The Curse of Information

I know that I’m not the only one saying this, but one more outlet won’t hurt, just in case. First, let me be clear, that I am in no way saying that we should ignore facts when making decisions. Maybe an example would help: if I was to experience an earthquake, I would run into a doorjamb, which is on the face of things, the most safe place. But if, to get to that doorjamb, I had to run 100 feet through a glass-domed room when, alternately, I could just walk outside, that tiny fact would sway me to turn around and go into the yard. That one is clear. Now, what if we had something difficult, like balancing the national budget…what then? If we were to take a page out of the popular Washington publication “How to Stop All Progress”, we would shout, “what about the local municipality that can’t afford to lose ten thousand dollars of funding for jails” or “why are we budgeting extra money for snow removal for NYC but not for my district in Miami” or something else like that. In short, we’d answer with questions and offer no solutions.

And this is the curse of information. We can always run another simulation on snowfall and we can always trend early release from jail numbers one more time until the next election cycle comes around. This is why health reform isn’t inevitable anymore. Nothing is. We can stalemate until the end of days. That end of days will be hastened by our inactivity, of course, but so what?

Wait. So what? Well that isn’t very palatable, is it? How is it that our elected government can let that come to pass? Simply, because we let them. And we let them do it by our inability to stand behind something for more than a few weeks tops. Without saying that Pres. Obama should enact all of the change he promised or not, at least he had a plan! And we, as a Nation, totally abandoned him because we got nervous and wanted the numbers to be run again.

I don’t believe people could actually have let this happened in America. Sure unemployment is high, but almost everyone has had a job at least once. And for that reason, I know that all of those people must have at least an inkling that organizations require us to move forward once in awhile just to keep it alive. Could a business survive if it was run like the U.S. Government? And I’m not just talking about deficits. I’m talking about having a plan. Or at least having a set of principles that we try to balance this Nation on top of.

I wouldn’t mind if the U.S. lost its vaulted position atop the world scene if we did so doing the right thing. And if we did the right thing, I sincerely doubt we would fall in the eyes of the world. Indeed, it is our inactivity itself that threatens our democracy.

I wish I knew what to say next.