Illusions Lost

It’s tough to lose your illusions.

Now we all have illusions, and we all lose some of them as we grow up, as we grow older, as we fall in and out of love, and even when we lose a job or win a million dollars or buy that car we have always dreamed of. 

We start early. Children are just a little sadder and more worldly-wise when they find out there Is no tooth fairy or Easter Bunny, and that Santa Claus is a mystery not to be looked at too closely.

Lost illusions are the stuff of tragedy, of wonderful plays and of revolutions. They are so much a part of who we are and what we do that when we lose one, it hurts. It hurts badly, sometimes beyond forgiveness.

Which spells really bad news for Donald Trump, who doesn’t know any better, and for Mitch McConnell, who should know better, and for a whole lot of organizations whose leaders think they can ride out the tidal wave of lost illusions coming out of Washington as surely as farms are being flooded out of existence in the midwest.

Illusions are the stuff of history as well as tragedy. Socrates probably thought that seeking and telling the truth would be supported by his community and its rulers. Tragedy and legend followed.

Kings ruled in Europe because people were told that God wanted them to rule. It was their Divine Right. People thought their Kings were wise and would protect them. And, when that illusion went away, so did the absolute monarchy.

In Japan, people thought their Emperor was always right, until much of Hiroshima vanished in an atomic cloud. In Germany, Hitler was widely supported by much of the nation, until the Americans and the Russians were knocking at the gates of Berlin.

Now a lot of that support came because of vicious police tactics, but no one complained about those abuses as long as Jews and Gypsies were the targets. Another couple of illusions bit the dust along with the Third Reich.

In both the Soviet Union and China, there was originally wide and deep support for a Communist government that said it was going to help the people, even if it took decades. Five year plans came and passed, and new ones came and passed. And, finally, people looked at the rest of the world and saw what was happening, and Communist governments came down or changed internally. 

What happened in Russia was obvious. What happened in China is still somewhat a mystery, but we know one dictator was replaced by another, and that the government’s absolute power is leaking away a little bit at a time.*

But, let’s look at the illusions that are falling away right here in the United States. We can start anywhere you want, but - since I am writing this - we have to start wherever fancy takes me.

So, in no particular order, here are some eye-openers you should be aware of:

• Colleges and universities are really businesses. Oh, they are so much more, of course, from providing a ladder to move up in life to the vital repository of the world’s knowledge. They are the engine of research and progress for humanity, and a stable tradition in a rapidly changing world. They are also powerful economic engines with thousands of employees, they give us football teams and remedial courses, and they have managed to put a whole generation in debt while at the same time paying their coaches millions of dollars a year.

   So, while you can probably snare a seat in the freshman class by donating enough money to endow a chair or pay for a new library, it’s against the unwritten rules to just hand that cash over for the same purpose. Life would be much simpler if major universities set aside five or ten percent of the freshman class seats and put them up for bid. Clean, simple and probably a good chance to get even more money, which is the whole point.

• Politicians lie to you. Oh, we know that the politicians from the other party lie to us all the time - we boo them at rallies and spit on their campaign signs on the street - but the ones we support are treated like visiting royalty. And, they tell us what we want to hear.

 But listen carefully and you will find that just about every promise they make to us is is qualified. The government has no roll in regulation private business, but I will take credit for creating jobs every month that a new jobs report comes out. I want insurance for all, but let’s not talk about how to pay for it. I want everything to be just the way it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, only safer and more convenient and better. Ah, rose-colored glasses.

• There are simple, common-sense answers to every problem. Sure there are. You don’t want to be hit on the head with a hammer, don’t put your head under a hammer.

   But what if that hammer is on a scaffold two or three stories up and you are walking under it. You can’t walk in the street - too much traffic - and so you march under the planking, knowing that the government which shouldn’t regulate businesses really should be regulating this one. But it says that it can't, because there aren't enough inspectors, and we can’t hire more. We fired half the department because more people complain about potholes than safety regulations covering construction sites.

  So what’s the simple answer? Just ban hammers. What could go wrong?

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* It’s hard to really know what is happening in China, which is hardly an open government. Even the members of the National People’s Council with its 29 ministers and heads of the State Council Commissions probably don’t know everything.

Illusions L