A Delicate Balance

This is a confusing situation.  First I consulted my feline advisers about it, which didn’t help much.

Mr. Hydrox did, however, point out that the chickens, coons, possums and deer want to be like cats, coming onto the porch eating cat food, which gave me pause.  But then I discussed it with the Great Speckled Bird, who pointed his spurs of blame in the direction of the deer and the coons, mainly.

“You’re constantly having to run them out of the chicken feed you put out for us.  Those deer aren’t even scared of you, but it’s fun watching you trying to chase them off throwing rocks, cussing and waving your arms around.  Damned deer want to be like us chickens.”

The deer were next in line for consultation.  That’s more difficult because they don’t speak proper English.  But a young buck assured me it was the feral swine causing the problem.  “Squeeee deer are just hungry.  Squeee don’t meannnnn no harm ner try busting things up.  Most of ussss.  It’s them damned wild hawggggs doing that.  They want to beeeeee like us deer.  Copycat bastards.”

What I was trying to figure out was why ‘we’ US citizens want the rest of the world to be like us.

At least, we want them to want to be like us

Time was not so long ago when the US cared so little about whether the rest of the world wanted to be like us, or not, the thought would have never entered their heads yea or nay.  Prior to WWII most US citizens wanted nothing more than to go about their own affairs and be left strictly out of the troubles spilling blood all over the planet.  What the rest of the world did was the business of the rest of the world.

 Earlier, during the Civil War, when the UK was trying to decide whether to join the French in the invasion of Mexico, the Prime Minister was saying a lot of things to Queen Victoria about the leadership of the country (Abraham Lincoln), the reasons for the war, the conduct of the war, that Americans would have found painful to hear if they hadn’t been too busy killing one another to pay attention.

 But they’d have found those remarks between the PM and the Queen painful because they contained so much truth. Not because they cared a damn what the leaders of the UK thought about the US.

 We’ve spent the last half-century trying to make the rest of the world want to emulate us, politically. Most of the world wasn’t interested.  But we did succeed in a lot of ways nobody anticipated.  We shipped all our industry off to the countries we’d spent a lot of lives and treasure whupping the socks off of, trying to help them be like us just a few years earlier.

 By ‘we’, I’m not talking about ‘me’, nor am I talking about ‘you’ if you happen to just be a regular person who wasn’t involved in making decisions to ship all our production, manufacturing and skilled labor jobs off to third world countries because of the cheap labor and ostensibly trying to help them to be like us.

The ‘we’ I’m talking about is some nebulous consortium of folks who had enough money to own companies, factories, mines, lumber mills, steel mills and all the other components involved in a healthy economy with a population of employed citizens.

And by ‘we’ I’m also talking about several generations of bought and paid for politicians of both parties who found themselves more attracted to serving the interests of those described immediately above than protecting the interests of the citizens who elected them to public office.

 When the parts of ‘we’ described above were minding ‘our’ own business the part of ‘we’ not included had thriving industry, plenty of jobs, affluence. Anyone who wanted a job could find one.

 But gradually, as ‘we #1’ and ‘we #2’ succeeded in making the rest of the world in our own image in some unanticipated ways, all three of ‘our’  industry and production infrastructures became a dead shell. All ‘our #3’  jobs became government related, or pure government, or ‘service’, such as selling insurance, flipping hamburgers, running the sewer plant, advertising, cashiers, sales, lawyering, medical, and cops.  The kinds of jobs producing nothing of lasting value, nothing for export.

 And in the process, the world we made in our own image wanted to be like us. They wanted cars, television sets, air conditioners, microwave ovens.  They became super-consumers. They began needing petroleum products for energy, for plastic rubber monster toys for the kids. Petroleum to run their power plants to refrigerate. Petroleum to run their hair dryers. Petroleum to run their industries.

 They became like us.

 Meanwhile, the dead hull of US industry didn’t demand so much energy, but our automobiles, air conditioners and plastics requirements continued to do so.

But the rest of the world wanted it, too.  They became like us. Prices skyrocketed.

 So, now we don’t have any industry, don’t produce anything, but still need the energy to run.  And so, also, does the rest of the world because they’ve done as we hoped. They became like us.  Now maybe we need to find some other ways to make them want to be like us, before they decide to be like us in some other unanticipated ways we’ll like a lot less.

But a couple of decades ago the entire Eastern Block of Nations, along with Iran, did something we might be well served to emulate.  They kicked out all the politico factions who’d been selling out the interests of the citizenries, tried a lot of them for treason and other serious crimes, and tried to start anew.

Now that they’ve managed to become like us it’s time we tried to be like them.

 Finally, Tabby pointed out what’s probably both true and obvious.

“You run those chickens off the porch when they try to steal our food.  You do whatever you have to do to keep the coons and possums from killing the chickens.  You drive the deer away from the chicken feed.  And you kill the swine because they’re dangerous to all of us and destroy everything that stands in their way of taking everything from all of us.

“Where’s anything confusing about that? “

Old Jules

Guy Clark “Jack of All Trades”