The Log in Our Eye

The other day I had a roar (Ante Up or Shut Up) about all the righteous anger regarding the Deepwater Horizon spill. This is not a retraction—I have little patience for the morally superior attitude of everyone who “knew this would happen.”

 

I also, however, feel a great deal of compassion for the people who are being affected by the spill. Just because I think we’re all participating in the industry doesn’t mean that I think fishermen who will lose this year’s livelihood or environmentalists who still drive combustion-engine cars deserve this distress. I don’t. I don’t think the oil company is wholly innocent, though I think that there’s a reason the other oil companies aren’t being forthcoming about their rig designs; my guess is that BP isn’t the only one doing things this way. It’s just the one who caught the bad well/mud/BOP.

 

My frustration is with the blame and scapegoating that are polarizing our country. Everything is adversarial, and this is just the latest example. A couple of years ago, the right claimed victory because increased offshore production means more energy independence, more jobs, and more security. It was right there behind big oil, and the governments of Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana were right onboard (Governor Backs Florida Drilling; Offshore Drilling Alabama’s Coastline; Louisiana touts is its offshore oil drilling). These individuals were the champions of the industry, and the second they were hurt by the industry they jumped ship and shifted blame.

 

In fact, in 2009, 68% of Americans supported increased offshore drilling as part of a suite of energy projects including natural gas and wind turbines (Poll Shows State Residents Support Offshore Drilling; you will note that the New Jersey supported offshore drilling, and that its legislators introduced the legislation to raise the liability cap on oil spill damage). Some (including Crist) argue that they support “environmentally friendly” drilling, but there is no such thing. You can attempt to minimize the impact, but the friendliest thing you can do is not drill. Any kind of drilling is “environmentally acquainted” at best. This spill was not a matter of if—it was a matter of when, and anyone who thought otherwise was an ostrich with his head in the tar sands. The proponents just choose ignorance because later they can behave as though they were deceived, when really they simply deluded themselves and wish to eschew responsibility for the consequences of the actions that they support.

 

The same adversarial relationship exists in education. Rather than working together—politicians, students, parents, teachers—to figure out that maybe there is no single approach that works for every child, and that maybe you need to hire good teachers and then let them teach, the parties attack each other to avoid accepting their own share of responsibility. Politicians are obliged to fund education, but they need a reason to hold that funding hostage during election years, so they talk performance. Students are responsible for working as hard as they can, every day, to get the most of their education because they are responsible for their futures, but if they prefer to slack, or if baseball is more important than Biology, they blame the teachers. Parents are responsible for making sure their children are well-behaved, fed, and supported in their education, but some can’t or won’t, and instead of asking for help they foist the responsibility on teachers and are stunned when teachers resist. Teachers, faced with a desire and responsibility to educate, receive minimal funding, unfunded mandates, inconsistent objectives, unprepared students, parental responsibilities, and rampant animosity, and shoot their frustration right back at all three of the aforementioned groups.

 

Most people in these groups try to work together: a good politician tries to support education, not rule it; a good student does his best and asks for help; a good parent has high expectations of both student and teacher (not just the latter); and a truly good teacher can most of the time take it all in stride and succeed. But the ones that we read about? The obnoxious ones? They’re more invested in assigning blame than in solving problems.

 

Other examples:

• Immigration in Arizona--We have illegal immigrants working in the U.S., businesses who are hiring them, but instead of going after the businesses who underpin both the black market labor and the political system, we go after the immigrants.
• The war in Iraq--Received overwhelming support in Congress that waned almost immediately when we discovered that you can’t invade a country without then occupying that country, unless you simply intend to destroy the country. Regardless of the rationale behind the war (and I admit that the support was the result of bad intelligence and subterfuge), invading a nation is not quick, however justified it may seem, and it was the potential longevity of the situation, rather than the faulty motives, that had many (not all) hawks turning accusatory doves.

The problem is, we can’t even have this conversation. We can’t discuss it civilly unless we’re behind closed doors where no one can see that we can understand the other side a little, and may even be a little wrong ourselves. Everything is adversarial, and I think it stems from guilt. I’m Catholic—I’m an expert on guilt, and the first thing a guilty person does is project blame. We’re ready to call others on it, as the Senate did when BP, Halliburton, and Transocean started playing responsibility hot potato. But then the log in our eye whacks something and hurts: this is the same body that at different stages allowed the rigs in the Gulf in the first place. The press conference kings these days are the same ones who in 2008, when oil prices were sky high, wanted a piece of that action in their districts. This is the same body that refuses to vote on carbon cap and trade, or any real legislation to wean us off the oil tit.

 

The same people funding support of the Arizona immigration bill are the ones who buy cheap strawberries picked by migrant laborers and don’t worry about the cleaning lady’s status when they pay her in cash at the end of the week. Some teachers are just bad, and they’re the first ones to spout off about parents (seriously—the good teachers lose their patience with parents every once in a while, but they are also often the first to defend parents who are doing their best to raise kids in a tough economy and meaner society than it used to be. They’re the first to try to coach parents about dealing with behavior issues because, let’s face it: the average parent trains 3 kids in a lifetime. The average teacher? 300+. There’s some expertise there. And they’re the first ones to give up evenings, weekends, and good nights’ sleep for the students who need them).

 

I am not without compassion. I do not, however, feel that sympathizing with those in distress means that we have to ignore all fault, or eschew it. We keep trying to make sweeping reforms of health care, of environmental policy, of education, of immigration—but those things only work from the top if the people on the bottom start participating as well. You want lower health care costs? Stop using insurance to pay for recreational massage—that’s not what it’s for, and you know it. You want a cleaner environment? Turn off the lights/computer/air conditioner in your house, stop buying bottled water, buy local produce, walk wherever you can and live closer to work/stores/entertainment. Accept that less oil production means higher gas prices.

 

You want a better education system? Stop finding someone to blame and start volunteering—be a mentor, a tutor, an advocate of public libraries. Talk to teachers, rather than at or about them. If you want to reduce illegal immigration, punish companies that hire illegal immigrants, as well as the immigrants themselves—both are equally criminal. Accept that it may mean Americans have to do their own manual labor—and in a tough job market, that may mean that you or I have to scrub someone else’s floor, pick their fruit, mow their lawn, or clear their dishes, and do it for the wages that illegal immigrants will accept. Or, alternately, accept that those businesses will no longer be able to charge what they do now, or even stay afloat.

 

I am frustrated because we have the power to change the world, and we have abandoned that power. We have given it away to governments and lawyers instead of claiming it. All I have to do to change the world is to change my own life, a little at a time, slowly creeping toward my ideal. But that requires real work, and that requires me to accept my fault when I fail: to live with the consequences both of my failures and my successes. That is the most American ideal that we have: we, through our own actions in our own lives, have the power to determine our own destinies. We are choosing not to do so because it’s hard—better to let government or the economy or anyone other than us mandate it, then blame them when it fails. It’s just sad, and I’m just as guilty as anyone else. The difference? I know there’s a log in my eye, and I’m trying, little by little, to pull it free so I can see a little clearer. There are others out there (many, actually, who read this blog) doing the same, and maybe, little by little, we can change the timbre of national discourse to one of respect, that acknowledges equal responsibility for our nation’s failures and its successes.