All political systems fail – for the reason they succeed. What first made them effective makes them defective at last. In Sherlock Holmesian fashion, style this “The Case of the Pampered Heir.” Or if physics is your bent, “The Third Law of (Existential) Motion.”
This only happens to humans. Other creatures, living in an eternal present, aren’t tempted by a preferable future. My dog-pal Henry is OK where he is because he can’t envision better. He does not notice my flaws, so evident to human onlookers. I relish his uncritical endorsement – it relieves me of any pressure to up my performance.
Humans, by contrast, are relentless improvers. Eve is not evil, just human. Something must be going on outside her paradisial confines! So did Semele crave her face-to-face encounter with Jupiter, even knowing it must incinerate her. So did Faust take the Devil’s bargain. So do I sniff forbidden corners of my psyche. Can’t I read those No Trespassing signs! I can – and my curiosity can’t resist.
Modern democracy was concocted a quarter of a millennium ago by forebears who believed they could build a better mousetrap than monarchy. We citizens – meaning male property owners at the time – would govern ourselves! Holy, moly, gasped observers, that can never work – humans aren’t up to the challenge. We must be safeguarded like infants, lest we toddle where we oughtn’t! Our Founders gave the finger to the King and embarked on their dangerous experiment. Democracy – and its essential sidekick, Capitalism – worked so well, folks forgot the rigor they require. The richer you get, the less pleasurable civics. We deputed self-government to grunts, willing to do the tedious work of meeting, listening, lying, getting elected. No wonder we ended up with the grifters, drifters, rapists and halfwits nominated to populate our next President’s cabinet. What did it matter who ran the world! They were only marionettes, their puppet-masters the megabuck bros who funded them.
Ben Franklin’s quip exiting the 1787 Constitutional Conventional, while probably apocryphal, simmers with his salty good sense. Asked what sort of government the Founders had cooked up, he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Turns out, we can’t keep it. We haven’t the staying power – the discipline, humility, education, focus – to make our system function. Like pampered heirs, we’ve scant appreciation of our predecessors’ greatness and grit. “Trump will fix it” so we can get on with our whining and dining. We piss on our patrimony, then grumble it’s unpotable. The day’s news so sickens me I ignore it. If the majority doesn’t value the American idea, why should I?
Sorry, scary times. But that’s what comes of being human. Henry shakes his little head, incredulous: What is WRONG with you guys! Why can’t you do what it takes, leave well enough alone? Why are you so STUPID?
Democracy and Capitalism, America’s – and the world’s – immeasurable benefactors, will end up destroying themselves. Freedom means freedom to be foolish, indolent, ignorant, overconfident, feckless, reckless, to employ as Leader a scumbag you wouldn’t hire to babysit your daughter, who treats America as a cookie-jar, not a public trust. “What are we thinking!” we gasp, appalled. But it can’t be helped. Eve will taste her apple, Semele gaze on Jupiter, Faust make his bad deal, even after seeing the opera, and I will keep meandering where I oughtn’t – because we’re human. “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well,” loyal Albany warns his proud, heedless, self-blinded boss, King Lear.
What comes next, after our present system’s collapse? “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Newton noted. Buckle up.