Written by Andor Carnes   

THE BULL IN US ALL: In Response to Reactions to: Earth to Democratic Leadership: Americans Are Angry as Hell About Big Money Corrupting Our Democracy By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page -RSN 30 July 16

Opinion:
In interesting-habitually turbulent times, it is always beneficial to walk carefully, to understand context and cause & effect, and to remind ourselves, or contemplate for the first time, that although a “bull in a china shop” is an attractive sounding catalyst to change, as it inevitably shakes things up, the shop is actually everyone’s and is destroyed.

Consequently, less understood in theses types of visceral, frustrated reactions to the times is the fact that the same “bull”, every time, while indiscriminately destroying that shop, through ignorance and the incompetence of perceiving context, also destroys the fundamental livelihood -the shop, itself. There is no moderation or selective destruction in such cases. Managing by grenade is unnecessarily and tragically wasteful every time. Doing so with total ignorance of the shop being destroyed simply visits deep devastation and no solutions of any type. Eliminating a problem with the bluntest of instruments also eliminates the reasons for wanting the problem eliminated in the first place. Pounding an angry pimple off of a face with a baseball bat will never result in a clear completion.

No such “bull” - being given such close, balancing, important and unfamiliar quarters, need understand the system they are destroying, and indeed, there in lies the source of much of the resultant irreparable damage to any good that existed at all. Soberly, negating the good in a system because of a disingenuous reaction to the clearly bad erodes and destroys the good as well, every time. Wishing, or assuming, that the “bad” can be destroyed by any bull, while retaining the “good” is one of the sad over-simplifications of angry thinking. Mankind has always exhibited this tendency for reactionary, self-centered survival through shoving others in to do their dirty work.

Ultimately, sending a bull into our own china shop is one of: insurance fraud, demented hope or insanity. If you wish to differentiate and destroy the bad in the system, it is never prudent to use a bull –they only know to react and move. Rational, strategic triage is not in their physical or mental capacity because, as on any good day, we all deeply realize that they simply cannot know how to run a china shop.

When sending a wonderfully powerful, genetically oblivious beast in to extract anything bad or to shake up a room, sounds to us like a viable, useful and attractive way to catalyze change, that helps everyone, we the “senders” also, unwittingly, condemn the good of the system, the parts that need to be retained. That may never be our intent but it is always the horrific collateral, irreparable damage reality.

Believing that an uninformed, flailing bomb dropped into the middle of our own “shop” will do anything but harm the good we all wish to retain as we wish and strive to change the bad, is like closing our eyes and driving through a congested intersection. The good we will inevitably kill through these actions will surely be someone’s and our own.