Why I'm preparing to leave public service altogether

I'm having some serious conversations, right now, about leaving teaching indefinitely. And not just teaching. Public service, altogether.

I'm tired of working with self-righteous folks who can see nothing but wrong with anything I do as long as I do not agree with them, is the truth. My administrators have nothing good to say to me, these days, almost completely because I disagree with them about the desireability of forcing change, is the truth, I think. And this self-righteous bend that liberals have taken, lately, has me coming to terms with the fact that there is not likely to be any serious intellectual honesty in any of the work that I've engaged in, up to this point, in the near future. I haven't had teachers be so completely dismissive of any of my efforts ever in my life, is the truth. And my love for education, higher education and teaching younger people, is quickly being drained by all this bullshit.

The irony, of course, is that I have been a liberal for the largest proportion of my life. And it is my liberal commitment to compassion and decency and forgiveness and a loving worldview that led me to this work. And it is liberals, now, who might just drive me out of the field.

And as I watch the banality of the current conversation about the Iraq war, namely this piece today, by E.J. Dionne, I'm quickly losing my inspiration to want to be a part of any of it, at all. The self-righteous assertions of certainty, the bullying, the persistent blaming and casting aspersions on those who don't agree, the mean-spiritedness, the dishonesty, the nastiness and pettiness, and the perpetual pretending like this is just how life and public service is supposed to be and that somehow this is what highminded politics and public life should look like.

It's ugly and bullshit. There are no heroes in the current discussions. There certainly is noone involved who has somehow divined all or even largely right answers.

E.J. is wrong. It is not just President Bush who has polarized the country, right now. It is liberals as well. It is so many people that it is very difficult to count. It is everyone who has tried to bully their way through this very difficult discussion and debate and so many important decisions in the last 6 years. It is every single person who has decided that their self-righteous certainty that they are right is more important than an intellectually honest discussion and debate of important policy issues, especially one as grave as the war in Iraq.

Why in the world would we look to Iraqis, right now, and say, "This is what democracy is supposed to look like. Don't you want to have an honest political system and discussion like our own?" is beyond me.

If what we are engaged in today is the highest principals that humanity has to offer or the best, most honest, most intelligent discussion that we can possibly muster, I don't want any part of them. Because it's so completely clear that such an assertion is bullshit, that there is no use taking any of it seriously.

E.J. Dionne epitomizes for me, right now, what is so wrong with politics. And the way that he and so many are engaged in politics, right now, should answer for itself the question from his major book, "Why Americans Hate Politics."

They hate politics because it is full of cynical self-righteous pricks is why, who are convinced that their cynicism and self-righteousness combined with any ounce of intellectual prowess that qualifies them to make or influence the most important decisions.

Hurray for them, I say. But I don't any part of this bullshit anymore or any of the self-fulling cynicism and ugliness that are at the heart of the corruption of spirit more than any other corruption that so characterizes politics and public life, these days.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, says one of the most important liberals of the 20th century. But it doesn't just corrupt those who have it. It corrupts all of us, as we use it and its failures to make excuses for what inexcusable pricks we all are.

We all better hope that there is forgiveness in the world. Because a lot of us need it, right now.

Namely from our children whose hope that we might somehow be better or leave them something better is perpetually corroded each generation from our commitment to the idea that if we weren't such pricks then this world would be a right bloody mess, as Monty Python might say.

If there really is no hope that this will get better, which liberals and many conservatives are doing their damndest to demonstrate that there isn't, right now, then there is no use at all for me to continue doing work that will never be appreciated for fear of acknowledging that perhaps noone controls anything as much as they might like, no matter how much they force the issue.

Love,
Ben