Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [73]
“My friends, when I arrived here in your time, I became a fast patron of the unthinkably vast and colorful array of meats, treats, and sweets I found in your kitchens and dining establishments.” That was a clever turn of phrase, he quietly congratulated himself, noting the rhyme for future reuse. “I enjoyed your Twinkies and your take-out, and I even enjoyed a flavorful Thanksgiving dinner … until the innards of my Fulsom TurkEase disagreed most profoundly with my own innards, which come from an age of simpler cuisine. I wholly understand the great achievements of the modern agricultural business; the food they produce is both endlessly bountiful and incredibly affordable for even the humblest of Americans, so that every family may enjoy a full stomach. Truly, this seems a divine blessing we enjoy today, living in a world of plenty that can satiate all our hungers.
“And yet …
“And yet at the base of it, it is a false bounty, a cornucopia that cannot endure happily. For there are lies mixed in at the bottom of the bowl, so to speak.
“I do not even speak of the unsavory practices involved in the processing of these foodstuffs: the reconstitution of grains into approximations of meats, of meats into facsimiles of grains, of sugars into every other consumable that can possibly be imagined. Nor, by the same token, do I mean to belittle the individual Americans who work so hard every day to bring it to bear. Quite the opposite! The welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country. Rather, it is the entire structure that surrounds the farmer and the grocer and the gourmet that gives me concern.
“If there is a problem with America today—as I see it—it is that we look for self-worth in consumption, rather than in the pursuit of personal achievement. I may seem a hypocrite for pointing such a finger, for I have obviously engaged in quite a bit of overconsumption myself! Nonetheless, it is true. We cannot fill the void in our souls by stuffing ourselves with physical comforts; we can fill it only by striving to achieve excellence. That noble goal holds different specifics for each of us. Where one American may become an excellent doctor or lawyer or taxicab driver, another may become an excellent mother, and yet another an excellent golfer!
“We all possess excellence within us from the start. For excellence is not a measure to be taken against others; it is a measure to be taken against oneself. The pursuit of achievement does not mean that one is a failure if he isn’t the acknowledged leader in his field; it is not a question of outperforming others. It is a matter of performing alongside others! Excellence is something we can all share as Americans and, more fundamentally still, as human beings.”
Somewhere out in the sea of humanity that faced him, Taft heard an angry voice cry: “Socialism!”
He harrumphed. “No, sir, it is most assuredly not the practice of socialism that I advocate. I must be so bold as to ask: are you quite certain you grasp what socialism truly is? I am talking about something quite different: simple self-respect.”
Taft sighed. “These tremendous forces that crash against us from above, these monoliths of habit and government and industry and pure social momentum can make it difficult to afford oneself the respect that every person deserves. We cannot pretend not to know how small each of us seems compared to the colossus of a world-spanning corporation whose name is found in every corner market—compared to the juggernaut of an election whose every twist and turn is blared, all day long, every day, all year, from all the televisions and newspapers and Twitters and Googles!
“These relentless, unstoppable institutions, larger than any one American yet lacking the basic human compassion that we, each of us, possess—that, my friends, that is the sort of thing I fought against when I was president. It is the sort of thing that Teddy Roosevelt,