Crimes of the Imagination

The recent Republican nominating convention had both too much imagination and too little.

1. Too much imagination

There was too much imagination in this sense: the whole convention responded to an imaginary Barack Obama sitting in a chair, an imaginary Obama that holds opinions and does things that the real Obama doesn’t.

For example, a major theme of the convention was that Obama is against small businesses. A fifty-dollar bill with the face of Draco Mulfoy has as much verity as that claim. It ignores Obama’s support for small businesses – like his administration’s loan program for small businesses. This canopy of a theme of the Republican convention came from X-Acto knifing certain words in a certain Obama speech. These words were picked away from the words that came before and after. The claim was not honest.

2. Too little imagination.

But there was also a lack of imagination.

I didn’t see most of the convention, but I trust conservative columnist David Brooks when he says that testimonies there about the compassion of Mitt Romney were moving. So let’s accept that Romney is a compassionate man.

Then how can he link himself by his selection of his running mate to the extreme part of his party that wants to cut away the social safety net? How can he in that way link himself to the members of his party who, as Bill Maher says, want poor people to find their food in the woods?

Mr. Romeny appears to have compassion for persons who stand in front of him, persons he knows. If someone he knew were hungry, he would probably feed that person. If they were sick, he might try to find a way to get them cured.

But if that person is not in front of him, if he doesn’t know them, then he seems unable to imagine the harm he would do by, say, stopping the government food-stamp program. And he can’t imagine the death or bankruptcy that would come with the end of Obamacare.

Make no mistake: without food stamps, people will go hungry. In fact, even with that program, people live in America who are, in sterile social-science speak, "food insecure". Without that program, children will be stunted in their growth. Without that program, adults will die. Particularly the elderly. Particularly the sick.

People will steal to survive. People will pilfer to fill their children’s mouths. Some of them will get caught, get prosecuted, get convicted. With the stigma of a criminal conviction, their ability to feed themselves and their children will be more dire than it was before.

If Obamacare is repealed, people who give birth to children with birth defects will go bankrupt saving their children. That’s because insurance companies won’t sell health insurance for a baby born with a "preexisting condition." The baby’s parents will have to choose between going bankrupt paying for medical care or buying their baby’s coffin. And they might both go bankrupt and bury their baby.

If Romney could imagine this, maybe his compassion would not permit him to allow it. But he can’t or won’t imagine it. So he has embraced the social-Darwinists of his party. He has (literally) embraced the Paul Ryans who claim they want to "free" poor people from dependence on government. This is the freedom to starve. This is the freedom to die. Imagine it, if you can.

So far as I know, no soldier in American history has chosen to put himself in harm's way for the freedom to go hungry. It isn’t much of a freedom. There’s got to be a balance that permits essential freedoms, but which doesn’t convert us to some kind of Dickensian dystopia.

3. Failure of imagination: it couldn’t happen here.

There’s another potential failure of imagination. That’s the failure of the imagination of the electorate. That’s the electorate that might select Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in November.

We human beings typically have a hard time imagining a radical change from what is. I suspect that that’s one reason that a prophet like Jeremiah could prophecy that his countrymen would be reduced to literally eating their own sons and daughters, but the reaction of those countrymen was something like, Yeah, whatever.

This lack of imagination affects us today. There is not now mass starvation. So we can’t imagine mass starvation among us through the policies of a major American political party. The image and idea of mass starvation in America seem incredible, the product of a severe fever, not careful thought.

We often can’t imagine a future without a social safety net, even though it is a marquee idea of the Republican Party. And even if we imagine the dynamiting of our dams that hold back hunger, we can’t imagine the flood of suffering that will flow from that policy.

The practices of our compassionate government rose from the suffering of The Great Depression. The potential repeal of those practices comes at a time when few men and women live who remember the time that gave birth to them. This is probably not coincidental. Perhaps the practices will die with living memory of their reasons.

4. Imagining a worse possibility.

Or it might be worse than that. It might be that small-government conservatism is so appealing that it makes mass suffering tolerable to many people.

Ayn Rand has many disciples, and she despised compassion. In a time before he chameleoned himself to blend with compassionate stage-scenery in Tampa, Paul Ryan compelled new employees to read Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand would have kicked into the gutter poor Lazarus, the beggar who Jesus spoke of. The only thing that might have stopped her is if he were already in the gutter. Certainly, she would not have lifted him out of the gutter. She would not have bound up his sores. She would not have given him bread.

(The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is at Luke 16:19-31.)

5. This election.

Imagine a parable of a man beset, not by bandits, but by hunger. Or ill health. Or lack of education. Imagine a priest and a Levite and a small-government conservative who cross the road to avoid that helpless man. (Luke 10:30-37.) Who will be the good Samaritan to help him?

This election is a choice between the candidates who want to cross the road and the candidates who want to help. Imagine the difference that the election of one side versus the other will make. Literally: please imagine it. Because elections have consequences, and this election will make a difference in hunger and in health and in education and in prosperity.

Prayer: Lord, your word says that as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Let it be so in this debate. And if anyone’s imagination is stimulated by this piece, perhaps their prayers will be, too – including their prayers for me, which I covet, to make my own imagination pleasing to you.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yasser Arafat

I’m resigned to America's debt ceiling not being raised. America will default on her debt. Our credit rating will tumble, and the dollar will take a running jump toward losing it dominance among currencies. China and the Chinese stand to gain as the makers of the world’s future high-value currency.

America will transfer an additional trillion dollars to lenders’ hands to pay for her preexisting debt, because of the fall of America’s credit rating. This will make it more expensive for America to raise money. Obviously, we could have used this wealth for better purposes.

I became resigned when I saw House speaker John Boehner respond to president Barack Obama’s televised speech on July 25.

It reminded me of something that happened in 2000: the Camp David summit between Palestinian Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat and Israel’s president Ehud Barak. To win peace, leftist Israeli president Barak made painful concessions. But Arafat rejected the best deal by far ever offered by Israeli negotiators. At the time, some people expressed that Arafat was perfectly happy to reject any deal, because refusal to compromise would win him the admiration of his constituency among the Palestinians. So peace floated into the ether, and Arafat let it float away.

John Boehner is playing Yasser Arafat in these negotiations. If the debt ceiling is not raised, because he insists on getting everything he wants and conceding nothing, Boehner becomes beloved of the hard-core Republicans who would hold the debt ceiling hostage to prevail in their position that only a minority of Americans share. Their position is that the long-term debt should be overcome solely with budget cuts, not with additional taxes on the wealthy. Republicans reject a ratio of budget cuts to new revenue of 83% to 17%. The new taxes would fall on the rich, who have benefitted disproportionately in increased income in recent years. Some of these very wealthy persons pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.

So the government becomes dysfunctional.

Of course, Boehner wants it both ways. He won’t compromise, but he blames Obama for the coming debacle. This is from a party that lost all credibility when they proclaimed that the Health Care Reform Act had death panels. (Will someone please show me the death panels in that legislation? Because what was claimed to be death panels was only a provision (now removed) paying Medicaid doctors for doing what they otherwise would do for free: counsel elderly patients about advance directives for end-of-life decisions. That’s no death panel. If the death panel is something else, would someone please point it out?)

As Boehner blamed Obama in his speech, he told his story that there was almost an agreement, but Obama changed the terms of the agreement, and the summit fizzled (actually, Boehner walked out). I don’t believe him. I’m predisposed to disbelieve Republicans in Congress after the death-panel lies. And I watched Boehner closely as he told this particular story. I saw a glint in his eye as he told it.

That told me that Boehner is not only Yasser Arafat; he is also Lord of Facts. He arrogates to himself a godlike power to create facts in his own image.

This upsets me deeply. I shouldn’t be shocked; this is only a worse incarnation of what I’ve seen before. It’s playing politics with our future; it’s lying to play politics.

Maybe this is the moment of America’s final decline. Maybe this is the moment where ideologues in the minority rob America of her economic recovery and start the slide to a weak, dysfunctional republic. It sickens me. It disgusts me. It literally robs me of sleep.

The Republicans act as if they believe that when America capsizes, only Democrats will get wet. That won’t be the case.

A metaphor: in Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of Trojan King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Apollo empowered her to see the future, but, when she wasn’t sufficiently grateful (in a particular way), he cursed her with the fact that nobody would believe her. She foresaw the fall of Troy, but she couldn’t convince anyone that her prophecy would come to pass.

I feel like Cassandra. Never in politics have I felt so frustrated. I foresee disaster brought about by corrupt practices. If Republicans are going to wreck the economy, let them at least be honest about their willingness to do so. House Majority Whip Eric Cantor was at least so honest when he said that the Republicans would not compromise on the budget, because they believe that agreeing to raise the debt ceiling was their compromise.

Remember that, and lay blame accordingly.