I know I’ve way overused the “I just read this in Esquire” premise for a post, but you can’t pick on a guy for where he finds his inspiration. Well, actually you can, and most people do, frequently, but I’m not going to let that stop me.
David Granger, the magazine’s editor, writes a column every month called “This Way In” by way of introducing and setting up each issue. Yes, I actually read them, most of the time anyway, and most of the time they, at the very least, demonstrate why he holds the post he does with that organization. He is insightful, unafraid of expressing unpopular opinions and an accomplished writer. His vision for the magazine is clear in its continuous reach for something new while maintaining its traditions.
Every now and then though, Mr. Granger exceeds that standard and contributes a piece that outshines, or at least rivals all else that follows that first or second page. This month’s is one of those times.
His was a simple message, to be clear, but in a time when the redundant and pedantic “now more than ever” has been added to every proclamation from Twinkies ads to rationalizations for illegitimate wars, it can’t be stated enough.
His message is this: For most of us it’s not that bad so man up, count your blessings, and quit yer whinin’!
He establishes this as an undisputable truth with reasons dear to my heart. I’ll lay a few of them out here and then add a few of my own as a means of justifying my own existence:
1. every generation wants theirs to be the best and the worst of times so we tend to exaggerate our situation – I knew a guy in college who ALWAYS noted this about Buffalo, NY
(Granger invokes HALF of the classic Dickens first line and a hypothesized editorial response to it from the European poor to illustrate the repetitiveness of this truism)
2. even if it were as bad as Al Gore says, and we did everything he suggests, we’d only, by the most generous predictions, succeed in reducing global warming by .3 degrees by the year 2100.
3. the current economic crisis, while nothing to sneeze at, means it’s easier to:
- get a seat at great restaurants and most offer value priced specials!
- unhinge our economy from the volatile futures market where it never should have been
…all things that should have happened long ago!
To Granger’s list I’ll add:
- buy cheap real estate
- catch up on that degree you abandoned
- change careers (we all need different kinds of motivation, for instance: being fired)
- buy cheap stock in companies you KNOW will be around in 10 years
- vacation in Cuba and bring home legal cigars (OK, maybe not quite yet, but…)
I guess what hits home most to me about Granger’s advice or observation is how it applies to politics. Trying times cause us to take stock. We should do that more often. While I’m happy that the American political trend seems to be a resurgence of the voice of the largely moderate electorate, I think we should take a little more notice of it.
The extremes from both poles have had the floor for far too long. I truly do not begrudge Rush or Billo for making a career out of this. In fact, if anything, I’m a little jealous. Not so much of their “success” as of their ability to fool the rest of the media into believing they matter more than they really do. Actually, that’s a misstatement as well. If they didn’t actually matter, the last three elections would have been vastly different. We would have discussed issues that really matter in a rational, reasonable manner. WE didn’t, hence Rush and Billo matter.
The Air America crew – and I’ll go ahead and put names to them: Al Franken and Janene Garafolo, (the only ones I can recall) were no better. Though I obviously lean slightly more in their direction than in Fox’s, I’m just as disgusted with their extremism as I am with that of the other side. In fact, maybe even more so for their lack of ability to pull off a successful campaign already modeled for them by their polar opposites. Perhaps they didn’t go extreme enough. Or, as I like to fool myself into believing on occasion, perhaps it’s just that their FAR LESS extreme/FAR MORE reasonable content simply doesn’t sell (watch the talk shows and the news if you doubt my theory) But even I have to admit that they tried to be just as extreme, they just weren’t as good at it as the right.
The point is, these folks don’t represent US. They represent extremes and while America might be extremely greedy, extremely shortsighted, extremely forgetful, and a lot of other adjectives to the extreme, as a nation, we tend to chug along with a high degree of stability, which is to say, overall moderation and reasonability. We’re really not bad neighbors to have most of the time even if we tend to be a little boring once the extremes are ignored. And in spite of ourselves, we’re still the best hope in the world for the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants.
We provide the best opportunity to rise out of one’s born class regardless of color, creed or even competence. We take care of our own (most of the time) better than just about any other group of people on the planet and when we falter in that, we’re the first to admit it even if we fight over the best way to fix it. At least we fight about it and allow for the fight/discussion to happen instead of repressing all opposition!
We could get better at that fight and I believe we have in the past year. Rush and Billo have proven themselves to be exactly what they are: shock value entertainers with no concern at all for what they’re spewing aside from the ratings and cash it gets them. Al Franken has put his money where is mouth was and opted to do something about it rather than just talk and make money. Like him, more Americans have taken a true interest in politics than we have in a long, long time, but there still remains a lingering doubt.
This doubt is reinforced each time I hear someone say something like “I hate all parties and all politicians. You just can’t trust any of ‘em anymore.”
On the one hand, it’s refreshing to hear this from people who formerly spewed party politics rather than contemplate a thought of their own for more than the time it takes to pop the top on a beer. On the other hand, this is exactly the attitude Granger is railing against.
Opting out is not an option. Politicians are what they are and have always been. They’re no worse nor better in our time than they ever were. Ditto the media, education, communication, technology, the economy, religion, guns, abortion, etc. and so on. Dropping out of the participatory process that is America in general and our political process in specific is just a lame excuse for your laziness.
It’s the dropouts who allow the extremists to take control in the first place… and only after watching them run away with everything great about our world are we finally drawn back into not just the polls, but the process itself. Party extremists can get people to the polls, but it took a campaign like Obama’s to actually get folks back into the process. If he hadn’t mustered up the now famous high-tech grass-roots campaign, pulling people in as volunteers and campaigners, he never would have gotten folks to the polls. Moderation was his stance. The only extremism came via his oppositions accusations.
Suddenly people are shocked to hear that he, like Clinton, is actually a moderate. Welcome to mainstream America. Don’t believe the extremist hype. Jump in the pool and discover that the water, scarce as it seems to be growing, is actually rather fine.
Does this mean we shouldn’t strive for that .3 degree reduction in global temperatures Al Gore’s less optimistic critics say we can achieve? No. Does it mean we should continue to artificially inflate rapidly self-destructing American companies rather than letting the market run its course? No. Does it mean we should abandon the workers through whose efforts those company’s helped establish American dominance and make it the great place it is and continuously tries to be? Of course not.
What it means is it’s time to STAY involved. It’s time to remember to count our blessings and realize it’s not that bad, or at least that we can make it better. It’s also time to remember that it’s worse for some, better for others. It’s time to do what we can for ourselves and for others so they can make it better for themselves as we strive to make it better for ourselves. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive and the vast majority of us are glad to share them as common goals. That’s not socialism, it’s America. There will always be folks content to do the labor, earn the meager wage, buy the products and live their lives firmly in a comfortable, anonymous middle class. Without them, the big wheels have no customers, no one from whom to make massive fortunes and remain or arrive among the elite, no one to build or deliver their products. But those elites must also remember the contributions everyone makes along the way. Elite (in terms of wealth) does not equal better or worse. The measure of one’s success or contribution isn’t always monetary.
Granger points this out expertly with his “unhinging our economy from the banks” idea. The nation of Bhoutan takes it even further by dropping the notion of Gross National Product in favor of Gross National Happiness – wherein they spend the nation’s cash not on that which returns the most cash, but on what returns the most happiness for their citizenry. Now that’s extreme, but somewhere between what they do and what we do, there’s a far more acceptable and realistic solution.
Now that those of us who comprise the middle of the bell on that famous curve have come back into power, let’s keep it that way by vowing to never return to those extremes again.
Expect more from your government by remaining an active participant in and customer of it. Don’t give up and let the extremes on either side shape the future for you. Don’t be the “no voter” who never proposes any solutions but rather constantly criticizes the solutions someone else proposes.
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