From the ashes, a mud stature or a phoenix?

Come on, we all have failed at one time or another.  There might have been extenuating circumstances or issues that were out of our control that kept us from succeeding but regardless of the circumstances, we all fail sometimes.  It's just a fact.  There is simply no way getting around it.  Michael Jordon once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed."  Failure is not the worst of our problems.  Failure is what brings out the best in us, if we choose for it to do so.  That is the key though--the choices we make can make our failures the focus of who we are or our failures can drive us to brilliance.  Many people though today seem to think that failure is something to defend--tooth and nail--it is not our fault.  Our own actions, even when they are provoked, if they lead to failure need to be analyzed and understood.  We simply can't pretend our failures are successes because eventually we come to expect our failures to be rallied and touted as much as our successes.

Our current President is a fine example.  On "Face the Nation" this past weekend, Diane Feinstein, one of the most far left liberals in Congress, said that the healthcare website needs to come down until it can be fixed and do what it is supposed to be able to do.  It's frankly an embarrassment to have the President of the United States to be so obstinate and honestly arrogant that he and his White House team don't understand this.  They can blame the Republicans all they want.  It's not changing that the website is a failure, and pushing it to be released incomplete was a poor, very poor decision.  There are glaring problems with the security of the site and yet they still think people will risk entering their social security numbers and other personal medical details for quotes.  It's absurd.  President Obama seems to be the epitome of one of our biggest societal problems today.  The inability to admit failure.  

We have become so accustomed to "bragging" about mediocrity that we as a society have moved where failures are twisted into successes.  A failure is still a failure though.  We've taught a couple of generations that everyone should be the same and that anyone that is "successful" is to be shunned.  Winning isn't everything, but just because a kid can't play baseball doesn't mean that he won't be a great engineer.  We have spent so much time praising mediocre performances that we have forgotten how important it is to have someone that is good at what they do doing it.  Being a successful businessman was actually a detriment to Mitt Romney when he ran for President.  Being an amateur, who was not fully engaged in two state senate terms, who skipped many votes, and had only served a third of a national Senate term was viewed as more "promising", a new direction, and full of hope.  We want the mediocre to be the American Dream, but that simply wasn't and never should be the American Dream on the national scale.  People have watched movies about the American Dream--Henry Ford, Abraham Lincoln, Howard Hughes, FDR, JFK, Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan--the list goes on and on.  An hour and an half to three hour movies about the successes of so many can hardly do justice for the difficulties and failures that any of these successful people had to endure over the years.  It's given the image that the American Dream is a simple thing and that anyone can achieve it.  It's true anyone can achieve it, but it's with hard work, genuine drive and the skills developed over time and experience.

We put pictures up of people that do mass killings faster than we will soldiers that have been honored with the Medal of Honor or the Silver or Bronze Stars.  We don't want heroes anymore.  We want the guy who in a 10 minute shooting spree killed more people than the last guy.  He's a coward, a mediocre piece of shit that wanted his 15 minutes of fame and we turn it into hours and hours.  To what end?  Some of the most "successful" Wall Street crooks are just as wealthy as ever.  We're angry because they lack the ability to overcome their own greed, but we watch as the people that defame them most ultimately are the exact same.  In spite of Reagan and O'Neill passing law that would mean that politicians are no longer able to use election donations for "personal expenses", they, Congress, created a loophole and exploit these "slush funds" as they always have.  We have a President who offered up $25,000 of his presidential paycheck to show that he and his family were willing to sacrifice what the rest of federal employees were, but forgot to mention that he's made in the millions per year with his books.  A penny to him that only sounded large because less than 5% of the people in this country could afford to just give away $25K.   We "brag" about mediocre people with mediocre goals, morals or ethics and we have the audacity to wonder what's wrong with our society.    

  

The gifted and talented in our society are ignored.  When's the last time a MIT graduate or professor was asked about the economy?  Instead we have people like Madonna making commentary on the world affairs and economics?  Just because Madonna knows how to package sex doesn't mean she knows anything about anything else.  Frankly, she's not even that good of a musician, singer or actress.  Yet, some people insist on using hers, or Bono's or even Oprah's advice to make their own decisions (I use the term "their own" loosely at this point) on politics, the economy and their sexuality--which has to be the most personal thing of them all.  Don't get me wrong.  I think Oprah might have some valid and interesting points and information, but the artists in school, the bohemians, were not always the brightest when it came to mathematics, history, political science or anything that required any structural thinking.  So it's extremely confusing that anyone would think Hollywood actors, rock band musicians, and people who've made their money peddling sex should be the ones that anyone listens to for advice on politics, world affairs, or business ventures.  It sends a confusing if not poor message to our children and future generations.

Is there a way to invoke more pride, more dignity, more ethics into our society?  I'm not sure.  Every generation has their own issues to overcome.  We have fundamentalists that would swing back the pendulum too far.  They say that they want to get back to basics, but there are few of them, let alone the rest of us, that can agree truly on what the basics are.  The only thing we all truly get is failure.  Failure, whether we pretend it's not failure or not, is still failure.  If we continue to toot failures off as successes, allow people like the President to ramble on about his successful healthcare program when all of us already know its just not working per his previous promises, we are sending the message over and over that it's OK to pretend that our failures are successes.  Failures are not successes.  Failure should be the one thing that drives future attempts and future success, not the pretend "success".  We can't take the ashes, adding water and mold a "success".  When the rain comes it's still mud.  Success is the phoenix that rises from the ashes of failure, not a mud mixture made to resemble "success" from the ashes.