Obama’s “Jobs” proposal–really, a poorly formulated conjecture about what could work–will not work for the simple reason that it was not conceived with the intent of decreasing unemployment in this country. By extension, it was also not formulated with the intent of decreasing suffering in this country.
What it is intended to do is create an Alinskyan platform for partisan attack. Obama is figuring, one, that he has little to lose, and two, that his only chance at reelection is making people more scared of Republicans in aggregate than angry at his patent leadership failures, and all of his other plans that, likewise, have accomplished nothing for most Americans, all at enormous cost.
Taking his policy proposals that have been enacted as a whole, we are plainly worse off than if he had slept twelve hours a day the last three years, and spent his waking hours building model airplanes. If the cost of that were Michelle shopping seven days a week at swanky stores, and vacationing overseas continually at taxpayer expense, we would be better off to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of jobs that would otherwise have been created.
I won’t waste much time dealing with details, but plainly he WANTS Republicans to deny continued Unemployment benefits, so he can paint them as heartless, and he WANTS them to allow payroll taxes to go back up, so he can paint them as hypocritical. He WANTS them to reject his big idea of hiring tens of thousands of workers to do work which does not need to be done, all at taxpayer expense, so he can say “Republicans don’t want to put America back to work.” This is pretty straightforward. He is not clever or original; nor are the people whose ideas these actually are.
The block, of course, is to ask what happened the last time we spent a trillion dollars that he insisted was necessary, and what the consequences were on our national debt. He posited, then, a cause and effect relationship that was falsified by the ultimate judge: reality.
The more interesting question, to me, is the internal reality that enables him to care NOT AT ALL about actual human beings who do, to a regretable extent, depend on him, ideally, making things better, and at a minimum not making things worse, as he has in fact done.
We all have this vain tendency to wax sentimental about our heroism. I myself, sometimes, look at myself imaginatively running into a burning building–like Peter Parker does in the excellent second Spider Man–and either dying nobly or succeeding (I actually met a woman in a bar one time who did run through literal flames to save a baby, and who emerged with substantial burns). I look at that, and get a bit teary eyed at my nobility. Wow, I must be a really good person. If only the world knew what a great guy I am. We all do this at times, I suspect.
This is foolishness. It is perhaps useful at a certain level of development–a level I personally am trying to transcend–but is not even remotely Good is the sense I want to develop it.
I would like to offer an outwardly strange example, but one which has resonance for me affectively and cognitively. To frame it, I will say only that I did martial arts for many years, and came over time to find many, many life lessons inhered in it.
That example is from Musashi, author of “The Book of Five Rings”, and victor–successful murderer–of many duels. He states somewhere in there that you should always be thinking of cutting. That is the key.
This would seem to be obvious. After all, you are trying to win, and not die. But so many things get in the way. In a duel, for example, you might be thinking about how well you are fighting. You might be planning your next move, designed to win. In my view, though, if you plant the seed of your real, final outcome deeply, firmly, ineradicably in your consciousness, then things begin to happen that further that goal. What you need comes to you. This is non-linear, but no matter how things appear, we do not live in linear universe in all but the most superficial sense. Everything is system.
What a Good person needs to be focusing on is helping people. You have to start with the notion of people as self sustaining, happy people, who DO NOT NEED YOU. You have to have as an aim complete superfluity, complete uselessness, with no need to do anything but watch. To do what is right, you need to remove your own ego from the thing, reject all emotional compensation, and all flaky sentimentality.
Now, this does not mean being cold, or never being happy. If you cultivate your own happiness, you don’t need to be needed. There are plenty of pleasures in this life that are free and common. As an example, I personally am an avid student of the sky. I never tire of the interplay of light and cloud, shadow, wind and darkness. I can and do watch the sky for hours.
Back to the point, though, the need to be needed is, itself, a type of dependency, and a dangerous one FOR OTHER PEOPLE. With this motivation, you will find yourself unconsciously undermining others, rather than building them up.
This is what people like Barack Obama do. He cannot conceive of a world which does not need him, and he therefore sets as his aim not helping people, but rather making sure that people like him stay in power, regardless of the actual outcomes of their policies.
This is a type of soft evil. It is not actively desiring pain for others, but rather an actual indifference to suffering that is tempered with a sentimentalism that is entirely divorced from reality, that consists entirely in wishful fantasies with him as the hero, and everyone else as praising him for his benevolence. Oh THANK YOU Barack, for caring about us so much, for being such a wonderful human being. We know that things don’t always work out, but you TRIED SO HARD.
I have in fact seen people taking bows to imaginary audiences after imaginary guitar solos. They can’t know you are there, or they feel immediately the ridiculousness of such things, but most such fantasies never leave the protective cover of the skull of the dreamer.
We can do so much better. All of us.