Can’t Get Used to It

Can’t Get Used to It.

By Evelyn Pyburn

Get used to it.

Such seems to be the new national mantra.

But to rile against the given, to reject the status quo, to demand and expect more of ourselves and of life is at the very core of what it means to be an American. Is that not true anymore?

In all the discussions about the national debt, about health care, about cap and trade, about bailouts and “stimulus,” no one is talking about a brighter, better future. Isn’t America about brighter and better futures?

That future generations of Americans should have a better life than their parents is not only no longer being mentioned, but to even hold such a concept has come to be viewed as contemptible or naive, as irresponsible and even immoral.

This turn in philosophical premise has been part of our popular culture for quite some time, now; it is not a manifestation of the Obama administration. Quite the opposite; the Obama administration is a manifestation of this new age philosophy.

America was established by people who were shouting ‘No” to a world that wanted them to acquiesce and to accept their pre-ordained place. They were shouting “no” to an entrenched and bankrupt society that wanted them to accept a life-view that said that subservience to other men, to circumstances, and to nature was their lot in life.

“No,” shouted the malcontents, the non-conformists, the radicals, who viewed their lives as far too valuable to be sacrificed to hopelessness and mediocrity. “No” and “Hell, no!” was their battle cry as they started the world anew. Are we now expected to whimper, “yes?”

The surrendering of the American spirit seems to be the goal of those who are trying now to reshape our country. To acquiesce and submit, seems to be the “change” for which they longed.

Now, when talking about the presence of poverty and suffering in our world, it is not with a rejection of it and a vehement vow to eradicate it; it is with the vision that this is the most to which human beings should aspire. It is to impose a sense of guilt if we should dare rise above it.

In the debate about health reform the most that anyone seems to hope for is to maintain the status quo. What happened to the vision, not so long ago, that most disease and affliction would soon be eliminated, and that everyone would live to be a hundred? There is no rhetoric in health care discussions about such lofty goals, any more. There are no provisions, no plans, for research, for innovation and adaptation, for new markets, products and services. No one talks about it because at some level everyone knows that when you are reduced to debating about the reality of death panels, there is no longer any aspiration for advancements in human health. Why do we no longer expect more?

It is being said that we should get used to double digit unemployment because it is never going to get any better than that. Why should anyone have to accept that? We know — because we have done it —  that we are fully capable of having full employment and, in fact, if left unfettered the jobs would rapidly materialize – if left unfettered. If left unfettered. Why do we accept restraints that hold us back?

So bleak and hopeless is this view of our future and our capabilities as human beings that we are giving up in the face of possible calamities before they even happen. We are being mandated to capitulate, “just in case.” Just in case forces of nature become difficult.

Because some people fear the future, the rest of us are being forced to cease to live for it. It is being demanded of us to lower our expectations of life, to cease to strive for the best, to endure and suffer, now, because later we might not succeed. To assuage fears born of myths, we are being forced to submit, to cease living lives to the fullest, to cease the quest for joy and happiness, just in case joy and happiness aren’t possible in the future. Is this a rational approach to life?

We are being assailed each day with dire predictions aimed at preparing us for failure. The change-artists are pointing to every challenge and effort that stands before us as a crisis, an emergency, a calamity about which – they tell us — we are too impotent to do anything, except to bow down in submission.

There are epidemics and market failures and bank foreclosures and floods and droughts. Are these the things which will bring us to our knees? Are these the undoing of people who had the audacity to over-throw the suppression of monarchies, establish a free country, settled and brought to production a continent, eliminated persistent world famine, pestilence and disease, brought the power of machines and technology to the finger tips of even the most poor and humble of the world, not to mention staving off the would-be tyrants of two wars that consumed the entire world? Are we now to be told to accept the idea that no more is possible? That we have reached our pinnacle, and to continue to strive for greatness is now something of which to be ashamed rather than to aspire?

This is not a view that comes easily to Americans, hence the need to impose laws that will put people in their place, just as they were some 300 years ago. To force them to accept the idea that they should expect less and not more, live worse and not better, and, in so accepting to be more malleable to those who believe they know better, and who believe that our lives are not as important as theirs.

If left to their own devises, Americans will not get used to this new world being imposed upon them. Americans will be – well, American. Left to their own devices most people in this country would start figuring out ways around the arbitrary obstacles. Left to our own devices – our freedom — the American people have, time and again, proven that there are no problems that can’t be over come. When each individual is allowed the freedom to work and to exchange value for value, there is an explosion in production, innovation and advancement in knowledge and capabilities.

That’s what we have gotten used to, and I for one see no reason to “change.”