It’s road construction season, you know, which is a frustration for drivers but an economic boon for the nation – because it yields paychecks for some 300,000 workers on highway crews. It’s just one of those seasonal things that we have to tolerate. But take comfort: the approach of August also means that Congress will be in recess, giving us a break from the incessant posturing and prevaricating that typifies political work nowadays.
That may be unfair to Congress, but only a bit. It’s not that nobody is doing anything on Capitol Hill; it’s just that what they’re doing often isn’t the work that needs to be done. Maybe they misunderstand the contract for services implied by voters’ support at the polls. There must be some guys on road crews like that, too, wearing orange vests and hard hats but never managing to do much digging. Think of them as the Marjory Taylor Greenes of highway construction.
You know, like Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s resolution to condemn Vice President Harris for not sealing the U.S border – ironic, that, in that Republicans killed bipartisan border legislation because Donald Trump thought it would take away an issue he wanted to campaign on. But the House might as well vote on Stefanik’s resolution, I suppose, because it can’t do much else. The Republican majority can’t even get its own members to agree on any of the major appropriation bills that were supposed to be passed by now. It’s as though the road crew foreman has declared that repaving is too hard, so the work just won’t get done. So Congress goes home for the August recess, and the nation’s work doesn’t get done.
To understand just how averse Congress is to taking on the nation’s tough issues, consider something that eventually will affect everybody: the financial uncertainty facing the nation’s big entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security is the largest program in the federal budget, so you might consider assuring its viability to be a fundamental task of Congress. And the need for action is clear: Just seven years from now, Medicare will only have enough cash to cover 89 percent of costs of inpatient hospital care and nursing home stays; two years after that, Social Security will be able to scrape up only 77 percent of the benefits it will owe retirees.
Yet in refusing to face up to the reality of their responsibilities on such issues as Social Security and Medicare, or climate change, members of Congress might actually be doing what they think we want – because we, their constituents, are generally pretty adept, too, at avoiding reality.
Proof of that exists in something that until recently I didn’t know existed – namely, a scientifically-compiled list of the world’s leading problems. Thanks to the Union of International Associations, based in Brussels, there is something called The Encyclopedia of World Problems & Human Potential – with 56,000 known problems in the world. And right there in the list of problems, between “Absolutism” and “Xenophobia,” you find this: “Avoidance of reality.” And here’s what those scientists say about that particular world problem:
“People no longer prefer to confront reality directly, having learned and accepted that reality has for all practical purposes become unmanageable. People tend increasingly to devote their energies to the proliferation and production of trivia and unreality to soothe tired and fractured egos.”
That’s what the Encyclopedia of World Problems says. But give us a break: 56,000 problems seems like an insurmountable list, doesn’t it? No wonder we avoid reality.
Yet maybe precisely because of the many discrete challenges that loom, there are solutions – because there must be an important task awaiting each of us, based on our own skill sets. We don’t need to look to just a few experts for big solutions; rather, we all can take a shot at making a difference on just one of those 56,000 problems.
Take those choppy Upstate roads, for instance. On the Encyclopedia of World Problems list, there are six listings involving roads – from “dysfunctional roads in advanced societies” to “environmental degradation caused by unsurfaced country roads.”
Think about it: Each of the 56,000 problems has people addressing them around the world – from “loss of soil bacteria globally” to “limited home nursing care,” from “sweatshop labor” to “the unavailability of literacy classes.” My neighbor is taking on that last one – she’s a volunteer English teacher for new immigrants; my niece is on the job on soil bacteria, because she’s a farmer and activist for healthy organic food; my friend is a poet whose words inspire others. They each are pursuing an agenda based on reality; they’re not ducking out into performative behavior, which is the raging virus of Capitol Hill.
So here’s where we can take heart: There are countless good people going about the hard daily work of resolving what sometimes seem to be insurmountable problems. We might hope that our representatives in Congress take note, and then act likewise – before Social Security loses its financial stability, for example, before climate change imposes much worse consequences than a tough season for road repair.
In fact, we might demand it. We need to remind our political leaders that while they can avoid reality, the real consequences of inaction aren’t, in fact, avoidable. That’s true in every season, meaning that there’s work for them to do right now, which we ought to insist they do.
And while we’re at it, let’s remember that there’s work for each of us, too, in confronting reality.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.