Next Year ...

I was thumbing through my new 2011 calendar, making notes of important dates, birthdays of family and friends, anniversaries of when we met, were engaged, married, and other dates, JFK’s death — I always remember that as faithfully as Thanksgiving Day.

Then I became lost in thoughts of what transpired this year (2010) and lapsed into what has become a politically correct phrase, ‘forward thinking’ of what I hoped to see in the coming year. I don’t think I’m out on a limb by saying the one thing we all have in common is that we want a better world next year than what this one turned out to be. The desire for improvement – for making tomorrow better than today, such as giving all kids a real start, or learning a foreign language, or forming a more perfect family (as well as national) union – is a shared human hope. Whether you are someone daubing paint on canvas, typing words on a computer, a tourist on a safari, or a terrorist plotting to turn an oppressive state of affairs to advantage, or a counterterrorism specialist hoping to deny the 21st century terrorist from senseless slaughter, we are all on this shrinking planet together.

As far back as 1980, (historians may dispute me on this point), and after the Soviet Union dissolved, individuals were challenging assumptions about how the United States should look, and how it should exert its influence to create and control their version of an American Dream. Dubbed ‘globalization.’ it opened the floodgates of political instability abroad, the creeping (and creepy) destruction of the Constitution of the United States, and diluting and dissolving the middle class. The middle class was the backbone, the heart and financial backer of the United States. Now our politicians are backbiters, the heart of the country belongs to Wall Street bankers and the financial backers of the United States are the Federal Reserve printing presses. The political and financial elites conduct the orchestra, the orchestra, sadly off-key, is what is left of the middle, and the audience is the military, the veterans, the infirm, the teenage mothers, illegal immigrants, the homeless, and anyone else collecting government issued checks. Those buff colored cardboard checks that are cashed for pretty green paper that is worth less and less.

This year, some people began challenging authority and each other – questioning, demonstrating, exploiting, screaming, accusing, hating. In its more undisciplined form, it is called the tea party movement. To we the thinkers, it was touted as the impulse for improvement; in reality it is the disciplined form of destruction of the American way. Debate and discourse is passe. Now two (or more) screaming, finger-pointing, hate-filled grimaces of talking heads interrupting each other on the correctly titled ‘boob-tube’ are goaded on by self-styled all-knowing television reporters.

Is our nation any better? Well, people are living longer, lives have become more interesting, but individual freedoms are fading. Yes, there have been some terrible reports last year – unconscionable wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, famines, wrongheaded ideologies, and absurd cults of political personalities. The best thing that can be said is, the world remains a work in progress. Still, I wouldn’t want to trade places with someone who lived before the Renaissance – and for sure, a decade after this last one. And maybe not even last year.

I think 2010 is a year you may want to stick in the filing cabinet and slam the door quickly. It began with the earthquake in Haiti, Toyota recalls and the egg scare before Easter, scanners and some say indecent ‘pat downs’ at airports, climbing unemployment numbers, too little money in Greek banks and too many bedbugs in American hotel sheets. Oil seeped and gushed from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, thwarting technology to stop it, while a volcanic eruption in Iceland temporarily shut down air traffic as well as European balance sheets.

Yet not all was gloomy. The year's most heartwarming moment came with the heroic and improbable rescue of 33 miners from the clutches of the Chilean mine disaster. But miners in China did not fare so well. How about those classified diplomatic cables? Or the outdated military documents and the Iraqi helicopter video? Lists of sites the US consider valuable interests? WikiLeaks became serious business. The military blocked websites. The Justice [sic] department warned government workers not to read them. Meanwhile, they spread like wildfire across internet monitor screens. Then came derision, denouncements, and calls for the founder’s assassination. Who would demand such a thing? Why, high profile elected leaders and former presidential candidates, that’s who. No warrant, no trial, just toss his butt in the deepest, darkest dungeon and leave him to rot. Can you hear the strains of America the Beautiful or the Star-Spangled Banner in the background? You may think otherwise, but this brought out the ways in which our government secretly operates. The government of, by and for the people? Except anyone at the level of “Esteemed Elite” do not consider themselves beholden to “we, the people” anymore. We the people just pay our taxes and vote them back in office. Ensconced in their world of Washington, D.C., politicians have delegated the hallowed halls of the Capitol to tourists; the will of we the people is long absent.

Will Republicans and Democrats actually talk to each other? Next year Republicans will control the House and have more power in the Senate. Incoming members of Congress – many of them tea party movement – will want to push their credentials. Republicans will come up with an “undo” list, to repeal “Obamacare” and modify financial regulatory reform. You can hear the swords clashing already. But, deficit reduction is needed, and that is likely to sharpen the knives between those who favor cuts and those who support tax increases.

And yet, next year is full of deadlines, all to do with federal spending. The extension of the federal budget runs out in March, and at some point in the spring, the nation will hit yet another limit on its federal debt. Failure to show progress could spark crisis when International financial markets go into a serious depression. Budget gridlock will impact the private sector. A job-creation effort will fall flat.

Those scenarios could well move a divided Congress and the White House to meet in the middle. One area already shaped up as a meeting place: tax reform. Senate Republican leaders number one goal is to make Mr. Obama a one-term president. If you bet on Republican compromises, you better hedge your bet.

Progress on the wars? You have to go to the foreign media to get any inkling of what’s happening. In 2011 you will hear more about wounded vets getting screwed on benefits. It’s not only funny, I know, but . . . the repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell has recruiters telling the gay community it’s okay to sign up. There are vets who say gays will increase the numbers of friendly fire or suicide. Expect to hear continuing rumors along those lines.

Progress in foreign policy? That is the third rail of the political subway. No respectful journalist or reporter can go there, the editor or publisher will spike the article. Television news? You get news of Hollywood there, but no substantial news of the world’s happenings. The pseudo-intellectuals find the FoxNews channel, then throw away the remote.

All of us want a better world. That’s not just a New Year’s wish. But by objective measurements, it appears to this writer, we are not actually getting what we pay for.