Hang the Establishment

During his years at Harvard devils whispered in the ear of Barak Obama. The demons were the legitimate envoys of the Establishment.

Patrician scions like Kennedy, Roosevelt and Bush were born to the ruling class and needed little instruction from the elite. Barry Obama was another story. He was promising but atypical and had to endure recruitment into the ranks of leadership. It would have been unthinkable to allow a capable man of color to escape position and place among the old guard.

Over and over young Barak listened to the Establishment mantra. "This is the way things are, this is the way they have always been, this is the way they shall stay." Catchy but boring. America is a revolutionary country enamored with the status quo. We fear change more than invasion or nuclear holocaust.

Our recent presidential campaign was laughable for its strident repetition of the theme of change. One candidate was a Harvard man and the other a military man, the chance for variation was nil. Obama diligently supports the bankers, dumps tons of cash into the economy hoping to revive the failing consumer based model and exerts great effort to remain inoffensive. McCain would have done the same or worse.

The checks and balances present in the constitution both damper our revolutionary impulses and slow any progression toward facsism or aristocracy. The founding fathers worried much about the emergence of a kingship. Our early government struggled mightily to overcome the first strong impulse toward a Federalist regime. Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have shown us that government can become instantaneously imperial simply by directives from the exectutive branch.

While the constitution tries to ameliorate bad assumptions and radical propositions it does not absolve us from detailed examination of premise and practice. We repeatedly have made the mistake of operating under false or faulty logic. Slavery was the first big operational mistake to surface. Did the constitution intend its existence or merely overlook and allow the practice for loss of a better labor solution. Many of the same questions posed by slavery still resonant in the ongoing discussion of immigration. Recently we have suffered under the assumption that markets will regulate themselves. Regulation and rule of law was intentionally removed from fiscal oversight and laissez faire capitalism was given full reign. This was done within the last ten years, after a full and long narrative of the dangers of human greed, a history of economic failures caused by excess speculation and over leveraging and the visible bubbling of an overheated economy. How can we be so monkey dumb? Full length philosophical dissertations on Objectivism and intricate elaborations on the benefits of supply side economics proved to be a cleaver though transparent veil for the worst of human nature. Almost anything can be made to sound reasonable.

Self regulation is as unlikely as the cooperative mode that centrists like Obama seek. We have laws in this country governing the speed at which an automobile may be operated. If speed limits were universally and strictly observed we would save billions of gallons of fuel and untold quantities of human life. We can reason with the populace and ask for their cooperation or we can strictly enforce the existing laws and make penalties noticeable. Those that insist on speeding can fund alternative energy, safe transportation and highway maintenance.

Things get done accidentally, as Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out stupidity reaches a tipping point. Unfortunately then it is too late, the explosion erupts, the economy fails or the world finds itself irreparably poisoned. We learn while we are cleaning up the mess. Then we either progress or listen to the mantra, "This is the way thinks are, this is the way they have always been, this is the way they shall stay."