Of Course I Remember You, America.

I suppose I should be more sympathetic.

After all, I am at that disconcerting stage of life when I discover I know someone — who they are, what they do, how we are connected — but not what string of sounds signifies their being all those things. It is probably akin to the sensation John McCain experiences when he is questioned about the location of foreign countries or the intricacies of the domestic economy.

He knows, but cannot quite say.

At least, so we hope.

No, I am being too kind. An encounter last night was more like John McCain's experiences with the Internet. I ran into someone who had been there, but never really done that.

Making my way down the row at the Twins game, I said hello to a woman I knew. We had worked together for about six years. In fact, she had recruited me, and I carried a fair amount of her water before succeeding her.

My greeting was neutral. Usually I reintroduce myself in such settings to spare people embarrassment, but I was carrying two beers, the game was starting, and I didn't really have much to say beyond hello. She responded at about the level of interest you'd expect from a stranger who was wondering whether you'd spill beer on her shoes.

On a return trip to the concession stand, I said hello again, this time using her name and asking how she was. More animation this time, of the sort you muster when you're pretending to remember someone who obviously knows you.

While I was fetching hot dogs, perhaps she was grilling her husband on who I might be. But no help from that quarter, apparently, because when I came back, she said, "You're going to have to help me" — which I should've done in the first place instead of being perverse.

I told her who I was, and she said "Of course!" and I said, "It's okay, this was too out of context." But inside, it just confirmed what I always suspected about our relationship. I was never really in context.

Good leaders must nurture  complex inner lives and, especially if they are politicians, must also maintain the appearance of a connection to the outer world that at some point on the ladder becomes humanly impossible. A certain amount of pretense is necessary at the hello, how are you? level. We see it enacted at every political rally.

It's not important, ultimately, whether they know our names or remember our personal connections. But if they are just passing through this world in a pageant of themselves, it matters.

So how do we tell the difference?

Comments

[Charlie Quimby]

Joe Loveland has a good post up that relates to the McCain camp's Rovian strategy.

http://thesamerowdycrowd.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/hobbling-hope

[Jeff Dege]

With regard to Joe Loveland's post -
there truly is something sick about seeking redemption through politics.

People who have abandoned faith in everything else, who seek fulfillment through political action.

The idea that we can, by some collective action, fix the world is fundamentally false. Individual problems can be fixed - you can help someone who needs help, you can clean up a street or a neighborhood. You cannot, and all of us working together cannot, rid the world of conflict or injustice.

It's not that it's beyond our power, it's that it's an intellectually incoherent goal. Conflict is inherent, injustice is subjective. They will always be with us. As there will always be those who are poor, or suffering from misfortune.

We've had hundreds of years of people trying to impose utopian systems. And they have always failed. Failed disastrously, more often than not.

[david p.]

I once heard a rumor that McCain is a hothead, prone to flying off the handle without warning.

[Charlie Quimby]

David, see the next post.

Jeff, I agree with you on utopianism. But there are some things that can and must be addressed through collective action. The challenge of governing is working out what we can do versus what we wish would happen.

[Hal Davis]

Jeff can engage us in the topic of collective vs. individual action, but the definition of "collective" can become slippery.

If I go with my neighbor to a hardware store, we split the cost of a few tools and share them, is that collective action?

If the answer is, No, we are two individuals cooperating, what is the answer when an entire block association assesses voluntary dues and sets up a community garden whose bounty is available to its members?

Ah, but the dues are voluntary.

And if the city assesses taxes so that clean water flows to its residents, and waste water is taken from them safely, has that become verboten collective action?

Just asking.

[Jeff Dege]

I've said it before - the strength of a community is in its voluntary organizations. It's when we get lazy, and replace trying to persuade each other with trying to strong-arm each other that we have problems.

Your forcing someone to live his life in the way you - and not he - chooses is objectionable, and becomes more - not less -objectionable when done using the power of the state.

And that you honestly believe that what you are making him do is his own best interest is no excuse.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
- C.S. Lewis

Or, if you prefer:

"[A]fter having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupifies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepard. - I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than it is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people."
- Alexis de Tocqueville

Obama promises to end divisiveness.

How, exactly? How will he silence the voices of those who absolutely reject his message? Or, rather, those of you who support him, what do you think he's going to do to actually fulfill those promises he's making to you?

[Hal Davis]

I have no truck with Obama. He'll be constrained politically as any other president (ultimately) is.

But notice how a question about taxation in the interest of public health (clean water) has morphed into two stirring aristocratic tirades against tyranny.

What is the slippery slope from municipal taxation (limited by the state constition) to "omnipotent moral busybodies"?

And Jeff, I figure as long as you're around, Obama won't end divisiveness.

[Hal Davis]

That's "municipal taxation (limited by the state constitition)," of course.

[Hal Davis]

Or something.