Directions

It seems every few weeks sees another poll about the "direction" the country is taking. It strikes me as a kind of nebulous question and, should I ever be part of such a poll, I wouldn't be sure what to say. At first brush it would seem pretty obvious that I do not think the country is going anywhere near the right direction. But that might suggest I think that the Democrats / Obama are leading us off in the wrong direction and that the Republicans should be back in power to correct our course. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Democrats / Obama are going off in the wrong direction mostly because they are sticking to the same path the Republicans choose years ago.

Which make me wonder, is the country out of whack, or just the people leading it?

The government is utterly pro-gun, regardless of the current rhetoric. There might be some restrictions, eventually, on large capacity magazines, though I wouldn't bet on it. There is no chance that there will be real gun control. Real gun control would require universal background checks, licences, and registration. Real gun control would include an absolute ban on any weapon that could fire more than 6 rounds without having to be reloaded, and draconian penalties for anyone who manufactured, sold, or possessed hardware that circumvented that restriction. None of that will ever transpire. Yet less than half of the households in the US have guns in them. Adults who own a gun number barely 1/3. The vast majority of Americans, even those who own guns, want serious gun control. The only people who seem to side completely with current government gun policy are the seriously bat-shit crazy right wingers. The rest of the country? Not so much. When it comes to guns the country, the people, are a lot closer to going in the right direction then is the government.

(By the way real gun control has nothing to do with banning "assault style" weapons. What a gun looks like is of absolutely no consequence. An assault looking rifle holding a maximum of 6 rounds has exactly the same killing potential as a 6 shot revolver. In fact the six shot assault rifle is a lot harder to hide than the revolver and thus is less of a threat. Restricting the capasity of a gun to produce high body counts is what matters. Dictating what a gun looks like? Why bother? Doing so only plays into the hands of the NRA and the gun manufactureres.)

The government is still anti-gay, again reflecting the right wing, religious fundamentalist attitudes towards sex. Some progress is being made, but in this case it is the people of the US dragging the government along, with the feds kicking and screaming in protest. The majority of the people in the US are just not that concerned about gay people getting married, living together, hanging out with their kids, whatever. People are now voting for laws that end the discrimination against gay people, and being openly anti-gay is roundly and openly criticized. This fight is nearly over and gay people won it. The rest of us get to profit from the fact that civil rights and personal liberty have pushed back against oppression and religious ideology. Yet it will be years before the government catches up to the reality.

People are tired of the drug war, particularly when it comes to weed. It is, by any reckoning, just unbelievably stupid. The only reason I can imagine that would keep the government policy alive is that easy access to marijuana might cut into the drug companies profits for prescription feel-good pills. So campaign money pours into the propaganda and election campaign machines to prop up the "war on drugs". Not quite as far along as the battle for civil rights for gays, the fight against the government's position on drugs is also being won.

The Bush / Obama wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been understood by the American people as complete disasters. It is kind of amazing that no one has gone to jail for lying us into those wars in the first place. Support for them has deeply tainted some who otherwise would be serious political and maybe national leaders. (I'm thinking mostly of retired General Colin Powell and ex-Secretary of State Condolezza Rice.) Had there been a third party candidate in this last presidential election who ran against Obama's continuation of Bush's wars and the unnecessary anguish that resulted, who promised to close the Afghanistan disaster quickly and bring the troops home from all over the world where they are posted in harms way for no real reason, she (or he) just might have routed both Obama and Romney. (Which explains why no such a person was allowed anywhere near the election process.)

The country is going in the wrong direction, but most of the time, most of the people, are being dragged that way against their will. Maybe nation-states are much like any other religion. Most of the deeply religious people I know are actually much better people than the religions they follow might suggest. Regardless of what their bibles claim to be god's teachings, most believers don't envision stoning people for having sex or working on Sunday. They don't condone cutting off hands or gouging out eyes, sacrificing sheep on an alter, wars of genocide against other groups, slavery, selling their daughters, or the virtues of honor killings. They are good people in spite of their church, not because of it.

Perhaps us Americans should view ourselves in the same light. Our country is a seriously screwed up mess. No society can consider itself healthy that suffers the arming of mass murderers, endless wars on its own citizens (gays, pot-smokers, women) and the citizens of other societies, poisoning its water and air, the selling of its elected officials to the highest bidder, or a relentless abuse of the poor. Yet we all recognize that these are symptoms of an ill society and (many of us anyway) are appalled at a government that endorses and often facilitates the sickness.

The country is on the wrong track, but an amazing number of Americans are actually facing the right direction. There must be some hope in that somewhere.