Mad as Hell? It Gets You Nowhere

When you’re mad, you want to act it out. No doubt we’re all mad right now. Economy “recovering” slowly, job loss still going up. Some stocks have started to go back up, but not all, and what about those of us who got out of the market at the bottom because we were scared? Our money is in the bank, and for sure those interest rates aren’t going up.

Banks are back to doing the same thing they were doing that got us into this mess, but now they can risk tax dollars as well.

Health care costs each of us so much we want to scream. We can’t believe insurance companies and hospitals and Pharma are allowed to get away with this.

We ALL are feeling this anger and frustration. Dems and Repubs alike. So we want to join up with others who will express this anger and get things moving in the right direction.

How do we do that? Calls and letters and emails to our representatives in Washington. Petitions online. Posting comments on blogs. Marching in the streets. Speaking up at town hall meetings. Signs on our lawns.

But where do you get the idea that it’s OK to lose it? To scream and yell and ultimately take violent action? Threaten to take your chips out of the pot and off the table, and start afresh, even if it takes violence to achieve that? Who tells you to throw a fit and smash whatever is in front of you? Not your mama.

Because Mama knows that hitting and screaming and biting doesn’t get you what you want.

One must suppose that Joe Wilson’s Mama never taught him that. Same goes for Glenn Beck, and the half-cocked pistols that want Texas to secede, the (IMHO) nutcases who “stormed” Washington on September 12, and the scary folks who set their sites, literally, on our President (400 times as many as any other president!).

Following what Mama taught, most of us use our inside voices. We talk. We bring up the reasons we think the way we do. We cite the evidence for our beliefs. We ask what the other guy thinks. We don’t sit on our hands, but we use enthusiastic non-threatening gestures to help make our points.

In the end, is either approach the best way to accomplish what you want? Will you be happy with what you get? We’re beginning to think neither way works.

The talkers are talking to people who won’t listen. They don’t show the emotions that make fellow sufferers feel that they take the situation seriously. On the other hand, the screaming hitters drive away the people they want to contribute to their hoped-for resulting situation.

Perhaps we take a page from President Reagan - the way to get things fixed is to poll your experts and pick a path and go down it. Tell ‘em what you did, not what you’re thinking about doing. After a while, if it doesn’t work, you stop, reassess, and head in the new direction. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to that last stage under President Reagan, but you have to admit he certainly took the country in the direction he thought best.

President Obama is bright enough to poll a broad range of experts, and put together a plan. Now he needs to make it happen. Screaming and yelling and threatening won’t work, but neither will intelligent discussion alone. “Talk softly, and carry a big stick…” Maybe Teddy Roosevelt knew what he was doing. President Obama has the eloquence, but he needs to add a sense of determination and urgency. The Democratic Congress can be a big stick. Of course, they have to decide there’s no future in debating with hitters, or they will continue to be limp as a … well, fill in your own favorite metaphor here.

Our President faces two extremely critical challenges as we speak: the re-regulation of the financial industry, and health care reform. In both cases, he needs to get everything he can on the first go. Once he has his plan underway, he can explain it enthusiastically, watch how it performs, and do the tuning up.

Our options are getting smaller by the day.
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ACORN – gaming the system. OMG! Do you believe it? Giving advice to pimps about how to fool the IRS and get a loan to buy a house! In three different states! They fired those people, but they probably weren’t the only advisors who would have done that. So the Senate votes not to give them a grant.

While we agree these advisors should have told them to leave or they would be reported to the IRS and the police, we can’t help but see the similarities between what ACORN did and what the banking and investment community did – look for loopholes and exploit them, in complete disregard for legality and morality. The difference being that the banking folks engineered the loopholes through lobbyists, got billions from the Senate, and they didn’t fire the dirty advisors.

What's the lesson? If you’re going to game the system, do it BIG.

JM