Faster, faster, faster...

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 many of the western European communist parties were forced to really rethink what it meant for them to be communist. In a very short time the French Communist Party lost more than half of its members. Naively I imagined their defection would mean real growth in the governing Socialist Party, the next one over from the left. Instead a majority joined the racist, populist National Front - at the furthest right end of the right-left spectrum! If this were a fancy dinner that would be like switching from your fish fork all the way over to the tiny espresso spoon.

This notion left me perplexed. What could possibly have motivated such a huge leap? Then it occurred to me: the one thing that connects both ends of the political rainbow is strong desire for change right now. Not in a year, not in a month. RIGHT NOW.

Recently on NPR, an American expert was commenting on China's unearthly capacity to expand the various infrastructural systems so quickly. He was talking with admiration about how rapidly they'd multiplied the miles of high speed train lines and quipped that we Americans can't possibly compete with or imagine such rapid growth. This echoed the comments of a young art dealer friend recently back from a trip to Shanghai: "The US is so screwed."

As a man who sold my services to French civil servants for many years, I was used to thinking of the US as one of those places on earth where things actually get done pretty quickly. It was strange for me to think of the US as a slow country - at least in this respect.

But the truth is it is easy to get things done quickly when leadership has no opposition and all other political parties are banned. Dictatorships and oligarchies will always be able to react more quickly than democracies because they simply have no or little need for discussion, no regard for people's rights, no time for a free press and little consideration for justice.

(Let's save for a later date the blog discussion about how ethical it was for us as a country to transfer the lion's share of our manufacturing base to just such a country while invading others in order to teach them democracy.)

One of the myths Americans like to tell themselves is that faster is always better. As a turbo-capitalist country we have grown accustomed to having many things quickly, without having to sit in that uncomfortable yearning zone of absence-of-gratification.

We don't like that.

We like to have democracy but we want the decision-making to go quickly. We wouldn't be without a judicial system but hate when it goes slowly and deprives us from acting on our urges for revenge. We love being protected from corporate malfeasance but can't stand that regulation slows down manufacturing and commerce. We enjoy having weekends and like our salaries to be higher than say China but have no patience for labor unions and their never-ending negotiations and picket lines.

It seems to me the closest we've ever come in my lifetime to that kind of oligarchy --in which commerce, manufacturing, military and legislators seem uncomfortably intimate-- was under George W. Bush and a Republican-dominated congress in which no legislation or policy seemed to meet the needs of the 50% of Americans who hadn't voted for them.

Interestingly, this need for "quick change now" corresponds nicely with the beliefs of what I call the Evangelizing Class: the 20 or so percent of Americans who believe that everyone should behave like them. They aren't really interested in the slow process of debate, negotiation, or discussion. They are not interested in listening, in meeting the other person right there where he or she is, and seeing how they can find some kind of common legislation.

No - the Evangelizers don't care who you are or what you think. What they know is that your way is wrong and theirs isn't. Their favorite mode of debate is the use of the Victim-Perpetrator game: insult and accuse, then say you are a victim when insulted back, rinse, repeat.

It's the opposite of discussion, antithetical to democratic debate and it's the perfect fodder for today's news media that's struggling to survive a slow economic death.

P.S. Another myth: We also like to think that we can have all of these perks --we call them freedoms-- without paying for them. How American of us to always be on the look out for a great deal - even on democracy!