Diary: Trust Only Goes So Far

[degringolade]

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Lately (and by lately I mean the past five years) I have become progressively less trustful of the Government of the United States.  Now, this doesn't for a moment mean that I advocate any sort of regime change or general uprising, no, things are bad enough already and it is a long row before that sort of thing becomes attractive to me.

My overall way of dealing with this sort of thing is the simple expedient of just "minding my own business".  This is hard to do in the good old USA because we have birthed a culture (perhaps a subculture) where we celebrate activists as defenders of the individual.  But activists are one-trick ponies.  I don't think that there is such a thing as a universal activist in our polity, because our polity is (or perhaps, should be) all about balancing conflicting demands.  But that presupposes a institution where the deciding entities are capable of compromise.  Our currently fractured view of what America is all about precludes this.

I cannot really say that there is a way around this kind of thing.  Our current policy choices seems to have devolved into a "take from the rich and keep it" versus a "take from the poor and keep it" option.  Granted, I think that taking from the rich is a more palatable option, but that is just a personal preference.  I recognize that there hasn't been a way to reach a compromise on this without someone getting violent.  The government thus far has solved the problem by trying to buy off both sides by borrowing money from the banks.  

But things are going to continue for a while.  I don't think that we are all that close to a workable solution so the spiral will probably steepen.  In the next four or five years I think that a working majority will actually gel around one of the options.  And by a working majority, I mean a majority of around 60-65%.

But the choice made will necessarily alienate a goodly portion of the population.  And there doesn't seem to be a working compromise currently available because both sides distrust the other intensely.  I think that figuring out the way to shade the system so that one side has a large enough majority to allow the compromise to work.  There is going to be a period of time (I am guessing between five and ten years) where trust-building and education take place about the merits and consequences of each option.

It sure isn't going to be pretty.