Perspectives

”Clowns to the left of me,

Jokers to the right, here I am,

Stuck in the middle with you.”

—From the 1974 Stealers Wheel song, “Stuck In The Middle With You.”

Was I the only one who thought it perverse (ironic, too) that six people died and 18 were wounded at their local Tucson Safeway? Shopping the safe way? “Paper or casket?” Indeed.

These are morose times in America. I’m trying to put my finger on what it is that is off. I am, by nature, an optimistic skeptic. I don’t know if there is a single word for such a man as I. Fool, perhaps.

I often think of the song lyrics from “Stuck in the Middle With You.” The chorus goes, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” That about sums up America today. We’re caught between the clowns on the left and the jokers on the right. And where are we?

Historian Thomas Cahill observed that, “We are what we have been.” That suggests a mixed bag of attributes. If you had to sum up what it means to be human, what would be your first qualities? Curious? Yes. Inventive? Unequivocally. Creative? See our “arts”! Aggressive? A timeless attribute. Warlike? Forever. Cruel? We try to be otherwise. We do. Mostly. Compassionate? At times. Loyal? Helps immeasurably to be blood. Superstitious? Cross my fingers and hope to die. Religious? Tragically so. Spiritual? Not enough. Loving? Not to Mother Earth. Short-term, pleasure seeking hedonists? Only when we can. “Shall we dance? But first, another flute of champagne!”

But I’ve been aware, for a long time, of what disappointing little monkeys we can be. Maybe it’s my advancing age that has me questioning the past and doubting the future. But it is the present in which I reside, and it is only the “now” that I have any semblance of control. Mistaken even though that small illusion may be. And, bingo, I hear the refrain, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

I speak — actually, I think as an American first. There is something, historically speaking, to the idea of an “American” perspective. Actually, it’s a western (as in culture/Western Europe/those canny Greeks!) perspective. The future? Imagine it. A problem? Fix it. A hypothesis? Test it. A solution? Why not the “best” of many considered? Options? Rationally determined. Failure? Rethink the question/rethink the options/rethink the solutions.

But America no longer thinks or operates that way (perhaps we never did). We confront national challenge after challenge, and if we are unsuccessful in actually postponing a decision (congressional preference), we make either poor judgments or bad choices. That is what has me questioning our nation’s future. That is what has me thinking, well, I’ll just tend my garden and hope that America is somehow immune to the cards history has dealt every aging empire.

The rich are cashing in, the middle class are holdin’ (barely) and the poor, well, they’ve no chips, let alone cards.

And the fools on the left and the jokers on the right forever dicker over who’s in steerage and who has the cushioned deck chair. On the Titanic.