The Political Pie
I came away from the sixties with a presumptive trust in the ability of people in general to act in a way that makes sense. But by the eighties, my disenchantment with political individuals had reached an all-time high. What with cowboy/actor presidents and Bush wars, I figured the whole thing was turning into a farce. On a good day, it was funny, but most of the time, it looked like a slow disintegration into some kind of mindless corporate board game.
The political system I'm in favor of has no name. It's based—not in a lip-service way but in a real way—on the concept of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Remember that old slogan? In my perfect world, the government would send each of us a book filled with all the possible things that can be facilitated by our tax dollars and we'd choose our favorites.
Here's a theoretical list:
1. Anything military
2. Anything peaceful
3. Eco-manipulation
4. Shoe lifts for short senators
5. National parks
6. Free medical attention for carnivorous plants
7. Antibiotics for giraffe feed
8. Free education
9. Free Dr Pepper for hundred-year-old athletes
10. I. M. Pei–designed slum areas
And so forth.
Then the government would give us a list of funding needs for each, and we'd come up with an equitable distribution of tax money. In other words, after deciding what's most important to us as individuals, we'd prioritize allocations using a simple pie format.
“Political Pie” (Grace Slick)
Once the computer finished its number crunching, we'd know exactly what the majority wanted. In the above figure, representing the current political setup, shoe lifts get top priority while old people get the shaft. My suggestion is, why not simplify the tax forms and find out what U.S. citizens really want? Surely we've learned by now that the democratic process is thwarted by representatives' questionable motives and by a lack of trust on the part of citizens themselves.
Now you may ask: Has any large-scale “government”— U.S.A. or other—ever given this much autonomy to its constituents? No. Which is why this pie-in-the-face routine would need the overwhelming support of the people to be implemented.
Whether or not Washington types decide to adopt my particular suggestion for a new form of taxation, I still think the existing system needs an overhaul. Voting now boils down to do-you-want-a-punch-in-the-arm-or-a-kick-in-the-leg? There just isn't much choice between the parties anymore and not enough access to the “fine print” of a given issue to vote with conviction. So why bother? On the other hand, if Texas's Ann Richards runs for president, I'll be right out there with a red-white-and-blue table, sitting in front of a supermarket, begging people to register.
After I'd come up with my pie drawing while writing this book, I saw a Newsweek cover story (October 3, 1997) titled “Inside the IRS. Lawless, Abusive and Out of Control.”
What a fucking surprise! Tell us all something we don't already know. Then I read journalist Hunter S. Thompson's book Better Than Sex, his marvelously skewed look at addiction to politics and the decline and fall of our “nation of dreams.” I agree with him that nothing seems to change, the costumes just get sillier as time goes on. And since the average citizen doesn't have a clue what's happening, the test of a given administration becomes the fullness of our pocketbooks. When the U.S. of A. is through strutting, Japan (or some other country with the cash and arrogance) will crown itself, and we'll take our place beside Italy, Spain, and the U.K. among the other old warriors who've been out-muscled in the world power game.
Benjamin Disraeli once said, “In politics, there is no honor,” but that didn't keep him from helping Queen Victoria annex most of the known world for the glory of the British Empire. I don't have anything against cutthroat capitalism—after basic medical, educational, and housing benefits for all citizens have been secured. Then everyone gets a shot at playing Donald Trump if they choose to invest their energy in that particular crapshoot.
The sad part is that we do have the resources to give the basics to our citizens, but the lobbyists tend to swat down high-minded funding proposals with their special-interest baseball bats. More often than not, the trade-offs they concoct turn into banana peels beneath their feet.
Whether it's a simple marriage or the merger of international conglomerates, successful human interaction depends on how separate the participants choose to view themselves in the evolutionary process. Too often it becomes us and them. How about just WE?
That's a question I asked in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. And in the nineties I'm still asking it.