Cause and effect
The litany of CUC’s neglected maintenance and broken generators gives spunk to the usually pompous term “tragicomic.” Tragic, for obvious reasons. Comic, well…for obvious reasons, too. This is basically 1930s technology, and performing basic maintenance duties in accordance with known schedules and intervals is not exactly rocket science. We’re talking basic cause-and-effect here.
Which isn’t to say that the worker bees at CUC are to blame for this comical botching of things. From what I’ve seen, they do admirable jobs, especially when it comes to line repair after typhoons.
But you can’t escape the fact that the CUC fiasco demonstrates that the Commonwealth is showcasing a glaring inability to apply the basic logic of cause and effect. Neglected maintenance (cause) will induce…broken generators and blackouts (effect). Is this hard to understand?
This same cause-and-effect cognitive deficiency has echoed throughout the economy. Tourism policy. Business policy. Fiscal policy. Sewage policy. And so on.
It is amazing that the pubic meekly tolerates the situation; it brings to mind some lyrics from a forlorn rock song, “We never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do.”
And, yes, it is easy. Failure always is. And the Commonwealth, plain and simple, is failing, at least by the standards of advanced nations.
And failing while sitting on the doorstep of the world’s most dynamic economic region: Asia. Asia, overflowing with cash. Asia, overflowing with labor. Asia, overflowing with brains and intellect. Asia, overflowing with technical expertise. Asia, overflowing with industrial acumen. Asia, overflowing with tourists. Asia, overflowing with promise.
Asia is the future; the West is sinking into a decadent socialist mess, and will soon be one big Europe…then one big Rome.
This is Asia’s century…yet the Commonwealth doesn’t seem to want to be a part of it. Odd, yes. But true, yes again.
JAL’s pullout was more than an airline event, it was an epochal shift for the Commonwealth, a backslide into backwater status. Japanese tourism alone could exceed one million visitor arrivals in the CNMI, based on Japan’s merits. But it is the Commonwealth’s merits that are at issue, not Japan’s.
Likewise the CUC fiasco. This isn’t a matter of a lemon generator or two. It is a fundamental shift in the Commonwealth’s stature. Cause and effect. Indeed, failure; not random bad luck failure, but deliberate, fumbling, bumbling, chronic failure. Hey, if the public prefers it that way, then it’s fine with me. I’m certainly not complaining, in fact, my predictions have been spot on for all these many years, so my credibility is a gilded 24 karats. My stock in trade is Cause and Effect. It is, to use an old military superlative, “good stuff.”
After all, I am not a social worker. So if people choose a lousy economy, I don’t argue. But I do predict, quantify, analyze, project, and report—report to clients, peers, and, of course, to you.
Take your pick, La Fiasco mall, CUC, JAL, or, well, whatever the scandal du jour is. Until the causes are changed, the effects will keep rolling in with an ugly toll.
The Commonwealth will sit in the dark (cause and effect) as people watch 747s from Tokyo overflying Saipan for Guam (cause and effect) and as households worry and wonder about paying their bills (cause and effect) and the people don’t have jobs (cause and effect)…hey, that’s kind of peaceful, sitting in the dark on the sidelines, watching the world go by.
Cause and effect. You can ignore it, but it will never ignore you.
