THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I live in the country now. When I go to the big city I cross a short mountain, the top of which is often shrouded in a thick cloud during the early morning hours, even on an otherwise sunny day. I, sometimes, think of my childhood as I’m going up the mountain.

In many ways, trying to make sense of life as a child is like entering a fog bank – one cannot move forward without becoming more and more bewildered. As the headlights go on, the GPS begins to find relevance and the radio helps one keep a sense of “place.” Those electronic accoutrements become a bit like all the advice and guidance one receives from the world as life begins to push one through the decades.

Reaching middle-age is a little like reaching the top of the mountain – you think the hard part is over. You have your bearings. Your eyes have become accustomed to the light and your speed has been adjusted to a safe standard. You are supported all around you with electronic assistance that reminds me of all the supportive opinions suggesting you’re on the right path as you hit that middle-age marker.

The reality of reaching the top of the fog-enfolded mountain is that you’ve become so completely swallowed by the confusion and ignorance around you that you are lulled into a sense of safety by the vast numbers of other people who are equally clueless.

It is in the moments when I leave the fog bank on the downhill grade and emerge from the confusion into the clear light of day that I realize how much like life the trip across the mountain is and how different the world looks to the old man who has finally cleared the fog.

It was on just such a trip one morning that I found myself considering the sad decline of America and wondering what, if anything, could spare us the same fate that has befallen all truly great empires in the past. We were, to follow the analogy, at the top of the mountain when I was a boy. We led every category of considerations that measure a great society. But in that fog of confusion and self-delusion we made a critical mistake. We ignored a principle of physics that will stand against all arguments to the contrary. Simply put: Nothing stays the same. The one constant truth in the universe is change, itself.

This principle was demonstrated to me once long ago when a radio station I was hired to lift from the bottom of the ratings pile reached the end of a survey period with a number one ranking. Champaign corks were popping, parties were being planned and there was high celebration throughout the building on the morning the numbers came out. That afternoon the owner called me to his office for a meeting. I expected major praise and a bonus. Instead, he asked me what my forecast for the next survey was. I was speechless with indignation.

“I’ve taken your miserable piece of junk radio station from nothing to number one overnight,” I told him. “And you have the brass to call me in here and ask me what I expect in the next book. I can’t read the future,” I explained in a heated mood. “All I can ever deliver is the best I can do, you ungrateful asshole.”

“Relax,” he said. “Let me help you.” That’s when he explained the nature of change to me. He finished by saying, “Since nothing stays the same, all those without a plan to get bigger have only one fate awaiting them – they grow smaller, weaker and, eventually, die.”

My boss went on to explain that we may fail in our plans to grow, but that is an inherent risk in life. Having a plan for growth does not guarantee the plan will be executed in a way that produces growth. Often, the attempt to grow, itself, produces failure, and that will always come because it was undertaken with inadequate planning or insufficient considerations. But pointing to examples of companies that have failed in their attempt to grow does not remove the one inherent law of matter that will prevail whether one plans for growth or not – nothing stays the same and those without a plan to get bigger will end up smaller.

While the U.S. was on top of the mountain, enjoying the fruits of supernation status, we did not acknowledge that one static law of matter. Our only design for growth was from within, hoping each quarter for an improved GNP. A nation cannot exist as an island. Its strength must be measured against the strength of its enemies, not against its past accolades.

There was a time…way up on the mountain, when we might have had a 51st state, and a 52nd and a 53rd, working toward a time when the United States of America would become The United States of Earth. We might have moved on the world stage to take smaller countries in as a part of regulated, studied growth. Instead, we went from nation to nation bringing “liberty” and justice to the citizens as if we were missionaries bearing some divine plan for salvation and then beginning a plan for withdrawal before the job was even finished.

Today, we don’t even consider a plan like the invasion of Iraq without a plan for withdrawal when our “mission” there is complete. This thinking has become so prolific and so universally embraced by Americans that it is not even questioned. Anyone who suggests we should annex countries we conquer is dismissed as a Hitler clone. And the dismal future that faces America in the year 2009 is what becomes of lost souls in the fog surrounded by other lost souls in the fog.

Frequently in discussions about this issue, I hear examples introduced by debaters citing the failure of other empires that have sought growth and the ruin that has befallen their unrealistic ambitions. These attempts to expand globally are all marked by a simple flaw in thinking such as befell Alexander. One cannot rule an empire effectively beyond a size to which communication and transportation are sufficient to the task.

No such restraints face America in the 21st century. Advancements in technology make the entire world instantly accessible in the realm of communication and no spot on earth more than hours away in terms of transportation. The flaw in Alexander’s plan was that he outgrew his capabilities to govern a land as vast as he conquered. In principle, this is what my boss was referring to when he told me a plan for growth will often fail because it was undertaken with inadequate planning or insufficient considerations.

I’ve read that General George Patton was mortified by Ike’s refusal to move on Russia while it was weak at the close of WWII. With the benefit of retrospect, this appears to be a pivotal moment in history when the U.S. had the brass ring within its grasp. If Ike had taken Patton’s advice, there might have been no cold war and by now the entire world might be one big happy democracy called The United States of Earth with no more or less unrest between regions than is suffered by states in our system.

Nuclear war might no longer loom as a possible future for the planet. We might arise each morning as citizens of Earth devoted to the universal goal of settling other planets, expanding the living environment and, thereby, solving the challenge of over-population. Our global resources in a world where hundreds of armies have been distilled to one peace-keeping unit might have enjoyed savings that could have been spent, instead, on research into the inevitability of death that awaits us all and life expectancy might, by now, have increased by thousands of years.

There is no end to the glory that might await the human unit in a world where national boundaries were dissolved and but one flag was saluted on Independence Day.

But while we were on the mountain, the fog overcame us. And history may yet record that, instead of emerging whole into the clear light of day on the downgrade, we tumbled into a guardrail and fell into an abyss so deep we were, like Carthage, never heard from again, except as a footnote in history.

I’ve tried to explain this on the radio. It can’t be done. Audiences are populated by fog dwellers and there is no room in mass media for unconventional thinking that resists the tidal wash of propaganda which keeps the young and limber intellectually imprisoned. Praise be to those who make it down from the cloud and into the pristine realm of reason on the downgrade. Only there in the light of day can the truth sadly visible only to old men be plain.