This morning I saw on the news that Gov. Walker’s bill concerning public sector unions passed the Wisconsin house. The 14 Wisconsin senators are still AWOL, and the governor says that if they don’t get a bill scaling things back for everybody, then instead of keeping everybody with a little less, he will have to start laying some workers off entirely. The concept of “not having any more money” is proving to be a difficult one for some to get their heads around. But that is not my primary point here. I mean, what else is new?
The video clip that really struck me was the leftist assemblymen in orange t-shirts yelling, “Shame! shame! shame!” during the vote, and jabbing their fingers at the Republican assemblymen as they filed out of the chamber after the vote. “Shame! shame! shame!” And there were some poltroons up in the balcony doing the same thing. And this brought another related word to my mind, which is the word shameless. Not to mention clueless.
Shame? By what standard? These protests have no traction. When you are hub deep in the ditch, gunning the engine does nothing but produce an impressive dark brown rooster tail.
I asked “by what standard?” The answer is that we are looking at people who have had, their entire lives, a deep and abiding and religious faith in the state. Everybody knows that private individuals and corporations can go bankrupt. That is a trouble, and in some cases a tragedy, but everybody gets it. That happens.
But the idea of your god running low on cash unsettles you completely. And if someone points out that your god is standing there, pockets pulled out and all tapped out, or worse yet, starts acting like this is true, the frenzy sets in. Someone who is religously committed cannot take this kind of thing in stride, and cannot treat it as just another political disagreement. No, the reaction is more like what would happen if an infidel heaved a dead calico cat at the high altar of the cathedral sanctuary in the middle of the high services on one of the central holy days.
So this is not a political discussion. These are the priests of Baal, cutting themselves with knives. And still, no fire. This also explains the double standard. If Elijah had done anything funny at the altar at all, he would have been derided mercilessly. But they can dance around for half a day, their knives working away busily, and everybody takes it in stride. Tea Party rallies have been peaceful, orderly and clean. All of them have been reported with lowered eyebrows and dark warnings about violence and racism. Union goons punch, threaten, kick and stomp, and it is treated as a robust expression of the democratic process. Double standards are not expressions of an arbitrary inconsistency. Rather, they are expressions of religious paradigms in action.
In order to accept the fact that the government has no more money, and can’t just summon it up from its mysterious place of origin indefinitely, one has to get into a frame of mind that is perilously close to repentance. That’s deeply unsettling. In order to accept this new state of affairs (in which the government is le busted, as the French say) a man has to stop believing the government’s promises, and stop investing a religious faith in those promises. He has to admit that his god is a god that has failed. His god wrote a check that failed to clear. He knows that there are checks in the world that fail to clear. He understands that. But how could a divine check fail to clear? When that moment of stone cold realization settles in, the only conclusion is — modus tollens — that the signatory on those checks was not so divine after all. So it is easier to yell “Shame!” at a fiscally responsible assemblyman. And the object of that derision might be justified in thinking, as he files out of the chamber, “Shame? Because I know how to add and subtract? Because my calculator works?”
You see, if the state is not an effective savior, then someone else must be. His name is Jesus. If the state is not the provider of all things, then someone else must be. He is the Lord. If the state is not solvent, then solvency must be located in the heavens, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thugs and miscreants cannot vote it away.