Collective responsibility, and hard choices

I caught up on the inaugural speech almost 24 hours late due to a hospital appointment and a lack of television. I’d heard some of it on the radio but missed a chunk in the middle, and so it was only thanks to Bittorrent that I was able to download the video and see, if not the surrounding events, at least the botched swearing-in and the inaugural speech that followed.

I found the event itself very moving — the visuals definitely added to the sense of this being a momentous occasion — but wasn’t much impressed with Obama’s speech. Paul Krugman hits the spot in today’s NYT in describing one of the things I noticed as I was listening:

…in his speech Mr. Obama attributed the economic crisis in part to “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age” — but I have no idea what he meant.

The other cause pinpointed for our current crisis was “greed and irresponsibility on the part of some.” Perhaps Obama thought he was giving George W. Bush a hard enough time and so decided not to press the point that government collusion with unscrupulous bankers had largely created the problems the entire world now faces. Or perhaps he was including the Bush administration in the ranks of the greedy and irresponsible. That fits. But like Krugman I don’t know what Obama meant by “hard choices.”

Krugman goes on to say:

This is, first and foremost, a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry. And if we failed to rein in that industry, it wasn’t because Americans “collectively” refused to make hard choices; the American public had no idea what was going on, and the people who did know what was going on mostly thought deregulation was a great idea.

With due deference to Krugman, though, I think that it’s certainly true that some of the responsibility — or blame if you prefer — should be spread widely. It’s certainly true that the American people as a whole had little or no understanding of what was happening inside financial institutions, but they chose a government for two terms that consistently showed a disdain for facts and expertise, and that did what it wanted to do based on ideology, and either did not care about the consequences or was woefully naive and indulged in wishful thinking.

So I think there is collective responsibility for the mess we’re in. Collectively, people in the US are far too ready to side with the interests of the rich, and so we end up with the peculiar spectacle of serfdom masquerading as rugged individualism. We’re too easily distracted by media-manufactured news (Britney!). We’re too easily distracted by politically-manufactured pseudo-issues (gay marriage! gun control!) that are designed to divert their attention from what’s really going on. We too often believe what they want to believe and are averse to facts (Obama is a Muslim! He’s not a citizen!). We spend too much and save too little (although of course for many people saving isn’t much of an option).

Anyway, we’re all left guessing as to what Obama, or his speechwriters, meant by a “failure to make hard choices.” If I were to suggest hard choices for the American people to make it would be something like the following:

• Do voluntary work so that you empathize more with people less fortunate than yourself.
• Cancel your cable subscription and watch less TV.
• Read more books — especially educational ones.
• Read serious analysis of various political shades.
• Turn off the Shock-Jock political programs that aim to make you angry. It’s harder to think straight when you’re irate.
• Admit that you might sometimes not know the answer to every problem, especially the big economic ones.
• Admit that your political opponents might sometimes have ideas worth listening to.
• Decide to honestly look at the facts of the matter before settling on an opinion.
• Subject your own opinions to the same kind of analysis you apply to those of people you disagree with.

These are hard choices for many, if not all, of us because it’s easier to be angry than to be rational, it’s easier to be entertained than it is to be genuinely informed, it’s easier to surround ourselves with opinions we agree with than opinions we dissent from and it’s easier to repeat opinions than it is to reflect on them. We’re too much retreating into isolated liberal and conservative enclaves, and it’s not doing us any good, either as individuals or as a nation.

I’d suggest that the personal responsibility that Obama touts has to include factors like these. We can’t rely on government to sort out our problems if we’re not in a position to choose an effective government. And we can’t choose an effective government unless we’re educated, respectful of knowledge, and able to think analytically.

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