The Ship of State is Taking on Water

A million years ago when I was in college, my friends and I drove to Cornell for a party. Friends there had arranged blind dates and even a boat for an evening on Cayuga Lake. The boat was basically a raft with floatation provided by barrels underneath (I don’t think Styrofoam had been invented yet). There was a cabin on the raft and the flat roof on top of the cabin was the main location for drinking, socializing and attempted seduction. I, unfortunately, was running the outboard and steering us around the lake – my blind date didn’t like me.

For some reason too many people were on one side of the boat. The boat tipped that way. Everyone rushed to the high side. The boat tipped even further in the other direction. The next tip was so extreme that there was water on the low side of the deck. Now the panicking people were reinforcing the rocking motion. The top of the outboard was getting wet and I worried that it would stall and also that the barrels would come loose from under the raft. Drunks would drown and it would be all my fault.

Fortunately, a friend on the boat exercised his voice of authority and got everyone to stop in the middle. The rocking subsided; the drinking, socializing and attempted seduction resumed; and eventually I took us safely back to shore.

I’m afraid that America is currently a rocking boat. We wanted “change”; we elected Obama. From my PoV, the ship of state tipped too far to the left: foreign policy was abysmally weak; more people were covered by health insurance than had been previously covered but the funding mechanism was (is) a Ponzi-scheme; the rich got richer; banks got bailed out; and the poor remained at least as dependent on government largess as they had been. Political correctness reached new lows, especially on campuses.

So we elected Trump. The ship of state rocked far in the other direction.

Xenophobia became policy. Incivility became the norm in political discourse. There are indications that hate crimes are up. The political promises of Republicans are as hard to keep as the promises of the Democrats were. The left is up in arms and would like to lead a “resistance” stampede back to the other side of the boat. After all, water is now coming over the right rail.

History is full of countries which rocked themselves into authoritarian leadership either of the left or the right – frightened people vote for stability. Frightened people vote for authoritarian captains.

Neither Obama or Trump or their “movements” were all right or all wrong. But somehow we have to stand in the middle of the boat and stop the mindless rocking. Then we can get somewhere. Civility and tolerance might be a good start.