Everything Is Broken

“…Ain’t no use jivin’, ain’t no use jokin’… Everything is broken!”

Bob Dylan

Like any complicated piece of machinery, things will occasionally go wrong in a society. Less like a piece of machinery, and more like a living organism, societies sometimes have the ability to heal themselves. From the time that the colonies broke free of the rule of Britain, through our unfortunate societal abuses of slavery and Manifest Destiny, the burning of our capital, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, two world wars, Vietnam, 9-11… we have always found a way to put the pieces back together again and go on. Sometimes all it takes is for the spirit of the American people to be revived by a common enemy, sometimes it requires a national repentance and turning away from an errant or immoral position, sometimes it requires leaders and heroes to show us the way.

It can be hard to watch the news these days. Besides the pressing issues of Ebola, ISIS, lone wolf terrorist acts, and school shootings; we have the long term problems of failing public education, enduring poverty, urban decay, and the deterioration of the family as the compass of society. Add to this the increasing vulgarization of our young men, our women, and even our children; the corruption of our government in every agency and at every level, a public debt that most people could not even write down much less pay down, and a holocaust whereby we have ended 56 million human lives in the 40 years since Roe v. Wade… well, if the admonition that America will cease to be great if she ceases to be good is true, we may well be seeing the sunset of America’s greatness.

We are a forgiving nation, sometimes to a fault. We excuse wickedness, moral failure, and incompetence in our great desire to be understanding and non-judgmental. What can start as the virtuous act of forgiveness, can progress to giving license to failure and making ourselves into doormats. Increasingly we overlook the failings of our leaders to behave morally, to govern ethically, and to fix problems as simply part of the human condition and common to all. How have we come to the place where we justify the President’s golfing while the nation is in peril by insisting that everyone needs a vacation? We look to the vast problems in our nation and in the world, and lower our expectations of leadership saying they are too great to be solved by a few elected officials; and of course they are, but those leaders have vast resources at their disposal, and the overwhelming potential of the American people. We elect them to find those solutions… it’s their job. If they can’t do their job, then why should we pay them? If no government can mend what is broken then what purpose does government have? One would hope it would be more than to just regulate the chaos.

IMHO: It is possibly unfair to lay the existence of ebola at the feet of the President, but the political response is typical, and demonstrates a replacement of true leadership with patronizing elitism. It is just one more instance of a world that seems broken, and in serious need of good leaders. The Democrats will no doubt suffer in the coming election due to the failure of the President to appreciably “fix” things. How much remains to be seen. It is troubling at the same time that the Republicans seem not much better equipped to lead than the Democrats as opposed to just win elections. Being “only human” encompasses a broad range of quality and virtue (or the lack thereof). We need to find “only human” leaders less in the mold of Rod Blagojevich, and more in the mold of Abraham Lincoln; less like Barack Obama and more like Martin Luther King Jr. In some way the buck doesn’t stop at the President’s desk, it stops at the voting booth and in the hearts and minds of the citizens. We get the leadership we choose, we get the leadership we acquiesce to, we get the leadership we deserve.