Op Ed: NO 'Free Lunch'
Change Process
Demands Support

Part one is a special two-part series: American “Exceptionalism” Recognizes Realities NOW.

Courtesy: progressivestates.org

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Last words one will ever hear from this bunch of ”politicians” performing like career-disappointed actors is “Tax Increase”.

We’ve already had proof of where and to what that can lead... It’s so damned politically-comforting --AND crisis concealing! - never, ever to find oneself forced into that painfully unavoidable reality:

Inevitable change is inevitably a highly costly process, even if very slow, difficult, demanding and complex --as in the receding past century. That wildly-whirling world all around us generates change NOW at increasingly giddy-speed, with amazing magnitudes of multiplying millions-and-billions in every aspect of life-costs --as we have learned “the hard way” ever since the 70s.

Anyone question inevitability of still more, surely increasingly difficult, complexities compounding what we have already found terrifying and horrendous?

Faster and ever more furious all aspects of life surely have become, with costs generated by more massive magnitudes --amazing and desperately now more-demanding, too --as in every New Age. SO MUCH SO that succeeding “leadership” generations from both ostensibly public/interest concerned “parties” -- masquerading in the three essential governance-functions presciently invented by our Founding Fathers-- now seek to avoid the issue and the confession of absolutely demanded necessity, just so long as possible.

“They” do so quite openly, as well as under-cover whenever at all possible by whatever prevailing pretense and prevaricating public statement seems to capture attention and avoid direct political artery/incision, sure to follow those cursed words: “Tax Increase”.

“They” thus avoid any/all possible, even partial, reflections of what has long been recognized, worldwide, as true “American exceptionalism”, reflecting character strong-and-true, far beyond today’s norm. An understanding of that proper self-evaluation, imposed by the long development of “exceptionalism”, is an unavoidable component now demanded for possible understanding of realities in current American dilemmas.

Many millions, all too fully aware of true, strong American self-understandings, built on basic experience over the first century following the American Revolution, are now --once again !!-- becoming true believers in what the Founding Fathers so presciently presented to us --clearly reflecting that characterization to-come.

Part of that worldwide-noted syndrome was, for decades, dedication to pragmatic plans for payment of potent costs unavoidably associated with the strong governance sought by ongoing American majorities. Ever since ‘76-itself, the basic American internal struggle has been “limited vs strong and centralized governance”.

It took confrontation, conflict --and some bloody politically-motivated deaths, too-- to set us up as we now are, with 250 years of success proving the pattern. Recent events --particularly since the ‘60s, with the advent of both Nixon and then, irrevocably, of Reagan --and “supply-side”, deregulation, privatization and distorted corporate-perverted “free trade” alias “globalization”-- have made multiplex radical, reverse revolutionary, and unreasonable impacts, forcing us into complex changes --but in the wrong directions.

First proposed by de Tocqueville, that amazing group of characterizing components termed “American exceptionalism” has long mystified many outsiders, while magnifying American impact on world events at all levels, everywhere --and never more-so than in the opening years of this 21st Century.

Here the term refers to what researchers and academics generally mean by it: “Sharp and measurable differences in public opinion and political behavior between Americans and their counterparts in other developed democracies.” (See Wikipedia for several versions varying with viewpoint and particularly time-point in our history.)

Yet CHANGE we MUST HAVE, in this the 21st Century: It better be wisely generated, with solid cost provisions, for our seemingly unsure-now survival. Our original exceptionalism can provide an unusual and surely pragmatic guide for what we must now do.

One can seek out ANY issue under demanding public scrutiny NOW, and the first, most-threatening, complex component for decision will be “How (the h...) do we pay for THIS one ?” . For early decades after ‘76, cost-of-governance was an overwhelming first-consideration, with strong, practical, pragmatic attention-paid by all concerned.

Leadership-then was deeply concerned with “the commonweal”; debt was generated, but basically kept under control, within logical, pragmatic limits. Perhaps the most exacting challenge to our long vaunted claim of serious “American exceptionalism” will be how we-as-nation now react to changing worldwide circumstance, condition and complex “advances” in every modern-life component --with inevitable rising-costs.

How we plan and pay for those-so-demanded is the strongest test of our Founders’ principles possible. That such changes --at every level, everywhere, for every nation, every interest group, every political party, even every neighborhood AND every person-- are rapidly occurring, and then re-occurring. even before the original dust has settled-- is no longer in question.

But intense, unfounded political pretense and wild proliferation of even more profound costs, threatening UNinformed and MISinformed, ennui-driven and-impatient citizens too involved in commercially-shaped lifestyle, has (temporarily?) overwhelmed that true citizen participation. we know we must have for a healthy democracy.

“Corporate campaign contributions” clearly play an overpowering role, with catastrophic consequences both Constitutionally and in purchase of political power. Pretense of personal political “right to speak” is set at something less than credibility simply by the fact that every human must exercise bodily functions...and that is not, in the usual sense, an attribute of the corporate pattern and protocol. (More brutally-put: “If it doesn’t defecate, urinate, breath and exhale, it ain’t human and has no political rights.”) i.e,: Corporate political speech as if a “human right” is now simply, always has been, and must always be treated as the legal/shorthand convenient-contrivance its history shows it, very clearly, to be --and that’s all it can ever be! (Despite distorted-mistaken statement procured within Supreme “railroad era” consideration.)

Little recognized, but a well known social-sciences fact, is that change-itself comes about via millions of minor personal actions, for whatever purposes and reasons, undertaken over years by duly-participating citizens, often with no clear reason nor process in place. “Trends” and even “political or social movements” can be thus allowed, measured, and managed; but not contrivances like the corporate dollar power political weapon conferred by this contrived and Constitutionally-absurd contraption.

For clarity, fully-commensurate Constitutional considerations and a complexity of other potent reasons, that incompetent, competitive and contrived action must now be reversed. Thus currently pragmatic levels of ongoing debt are demanded and must be met, sooner or later --whether recognized by those closely concerned or NOT: “There ain’t any free lunch!” is therefore now more than ever a fascinating version of truth demanding an unqualified honest response:

HOW do we now pay for our essential ‘lunch’? One has only to visit the Internet to sample the multiplicity, magnitude, and massive impact-everywhere of what is reality-today --even though brutally overlooked by far too many who should be fully informed, by their own involvement in particular, if partial, circumstance, surround and personal situation.

How far-behind many otherwise-cogent persons now fall is demonstrably apparent in LOL-comments found frequently on multiple Internet blogs: The 30-year/teacher (subject and level unknown) who cites his 40-year/old college “Econ 101”-overview from thus-ancient history in that area; The indefatigable constant-cynics who demonstrate their intellectual level via consistently charging President Obama’s nationally-derived special-Commission numbers as “shifting the deck-chairs on the Titanic”; The malign-intended flat-out liar declaring a known progressive pundit (Stiglitz !) has suddenly reversed his stance via address at a well known collegiate institution --at which the pundit had NOT appeared during the last decade.

Nothing either American or “exceptional” about any one of those documented incidents, occurring right here on this S-N channel! But each doth demonstrate the current desperate denigration of true American differentiations, now, from what we first earned the right to own.

Each demonstrates, inevitably, thus unmercifully reveals, in the public domain, the continuing attack on rationality and reasonable expression of those existing realities which now may well prevent the forward steps via cogent consideration of policy and action-decision we MUST NOW HAVE.

Those brutal bad-choice attitudes began in the 60s with pseudo/social-revolt. The whole syndrome was then massively multiplied by the “Government IS the problem !” response strongly reiterated by all Reaganites --with rapidly-reversed huge tax/slashes for the rich and privileged, never matched by progressive repayments.

Those repayments were promised to Congress and concerned ciizens - but never achieved by cost cutting/ applied, unmistakably demanded to stanch unavoidably debilitating revenue-flow thus rapidly encountered --setting an irrevocable pattern for decades-to-come and thus enslaving millions of new Americans even before their very conception. That pattern, too, has been a part of true American “exceptionalism”, recognized and now much more deeply appreciated during every day of the current worldwide economic catastrophe clearly underway.

Then there are also some exceptional few --often working from limited “outsider” viewpoint -- further encumbered by the culture, economics and overwhelming political freight of geographical distance-- who not only prophecy rapid, remarkable disasters for our American Way and its unique historical “exceptionalism”, but attribute that looming failure they see to something inherently weak/missing/broken or otherwise malignant, built-in “ever since 1776.” For those with that obviously badly-bent view -- too much like Alice’s “through the looking-glass”-- with its obvious distorting elements, we can only say:

“How come we’ve done so damned well over these past providential 250-years of democratic-experiment ?” IF, indeed, something rotten reigned, either undercover or completely “in the clear” ever since 1776, how come it took so long to be impactful, effective, and otherwise detected and so easily discernible?

Even given the too-enthusiastic characteristics of “American exceptionalism” --duly and disparagingly described-and-recorded by many, mostly in other lands and locations-- how did it happen we experienced the well known, widespread, world-unique, continent-wide expansion and homesteader occupation firmly on historic record? Who, today, can denigrate that demonstration of the true “exceptionalism” we then, undoubtedly, did possess?

First forward-thrust of the surely-formative mass movement by millions, presaging potent manipulation and complex machination of the continental mega-structure it offered, was the Louisiana Purchase. Perhaps presciently, that empire-sized “purchase” was prompted -- by a perplexed and perhaps, for this, a purposely naive nation then known as the French Empire, unable to capitalize on historical holdings then.

There are many indications the French were looking to saw off on simple-simon settlers in unorganized-yet and far-away America the largest land-grant/ever, despairing of completing its despoliation themselves.

But exceptional American future-potent foresight, even without survey and situational information not available until further-explored, knew a very good thing when presented --naivete be damned on either side.

The rest, as the saying will have it, “is history” -- of which we can make-now what we will, with the plain clear historic record telling us the unmistakable truth about the real American exceptionalism surely a result.

We have no wish to further perpetrate imperfect passing comment on colossal American-historical events, so will simply send you-all to the nearest comprehensive text for “the rest of the story” --right up to the current-events page in today’s most impressive daily you can find. Be sure to see such as Zinn et al have laid on the line to make sure you do encounter reality --complete with those two major smears on our escutcheon:

The longtime economic/social catastrophe of slavery; and the now/clearly-demonstrated conflict of American values and beliefs inherent in the rise and control of governance by corporate conquistadors. Any such futher-review will surely show you the continuing potent, perfect truth totally evident, still being demonstrated around the world in so many ways even a number-designated short/summary is useless here:

You can “see with own eyes” and find numerous rapid-links to detailed trained-historian revelation and review for whatever topic, issue, problem or particular you wish to pursue --right on the flourishing Internet. That in itself demonstrates potent points of Op Eds preceding as well as this one, via your own action in so seeking that new-view of modern, massive, manifold complexities we must face in this, the 21st Century.

It is impossible so-to-do without clear, complete, complex and comprehensive reference to what we now know, having learned so much both positive and negative from our own self-accomplished “exceptionalism”.

Can anyone successfully contend that we must now NEVER return to those prescient principles so well-and flexibly stated by our Founders? Theirs was a probing, prodding, potently productive and highly prescient shared-dialog, examining and testing and trying-out combination and continuation from each and every preceding philosopher and specialist they could find and share.

We have profound and potent proof, written large and sometimes bloodily across the pages of the world’s history, that the “experiment in democracy” undertaken by demand and devotion and dialog and invention by our Founding Fathers has written its way into the Ages to Come...for whatever it may be worth over those Ages.

Pogo had it right, and his warning-tone becomes our bellwether for what we must do NOW, to complete and clear and conclude any true “American exceptionalism”.

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Reader’s Note: Dialog demands differing attention-levels to fit the function and feeling-tone of complex subjects. This is one-such, where reader-understandings may well depend crucially on complete statement for both clarity and continued attention for meanings. Thus we seek to see the affect-and-effect of this lengthy laid-on summary, seeking to simmer-down and supplement much ongoing comment and commentary from “the usual sources”. It’s smoky in Seaside !! But this is what we can plainly see from that vantage-point, possessing, we may hope, some of the clarity and common sense demanded for such detailed impact on reader-attention. Thank you for your patience in our friendly pursuit of potent immediacy, perhaps cured and colored by the Seaside smokiness.

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At 21, Henry Clay Ruark was Aroostook Editor for the Bango, Maine DAILY NEWS, covering upper 1/4 of the state. In the ‘40s, he was Staff Correspondent, then New England Wires Editor at United Press-Boston; later Editor for the Burlington, Vermont 3-daily group owned by Wm. Loeb, later notorious at Manchester, New Hampshire UNION LEADER for attacks on Democratic Presidential candidates.

He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 560 written since then.