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Back to the Future: Remembering the 70s and a New Year’s Rant

Robert Goidel

Posted: 01.02.2009 / 12:20 PM PST

As Christmases go, this one was pretty low key. Not because things are bad but because they feel like they are slowly slipping away. 

I have felt this way before. As a child of Watergate and Vietnam, I was bathed in cynicism and dressed in a lasting distrust of corporate and political power. In the 70s, a combination of high unemployment and rising inflation fueled economic misery.  Oil shortages led to long gas lines and a national energy policy that included an ill-fated 55 mph speed limit. In foreign policy, the decade was bookended by Vietnam and the Iranian Hostage Crisis leaving lingering questions about American influence and power abroad.

A general malaise hung like a heavy fog that felt as if it would never be lifted.

As children of that era, we grew up with little to believe in. Our political institutions had failed us, and the mythical veil that had shrouded American Presidency had been lifted. We were Dorothy after the curtain is pulled back to reveal that the Wizard of Oz was just a man. Only we didn’t have any ruby red slippers to click together and bring us back to Kansas.

If the 60s were “Give Peace a Chance,” we were “Anarchy in the UK:” Anti-establishment but lacking the 60s optimism about the capacity for change.   As Johnny Rotten would proclaim, “All we are trying to do is destroy everything.”

Ronald Reagan restored American confidence and in doing so has earned a place of reverence among the Republican faithful. Every Republican since has promised to be the next Reagan. But he did so by taking out a second mortgage on the American dream. He cut taxes but not spending. He invaded Grenada to detract attention from the killing of U.S. Marines in Lebanon. And, he engaged in an arms race that forced the Soviet Union into bankruptcy but left the United States upside down in debt. The central piece of his defense strategy, the Star Wars missile defense system, was never built; arguably could never be built.   His central legacy was a federal government that not only didn’t pay its bills but didn’t even feel a real need to. Deficits no longer mattered.

The Clinton Presidency offered only a temporary reprieve thanks to a tech boom that could not be sustained.

The era we live in is different from the 70s but the feeling that something has been lost that cannot be easily recovered is very much the same.  Obama’s hope is encouraging - but hope has failed us before. And we can ill-afford to buy into hope that is the equivalent of 90 days same as cash.  Will the Obama stimulus plan address an economy that has been running on credit card purchases for well over a decade? Or will it extend the line of credit with higher limit putting off the collapse for another day or year or decade?  

The New Year is not the time for pessimism but I have lingering doubts that we have the will or the resolve for fundamental change. The fundamental problem is this: Our horizon is too short. We think in minutes not hours or days or years or decades. Our corporations think about tomorrow’s stock value, our politicians the next election. As a result, they make decisions that provide short-term fixes to long-term problems because they know their constituencies lack the attention span to think carefully about long-term solutions, and that even if they had the attention span they would be unwilling to absorb the cost.  

We can’t solve a looming Social Security crisis because it is complicated and hard and requires making unpleasant choices about the retirement age or benefits or taxes. So we let it linger unresolved moving at glacial speed toward crisis. We complain about the quality of schools, about our dilapidated infrastructure but reject the idea of paying more in taxes. We patriotically wave flags to support our troops while engaging in wars we will ask our children to pay for.

Give us a Lexus and a gated community and we will let the world burn around us.

And there is more. Somewhere along the way, we have lost the value of work, of the process of creating something of value, that the work itself is more important than the reward. We have created this collectively in corporations that see employees as expendable, in employees that have little loyalty to their employer. We have praised mobility for its ability to move people up the career latter with no appreciation of what it has cost us in terms of loyalty and community.

We are an American Idol society laughing at failure while waiting to be discovered. We are lottery culture waiting for our pick-six to hit, ready to cash out. We believe it is simple as this: The lucky ones are discovered or hit it big, the unlucky toil away.  

And, we have lost that sense that what is most valued is earned, never given. Perhaps ironically, we are working longer and hard but caring less.

And so I start 2009 with a heavy dose of pessimism. Not because I no longer believe our problems can be solved, but because I doubt we have the will to resolve them. When given the choice between a better today or better tomorrow for our children, we have routinely opted for the now. When given the choice between the hard solution that requires long term commitment and short term cost versus the quick fix that puts off our problems for another day, we have inevitably opted for the latter.

If this doesn’t change - if we can’t expand our horizon - little else we do will matter.