“Zucchini?”

“Yeah man, vegetables. Look around, half the world is there. They’re planted in their shit gardens, sucking in whatever nutrients they need to survive, but they’re not living, man. They’ve ceased to have ideas bigger than the vine they’re clinging to, whether it’s religion, academics, the rat-race, or something else. Whatever else you do, beware of that. Don’t become a fuckin’ zucchini.”

Most of the people I’ve met aren’t remembered, at least not vividly. Although I only knew him for a couple of years, Bill stuck with me. I’ve spent thirty years with the zucchini analogy branded in my brain, and have done my best to avoid becoming a clinging, myopic vegetable – which wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. There’s something about being hurt, struggling, overwhelmed, or frustrated that seems to stop life on a macro level. The world of ideas becomes less important than the need for a Band-Aid, a break, or an immediate solution – even if the solution is temporary, or detrimental in the long-run.

I’ve managed to keep myself out of the shit garden for the most part, if only because I love the idea of potential. I love knowing that, barring death or a cruel disease of the mind, the human brain can keep on learning, thinking, and creating up until the last of its neurons are fired and its gray matter grows cold. I get a special thrill out of stories about 70 year-olds graduating college or middle-aged artists having their first art show. Stories like that stoke hope, no matter how slim, that it really never is too late – not for a degree, for talent, for love, for dreams – not for anything.

I wonder, though, if it’s not too late to change America back to the innovative, thriving power it once was. I can’t be the only Democrat who believes that the bank bailout, and now the $900B(+) Economic Stimulus Plan, is like the governmental version of a shit garden. After browsing through the 1071 page document, I’m convinced that we are fertilizing soil for the benefit of the vegetables among us.

Bureaucracy is often a self-perpetuating monster, and the collective greed of big corporations has been well-documented. These are the major beneficiaries of spending in the bailout and stimulus packages, and for decades into the future, taxpayers will have the noose of this debt wrapped around their collective necks.

This stimulus package is just one humongous gambling marker, and the ideas within it seem to have sprung from the same kind of mentality that compels chronic gamblers to throw good money after bad, hoping that if they spend enough, Lady Luck will grace them with a winning streak. It’s irrational, it has no grounding in reality, but even otherwise smart people will rub their lucky pennies, throw a pinch of salt over their shoulder, or appeal to the fates when they’re losing.

The ideas contained in the bailout and stimulus plans cater to the chronic spenders and vegetables in our midst – there’s not an original thought or innovative, long-term approach within either package.

America didn’t become a superpower due to its government bailouts. We got there with revolutionary inventions – by the creation and manufacturing of goods no other country had, or could produce as well as we did. We got there by being innovative, competitive, and tireless in our search for ways to improve life for people here and around the globe. We got there by opening doors of opportunity, paying decent wages, making housing affordable, and being willing to challenge traditions and social policies that impeded human potential.

Greed and avarice overtook America during the Bush years, particularly in the corporate and banking sectors. It seems to me that the way back to greatness isn’t going to be found in borrowed money, mass bailouts, or by reviving sagging bureaucracies, but in a new vision that incorporates and rewards innovation, attempts new strategies, and insists on ethics.

Instead, we’ve just tilled a massive shit garden, and I think many working class Americans understand that, even if they don’t have a degree in economics. Most of us are aware that if someone stood out on the street tomorrow handing out $10 bills, people would take them, regardless of need. Free money is free money. There’s no innovation there, and no incentive to spend it wisely, or with the long-range interests of the country in mind. The zucchinis will plant themselves quickly enough, sucking up everything they can until the garden is dry.

My friend Bill was right. We are a world built on ideas, and the finest ideas aren’t contained in any one school of thought. Beyond every other consideration, our humanity, and our common desire for better circumstances, binds us.

“Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.” – Carlos Castaneda

“Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.” – Ayn Rand

I’m not sure what any one person can do at this point to avoid shit garden economics, but as a nation of newly invigorated citizens I hope we demand accountability from all of those who seek to plant themselves there, and insist that those who show signs of wasting their handouts be plucked from the program.

And, of course, we have do whatever it takes to keep new ideas from flowing out of the hemisphere and into the vacuum of apathy.

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They were a match made in a blinders-on Republican heaven, where the conservative faithful still believe that with a little bit of faith and a lot of charm, they can transform failures and shortcomings into delusory gold, and rebirth multimillionaires into everyday people who really care about the plights of their Joe Six-Pack and Soccer Mom peers. Operating under the premise that if something is said often enough it will become accepted as the truth, they tend to blame the mythical devil of the Liberal Media for their public embarrassments, and don’t find it odd at all when their counterparts wave off abuse-of-power reports, and even court convictions,  as if they were the conspiratorial fantasies of an unpatriotic public. Behind the thick cigar smoke and carnival mirrors of such political propaganda, Limbaugh isn’t just a barker, but a godhead with a loyal legion of followers hailing from the furthest backwoods shacks to the hallowed halls of Washington. Those followers are called, appropriately enough, dittoheads.

The slippery, delusional thought processes of dittohead candidates and their lobbying groups were never as transparent as they were during the 2008 election. In the midst of a economic crisis, with the highest national debt in the history of the nation — after eight years of iron-fisted Republican domination — millions of Americans were bombarded with political slogans like these:

• Who can fix our economy? Only one party will fix the damage and prevent another crisis. Vote Republican.
• Jobs lost. Spending up. Economy down. Energy prices Up. Vote Republican to end America’s economic crisis.
  
• Vote Republican & Restore Balance to Our Economy.
• Republicans will eliminate wasteful spending, balance the budget and regain the trust of the American taxpayer.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh was there to lead the charge. And in the foggy realm of Republican obfuscation, Limbaugh is not just a college dropout with an inflammatory radio show, but an authority on capitalism, economics, defense, domestic policy, world relations and more.  Never mind that Limbaugh has not passed so much as one college course in business, law or political science — he has a $400M dollar contract with Clear Channel Radio, and a show that reaches an estimated 20 million viewers a week between 600 stations. According to figures obtained by Forbes, Limbaugh’s eight-year contract is only $87M short of what Hollywood’s 10 best-paid actors earned in the year between June 2007-June 2008, and $155.5M more than what the 10 best-paid actresses earned in the same time.

$400M can buy a lot of prestige in Washington, but a charismatic personality is worth much more, particularly when it comes attached to a substantial base of fans.  Just ask James Dobson or Pat Robertson.   Like Limbaugh, Dobson and Robertson managed to hold political sway based not on their intellectual credentials or objective reasoning skills, but on the basis of their Arbitron ratings.  They were given credibility by Washington politicians not because they were giants of integrity, ethics, or reason, but because they were media giants — willing to stand up for even the most beleaguered Republican politicians and truth-bereft party messages in exchange for Washington-sanctioned political standing.

Without that sanction, it is unlikely that personalities like Limbaugh, Dobson, and Robertson would have ever been considered newsworthy outside of the entertainment or religion pages. Certainly, without the sanction of Washington politicians, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal would not be doing what amounts to PR for Limbaugh.

Instead, thanks to Washington and the slavish capitulation of congressmen like Phil Gingrey-R (who backed off of his justified criticism of Limbaugh after fans inundated his office with complaints), Americans who would not normally tune in to hear the opinions of an unschooled political shock-jock, are being inundated with his ridiculous, uninformed messages.

Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It’s 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. – excerpt from Rush Limbaugh’s stimulus plan.

Taking his cue from dogmatic Republicans who can’t stop repeating the mantra of corporate tax cuts long enough to address the truth, Limbaugh used his PR opportunity to mislead more Americans than usual. The 35% tax rate is born from a paper figure that has little to do with the reality of what corporations actually pay. At the risk of repeating information that seems to bounce right off the collective conscience of the dittoheads, the fact is that despite the high bracket tax rate on paper, many corporations pay no taxes at all, and those that do pay, don’t pay anywhere near 35% after deductions, incentives, and loopholes.

America has known many charismatic media personalities but Republican politicians, perhaps still impressed by the number of conservative evangelicals thought to be delivered by television and radio preachers in the Reagan and Bush years (as if they would have voted otherwise), seem especially inclined to lend credence to Rush Limbaugh, even at the expense of their own reputations outside of the Republican party.

I don’t think President Obama was being flip when he told congressional leaders that “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done”.  Rather, it seems he might have been responding to the lack of original thought and leadership within the Republican party, and the seeming eagerness of Republican politicians to hand the intellectual reins of their platform over to whatever colorful pundit they think can best deliver them voters in the next election. If it’s a strategy, it would seem to be one as disastrous as the Palin pick, and if it’s a habit, it’s one that surely needs breaking if the Republican party is to recover from the Bush years with any integrity.

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