Reflecting on my last post, I have to recognize that
contemporary American politics is also painfully short of noble
leaders, as defined by the Tao Te Ching.   Remember this excerpt:

The people are impossible to rule,
and it’s only because you leaders are masters of extenuation
that they’re impossible to rule.

    "Extenuation" hardly begins to describe the evasions and outright lies of Bush and company on so many occasions.  Revelations that Bush, in 2004, denied that he was circumventing the legal process for authorization of wire taps, at the very moment that he was  bypassing the law, is just the most recent example of a depressingly consistent pattern of twisting and obfuscating the truth.

    What is interesting, from the perspective of the Tao Te Ching passage, is why people are not "impossible to rule" in the US, as compared with China, where social unrest is growing. 

     I think freedom makes a difference. 

      This is not to say that the US has achieved some perfect state of liberty.  Rather, people in the US are free enough to be able to channel their political frustrations in directions other than large-scale social protest.  People, when fed up with national politicians, can engage locally or at the state level.  They can also look forward to "throwing the bums out" at the next election.  Alternatively (and I think a lot of Americans do this) they can give up on politics all together and throw themselves into their jobs (indeed, this may be necessary given tight economic conditions for many). 

    Perhaps most importantly, even though civil liberties are under threat these days, and must be more actively defended, the relatively secure system of civil rights, backed by a fairly reliable legal system, limit the extent to which the extenuations of political leaders affect the daily life of the average American.  We can see the lies on our televisions or computer screens, we can debate how much they are lies or something short of lies, and we can still believe that we will not face expropriation of our property or the loss of our personal freedom.

    Again, the most worrisome thing about domestic spying and the other attacks on civil liberties undertaken by Bush, is that they could portend a more significant erosion of precisely  those freedoms that reassure Americans and keep them off the streets.  But having come to political consciousness in the 1960’s (I have vivid memories from when I was 11 years old, watching the Chicago Democratic Party Convention riots on television and being drawn into political thinking because of those images…) I am confident that, should the power of the state grow to dangerous proportions and the extenuations of politicians become unbearable, Americans would get out on the streets and protest.  They would make themselves "impossible to rule" until a somewhat more noble political leadership emerged.  We may be getting close to that moment, but we’re not quite there yet.