In 2009, it seems becoming president of the United States is a simple path: convince a population group to relinquish their assets in exchange for promising to make them feel better. In the case of the current president, he convinced enough people to hand over portions of their current and future liberties, and liberties of their children, in exchange for … what? A middle-class tax cut? Making sure the rich are taxed more? The approval of Europeans on how we handle the war on terror, releasing detainees at Guantanamo? The lesson is clear: Promise comfort and appeasement – and in return, millions will hand over individual freedoms and future assets.
Many conservatives, deriding the current president for being liberal, feel that liberalism is the greatest threat to America. I disagree. Liberalism is simply an anesthesia of choice for the real problem in America: self-centeredness.
When individuals consider only themselves and their physical or emotional comfort, they are easy prey to the carnivorous idea that one’s feeling of contentment is paramount. Like morphine, liberalism (and its representatives) attaches to the screaming pain receptors and provides an illusion that all is well by masking the dysfunction with feelings of euphoria and serenity.
Regardless of the euphoria of the moment, the dysfunction remains … and the individual has ceded power to a merciless and consuming master.
When my wife’s right leg was amputated due to extreme pain and damage, the surgeons numbed her from the waist down for three days following the surgery. The idea was to remove the “pain print” from her brain and hopefully reduce phantom-limb pain. Twenty-four hours following the surgery, she was sitting up in bed, having dinner and feeling surprisingly well. With the sheet over her lower body, a stranger could have walked into her room and never known that her leg had been amputated the day before. She felt and looked fine, but under the covers she had a newly maimed limb. Had she tried to get out of bed, walk or participate in any functionality, she would have seriously hurt herself. She “felt” well, but she was not well. The problem had to be addressed. She endured the strain of wearing a new prosthetic limb, physical therapy and the emotional pain of living with limb-loss and now is a fully functioning individual. Along the way, she faced her fear of falling by picking herself up every time she took a tumble.
America, as a nation, wants to feel better, but we’re unwilling to pull the sheets back and honestly address the hard reality of our dysfunctional state in order to get better. We’re reluctant to put on the artificial limb or sweat while learning to take a few steps with a walker. Forget picking ourselves up when we fall; it’s just easier to sit in a wheelchair in front of the television. Our new national motto may as well be: levamentum, non iucunditas (comfort, not purpose).
When enough people who want their guilt suppressed, their angst addressed and their desires met agree to cede their power to any individual or organization, then the latter becomes master, not servant. The “fix” becomes paramount, and otherwise independent-minded Americans eagerly give away precious freedoms and resources to gain what anesthesia promises: numbness from the stabbing pain of reality.
Funny thing about anesthesia and narcotics: There’s never a satisfactory finite dosage. The body continues to produce pain receptors that require more and more narcotic. How comfortable as a society do we have to be before we have enough? Where does this road of comfort lead? Must we structure America’s whole economy, health care and justice systems so that no one feels uncomfortable? Is that the promise and idea of America? In 1973, we let go of life. In 2008, we let go of liberty. All that’s left is the pursuit of happiness.
Like addicts, self-centered, victim-minded people surrendering valuable assets in order to feel happy and avoid facing reality will suffer dire consequences, often while inflicting pain on others. If only this frantic pursuit of comfort was limited to an aberrant few.
Alarmingly, it’s spreading like a virus across America.
