The American lifestyle is all about the yoyo. I’m not just talking about nostalgia toys, rap slang, or trendy cellists. Oprah just trumped Clinton with a $12 million dollar advance for the wisdom she has gained from her lifelong struggle with yoyo dieting. The underlying philosophy of our political leadership is yoyo economics.

What does the American romance with the yoyo mean? Isn’t America supposed to be about Frontiers, Rugged Individualism, Big Dreams, and Apple Pie? How did this turn into compulsive lurching from one extreme to another, reaching one minute and then fleeing the next? What is the thing we’re continuously seeking, but can never find? It seems to me we’re all playing an endless game of Who Moved My Dignity?

Three hundred years ago, a Chinese scholar in exile named Pu Songling said, “Men must put on false, ugly faces to please their superiors - such is the hypocritical way of the world…But a man who dares to reveal his true self in public is almost certain to shock the multitude…” This issue itself seems to be one of the yoyo tricks of history, bopping from the Renaissance courtier to our modern ketman conformity. The organization of society continually spawns hierarchies, and those who obtain decision-making or administrative powers quickly forget we are all equal in our humanity, and that every human being has dignity.

Americans aren’t addicted to the yoyo, they’re tied to the yoyo by social and economic policies that reduce them to a state of perpetual indignity.