The Tower of Babel: Does Anyone in Washington Know Which Way is Up?

I’d imagine that nearly everyone knows the story of the Tower of Babel. But for those few who do not know of that story, well, Google is a handy invention. I’ve always imagined that story going something like the following, but you have to imagine this vignette taking place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Captain Kirk just had Scotty transported down to the surface of the planet.

“Come in Enterprise!”

“Spock here.”

“They’re building a tower.”

“Primitive humanoids often build towers and other edifices for a myriad of reasons, would you like a sampling?”

“No Sir, because they’re building this one up.”

“That would be the normal direction of a tower, ensign.”

“To heaven, sir.”

“Hold, please.”

What comes next follows a heated discussion of the folly of these Earth dwellers.

“Ask two different work unit leaders which direction the stairs in the Tower of Babel are going to go. Clockwise or counter.”

Long pause. “…Why, sir, if I may ask…?”

“Some will say one way and some will say the other. That will be the demise of the tower.”

The moral of this story is that even though there are always differences of opinion and some folks just can’t see the world on a global scale, does not mean that them folks and us’uns all speak the same language. As a matter of fact, the whole world speaks the same language. Well, maybe different aspects of it are vocalized differently according to local custom but we all understand economic growth no matter how it is spoken. It always wins out over oppression. If a conqueror can limit the resources available for purchase the conquering force inevitably wins. The whole world speaks economy.

Hey Democrats and Independents! I would so much like to impose upon you for your attention for a mere five minute read. Okay?

Have you folks completely missed the political lessons of the last administration? Really? You really did not notice that the guy who was elected president was elected because he had some “paazzazzz” no one else had? Were you just too busy complaining about how good/bad that guy was? You know he had some good points and he had some just horrible points. He just wasn’t cut out to be a President of the United States. Now we all know. So?

Everyone is entitled to make mistakes. That includes that entity known as the voting public. This does not come down to us against them, whoever us and them might actually be. This is about the right to be those particular us-es and thems. I really can not understand why there would not be a spiritual divide between us and them. They think the stairs in the Tower of Babel should go to the left and we think the stairs go to the right. It doesn’t matter which way the stairs go up. What makes a difference is that they go up. Now how much of the economy are we going to spend on this stupid argument? I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we put it to a vote and let the majority decide. It’s not like it really makes a damn bit of difference, you know? We just need to get on with the economy on account of my kids wanting me to buy groceries so they can eat enough to do whatever they’re going to do. Don’t you want the same damned thing?

That’s the point. We all want the same thing. But we let us and them get in the way of the economy. It shows up in strange ways, too. We have to fight about who can vote, when the deal we made was that everyone votes. Even the ones who are not on my side. If they’re affected by which way the stairs in the Tower of Babel go, then they have a right to express their opinion. We are not deciding on which way the stairs go really, we’re just deciding to get on with the economy. How hard is that to understand? I truly believe that’s what the Macy’s Parade Baby thought he was doing even. I do wish he’d had the understanding of a grown man to keep his eye on the economy instead of how big his crowd size was. If that’s what he was really bragging about. Lyndon Johnson did that kind of crap all the time so I suppose that Macy Baby can too. Fair is fair after all.

This whole Jim Crow-era thing of cops picking on black people, what is that all about? I get that white people can get scared about black people in the neighborhood just the same as black people can get scared about white people in the neighborhood. If you don’t know someone for the better part of your life it is not likely you’re going to understand much about them, so they’re obviously going to present a threat on some level or another. But even plants can get along and can even send each other telegraph signals through a fungus network that trees and fungus form. If plants can do something so seemingly impossible, what could be the problem with we human type folks doing even better? Black people are part of this economy-based fungal network we humans have developed. So are Mexicans and so are the French and the Germans and even Arabs and Italians and, as Russia is learning, even Russians. We all speak and understand economy. What’s to understand about that?

Oh, don’t waste your silly answers here. I don’t care if you believe the earth is round. When something is true, what I believe about it doesn’t change anything in the world except my blood pressure and I have a very strong feeling that you’re exactly the same as me. I know that I’ve wasted a good deal of my life on wishing for things that just could never be. Not because I really thought they were impossible but because I was too impatient to notice that other people thought they were impossible. I did eventually learn that just because I had an opinion about which way the stairs should go up the towers, that mine was not the only option. There always have been two options and they both got to the top of the Tower of Babel.

It’s okay that there are two options. Neither is better than the other if they both reach the same objective. If one does and one doesn’t though, then we have to choose the option that gets us to our collective objective so that we all can get to our individual objectives. This is the nature of the economic language. The cool thing about economic language is that we don’t have to go to school to understand it. We sometimes have to learn a thing or two in order to be clever with it, but isn’t that always the case when it comes to learning languages. I know I do not have any intention of ending up like Babylonians. I want to go ahead and build the Tower of Babel even if it means I have to learn to speak tower direction. I don’t reckon it will hurt all that much. I am grown now, even if I hate to admit it. I’m sure you all have had that same realization at any number of points in your life the same as me.