Wednesday, November 24, 2010

food fight

Cossacks. Turks. Wall Street bandits. Corporate plutocrats.
Dick Cheney. (Aaaaauuugggghhhh!?!)
Whatever you got.
The following excerpt is from All Too Human / (a political education), by George Stephanopoulos.
-----------[quote] The word on the Hill was that D'Amato had targeted Harold and me: We were both from New York, and he knew that we'd worked to defeat him in the past. The Republicans also banked on the fact that distracting senior staffers like us was half the battle. If we were busy with our lawyers or testifying in the hearing room, we couldn't be working on health care and crime.
...At first, we were nervous; none of us had testified to Congress before on a matter of policy, much less as witnesses before an investigating committee. But the hearing turned out to be a partisan political food fight.
--------------------[end quote]
[from All Too Human, by George
Stephanopoulos, CopyR. 1999.
Little, Brown andCo. Boston
New York London]
That seems really objectionable and wrong, to me, regardless which Party is doing it -- to spend your energy and ingenuity simply attacking individuals in an administration to distract them from the work they're supposed to be doing is Improper, Inappropriate, and Not Behaving Like Adults.
It would be like if you're out playing baseball and the members of one team run across the field and attack and beat up all the members of the opposing team, and then claim victory because the other team is too injured to pitch or hit.
It seems to me like the idea (notion?) of COMPETITION has gone awry since the 90s.
Example: if one company buys another one which is its competition and then CLOSES it, is that fair competition?
To me, that's not Competing, and Winning by Doing A Better Job, that's -- I don't know -- something else.
It would be like if I were playing ping-pong against somebody, and they abruptly laid down their paddle on the table, took out a gun, and shot me dead. Then -- served the ball over to my side of the table, 11 times, and -- naturally -- I don't hit it back because I'm --dead -- and then the Opponent claiming victory in a shut-out.
Well, granted -- I didn't hit the ball back, but did this Opponent -- WIN?
Is that the competition parents are supposed to raise their children to engage in?
Like -- you don't have to be Excellent, or even Good -- you just have to be Aggressive enough, and Mean enough and Unscrupulous enough to Change The Situation so that you dominate and benefit.
Is that Competition? Healthy Competition?
Or is that Piracy?
Don't worry about winning it fair and square, by striving and excelling and succeeding?
No -- just TAKE IT.
Winner-take-all.
That figure-skating imbroglio in 1994 -- perfect example. Tonya Harding thought she could skate better than all other contestants except Nancy Kerrigan, and we remember what happened there.
Did Tonya Harding and her posse of thugs SET an example which some people followed?
Or did the Harding Clique learn that behavior from our politicians and corporate leaders?
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