There are, perhaps, four or five "issues" that SHOULD define the current election -- climate change and energy production, the military and its international role, race and our continuing inability to work toward justice for all, "democracy" and the effects of money along with gerrymandered voter manipulation, and of course, as always, the economy -- but it's ever so rapidly becoming a contest of "benghazi" and the "email scandal" vs what? there is so much to pick from with Trump, and that perhaps is part of the problem, not just one or two things to hammer repeatedly as a "meme."
Although two interminable investigations have produced nothing particularly damning in either the Benghazi affair or Clinton's use of email, the mainstream media continues to hammer away. The NY Times politics page had at least nine stories on the email, many of which point out that the GOP will continue to hammer away at an established meme, and surprise! the republicans continue to hammer away. Breitbart, for example, reports prominently that "Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Wednesday afternoon that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had misled Congress, under oath, when testifying to the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October 2015," and if Politifact and others are to be credited, indeed she did. To put it into perspective, of the 30,000 emails in question, 0.004 percent were found to be "violations" contrary to her public statements. There may be more, but one really wonders if the "smoking gun" will be found among them. While they excoriate her on her email, however, they are supporting a candidate who takes pride in his unpredictability, lies about his charity work, evades taxes, and generally fabricates his own "truth." When challenged, he doubles down on the fabrication. The latest being his praise of Saddam Hussein. He has said, "We shouldn’t have destabilized — Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Right? He was a bad guy. Really bad guy. But you know what, he did well. He killed terrorists. He did that so good." Of course, how quickly we forget. Indeed, he was a "bad guy." The Washington Post awarded the statement four pinocchios, writing "Hussein was no opponent of terrorists, certainly in the eyes of the West. Perhaps Trump is referring to Hussein’s fight against internal religious extremist movements that he viewed as a threat to his regime — a part of his overall suppression of dissent. But Trump’s description — that Hussein “killed terrorists,” and did it “so well” or was “so good” at it — is just not credible, especially given the overwhelming evidence of Hussein’s long-standing record of supporting (financially and operationally) international terrorist groups." Trump is either ignorant of the man he praises, or he is signaling, along with his praise of Putin and others, that he finds their behavior admirable, particularly their "overall suppression of dissent." Trump has already given sufficient evidence that he is willing to suppress dissent, banning several "dissenting" media outlets from his press events. Clinton may have a scandal with her email, but Trump IS a scandal.
In the meantime, on the front pages of the Times, we have "climate change claims a lake and a way of life" along with a link to a debate on "carbon capture" and its effectiveness in "reducing the emissions that cause global warming" -- a "bombing at Bangladesh’s largest gathering for the Eid al-Fitr holiday killed two police officers and a civilian on Thursday, police officials said, a day after the Islamic State warned that more attacks would follow the militants’ bloody siege in the capital last week" shows that, despite "winning" the ground war in Syria, we are "losing" the war on terror -- moreover, "the Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation on Wednesday into the fatal shooting of a black man by the Baton Rouge, La., police after a searing video of the encounter, aired repeatedly on television and social media, reignited contentious issues surrounding police killings of African-Americans." But hold the presses, a report is about to be issued and after years of investigation and millions of dollars spent we're finally going to learn the truth ... well ... wait ... it's just another of the "unrevealing revelations. After years of work, in one case seven years, the world has been treated to three reports on matters of great import that offer precious little new or useful information." Damn. Surely somewhere in all those emails is the revelation of a Monica/Bill/Hillary threesome captured on grainy video. No? Well keep looking until you find something ...
The real story of this election cycle, and it is getting some press, is the dispossessed and its effect on democracy, not only here, but abroad. I won't disparage social media, but it's reasonably clear that we're engaged in the Twitter election, issues that have been reduced to headlines, and headlines that have been reduced to attitudes without substance. The Twitter election does not lend itself to progress, because progress will require more of us than a "position" or an "opinion." Appropriately, on the wonk blog section of the Washington Post, Ylan Q. Mui published a piece entitled, "Why America’s men aren’t working." First the good news. As she writes, "private employers have added more than 14 million jobs. About 2 million people have been out of a job for six months or longer, far too many but only about a quarter of the number of long-term unemployed people seven years ago. By almost every measure, the labor market has made incredible progress." Now the bad news, "but there’s one statistic that has been vexing economists. The size of the nation’s workforce -- known as the labor force participation rate -- continues to fall." As she goes on to write, "The problem is particularly pronounced among men between the ages of 25 and 54, traditionally considered the prime working years. Their participation rate has been declining for decades, but the drop-off accelerated during the recession. The high mark was 98 percent in 1954, and it now stands at 88 percent." The drop cannot be explained statistically by the entry of women into the workforce or the rise in Social Security Disability payments, or even the rise in the prison populations. The Council of Economic Advisors gives two explanations, "the problem is one of education and the erosion of demand for low-skilled workers. More than 90 percent of college-educated men are in the workforce, compared with 83 percent of those with a high school diploma or less. It’s a theme seen time and again in our increasingly globalized and high-tech economy: Blue-collar jobs that were once the cornerstone of the middle class get outsourced or replaced by automation."
The COE explanation, however, is a reflex action. There is an underlying assumption that education is the answer -- i.e. if college-educated men are productively employed in greater numbers than those without college education, then clearly more men should become college-educated. Problem solved. This may be true, in some limited sense, but it would require a reform of education, top to bottom. Starting at the top and working backwards, the National Assessment of Education Progress, reports that in 2015 only 37% of graduating high students are prepared for college-level math and reading. Many colleges, particularly community colleges, have implemented various forms of "developmental education" to prepare students for college level work, but this can add upward of two years to a college degree, dramatically decreasing their chances of success. Clearly, then, we need better preparation in the elementary and secondary levels to insure that they arrive at college with the necessary math and reading skills, but even that may not be enough. There is the persistent "achievement gap" between racial groups, and according the National Center for Education Statistics, "white students had higher scores than Black students, on average, on all assessments. White students had average scores at least 26 points higher than Black students in each subject." Having said this, however, there are simply too many confounding factors associated with race to make any bell-curve claims about "racial superiority," to include endemic relative poverty, the quality of schools available to students, cultural factors to include racial stereotyping, along with other environmental factors. Even if the shooting turns out to be wholly justified, it would be difficult to estimate the effects on the young girl's school performance on the day after she sat in the back seat of Philadro Castile's car, watching him bleed to death, watching while her mother was cuffed and arrested. We can assume, however, that it won't be negligible. We can also assume, to one degree or another, her experience is not unique.
To have more "college educated" would require a reform of education, top to bottom, but any real reform of education would require a reform of those social factors that mitigate against education, to include issues associated with systemic racism. We are light years away from having real suggestions for "education reform," and galaxies away from having the political will to implement any of those suggestions, in part because the education system is "designed" to reinforce and perpetuate the "savage inequalities" inherent in the existing status quo. Ann Mullen's recent study, "Degrees of Inequality," makes the case reasonably well for higher education, following on studies by Kozol and others who have made the case extensively for elementary and secondary education. Meanwhile, there has been an erosion of the job market, particularly those so-called blue collar jobs that do not require a college education.
It is perhaps not surprising that, as workforce participation declines, as resentments escalate, we too are devolving into "identity politics." If the invidious distinctions between Sunni and Shiite justify internecine war throughout the middle east, if the invidious distinctions between Catholic and Protestant justified decades of internecine war in Ireland, then perhaps it should not be surprising that the strongest marker of identity in the US, race and ethnicity, seem to be a justification of internecine war on our streets. So it is that I awoke this morning to the shootings in Dallas. Breitbart, with their traditional restraint, headlined "12 Police Shot, 5 Murdered at Dallas 'Black Lives Matter' Protest. One Suspect Dead, Three in Custody. Final words: 'I want to kill white people.'" Huffington Post, with their traditional restraint, used Obama's words as the headline, calling it a "despicable, vicious, and calculated attack." The NY Times, for their part, wrote:
It appeared to be the deadliest attack for law enforcement officers in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The shootings ... transformed an emotional but peaceful rally into a scene of carnage and chaos, and they injected a volatile new dimension into the anguished debate over racial disparities in American criminal justice.
The reference to 9/11, I'm sure, is calculated, but where do we send the troops? Who do we bomb? Perhaps we could follow Saddam Hussein's lead and simply gas some neighborhoods? Bring order to chaos. It worked so well for him.
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