Miles's blog

There was a funny musical on Broadway a few years ago called Urinetown which I can’t help thinking about when I read the newspaper.  The premise of Urinetown was that measures had to be taken to reduce water usage due to an extreme drought.  Laws were passed prohibiting toilet usage except through official restrooms which required a fee.  A monitor of one of these restrooms justified this practice by singing “It is a privilege to pee.”  The populace grew increasingly outraged until they finally overthrew this onerous burden and opened up toilets for all.  Of course, this led to complete depletion of water and death by thirst.

Although Urinetown satirized building a civilization on the profligate use of finite resources, I cannot help but take another message from it as I read the newspapers: Populist pressure on governments to secure short-term goals can backfire leading to serious long-term repercussions.  

Japan is embroiled in turmoil because local governments have thwarted plans to restart the country’s nuclear reactors.  All of them were shut down in the wake of the catastrophic failures of some plants following last year’s tsunami.  The national government has put them through stress tests and wants to get them open soon. The mayor of Osaka has become the most popular politician in Japan for refusing to let the nuclear plant in his area open by playing on the public’s justifiable frustration with the national government’s cozy relationship with the nuclear power industry.  Unfortunately, unless some of these reactors open soon, Japan will face major brownouts during the summer which might result in the closing of some factories causing loss of jobs. 

Governments in Europe are facing electoral frustration, civil disobedience, and seeming societal disintegration over their attempts to deliver austerity budgets requiring the reductions of government programs, individual income, and job security.  Attempts to curb government spending on the back of the workers have raised to a boiling point previously simmering resentment against greed and graft on the part of elected leaders.  However, unless some austerity measures are instituted, governments in places like Greece will be unable to borrow money, leading to financial collapse and possible bankruptcy with unforeseeable, but inevitably detrimental, effects.

Most of the world supported the “Arab Spring” in the Middle East which saw government change in much of the Arab world, and attempts to institute real democracy.  The process, unfortunately, has led to continued frustration that democracy is arriving too slowly, or perhaps in ways that lots of people don’t really want.  Civil disobedience in Egypt seems to be as prevalent now as it was in the final days of Mubarak, and the only ones poised to take advantage are the Muslim Brotherhood and those with even more restrictive Muslim agendas and belligerence to Israel.  

All of these news items make me think of Urinetown’s poor, toilet-starved citizens, rallying behind a charismatic leader in a just cause, but then ending up worse off than when they started.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not against democracy, protests, or nuclear energy.  I understand governments need to conform to the will of the people.  However, unbridled democracy can be dangerous.  America’s founding fathers knew this and set up a limited representative republic.  Throughout America’s history, prior to the creation of social media, the term “populist” was not seen as necessarily a compliment, but more of a cheap electoral strategy to pander to the will of large groups of disenfranchised or disenchanted voters by advocating programs which sounded good on the surface but really were impractical.  Populist politicians like William Jennings Bryan inevitably lost because what they advocated would ultimately lead to severe negative repercussions.  

Modern politics, however, does not have the checks and balances of prior era.  Leadership and statesmanship have gone the way of the dodo bird; the media sees themselves not as part of a greater society but rather as muckrakers-in-chief; and instant, worldwide communication has enhanced the influence of superficial thinkers.  Thousands can now be drawn to occupy Wall Street based upon a few inflammatory sentiments placed on Facebook.  Such gatherings would have been difficult to arrange when it would have taken a significant portion of the people who might have heard about an event to allow it to draw big crowds.  In other words, if you had to get your message out by slow media, you would only reach a small number of people.  Unless your message had resonance with a high percentage, it would be disregarded as irrelevant.  Now, however, any high-volume rant can be viewed by millions.  Even a tiny percentage of like-minded thinkers can mobilize into large groups, giving the image of a major movement, even if the percentage of those in sympathy is rather small.  The media, of course, sensing interest which they equate to news, exaggerates the coverage, further drawing in people who just want to be famous.  

Of course defending the status quo is very difficult.  First of all it is just not cool.  I mean, throughout history, people who want to preserve current governmental and societal structures were seen as repressive, lacking imagination, dim-witted, and ultimately people to be scorned.  People love a good iconoclast.  (Of course they want to sip Starbucks, text on their iPhone, and order Domino’s delivery (all large corporations) while they watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on their cable tv, and send a donation to Occupy Wall Street on their iPad.  They hate big government, law enforcement, and global corporations, but call 911 to report their $5000 bike has been stolen and god damn it why won’t the police drop everything to respond.)  Everybody finds fault with the way things are (me included) and thinks they know a better way (me included).  

Government and corporate leaders, of course, have been a major part of this problem.  For too many years those with power have used it unwisely, overzealously, and just plain stupidly.  In the past people were willing to put up with a modicum of these problems as long as the trains ran on time, and perhaps they still are if the trains were still on time.  But the trains are late, the planes are torturous to take, and innocent people are being released from death row.  Too many legitimate beefs have created a situation where vast numbers of people want to just say no to the status quo, whether Tea Partiers who want to eliminate most of the government as we know it, or Occupy Wall Street who think the answer lies in reducing corporate profits and influence.  I hope that somehow this populist push will be tempered with consideration of long-term effects, or at least acknowledgement that conforming government and corporate actions to popular will might result in the need for some sacrifices for the greater good.  What, no latte?