American soul-searching and Tiger Woods

Commentary : American soul-searching and Tiger Woods

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: September 15, 2009

My wife and I went to New York City recently expecting to see some signs, even small ones, of the recent economic collapse. There were hardly any. It’s a very wealthy city where even severe financial losses leave little visible trace on people’s everyday lives. My wife did notice that fewer families grew flowers in their gardens, and people had a little less food in their shopping carts when they left the supermarkets.

What is evident, though, is that Americans show a certain loss of faith in the institutions that once received their uncritical adulation, including the icon of American industry, General Motors. Its managers once said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” and many Americans believed them. Now General Motors is bankrupt.

Wall Street is another fallen idol. Americans always kept a wary eye on Wall Street’s doings, but they were still proud to walk along the short street at the foot of Trinity Church and realized it dominated the markets of the world. Americans now have their worst fears about Wall Street realized.

Another example is American health care. Americans were told they had the “best health system in the world.” Now, in the heat of a great debate over President Barack Obama’s national health program, people are learning that the health system is rated only average among the systems current in developed countries. One commentator called it “islands of excellence (cancer treatment, for example) in a sea of misery.”

Americans get a sinking feeling in their stomachs when they see their armed forces entering one more bloody and extended war in Afghanistan. The signs of it becoming another Vietnam are as prominent as crosses along highways that mark the places where people died. US and NATO troops are supporting a corrupt government of questionable legitimacy. The government forces are untrained and reluctant to fight, while the Taliban are deeply motivated, surprisingly well armed, and outnumber government soldiers. Americans hope against hope this war will have a different ending from the one in Vietnam, but they are also aware of the maxim that to repeat the same actions and expect different results is a sign of insanity.

Finally, Catholics, or at least some of them, worry about the Church’s seeming unequivocal concern for abortion in all the social issues that arise. They share the concern over abortion, but they miss the Church that was prominently engaged in the struggle for labor union rights, that resisted the war in Iraq, and defended the rights of children, immigrants and the poor in general.

The new questioning stance of Americans may be a good thing in the end, even if it leaves them a little more insecure and skeptical of their institutions. Filipinos and peoples everywhere have grown used to failures in government. It is only Americans who have believed they were “special” in any fashion. Skepticism about government is healthy. Why should anyone think a society built by humans should be perfect?

To appreciate America’s new loss of faith we should remember that American children have been taught that the United States was given to the human race as some sort of evolutionary step forward in nation building.

How could Americans have failed to take more seriously the accounts of the bad things done in their name around the world by their government and multinational companies, and the injustice done to Afro-American people and other minorities at home?

I received what may be an answer to this question quite by accident. Just before the recent PGA Golf Championship that began on Aug. 13, our TV set in New York went on the blink. The screen moved up about 1 1/2” which gave all the people big torsos and heads and small bandy legs. We wondered how we could watch Tiger Woods looking so strange for four days.

We sat and watched and the first day was painful. Poor Tiger with his small legs and big head! It was unseemly. Then little by little we didn’t notice the distortions any longer. We no longer saw them. We unwittingly combined the actual sense data and our past experience of what should be before us. We “saw” Tiger in normal size and great golfing shape, up to the very last hole, that is.

Americans didn’t see the facts. They saw instead what their education had prepared them to see. They saw what they wanted to see.

America has much to learn from the countries, like the Philippines, that have become more expert in criticism of their government over many centuries. The world can benefit from the new American soul-searching if it results in a humbler America, more ready to deal with other people as brothers and sisters and not as a master or guru.

(Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.)

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Roots of democracy

Commentary : Roots of democracy

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: October 11, 2008

Not long after the $700-billion bailout of banking institutions was announced, we walked down lower Broadway to Wall Street, the “ground zero” of the recent financial disaster. It was a bright sunny afternoon, but Wall Street was deep in shadows.

Wall Street is so narrow (perhaps only 12 meters from the buildings on one side to the buildings across) and the buildings are so tall that the sun shines on it only at high noon.

We sat on the steps of the old Federal Reserve building where George Washington delivered his first inaugural address and waited for something to happen that might explain the collapse, or at least show how the people involved would react.

The street was quiet because traffic was not allowed, except for the sleek, soundless limousines of the very rich. Hundreds of people milled around, mostly tourists and also dozens of policemen eyeing everyone, including people on the steps with apparently nothing to do. Nothing happened. No crowds protested Wall Street’s ruinous behavior. None of the powerful came out to apologize, or tried to atone for the financial crisis by harming themselves, as bankers did in the Great Depression. The tourists, as always, posed for pictures. One of their favorite shots was the flag-bedecked New York Stock Exchange. Another was the larger than life statue of Washington beside us. An Asian TV reporter stood on the pedestal of the statue as he made his report and seemed to interview the old president.

There was an aura of gloom, however — as if the street was aware the good times were over. A few days later, an article would appear in the New York Times under the headline: “Wall Street, R.I.P.”

The collapse of the finance world is hurting every citizen in various degrees — because people are losing their houses and ordinary workers’ pensions are tied up in the devalued stocks. But there were no rallies or protests anywhere, no crowds of investors calling for justice. There was no organized people’s reaction reported anywhere in the country.

People reacted individually, emailing their representatives in Congress, responding to TV polls and man-in-the street interviews, but they did nothing together; there was no social protest. Nowhere was it clear that ordinary people had gathered together, discussed the problem and decided what they as a group would do in response to the Wall Street failure.

The financial collapse seems to be not a concern of angry mobs wanting their money back from banks. People are still behaving as individuals, not as an organized group. The concern is for ordinary people’s thoughtful actions agreed on in their own associations after discussion.

The same pattern appears in the presidential election. Most American voters make up their minds by themselves based on what they learn from their families and the media. There are few associations that bring people of a certain class or work group — or people who share the same interests — to discuss who of the candidates can best do the things they want done. The labor unions and the ethnic Catholic parishes and other ethnic groupings often did this in the past, but the unions are now weak and for the most part the ethnic parishes and groups have largely disappeared. What emerges in group discussions is that people are more inclined to vote based on their own intuition or “gut feeling” rather than on rational self-interest.

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville published his “Democracy in America,” which remains one of the very best analyses of American democracy and maybe of all democracies. He found that the role of voluntary associations (cooperatives, political clubs, special interest groups, occupation groups, ideological groups) was crucial in American democracy. He wrote: “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations …. In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine [these associations] is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.”

He said that if the vitality of these associations dried up, democracy as Americans knew it would falter. The associations are the foundation of national movements. They are the cradle of responsible and effective action and politics. Between elections, the associations keep the pressure on government to fulfill its promises.

Philippine democracy can produce people power movements and thousands of NGOs and other types of associations. The first challenge is to increase their number and to encourage the associations to widen their agendas to include national and political problems. The second challenge is, as De Tocqueville said, to unite or combine them into a powerful reality for the common good.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

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