There are two uncomfortable facts that make it very difficult for democracies to address long term threats and maintain long term commitments. Both are products of the ways in which our minds are structured and organized.
First, immediate threats will always have priority over long term consequences. The basic circuitry in our brains that react to threats, our deepest survival programming if you will, are expressly designed to deal with the most immediate needs and neglect the longer term. This worked well on the Savannah back in our distant hunter-gatherer past, but it uniquely ill suited for the modern world.
The second issue is that we are extraordinarily poor at risk assessment.
The painfully constructed edifice of the modern world is dependent on the scientific method, our only reliable method to differentiate fact from fantasy; even so, the public discussion of anthropogenic global warming should be evidence enough that in the absence of definitive data, emotional responses prevail.
At the moment, were one to try to discern the core threats facing the country, one would be forced to conclude that Islamic terror threatens half the country and the Republican administration threatens the other half. There are certainly ancillary concerns. Republicans talk about the threat of abortion, gay marriage, and various other signs of cultural decay; Democrats wax eloquent about the plight of the poor and those whose jobs are threatened by globalization.
Yet there are a number of elephants in the room that no one is willing to discuss, correctly understanding that such discussions will either lead to MEGO reactions from their listeners, or are political suicide.
One particular threat arena is our near future economic prospects. Robert Samuelson, in the New York Sun, discusses the threat that our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid liabilities pose to our future prosperity; don't be mislead by the title, he is talking about all the candidates:
The big lie of campaign 2008 — so far — is that the presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, will take care of our children. Listening to these politicians, you might think they will. Doing well by children has now passed Motherhood and Apple Pie as an idol that all candidates must worship.
"We will do whatever it takes to make America a better country, to give our kids a better future," says Mike Huckabee, winner of the Republican Iowa caucuses. "We will deliver for our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren," claims Senator Obama, the Democratic winner.
"We're going to reclaim the future for our children," says Senator Clinton.
Actually, these are throwaway lines, completely disconnected from reality.
Our children face a future of rising taxes, squeezed — and perhaps falling — public services, and aging — perhaps deteriorating — public infrastructure (roads, sewers, transit systems).
Another area of threat overtly concerns immigration. In this case cheap and simple demagoguery trumps reality every time. The immigration question comes down to how we control the inflow, and encourage the outflow, of people who do not want to become Americans, not how to stop people who just want what all our best immigrants have traditionally wanted, to become Americans.
Yet another area of threat is subsumed by the heading of Islamic terror but in reality has much more to do with the global threat of dysfunctional political systems based on Sharia law which require and institutionalize demonization of non-Muslims. This threat will persist long after Osama bin Laden is gone and will increase in direct proportion to our inability to address our oil dependency.
Overriding the concerns about Islamic dysfunction is the more important question of the structure and nature of any new emerging international paradigm. Pax Americana has worked for 60+ years (and please note that despite the violence in Iraq, on a global scale the world has never been so at peace; most conflicts today are intrastate rather than interstate, and the casualty rates and destruction are commensurately lowered by the changing nature of war.) Those candidates who threaten to reduce America's involvement in enforcing a minimally rational set of international norms are threatening to overturn a system that has brought prosperity to billions and is continuing to bring millions out of poverty on a yearly basis. Dedifferentiating to a global anarchy is in no one's interest.
This is hardly an exhaustive list and cannot include the unknown unknowns that I referred to in The New Age of Anxiety. [Just for clarification, while unknown unknowns has specific meaning, as pointed out by Simon, when people experience anxiety attacks, they are typically reacting to unknown unknowns; the definition of anxiety is a fear reaction without a realistic precipitant. Since the actual trigger of anxiety attacks is often unconscious, it is by definition an unknown unknown.]
For those of us who are concerned about such matters, the current crop of candidates does not inspire confidence. We are left, as usual, choosing a President on the basis of what we can discern of his or her character, and in our Audacity of Hope, devoutly hope they can rise to whatever occasions confront them. The best sign thus far, during these most entertaining and interesting caucus/primary times, is that no candidate has thus far been crowned. The primary season is going to be grueling and exacting; the candidates will be further tested and with luck, there will be moments when their character flaws are revealed. At the end of the process we may yet have a chance to discover which candidates(s) have the requisite equanimity, resilience, flexibility, coherence, and inner calm for the job.
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