Ten Reasons I Hate Politics and One Reason I Don’t - Part 3

3.  Your Plans Are Crap, Mine Will Save The World

Plans are a good thing. They help you focus on how to direct your future so you don’t end up floundering about making irrational spur-of-the-moment decisions. But as Robert Burns’ poem To a Mouse says, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” But how can that be? How can we investigate the details, consult the experts, and look at history and not always lay out a plan that will accomplish our goals?

 

Simple Answer: “Because we don’t know everything! All our plans have to be made with limited knowledge.”

This is especially true when our plans depend on how other people will behave. Sure, you can have some general rules of thumb that work in many situations. But different people behave and respond in different ways. So, you can never be certain. For example, suppose you are mugged by a person hiding in the shadows as you are walking down the street. Should you comply with his demands and hope he departs, leaving you unharmed, or should you take a chance on retaliating and hope you can overpower him lest he leave you dead? Well, the truth is you can’t really know for sure because you don’t have sufficient knowledge about that person. Perhaps he is just a desperate person trying to feed his children and doesn’t really want to harm anyone. Or, perhaps he is a degenerate low-life scum-sucking scumbag with a long criminal record and doesn’t really give a damn about your life or anyone else’s. If ever presented with this situation, you just have to read the person as best you can and hope you make the right decision.

I learned a lesson along these lines back in 1996. As many of you may remember, the Unabomber had been reigning terror down on our country for almost 20 years. He had made the demand to have his manifesto published in a major media outlet and promised to halt his bombings if that happened. The standard policy of our country was “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” The idea behind this was that if you concede to one terrorist’s demands, others will be encouraged to make demands also. But with the long string of bombings and no viable leads on who this guy was, the decision was made to allow the publication. It was printed in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. When I heard about the publications, my thoughts were, “Boy, they’ve really messed up this time.” But as it turned out, David Kaczynski, who was already suspecting his brother Ted might be the Unabomber, read the manifesto. He saw that it had similar phrasings as past letters that Ted had written to various newspapers. A few months later, with David’s help, the Unabomber was finally arrested. Who knows how many more bombings would have occurred had we stuck with the plan to not negotiate.

I say all this to make this point: when you hear a politician say that his opponent’s plans are crap and have no possibility of success, but that his plans are a sure thing and will bring glory to our world of messianic proportions, step back and really think about what he is claiming. He’s saying he knows the future and how people will respond to his plan. And obviously he can’t know that with certainty.

I am reminded of when Congress passed a law laying a new tax on luxury vehicles. The promise was that this would be a good way to get those evil, nasty rich people to pay more tax into the federal coffers. What actually happened was that producers of these vehicles saw a cut in sales that resulted in the laying off of their workers. So, working people lost their jobs, US businesses floundered, and the rich just held onto their existing luxury vehicles a bit longer. Ultimately, the government saw a net loss of money rather than a gain, all due to the tax. Congress had simply assumed that the rich would not change their buying habits due to the increased cost. WRONG!

The moral of the story is that no one can predict the future, especially as it concerns the actions of others. Thus, if you make plans that depends on certain behaviors of others for their success, you will oftentimes find yourself disappointed. So, when those braggadocian politicians start making all those lofty promises about how their plans are going to bring about the salvation of humankind, think long and hard about what could go wrong. Most likely, there will be a lot of things. And mark my words, when those things go wrong and their plans fail, they’ll keep holding on to their plans, claiming they are successful, until the bitter end. That’s because Rule Number 27 of the Rules of Politicians is “Never admit you were wrong or made a mistake. Lie, divert, obfuscate, deceive, or babble. Do whatever it takes to deflect the blame for your plan’s failure.”

Presidential Debate 2

Well, as most of you know the second debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney took place tonight. And they both came out fighting. No boxing gloves; no bare fists; no spinning jump kicks. Only tongue lashings. Both candidates’ faces were thoroughly covered with the other’s saliva by the end of the debate. So, who won? Well, I was totally surprised when after the spit settled, the last man standing wasssssss… GARY JOHNSON. Yeah, I was just as astounded as you were. How in the world could a candidate that was not even in the debate, due to not being invited, end up being the winner? After conducting a brief but thorough analysis, I figured it out. Obama and Romney totally discredited each other by outing their opponents as liars. Neither candidate even mentioned any lies that Johnson had told. BINGO, Johnson WINS!!

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. “Who cares about a candidate that was not in the debate? Just tell me who won between the two debaters that actually debated?” I think those questions are nothing but a bunch of malarkey, but I’ll still provide sort of an answer. Both candidates are quite forceful and convincing when espousing their policies. But keep in mind that both of these guys only tell you the things that make themselves look good. They leave it up to the other guy to tell you the bad stuff. Who knows who is telling the truth? Also, they each tell us how their plan is superior to the other guy’s plan. But in the end, who can predict this? The bottom line is their records. This is a matter of fact, not opinion.

So, how have President Obama’s plans worked so far? Well, as is usually the case, some have worked okay, some not so okay. But when it comes to the thing that is most on the minds of people today—the economy—his plans haven’t fared so well. Unemployment hasn’t improved in the last four years. More people have stopped looking for work. More people are getting government assistance. Incomes are declining as prices are inclining. The debt keeps climbing while hope keeps rappelling. This is not good. To be fair, Obama says that four years was not enough time to turn the economy around and points to signs of things getting better. Well, I say this: the predictions Obama made about what the state of the economy would look like at the end of his first term did not materialize. So, it’s time to let someone else take the helm and show us how his predictions won’t come to pass either. If it’s not going to be Johnson, I guess it’s going to have to be Romney.

Today's Content: Being Content

In last Sunday's sermon, our preacher talked about contentment. It was based on 1 Timothy 6:6-11.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

I believe contentment is a valuable attribute if applied appropriately. A person who is always discontent no matter how well off they are will find themselves stressed much of the time, always trying to determine what their next step on the stairway to contentment should be. But once that step is reached, there will be yet another, and another. So, it is a good idea to have an attitude of contentment in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. However, we don't want to be completely content either lest we become complacent and never try to better our lives. Let me explain.

I have heard of a number of POWs that despaired over their circumstances thinking that they would never be free or that they could not endure the time they would be captive. Sometimes these people gave up and died. However, others took on an attitude of contentment. Yet, even in the midst of being content they still strove to find a way of escape. This gave them hope for the future. I believe this combination, contentment and hope, is a good one. It allows us to be satisfied with current conditions, but have a reason to believe that an even better day is coming.

The contentment/hope team is also helpful in less dire circumstances than being a POW. It can be useful to the person working a dead end minimum wage job who aspires to get a higher education which in turn will lead to a better job. It can even be useful to the workaholic multi-millionaire Wall Street financier who aspires to slow down the pace and spend more time with family.

The basic idea is this: always strive to improve your life in any way possible by setting achievable goals, making honest plans, and following through with them. But if you fail, or it takes a lot longer to achieve your goals than you had hoped for, be content with the things you do have along the journey. You will be better off physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.