Have government and private enterprise traded places?

Agenda item #1 for my Smart People Council to consider: have the roles of government and private enterprise been reversed?  

As we come out of this COVID-19 pandemic, it's been interesting to see how much effort businesses have been undertaking to tell us what they are doing about employee and consumer safety.  Go on to almost any business website (often necessary because in-store purchasing is not always an option), and they'll have a very important announcement telling us what they are doing.  But it's not just about the pandemic...it's about everything now.  Sports leagues continually tell us about what they are doing about racial justice; restaurants for some time have been trying to speak about how they are good neighbors and working hard to reduce their environmental footprint; and many large companies in recent years talk about how they are 'partnering' with good charities like Habitat for Humanity or soup kitchens.  It's almost as if they recognize that they aren't there just to make money, but do good beyond the bottom line.  

On the other hand, consider how our POTUS has tried to downplay the necessity of government to get involved during the pandemic.  It wasn't his responsibility to be a shipping clerk with masks.  It's not the federal government's responsibility to get generators and track the virus (those are state problems!).  And it's not on his watch that hundreds of thousands have died or government has been very slow to do something about these problems...sure, you can blame Obama (3 1/2 years gone), but then any good news about the economy (which is non-existent now) is all because of him.  

It used to be thought that the role of government was to ensure the greater good for all people; it used to be thought that the role of business and private enterprise was to make money.  Now, it seems, everything has changed.  Businesses are taking on (or at least claiming to) many of those roles that were the domain of the public sector, while governments (or at least this government) are stepping back and saying that such things are not their problem.  Doesn't this seem completely mixed up?  

I'm guessing that the obvious answer is that our Trumpite nutjob federal leadership is mostly to blame for this.  For all his minions' belief that he is out there fighting the 'Deep State', he's just really lazy and can't be bothered to do the job of administering the nation.  Too much twittering and golfing needs to get done.  But I do think that private enterprise has in some ways recognized that it is better to do good, and that perhaps is the long-term plan to be more viable in the eyes of a picky consumer public.  Is their desire truly altruistic?  Certainly not.  But even if their motives are not fully pure, at least they are trying to do something, more so than we can say for the federal government, which at its highest levels has turned into a Trump Support group in recent years.  

Once the current POTUS is gone, hopefully in just a few months, I'm wondering if business will get back to normal, and look at profits again.  Perhaps...but I do think that things have shifted, and businesses perhaps are more representative of the needs of society now than a duly-elected government.  What does this say about democracy and where it is going?  Is this a libertarian dream?  

I really don't know...but hopefully smarter people than me can figure this out.  

The Smart People Council

I am blessed in this life to have a loving wife and kids, and an assortment of good people around me at both church and in my other workplace whom I can trust and turn to in times of trouble for comfort and concern and even a bit of wisdom. 

What I am finding as I get older is that I don't have a lot of truly smart people in my life, people who have a knowledge base in their life that I can visit as comfortably as I google a question.  Years ago when I was in grad school a classmate said that the library needed a guy sitting somewhere in the library to whom you could go and ask any question and get an answer.  I know that it was tongue-in-cheek, of course, but that I idea has always stuck with me, that no matter how many good books I read, and no matter how many people have to give me homespun wisdom to get me through the difficult times, I also need people who are smart enough to consider an idea and tell me whether it is good or just full of crap.  

As I think about the many people who have come in and out of my life, there are some people who simply don't qualify.  

-Those who are Trumpites.  This goes without saying...not that some who might support Trump might not know some things, and their perspective might be one that I need to hear...but these glass-eyed Stepford wife Trumpites have lost my respect.  If they can't see how awful on the whole Trump has been, then they're really just dumb people who I can't trust.

-Nor do I want somebody who has become so woke that they have become insufferable.  Today we have to deal with lots of people who demand that I feel a certain way, that if I don't, and if I'm not as outraged about ____ as much as they are, then I must be a ___ist.  Sorry, I know how I feel, and don't have time with these folks.  

-People who I deal day-in, day-out with.  This seems strange, because surely there are a lot of smart people around me.  But I've learned that up-close personal conflict is not one of my strong suits.  I do get unreasonably upset talking to people who are simply wrong.  I need to control my emotions better, but for now these people don't qualify, not because of them, but because I don't want to break relationship with people close to me.  

That leaves a rather small group of people that I see very rarely...people I went to school with, or whom I have crossed paths with and walked with for a period of my life. Thinking through people with help from my Facebook friends list, I found less than a dozen people who would likely qualify.  These are smart, moderate, sensible people who seem to have some level of success in their life.  Unfortunately, they are a mostly homogeneous group...they come from a similar church tradition as me (even if some have left), they come from similar family and socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, and they likely are all more built up in my head than they actually are.  They're too much like me, perhaps, to really expand my thinking.  

I think about contacting a few of these old friends over Facebook or calling them, and asking them to be my Smart People Council.  But they are busy with families and jobs and lives of their own, and perhaps they would have more pressing subjects that they need to find clarity on to the point that they don't have time to debate my insignificant issue.  I need to make more friends where I am, to listen better to the people around me, and perhaps not think that I'm smarter than the nincompoops I look down upon.  Maybe the first lesson my SPC would do is disband, to tell me as their leader to get a better life, I don't know.  But still I imagine, someday when I am world dictator, these people will get my summons. 

What Do We Remember?

Today is the 18th anniversary of 9/11, and so as one might expect Facebook is full of all the 'Never Forget' memes and the 'I remember where I was..." stories.  All of us old enough to remember this terrible day have our own stories, of course...but when I keep hearing people say how they will remember, I wonder what it is we are supposed to remember?  For some, it's the story of Muslim Radicalism.  For others it's the story of American Strength.  For still others it's the story of how we began an Endless War On Terrorism.

But I wonder if maybe we aren't remembering the wrong things.  As a Christian who reads his Bible, I am often struck by how much of the Biblical metanarrative is wrapped up in God trying to get our attention.  He has blessed his people, who slowly but surely turn away from him when they prosper, and so God seeks to call people back to him.  And in order to do this, he sometimes has to punish us to remind us where our true loyalties rest. 

I don't know if 9/11 was God trying to rebuke America.  But I do know that our response was anything but Godly.  Sure, a few people started thinking about faith in the weeks to follow, but this was quickly followed by a call to spend money that they didn't have to keep the economy running, a suspicion of people of color with strange names, and eventually speculative wars that continue to do this day and seem to have no resolution.  America's faith in itself grew over the next year, but in the 18 years since can we say that we are truly a more Godly nation?  I seriously doubt it.  Our dependence upon stuff, our self-pride and arrogance as a nation has exploded, and to this point it's culminated in electing a President who's a complete and utter numskull that daily gives more aid and comfort to the enemy than anything the terrorists could ever have done. 

When will we wake up?  I hope that today will be a humbling experience for us as a nation; I would even hope that we would ask the hard question of 'why do some cultures hate us so much' without most people stupidly answering 'Because they hate freedom!'  But I know that neither of these things will happen.  I will choose to remember 9/11 by trying to do what is right and good...maybe I'm delusional and self-righteous in thinking this, but Kingdom of God people always are to remember where our first loyalty rests. 

Marketing Fail! or a Failure in Marketing?

So my birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and today in my mailbox I got this little flyar from a shoe store.  I'm in one of those rewards programs and so occasionally (like on my birthday) they send coupons saying that I can get $5 off or something like that.  Fine.

But look at this picture for a moment, sent as one side of an advertisement for shoes, sent to a straight man.  Is this picture supposed to make me rejoice?  Will it give me a thrill that my relationships will be as exciting as this?  Do I dream everyday of about having 'my day to sparkle'?  Did (national seller of shoes here) actually commission this picture of two middle-age lunatics thinking that their ecstasy at buying a pair of shoes would translate to me?

Yes, it's marketing.  They want me to come and buy shoes.  But this reminds me that for all the analytics and algorithims that now go in to marketing, this company failed miserably when it came to knowing their audience, ME.  We complain all the time that companies are selling our private personal data (that we have given them willingly, BTW) and that no longer can we make choices on our own.  Surely, we think, this is the end of the world.

But as long as actual marketing campaigns are run by people stupid enough to think that this picture will appeal to a straight middle-aged white male, maybe we shouldn't be so worried that we are losing our souls.  Because this picture almost makes me NOT want to buy from this company, just as the guy selling cars from the local Ford dealer who screams into the camera makes me NOT want to buy Fords.

Of course, I do like a new pair of kicks.  And I do like money off...that should have been their message.  As it is, I've got to hold onto this picture of these orgasmic morons until I finally get around to getting my new shoes.

I pledge allegiance to...the confederacy?

This past weekend we had our annual little small town festival.  Having lived in a number of small towns in my adulthood I see that they are mostly the same...a few carnival rides, a craft show and a car show, bands in the park, a beer garden.  The names may change the reason behind the show may change (though almost always there is some nod to the historical background of the town), but they are almost always the same. 

My kids, who have lived in the same town their entire lives, really enjoy our festival.  I don't care for it much, but then again I'm an introvert and so don't enjoy all that much which involves huge crowds of people.  But I do always walk through it for awhile, mixing among deplorables and hippies alike that seem to populate these things.  I'm always fascinated and a little bit disgusted at my fellow humans, such as the huge guy in the tank top with an arm tattoo that said 'Hello Bitch!' in large letters, or the guy wearing the t-shirt saying 'If I die delete my browser history'.  99.9% of the people at these shows are my fellow caucasians, and it makes me realize even more so the stupidity of racism.  I mean, if this is the best white people have to offer, then surely we need some more DNA in the gene pool, right? 

One thing that I notice in the craft shows is the marketing of the confederate battle flag almost as much as the American flag.  T-shirts, wooden decorations, coffee mugs...while I don't live in a former confederate state, I find a lot of people here in Kansas are still fighting the lost cause.  They will fly their confederate flags proudly from the back of pickup trucks or wear it on their favorite t-shirt.  I'd like to think they are honoring some kind of southern heritage of family values...but more than likely, a lot of those who wear these things really do think that fighting to preserve slavery was really a pretty good idea.  Yes "I have black friends" they will say...but really, the confederacy was about slavery at its core, and such a way of life would be perfectly acceptable to many people in Trump's America. 

Because here's the thing: I find it interesting that many of the people who proudly wear the stars and bars at the same time are likely also Trump supporters who get enraged that Mexicans want to come to this country and hold onto some of their Mexican heritage.  Even as they drive around with a confederate flag in the window, they have no qualms about disrespecting the Mexican flag on the car of another.  Even as they tell other people that this is America, love it or leave it, they are still more firmly rooted in an entirely different nation, the confederacy.  What a weird kind of patriotic fervor.