My health is almost back to normal. I gave myself a sick day on Saturday and didn’t push myself yesterday. I rescheduled Saturday’s task for later today and added a new task tomorrow. I have a long way to go but I’m working on functioning better. For now, that means one task a day plus blogging. Even blogging is giving me anxiety. It doesn’t come as naturally as it used to. I still enjoy it and some days it does flow. I’m going to accept that there are days when I don’t have 1200 words to say and will settle for whatever I have in me.
Yesterday I recorded Gord’s Gold for Folk Music Notebook. That was the highlight of my week. Why? I have wanted to be on the radio for years and this is my opportunity. Despite that, my anxiety/procrastination has stopped me from doing it every week. I’d like to do it twice a week. Getting it done is huge. I can thank South For Winter for energizing me with their new album Luxumbra. If I didn’t know that it meant light and shadow I would never remember the title. I have another Gord’s Gold on the queue for today. I’m striking while the iron is hot. The trick is to make this routine, and not have each edition be an accomplishment. That’s the running theme in my life now. I’m feeling strong enough to get started on working on getting started on doing things. It’s a puzzlement. This is not unusual, there should be a better word than procrastination for difficultly initiating action. It is intimately tied in with anxiety. When I started writing today I was worried about what to write about. I’m worried about what to say in Gord’s Gold. I finally got approved to teach at Outschool and I worry about what I’m going to teach and how I’m going to teach it and how to get students. This is teaching. I can teach in my sleep; I still get anxiety about it. Yet I never had it when teaching college classes.
The overture to Tannhauser is playing. Wagner should inspire me, there is no more heroic music. Wagnerian heroes are never afraid. The music conveys that. That reminds me to switch topics to something political. My love of opera comes into this.
One of the generally accepted tax breaks for the wealth is the charitable deduction. We want to encourage giving to charity, right? That sounds good but there’s an often-unvoiced cost to that, it means that the wealthy have a larger voice in where our tax money goes than the rest of us; it is plutocratic. Let’s say that Charles Koch gives $1,000,000 to the Metropolitan Opera. He gets to deduct that from his taxes. That comes off the marginal rate, the top rate of 37%. He is giving $630,000 to the Met and at his bidding the United States is giving $370,000. He decided where that money went, not our representatives in Congress. I’m extremely glad that he gives money to the opera, his interests are aligned with mine. But it’s not about what’s important to me. It should be about what’s important to the people as a whole. I think we should vigorously support the arts, and that includes opera, but those decisions should be made by the people’s representatives.
It’s not an easy decision where to spend the money. Many would argue that we should be spending that money to help the poor, clean up the environment, on medical care. Those are all things I care about deeply. The justification for giving to the Opera is that $1,000,000 is the difference between the opera existing and not existing while it would make little practical difference to the millions of needy. A lot of money for Opera is a drop in the bucket for social spending. There are many things like that. You could argue that money used to help animals would be better spent on people. It’s pretty hard to argue against it, except you can make exactly the same point. There’s no clear-cut place to draw the line. Democracy is about balancing those competing claims. There will always be disagreements of where the money should be spent. But it’s wrong for those with the most money to make those decisions.
Ever notice how often my conclusion is that things aren’t easy? It’s true and people hate that. People love blacks and whites and hate grays. The world is heroes versus villains, right versus wrong, Mets versus Yankees. But we can’t agree on which side to place things. We can’t even agree with ourselves. If we gave up the charitable deduction and increased spending on the arts I’m afraid that opera would suffer. That means I would suffer. I have to remind myself that I don’t get to decide these things for everyone. I know I’m not the only one with these issues. People think that the government should follow their priorities and that it’s selling out if they follow what most people want. Some, perhaps most people, fool themselves into thinking that the majority feels like they do. I’m used to being in the minority, the books, TV shows, and music I love is never the most popular. Why should my policy positions be any different?
It may sound like I’m getting off the topic, but I’m not. The topic is thinking that your priorities are inherently the right ones and democracy is you getting your way. For most of us, it’s something to complain about; the rich can make believe it’s true. This is not a condemnation of the wealthy. Those that speak the loudest against plutocracy often feel the absolute rightness of their positions the most. No, this goes to what Anatole France said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Just as there are sins that the rich don’t have to make for survival there are others only the rich have the opportunity to commit. It’s all our jobs to makes things fair and that means agreeing on what’s fair and accepting that sometimes our views will not be enacted.
Wise Madness 