Can We Find More Cheese?

I read a wonderful book about 8 years ago called “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Dr. Spencer Johnson.  It is a short book that is a parable, and an amazing way to look at change in your work and in your life.  It is the story of two mice who find their cheese at the same place every day until one day they don’t!  It just stops appearing outside the mousehole door.

One mouse eventually decides that the cheese has left for good and successfully goes out to discover another source of cheese.  The other mouse insists that if he waits long enough, the cheese will reappear.  Well, guess what?  He patiently waits for the cheese to reappear (which it never does) and he ultimately dies because he cannot bring himself to believe that his cheese is really gone for good.

In life, when your cheese is moved, you have to accept that someone has moved it, and you must search for new cheese.  That is what is happening in our American society today.  Our cheese, (the way we derive our economic sustenance has moved).  Yet many of us believe that if we just wait long enough it will come back.  Sorry folks, not gonna happen!

If we continue to wait for the economic climate to change back to what we had for the last 25 years we are going to ultimately 'starve'.   Change is needed.  Our leaders must look for cheese in another place since it is they who have the power to regulate and change conditions.  And herein lies the biggest problem we face.

The opposition party in today’s political universe is a party that really has no interest in change (looking for more cheese) or actually governing.  The Republican party has been co-opted by extremist voices like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Glen Beck.  They feed the party base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it.  They turn obstructionist rather than bi-partisan, so they prevent the administration from actually dealing with the crises that face us.  They oppose regulation of Wall Street; they want to preserve the culture of lobbyist privilege and influence; they preach fear and the paranoia of Socialism, Naziism, and Communism hiding behind the curtains of the Oval Office. 

Elections, as agents of change,  tend to be determined by events and economic conditions rather than rationality. So the possibility of Tea Bagger Republicans winning big in the elections next fall because of the slow pace of change, the rising level of unemployment and the administration’s difficulty dealing with problems that require creative bi-partisan solutions is real.  What will that mean?

"The result would be that the United States would essentially become ungovernable in the middle of an ongoing economic disaster.  The point of all this is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter" says Paul Krugman of the New York Times.  When Rush Limbaugh and his ilk made their appearance on the front lines of ‘talk radio’ back in the early 90’s I instinctively knew that they would be bad news for America.  I could never have imagined their present prominence, however, or their twisted arguments trying to stop positive change in its tracks.

The mice who believe the cheese will reappear if they just wait long enough may succeed in shackling the mice who are trying to find the new cheese to the front door of the mousehole!