Enablers and the American Mindset

A fellow president recently asked me, “Which is worse: An man who commits evil acts or a good man who does nothing?”

My initial thought was to remind the gentleman than “evil” is a perception, however I quickly removed such a jackass response from my mind and began to focus on the question (though note I still wrote it in this blog…). I would just like to list a few thoughts since I don’t have much time to write. Hopefully you, the reader, will consider these and use them to examine your own life a bit. Here they are:

1.) A “good man who does nothing” is for all intensive purposes an enabler. By standing by the good man permits “evil” to occur and promotes future acts to be committed. Henceforth the other points assume that the good man stops being an enabler.
2.) Our country is full of these men (myself included).
3.) In order for the good man to combat evil, he must pick and choose is battles wisely.
4.) The most important battle is the one which directly effects the good man, in other words the one which effects him the most “closest to home.”
5.) The second most important battle is the one which effects the masses, i.e.- checking the government and business to prevent manipulation, loss of civil liberties, etc.
6.) That being said, what action needs to be taken to snuff out the evil act? (Violence? [I would hope not], Discussion?, Confrontation?, Slick Behind the Back Maneuvers?)
7.) If the good man attempts to stop an evil act and fails, what should he do?
8.) Once successfully stopping evil, what does the good man do next?

The question itself is very abstract and is highly dependant on who the good man is and what his view on society is and what his role is within that society. Typically Americans adopt the philosophy that the government should stay out of their business, that is until the shit hits the fan, and then the majority of Americans start screaming for help. It many ways the example provided by Mr. Jefferson is a useful microcosm for the American mindset: “I do as little as possible and don’t try to stop me, but if things get bad you [US government] better be there to help.” In other words, the average American is a young child learning to ride a bike without training wheels. Whenever things get bad and they fall, they want the training wheels back on and their father by their side. This simply means that we are a nation of enablers and thus we are facing our current economic woes. Many within the government and business knew that the current practices of risky lending, deregulation, and low oversight was leading to a slippery-slope. However they let the good times roll and those who were concerned felt they could do nothing and by not uniting enabled the condition to worsen. Thus here we are.

There is no easy solution. But to fix the problem we must first reconstruct the American mindset that has been programmed to enable. We must reteach the American public that this is our country. We have given our representatives the power to enact legislation and it is their job to pass legislation that benefits the majority, not the minority (ie- business and the wealthy). If they were doing this we wouldn’t be facing many of the issues we are now such as NAFTA, economic woes, bailouts, a broken social security system, bad health care, and war. Case in point: If we really had power as voters, the first bailout would have failed in Congress and never passed (as it was evident that the majority of Americans were against it).

If you ask me who is worse between an enabler and an evil man, I say the enabler. However if you ask me who is smarter, I say the evil man. For too long we have been enablers, its time to start fighting back, and whether you like him or not the election of Barack Obama was a warning shot to Washington that citizen won’t take their shit for much longer. It is up to Obama to keep the pubic involved; otherwise we will slip further into the abyss of enabling.