Lately, it would be sweet to know that I’m in some kind of distorted reality yet again instead of having to face the obvious fact that I’m not.
My mostly liberal progressive, or what have you, politics are currently out of favor, but even given that, doesn’t the country seem unusually, profoundly whacked? The right doesn’t just attack but demonizes the left. The left is just as contemptuously dismissive of the right. Black and white, heroes and villains is so convenient, who can resist it?
The reality, more likely, is that the problems we are facing were not caused by “them” but by “us,” the solution is not confrontation but collaboration, not “I” but “we.” The necessarily inherently collaborative nature of living in an open society seems to be not just being overlooked by everyone but aggressively denied.
Still, a representative democratic republic is nothing so much as a pendulum swinging, maybe right now swung too far in one direction. Destroying the social safety net and a half-century of protective legislation for labor, minorities, immigrants, working-class people, and citizens in general is not, as some insist, to indicate how unnecessary it was. Rather, over time, it will become ever more apparent that most of that legislation was in response to real crises, and in so many cases the fix succeeded and things dramatically improved. So blithely it is taken for granted that these protections are no longer needed. Foolishly they are dismantled. That part is easy.
But by building levees, rivers are not then contained without them. Removing them leads to the flooding they were built to protect against.
It is going to be the rebuilding of those political structures and the social safety net that is going to be so damn hard. Ironically it is going to happen, not because of anyone’s personal ideology. They were built because they were needed.
Government is not precise. Some degree of failure is built in whenever government is applied to solve a problem. We have become geniuses at focusing on the flaws and sadly tone-deaf at appreciating the successes of government, which is not an abstract but rather our collective effort.
Still can any one explain to me Michigan? Where the drinking water in Flint was literally poisoned by bad political decisions? The crisis is being addressed, but slowly and inadequately. But meantime they allow legislation banning oral and anal sex? Passed by supposed champions of personal liberty. Voted for by those who oppose big government’s interference in our personal lives!
Obviously abortion is a charged topic, but one where even those I most violently disagree with have a moral point. But what is the moral point to a ban on personal sexual practices? In what universe is this kind of shocking morally blind, impossible-to-enforce legislation regarded as a triumph of conservative political values?
Odd, because as insane as I feel, my overall optimism is that this glorious experiment in representative government will ultimately triumph over the current truly deviant know-nothing political swing in the most reactionary direction. Still more and more, however, I feel like an isolated constitutionalist in my faith in this country. Professed “Love for America” is epidemic but it is almost always not for America as it is but for what it could be, this presented not as an evolutionary concept – this country is growing but perhaps not in the right direction. Instead it is a revolutionary one – this country, broken and gone to the dogs, is at the depths now. The constitutional experiment has failed.
One would have to be insane not to see that we are in a world beset with problems. The genius of the Constitution is to accept not just the shocking array of problems but the even more diffuse and often aggressively contradictory range of solutions. The reality is that the Constitution is an embrace of fluidity, perhaps making it more remarkable that so many of those who verbally embrace it most passionately insist on rigidity. The idea of the document was not as hopelessly naive as to anticipate a harmonious nirvana but rather the practical acceptance that participatory democracy was an inherent mess, that haphazardly moved back and forth with no clear pattern toward a goal. The opposite of that, the streamlined coherent governmental vision, is properly labeled fascism.
The original framers of the Constitution, often conceptually presented as united as the offensive front of a football team, were actually deeply and aggressively at odds with each other. The inclusive group of the framers of the Constitution held many different positions on all the relevant issues; what they understood was that they all had these different opinions on what a government should be. What they agreed on was to construct a government that embraced divergent views. Which moved best and fastest by compromise. It was constructed so that there were all kinds of inherent road blocks, so that government would never move too quickly, head too far in one direction or another. Not trusting each other, they wanted any kind of ideological dominance to be impossible. We still don’t trust each other, and there is no lasting ideological dominance. The only issue left is the functionality of day-to-day governing. As broken as that looks right now, I have some trust still in the gyroscopic rigidity of the Constitution.
This paper’s content is composed of those who create it, especially the writers. The rest of the team supports, proofreads, lays out, presents, and edits the content. The most pronounced and obvious threads in the overall tapestry woven by The Austin Chronicle are the especially vivid colors of the works of certain writers. Over the years Virginia B. Wood has been a dominant voice in this paper, in the Austin food community, and in Austin. In every way her writing and career were, even before we came together, at one with the underlying vision of this paper of the importance of local focus, in that the happenings in our community are not just the stories of our lives, but even more meaningful.
In every way her career as a writer, restaurateur, caterer, consultant, coach, cheerleader, mentor, and menu designer profoundly influenced, supported, and advised the overall food community. The results of her devotion, support, and attention are everywhere, not just in certain specifics but in the overall diversity of Austin’s food business. Virginia’s knowledge of the history of the community and her enthusiastic support of it mark what has been a remarkable, influential, but most of all entertaining tenure.
After many, many years with us, Virginia has decided to retire from the Chronicle. We the staff, the paper, and the community are all saddened by this loss and send Virginia our deepest love.
This article appears in February 12 • 2016.