Those of us who have never embraced the world of reality TV find ourselves at a distinct disadvantage these days. With the election of a loose-living reality TV producer and star as president, our nation’s public affairs have become, quite predictably, an all-consuming, irresistible reality TV show, and we don’t know the rules of interpretation. By nature, these dramas combine the spontaneous with the contrived, but how does one know the difference?
One of the more mysterious plot lines — currently eclipsed by the Russian influence spectacle and the Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court hearing drama — has to do with the administration’s “hard power budget.” This budget proposal famously funds the Great Wall along our southern border and significantly boosts military spending, while cutting or eliminating altogether a host of programs and agencies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the National Endowment for the Humanities to Meals on Wheels.
Since the producer and star of the show also has a reputation as a masterful business negotiator, should we take this proposal as a kind of opening bid? Do proponents expect to negotiate, offering reprieves to those whose heads lie on the cutting block in exchange for getting what they really want while the rest of us sigh in relief instead of resisting? Or is this hard power budget already hard?
Assuming that the script dictates the latter possibility, what vision does it hold up for the nation? What will the set of “Survivor USA” look like in 2020? And which of our qualities as human beings does it encourage and cultivate?
Most obviously, fear animates this budget. It can’t pass without its sponsors doing all they can to make and keep us afraid, although we already spend more on our military than nearly all other nations combined. We hear daily warnings about terrorists, yet simple facts mock such fearmongering. Over the last decade, twice as many Americans have died when toddlers happened upon loaded guns than have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Falling out of bed has killed 70 times more citizens than have terrorists. That Great Wall, no matter how attractive, will merely alter the route by which those who wish to come here make their way.
What will we have lost when this budget completes its slashing? The Free Market will protect citizens from corporate predators and ensure clean air and water more effectively than government agencies, its proponents argue. We can forgive them, perhaps, for not recalling the deadly Ford Pinto affair, but not for pretending BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill or the financial meltdown of 2008, which left taxpayers rather than the perpetrators holding the bag, could never happen again.
A siege mentality that makes us willing to sacrifice public education, support for the arts, and scientific endeavors — including medical research — both diminishes us and cedes victory to those who rejoice when our tongues speak bravely but extortion drains our treasury.
Even those who suffer famine repeatedly teach us that human beings don’t live by bread alone. We live to love and to make bonds of community. We find our humanity it caring for others, and a humane society works together to care for needy ones we may never see or know. We thrive on learning and curiosity. (Indeed, some say we forfeited Paradise merely for the chance to know more.) And to make sense of it all, to say what it means, we tell stories, create art, and make movies.
Apart from this great conversation, little distinguishes us from the goats and grasshoppers. If we sacrifice them on an altar of power and security, we hardly have a civilization worth protecting.
Fred Niedner is senior research professor in theology at Valparaiso University.
