Short Sighted

I've often thought that short sightedness is going to kill us. We are in an era when few branches of government get much respect from the public.  When you look at polling data with historically low approval ratings of congress, and presidential ratings pretty low, too, I think it reflects on the fact that people are asking what's wrong with out Government.

Our government is dysfunctional and seems to be unable to work toward solving any of our current problems.  I am convinced that one of the big problems is that Government has evolved to be an extremely short sighted institution. With elections every two years, we are in perpetual campaign mode.  With election promises divorced from any kind of accountability, we have no way of insuring that politicians will do what they say they will do.  When coming out on top in the barroom brawl that is supposed to pass as political debate is the only goal, because to lose any verbal exchange in the news cycle is seen as a way to lose an election, is there any doubt why our politicians can't even seem to tell the truth in their political speeches?

Elections have become competitions, like a football game.  The electorate divides up and decides which party they are going to vote for, and it doesn't matter how bad their team's sportsmanship is, they will still be blind to the virtues of the other party, or the faults of their own party.  It's like watching a die hard fan get mad at the referee, but only when the call hurts his team.  Few sports fans will say, "that's a bad call" if it helps their team, and few electoral partisans will call members of their own party when they are put their foot in their mouth or do something that adds nothing to help the country.

I get particularly frustrated when I hear the Republicans try to bash the Democrats over the issue of personal responsibility.  As long as we can wage two wars while giving out big tax breaks, nobody should be lecturing the other party about responsibility.  Imagine how long the Iraq War would have lasted depended on voluntary War Bonds in able to finance it.  Yet, we were perfectly willing to put it on the national credit card.

Our corporations don't seem to be any better at being responsible, either.  They're perfectly willing to give CEOs enormous bonuses, whether the company is doing well or not, but they are not willing to give anything for research and development, which is the only way most companies can hope to survive in the long run.  Corporations have devolved to the point where they would rather make good quarterly profits at the expense of their future well-being.

We talk about personal responsibility, yet we are collectively unwilling to do anything for the environment, short term or long term.  It's irresponsible to neglect the impact our actions have on our environment when damaging the environment will hurt us all in the long run, as well as making it more difficult to run profitable businesses.

We shouldn't have to lurch into a crisis in order to think about the long term consequences of our actions, and we shouldn't have to have a gun to our head to make good decisions.  We shouldn't be thinking about our children's lives, we should be thinking about our great great grandchildren's lives, or the life of the planet and our species in 200, 500, or 1000 years from now.  What will those people think when they look back on us now.  Will they praise or curse the decisions we make and the actions we take today?  It's pretty clear to me what those distant descendants will be thinking if we keep behaving the way we do now.