Here's a paradox for you. Within an information driven society, the GOP and Trump ran on the premise that all the government information we have been given is simply wrong. The media, of course, is biased, but perhaps more significantly, the government itself is biased. Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post, for example, writes that "Back in October, a Marketplace-Edison Research Poll found that two-thirds of Donald Trump voters didn’t trust government-reported economic data, thanks partly to their candidate’s insistence that the numbers are bogus." The GOP is inheriting a good economy, by most measures, but a good deal of their success in recent elections has been driven by the disposables, those who have been (or fear being) cast aside by the emerging economy. The poll Rampell cites, in retrospect, could have been a good predictor of the election results, with Americans "increasingly worried about losing their jobs, the ability to pay their mortgage or rent and saving for retirement. Thirty percent of Americans are very fearful that they will lose their job in the next six months, up from 10 percent a year ago."
It might seem counter-intuitive that, as the economy improved, the fear mounted, but the differences are largely partisan, with "almost half of Donald Trump supporters (48 percent) completely distrusting the economic data reported by the federal government, compared to only 5 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters." Altogether, this means that fully "one quarter of Americans completely distrust the economic data reported by the federal government, including statistics like the unemployment rate, the number of jobs added and the amount of consumer spending." As the economy improved, the fear mounted in part because of the near apocalyptic terms the GOP used to describe the economy coupled with assertions that the numbers were being falsely reported. For the Carrier workers of America, about to lose their job to a Mexican plant, it would be easy enough to believe that the government numbers painted an overly rosy picture of the economy. Although it seemed clear enough that Trump often didn't have a significant command of the facts, to many voters, he seemed nevertheless more genuine, because he spoke his mind. The voters asked the candidates to "tell us what you really think," and Trump's misogyny, his racism, his xenophobia -- generally speaking, his willingness to speak aloud for his inner bigot -- were seen, not as disqualifiers, but as tokens of his authenticity, unlike Clinton who hid behind, what Twain, quoting Disraeli, called "lies, damn lies, and statistics."
There was something "movement like" in the support for the impending anti-government government. The long enduring GOP war of attrition waged against the US government is about to come to fruition. Although still a minority by some 3 million votes, the revolutionaries have seized power, and given Trump's cabinet appointments, there is little doubt in my mind that they will begin to enact their agenda. They will do what they have said they will do, and dismantle not only the Obama legacy (e.g. ACA), but will reach further back and dismantle the Great Society era programs (e.g. Medicare and especially Medicaid along with the tattered remnants of welfare) along with the New Deal era programs (e.g. social security and unemployment benefits). They will do what they have said they will do, and begin to dismantle government regulatory agencies, almost all of which are designed to protect against the excesses of capitalism. It has forever been a core belief of the GOP that the business of America is business, and those who control the Fortune 500 should also control the government and rule the country in the way they rule their companies. For the Carrier workers of America, about to lose their job to a Mexican plant, I doubt they will be pleased when the impending government reaches even further back and begins to dismantle the Wilson era Department of Labor. Initially, at least, for the "more than two-thirds of Americans — 68 percent — are either dissatisfied or angry with elected officials in Washington, D.C.," all of this may seem like great good fun, until the impact is felt, and then of course, it will be too late. The damage will have been done. The American people will suffer, and frankly, those of us who are old enough, will deserve our suffering.
Nevertheless, in the meantime, the anti-government revolutionaries have seized power and they are now the government. Although the economy has been steadily improving for some time, and as Rampell notes, "Consumers likewise seem euphoric, with multiple measures of consumer confidence recently reaching business-cycle highs," an economic indicator that I have long considered key, in part because it drives demand, which in turn drives employment, which in turn drives wages. The consumer confidence reflects "a sharp spike in optimism among Republicans in the weeks since the election," which will allow Trump, with his outsized ego to claim that the mere thought of a Trump government improved the economy, but as many of us have been pointing out, even before his election "confidence had been trending upward." As consumers consume more, business will invest to meet the demand, and consequently "the most recent jobs report shows the unemployment rate down to 4.6 percent," which is tantamount to full employment, which means employers must compete for employees, and consequently, "adjusted for inflation, median weekly earnings for wage and salary workers were at an all-time high in the third quarter." As an added bonus, "Gas prices remain low, as does overall inflation. Meanwhile, stocks have reached all-time highs, with the Dow Jones industrial average on the cusp of 20,000. Gross domestic product growth for the third quarter was revised upward last week, to 3.5 percent."
So, yes, the anti-government revolutionaries have been handed a government that seems, by most lies, damn lies, and statistics, to be functioning as it should. Rampell notes "Curiously, though, Trump’s priorities seem predicated on the premise that the U.S. economy is still circling the drain." I don't find it all that curious, in part because Trump has been successful in denying the facts when they don't suit him, in part because the GOP believes (to some degree sincerely) that the current economy is a house of cards built on shifting sands. The current good fortune is illusory, not so much because we are victims of government spin, but rather because we are victims of largess that cannot be sustained. They believe, not without some justification, that our government behaves like profligate, debt-ridden consumer who gets a new credit card in the mail. For a while it is "free" money, giddy-up, but the day of reckoning will come and we will have gone from bad to worse. There is a rift, however, between the core GOP belief that government profligacy cannot be sustained and what Trump has promised to do. He has promised, for example, "a major stimulus package early in his administration, including massive personal and corporate income-tax cuts and a public-private $1 trillion infrastructure plan." The tax cuts are familiar "supply side" economics, or supply side economics without the monetary restraint. The tax cuts themselves, one might argue, do concentrate the supply of capital that could potentially be invested, but the tax cuts themselves do little to improve consumer demand. An extra one hundred to two hundred dollars, even an extra one or two thousand dollars, in my pocket after April 15th will get spent, but it won't fundamentally change my life. If I am fearful of losing my job, the extra money won't change my fundamental anxiety, or the causes of that anxiety. It may pay off a couple of bills, or buy that big screen TV, but it won't pay off the credit cards, much less the mortgage. The investment in infrastructure is needed and will temporarily help the "disposables" that put Trump over the top in the rust belt. It may even garner some GOP support if it is structured in the way military contracts are structured, in the sorts of "public-private" partnerships that will serve the financial interest of the larger construction companies. The combination will, as Rampell put it, "further goose the economy, at least in the near term," and so "you can bet, then, that early in his presidency, Trump will be touting all sorts of government-sourced economic data as evidence of his tremendous success." Our government will have less revenue, but spend more, not unlike the American consumer, and the deficit will grow by leaps and bounds. Isn't that anathema to a GOP congress that has refused, on principle, to raise the debt ceiling?
It will be, even more so, a house of cards built on shifting sands. And Trump is the hot air blowing over the desert. As Rampell puts it, "Fed Chair Janet Yellen recently acknowledged that the delicate art of forecasting is especially challenging, given the 'cloud of uncertainty' surrounding Trump’s fiscal policies." It is not at all certain what Trump will actually do, and he may both cut taxes then print and pump money to "goose" the economy, but the historical record tends to suggest that it may contribute to this short term popularity, but "with so many economic metrics already so strong, there’s likely only one direction the economy can head in the medium term: down." Then too, there are other factors -- e.g. a trade war with China. As Americans, we have grown accustomed to exploiting China for cheap goods, predicated on two factors, low wages and lax environmental standards. If we "cut off" china, those cheap goods that line the shelves of Walmart and Target are likely to either disappear or become much more expensive. Unless we are willing to accept "chinese" conditions of low wage employment and virtually uninhabitable cities, which the GOP seems to actively endorse with its opposition to raises in (or the abolition of) the minimum wage as well as the environmental regulation of the EPA. We could, in relatively short order, become China! Imagine, as Marc Lallanilla of Live Science reports, "thousands of dead, bloated pigs floating down the river that supplies Shanghai with its drinking water. Air pollution in Beijing so impenetrable the U.S. Embassy's air quality measuring station can only call it 'beyond index.' Industrial towns where rates of cancer are so high they're known as 'cancer villages.'" What's a bit of lead in the drinking water of Flint, when we can have that? And, like China, we wouldn't want to regulate away the boon, so too we should adopt "the Chinese government's stony silence about anything that might imperil the country's economic development — including environmental regulation." Come now. But even our exploitation of China may be coming to an end, as "China's increasingly restive population of 1.3 billion people [are] now starting to demand government action to combat the deadly plagues of pollution and disease that are stalking the 21st century's economic powerhouse." It was good while it lasted.
So what will happen when the bon temps roll away? Rampell suggests there are three likely possibilities, and I tend to agree. First and foremost,"the administration will start searching for scapegoats other than Trump’s own party and its choices. Immigrants, minorities, Fed officials: Watch out." There is absolutely no reason -- for emphasis, absolutely NO reason -- to believe that the Trump administration and the GOP will not do precisely that. The alt right are, in effect, with their blatant attacks on immigrants and immigration are already preemptively targeting Mexican (meaning spanish speaking) immigrants. If history is any indication, the mainstream right might feel a bit qualmish about it, but it's likely that they will go along to get along. The second, "assuming Trump will have already signed a major fiscal stimulus package during an expansion [of the economy], there won’t be much powder left in the keg when Keynesian stimulus is actually needed," which means the "fiscal tools available to mitigate the recession will be unusually limited," which in turn means, of course, that the next recession may well fizzle into a depression. If that happens, her third point may well be moot, because the damage will be obvious. If we just have a run of the mill recession, not a full on depression, then "the numbers will become suspect once again, and Trump may even try to mess with the official government numbers to suit his narrative. This — and not a recession, blame-gaming or impotent policy response — would cause the most enduring damage to our democracy." And why? Because democracies thrive in within a delicate balance of trust and skepticism, for the most part trust in our government to tell us the "truth," and to a lesser degree trust in our media to call out the government when it attempts to spin the "truth," as it will inevitably do. If we have neither trust in government, nor trust in the media to keep the government "honest," then democracy will almost surely fail. We will hear one voice and one voice only, the voice of the demagogue, universally without trust and oppressive of those he distrusts. It was good while it lasted.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Monday, December 26, 2016
Let us prey
Michael Gerson in a recent WAPO editorial suggested that "It is one of fate’s cruel jokes that conservatism should be at its modern nadir just as the Republican Party is at its zenith — if conservatism is defined as embracing limited government, displaying a rational, skeptical and moderate temperament and believing in the priority of the moral order." I am not sure which "conservative" party he has been looking at over the past few decades, but I am not convinced its actual behavior could ever be defined as he has defined it. Even so, conceding the definition, it is broad enough to fit just about anyone. I could be a conservative under his definition, though I would restate and reorder the principles slightly. I too believe in "the priority of the moral order," but I would also point out that, for some areas of human endeavor, profit and self-interest as motives are inconsistent with anything resembling a moral order. I too believe in "displaying a rational, skeptical and moderate temperament," but I would point out that moderation is might simply be called "civility" in other contexts. Additionally, I would point out that, as values, "rationality and skepticism" are incompatible with any system of thought that insists, first and foremost, on "faith," regardless of the object of "faith." Finally, I too would embrace "limited government," but limited by what and to what? Therein lies the crux of the matter.
OK, so, for starters, let me say that capitalism, even that (especially that) conceived in the ideal purity of Adam Smith's vision of the "free market," is amoral. Here, I have to admit I have a relatively simple view of morality. I believe that suffering is real, and that anything increasing the store of suffering is immoral, anything decreasing it is moral. It doesn't take a great deal of thought to discover that no action is ever perfectly immoral or moral, or that there is a broad streak of utilitarianism in my thinking, particularly when it comes to governments and their actions. For example, the rich man may suffer when his wealth is taxed to feed the poor, but the greater good among the greater number is served by feeding the poor and eliminating their greater suffering. This, of course, could be deliberated, and the rich man may disagree that the greater good is served, but democracy, as such, tends to serve that streak of utilitarianism, the greater good for the greater number, as the cumulative effect of serving my individual good holds sway. Moral action, aimed at a moral order, would seek to limit suffering, but capitalism is not aimed at either increasing or decreasing the store of suffering. It is aimed at profit. A capitalist may establish a grocery chain, and that grocery chain may have the salutatory effect of feeding the masses, but within a capitalist system, the grocery chain does not exist to feed the masses. It exists to create profit, and at the end of the day, when profit and morality come into conflict, as they inevitably will, profit will win out. If the owners don't attend to profit, the chain will ultimately fail, along with any salutary effects it might have had. In this respect, one might argue that, not unlike democracy, capitalism tends to serve that streak of utilitarianism, as the cumulative effect of serving profit holds sway. More are fed than not when grocery chains across the nation attend to profit and continue in their existence.
So, when Gerson says "Conservatives believe that human beings are fallible and prone to ambition, passion and selfishness," I tend to agree. Again, I could be a conservative. Within my simplistic moral universe, I should also mention, however, that we are prone to selfishness, if for no other reason than my suffering is immediately and incontrovertibly "real," while another's suffering is always a matter of surmise. If I grow hungry and suffer, I feel it in my gut, literally, but if another grows hungry and suffers, I may experience pangs of empathy and suffer along with them, but I do not suffer in the same way or to the same extent. As individuals, we are hardwired to "selfishness." We are not, however, alone in the universe, and when I say "I suffer," there is likely to be another who says "me too," and again democracy tends to serve that streak of utilitarianism, a greater good for a greater number, as the "me too" becomes the concerted political action of "we suffer." If the "we" represents a majority, so much the better, but if the "we" represents a minority, it is contingent upon others who feel those pangs of empathy, of compassion, and have sufficient moral imagination to suffer along with those who do, actually, suffer. Again, moral action, aimed at a moral order, would seek to limit suffering, but capitalism is not aimed at either increasing or decreasing the store of suffering. It is aimed at profit. Consider another example. A capitalist may establish a chain of "elder care" homes, and those elder care homes may have the salutary effect of providing for a segment of the population that is helpless and vulnerable. Nevertheless, so long as the elder care home is "private," it may capitalize on serving a need, even a moral need, and it exists only insofar as it can turn a profit serving that need. When morality and profit come into conflict, the care will be sacrificed for the profit -- e.g. when an elder can no longer afford to pay for their care, what happens to them then? The owners may regret the necessary action -- they may even take on some patients "pro bono" -- but there are limits to the amount of charity that can be extended without putting the enterprise at risk. Consequently, the necessary action may be regrettable, but it seems clear enough.
If an action increases the store of suffering in the world, it is immoral and those that perpetrated the act have behaved immorally. Having said this, however, I need to make a couple of subtle (perhaps over-subtle) points. First, there is a distinction between immoral behavior and an immoral person. The focus should be on the former, not the latter. When Gerson writes that "human beings are fallible," it does not mean, at least by my estimation, that we are all immoral, are all "sinners," are all "fallen," or anything of the sort. The owners of the elder care facility may be driven by profit, and that motive may lead to immoral acts, but one should at least credit the idea that they established an elder care center and in doing so may have intended a fully moral purpose -- relieving the suffering of the elderly and infirm. The necessary act may be regrettable, but it is, after all, "necessary," and a failure to do what is "necessary" puts the enterprise, and consequently many more elders, in harm's way. The focus should be on relieving the "necessity" driving the immoral act, not on the dispensation of "blame" for those perpetrating the act. The latter may make us feel better, but it does little or nothing to relieve suffering in the world. Second, the "necessity" of an act does not relieve moral responsibility. As the owner of a facility that must kick an elder to the curb when they can no longer pay, I may not be an immoral person, but that does not relieve me of responsibility for my act or release me from responsibility to address the necessity that motivated it. Indeed, it relieves no one of responsibility -- no one. If the goal is a moral order, then it is incumbent on us all to relieve the suffering of all. Third, I am not a utopian. I do not believe a world without suffering is possible, or even desirable in the final analysis. The struggle for a moral order is an ever-ongoing struggle, in part because we live in a world of "necessity," in part because we live in a world of "unintended consequences." There is no perfect order, and the belief that a perfect order is not only possible, but imminent, has caused more suffering than resignation to the Sisyphean labor of simply creating a "more" moral order. The belief in a perfect system, lends itself to what might be called (somewhat simplistically) "if only" thinking. "If only" there were no apostates, or no religions at all, or no liberals, or no conservatives, or no contentious countries, et cetera. Imagine! "If only" is a call to eliminate suffering by eliminating those who cause us to suffer, and while there is something noble about the dreamer who dreams of a perfect order, without fail, when there is a real attempt in the real world to make the dream come true, it quickly becomes the nightmare of the guillotine, the concentration camp, the gulag.
In short, in a moral order, we cannot expect perfection, but nevertheless we all have a responsibility to relieve the suffering of those among us who suffer. We all live, so to speak, in an old boat. It breaks down here, breaks down there, unexpectedly. Fixing this problem causes that problem, and the task of keeping it afloat is never ending, frustrating, but we are all in the same rickety old boat together. We might suggest that "it isn't my problem," or "there's nothing I can do," or worst of all, "it's inevitable," but in seeking to become a "more" moral order, there really are no excuses, particularly in our ostensibly democratic society where we all share equally in the election and accountability of our governing leadership who HAVE taken on the problem as their problem, who ARE empowered to do something, and who ARE charged to meet and overcome the emergent "necessity." Having said that, however, it would take a rather rosy view of humanity to believe that those who aspire to governing leadership also aspire to the creation of a moral order. There are any number of motives to seek governing leadership, and we don't need to think either long or hard to discover that most are immoral and malignant -- not least the twin emoluments of power for the sake of power and of greed that outstrips any reasonable conception of human need. As Gerson suggests, we all "tend to become swaggering dictators in realms where we can act with impunity — a motor vehicle department office, a hostile traffic stop, a country under personal rule," and perhaps likewise we all tend to become ostentatious kleptocrats in realms where we can take with impunity. The framers of our constitution, perhaps, understood this better than most. Gerson along with a host of others suggests that "It is the particular genius of the American system to balance ambition with ambition through a divided government (executive, legislative and judicial). The American system employs human nature to limit the power of the state — assuming that every branch of government is both dedicated to the common good and jealous of its own power." There is, however, plenty of reason to suspect little dedication to the common good, much jealously of its own power. It doesn't take a genius to understand that if a "divided government" does indeed "limit the power the state" and those who govern the state, then the solution to that particular problem is to "heal," so to speak, the "divisions" and bring the three branches of government under the control of a single party. It opens the door and holds it open for the swaggering dictators and ostentatious kelptocrats.
It is, perhaps, the most enduring hypocrisy of the conservative is the claim that they "embrace a limited government," or that they "protect and defend" the constitutional division of power to insure the limited power of the state. Had that been the case, conservatives would have followed through on the constitutional imperative and at least considered the appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. The executive appointment and senate confirmation of the judicial appointment is the very essence of the division of powers imagined by the framers of the constitution. Instead, they obfuscated and gambled on the next election. It was a risk, but as it turned out, a risk worth taking because they won the election, both in the executive and the legislative and can now insure a conservative majority within the judicial. These are not the actions of those who "embrace a limited government" on moral, or ethical, or even philosophical grounds. These are the actions of people who wish to remove particular limits on the power of the state and impose others, and they now have the undivided power to do so. If this makes some conservatives, like Gerson, take notice, it is perhaps the dawning realization that we, the American people, have selected a governing leadership that is immoral and malignant.
If "the moral striving of finite and fallen creatures who treat each other with a respect and decency" defines conservative, then count me in as a conservative. When Gerson tells us those "virtues" are "often rooted in faith," this is just abstract enough to seem edifying without actual commitment. The other enduring hypocrisy of the conservative is the claim that they embody a "rational and skeptical" temperament. When one says, "rooted in faith," the follow up question is "faith in what?" The moment one answers this question, no matter how one answers, by definition, we have given up rationality and skepticism on at least that one thing, the object of faith. Gerson doesn't say, but the mass of Americans would answer the question "faith in God," meaning not Allah, but the Christian God --meaning not Mohammed, but Christ -- and from there, of course, it grows ever narrower, ever more sectarian. To misuse Gerson's words, "in the midst of all our justified skepticism, we can never be skeptical" of this one thing, the object of faith. If those who seek governing leadership are often motivated by the twin emoluments of power and greed, what Gerson doesn't say, at least not directly, is that the mass of the governed behave like suffering (and often insufferable) sheep. If a moral order aims at the relief of suffering, for the mass of humanity, the moral order most in demand is indeed a moral order rooted in faith, in the unquestioned authority of a good shepherd who demands obedience, and gives in return, salvation. If this makes some conservatives, like Gerson, take notice, it is, again, the dawning realization that we have placed our faith, and given over undivided, unlimited power to a "finite and fallen creature" that is anything but a "good shepherd." Ann Coulter's book title perhaps says it all, "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!"
I admit that I have not read Coulter's book, and doubt that I could bring myself to do so, particularly if I had to spend actual money on it. I am reacting to her title alone, which strikes me as obscene on any number of levels. It conjoins and then makes a two-fold substitution of two common phrases, the official and unofficial mottos of the United States, and are familiar because they are on our money. The first, of course, is "in God we Trust." To substitute Trump for God, and subsequently to place faith in him thumbs its nose at the first two injunctions of the decalogue -- "thou shalt have no false gods before me." The second, of course, is e pluribus unum, out of many one. The substitution makes little sense, out of many awesome! unless one thinks of Trump, rising from the sea of commonality, like some Nietzschian ubermensch, as a quasi divine expression of a profane awesomeness. Having said that, the obscenity is compounded because it reveals conservatism, not for what it professes to be, but for what it has become and what it is. Gerson wants to believe in a "type of conservatism — a conservatism of intellectual humility and moral aspiration," which he claims "also has the advantage of being organic." I am not certain what he means by this, but his characterization of the organic reminds one more of the weeds grow "with tenacity in hidden places, eventually breaking down the cement and asphalt of our modern life." To be frank, I'm not at all sure that's what I or anyone else wants, a reversion to what? a "pre-modern" life? There is a sort of pre-lapsarian fantasy implicit in any wish for the disintegration of the modern, a reset to a better, greater time -- to a lost golden age. Different folk will ascribe a different time, a different place, a different cause for the lapse into the modernity that appears to cause us so much grief, and a different path back to the lost golden age. Nevertheless, as Gerson notes, it appeals to people "who probably wouldn’t use words like 'nadir' and 'zenith'"-- to people who have been been left out or left behind by the lapse into modernity -- and perhaps even more to people who have "played by the rules" and "provide examples of hard work, personal responsibility, unfailing decency, family commitment, quiet faith, inspiring compassion and resilience in adversity." It appeals to people who feel "cheated," and the impulse to seek out an avenger is as old as the cult of Mithras, or for that matter the cult of Christ -- the "good shepherd" who comes bearing a sword -- who promises not peace, but division -- who portends the apocalyptic reset to the golden age before. If Trump has revealed anything, the potential recruits of conservatism are not the hard working folk who inspire compassion and resilience in adversity -- traits that are really inherently neither conservative or liberal -- but resentful folk who feel cheated and want an avenger who will set things right for them.
Nature and power abhor a vacuum. If Trump fulfills the promise of a limited government -- and as Heuvel points out in another WAPO editorial, his colloquy of cabinet picks, almost all of whom oppose the very agencies they were chosen to lead -- an overarching goal seems clear enough, "stripping the federal government of its power, in nearly every arena." To do so does not return power to the people, nor does it even return freedom to the people, it merely "strengthen the hand of private enterprise." This is not a prescription for a moral order, but an amoral order. As just one example among the many cited by Heuvel, "Trump has also telegraphed his intention to smash organized labor and attack workers’ rights. His pick for labor secretary, fast-food executive Andy Puzder, is an outspoken enemy of minimum-wage increases with an appalling record of mistreating employees." He is the chief executive of the company that controls Carl's Jr. where "the Labor Department has uncovered violations of labor laws in 60 percent of its investigations of Puzder’s restaurant chain locations." While a violation here, or a violation there, can be written off as anomalies, sixty percent suggests that, as management, he encouraged the abuse of "hard working folk," usually by failing to pay even minimum wage or over-time wages for their work. Puzder, on the other hand, has an annual salary of at least 4 million a year, which, to put it in perspective, is $1,923.00 per hour as opposed to the $7.25 minimum wage. As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka recently said, Puzder’s career has been 'defined by fighting against working people.'” If money provides freedom -- a freedom from penury and the freedom to do as one chooses -- the conservative insistence on limited government does little to free the people, a good deal to free the plutocrats to push the people further and further into a wage serfdom. "With his sham populism giving way to shameless plutocracy," it is difficult to accept the false pieties of Gerson, his homiletic belief that "humans have a dignity that, while often dishonored, can never be effaced." Trump and the conservatives have not only dishonored, but virtually effaced anything resembling the dignity of a rational and skeptical approach to government, preying instead on the most irrational fears of the faithful while offering up an equally irrational hope for a savior. They have betrayed anything resembling a moral order, preying instead on the weakest among us with amoral abandon. The conservative faithful hear "let us pray," while the conservative leadership has long understood it as a call to "let us prey."
OK, so, for starters, let me say that capitalism, even that (especially that) conceived in the ideal purity of Adam Smith's vision of the "free market," is amoral. Here, I have to admit I have a relatively simple view of morality. I believe that suffering is real, and that anything increasing the store of suffering is immoral, anything decreasing it is moral. It doesn't take a great deal of thought to discover that no action is ever perfectly immoral or moral, or that there is a broad streak of utilitarianism in my thinking, particularly when it comes to governments and their actions. For example, the rich man may suffer when his wealth is taxed to feed the poor, but the greater good among the greater number is served by feeding the poor and eliminating their greater suffering. This, of course, could be deliberated, and the rich man may disagree that the greater good is served, but democracy, as such, tends to serve that streak of utilitarianism, the greater good for the greater number, as the cumulative effect of serving my individual good holds sway. Moral action, aimed at a moral order, would seek to limit suffering, but capitalism is not aimed at either increasing or decreasing the store of suffering. It is aimed at profit. A capitalist may establish a grocery chain, and that grocery chain may have the salutatory effect of feeding the masses, but within a capitalist system, the grocery chain does not exist to feed the masses. It exists to create profit, and at the end of the day, when profit and morality come into conflict, as they inevitably will, profit will win out. If the owners don't attend to profit, the chain will ultimately fail, along with any salutary effects it might have had. In this respect, one might argue that, not unlike democracy, capitalism tends to serve that streak of utilitarianism, as the cumulative effect of serving profit holds sway. More are fed than not when grocery chains across the nation attend to profit and continue in their existence.
So, when Gerson says "Conservatives believe that human beings are fallible and prone to ambition, passion and selfishness," I tend to agree. Again, I could be a conservative. Within my simplistic moral universe, I should also mention, however, that we are prone to selfishness, if for no other reason than my suffering is immediately and incontrovertibly "real," while another's suffering is always a matter of surmise. If I grow hungry and suffer, I feel it in my gut, literally, but if another grows hungry and suffers, I may experience pangs of empathy and suffer along with them, but I do not suffer in the same way or to the same extent. As individuals, we are hardwired to "selfishness." We are not, however, alone in the universe, and when I say "I suffer," there is likely to be another who says "me too," and again democracy tends to serve that streak of utilitarianism, a greater good for a greater number, as the "me too" becomes the concerted political action of "we suffer." If the "we" represents a majority, so much the better, but if the "we" represents a minority, it is contingent upon others who feel those pangs of empathy, of compassion, and have sufficient moral imagination to suffer along with those who do, actually, suffer. Again, moral action, aimed at a moral order, would seek to limit suffering, but capitalism is not aimed at either increasing or decreasing the store of suffering. It is aimed at profit. Consider another example. A capitalist may establish a chain of "elder care" homes, and those elder care homes may have the salutary effect of providing for a segment of the population that is helpless and vulnerable. Nevertheless, so long as the elder care home is "private," it may capitalize on serving a need, even a moral need, and it exists only insofar as it can turn a profit serving that need. When morality and profit come into conflict, the care will be sacrificed for the profit -- e.g. when an elder can no longer afford to pay for their care, what happens to them then? The owners may regret the necessary action -- they may even take on some patients "pro bono" -- but there are limits to the amount of charity that can be extended without putting the enterprise at risk. Consequently, the necessary action may be regrettable, but it seems clear enough.
If an action increases the store of suffering in the world, it is immoral and those that perpetrated the act have behaved immorally. Having said this, however, I need to make a couple of subtle (perhaps over-subtle) points. First, there is a distinction between immoral behavior and an immoral person. The focus should be on the former, not the latter. When Gerson writes that "human beings are fallible," it does not mean, at least by my estimation, that we are all immoral, are all "sinners," are all "fallen," or anything of the sort. The owners of the elder care facility may be driven by profit, and that motive may lead to immoral acts, but one should at least credit the idea that they established an elder care center and in doing so may have intended a fully moral purpose -- relieving the suffering of the elderly and infirm. The necessary act may be regrettable, but it is, after all, "necessary," and a failure to do what is "necessary" puts the enterprise, and consequently many more elders, in harm's way. The focus should be on relieving the "necessity" driving the immoral act, not on the dispensation of "blame" for those perpetrating the act. The latter may make us feel better, but it does little or nothing to relieve suffering in the world. Second, the "necessity" of an act does not relieve moral responsibility. As the owner of a facility that must kick an elder to the curb when they can no longer pay, I may not be an immoral person, but that does not relieve me of responsibility for my act or release me from responsibility to address the necessity that motivated it. Indeed, it relieves no one of responsibility -- no one. If the goal is a moral order, then it is incumbent on us all to relieve the suffering of all. Third, I am not a utopian. I do not believe a world without suffering is possible, or even desirable in the final analysis. The struggle for a moral order is an ever-ongoing struggle, in part because we live in a world of "necessity," in part because we live in a world of "unintended consequences." There is no perfect order, and the belief that a perfect order is not only possible, but imminent, has caused more suffering than resignation to the Sisyphean labor of simply creating a "more" moral order. The belief in a perfect system, lends itself to what might be called (somewhat simplistically) "if only" thinking. "If only" there were no apostates, or no religions at all, or no liberals, or no conservatives, or no contentious countries, et cetera. Imagine! "If only" is a call to eliminate suffering by eliminating those who cause us to suffer, and while there is something noble about the dreamer who dreams of a perfect order, without fail, when there is a real attempt in the real world to make the dream come true, it quickly becomes the nightmare of the guillotine, the concentration camp, the gulag.
In short, in a moral order, we cannot expect perfection, but nevertheless we all have a responsibility to relieve the suffering of those among us who suffer. We all live, so to speak, in an old boat. It breaks down here, breaks down there, unexpectedly. Fixing this problem causes that problem, and the task of keeping it afloat is never ending, frustrating, but we are all in the same rickety old boat together. We might suggest that "it isn't my problem," or "there's nothing I can do," or worst of all, "it's inevitable," but in seeking to become a "more" moral order, there really are no excuses, particularly in our ostensibly democratic society where we all share equally in the election and accountability of our governing leadership who HAVE taken on the problem as their problem, who ARE empowered to do something, and who ARE charged to meet and overcome the emergent "necessity." Having said that, however, it would take a rather rosy view of humanity to believe that those who aspire to governing leadership also aspire to the creation of a moral order. There are any number of motives to seek governing leadership, and we don't need to think either long or hard to discover that most are immoral and malignant -- not least the twin emoluments of power for the sake of power and of greed that outstrips any reasonable conception of human need. As Gerson suggests, we all "tend to become swaggering dictators in realms where we can act with impunity — a motor vehicle department office, a hostile traffic stop, a country under personal rule," and perhaps likewise we all tend to become ostentatious kleptocrats in realms where we can take with impunity. The framers of our constitution, perhaps, understood this better than most. Gerson along with a host of others suggests that "It is the particular genius of the American system to balance ambition with ambition through a divided government (executive, legislative and judicial). The American system employs human nature to limit the power of the state — assuming that every branch of government is both dedicated to the common good and jealous of its own power." There is, however, plenty of reason to suspect little dedication to the common good, much jealously of its own power. It doesn't take a genius to understand that if a "divided government" does indeed "limit the power the state" and those who govern the state, then the solution to that particular problem is to "heal," so to speak, the "divisions" and bring the three branches of government under the control of a single party. It opens the door and holds it open for the swaggering dictators and ostentatious kelptocrats.
It is, perhaps, the most enduring hypocrisy of the conservative is the claim that they "embrace a limited government," or that they "protect and defend" the constitutional division of power to insure the limited power of the state. Had that been the case, conservatives would have followed through on the constitutional imperative and at least considered the appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. The executive appointment and senate confirmation of the judicial appointment is the very essence of the division of powers imagined by the framers of the constitution. Instead, they obfuscated and gambled on the next election. It was a risk, but as it turned out, a risk worth taking because they won the election, both in the executive and the legislative and can now insure a conservative majority within the judicial. These are not the actions of those who "embrace a limited government" on moral, or ethical, or even philosophical grounds. These are the actions of people who wish to remove particular limits on the power of the state and impose others, and they now have the undivided power to do so. If this makes some conservatives, like Gerson, take notice, it is perhaps the dawning realization that we, the American people, have selected a governing leadership that is immoral and malignant.
If "the moral striving of finite and fallen creatures who treat each other with a respect and decency" defines conservative, then count me in as a conservative. When Gerson tells us those "virtues" are "often rooted in faith," this is just abstract enough to seem edifying without actual commitment. The other enduring hypocrisy of the conservative is the claim that they embody a "rational and skeptical" temperament. When one says, "rooted in faith," the follow up question is "faith in what?" The moment one answers this question, no matter how one answers, by definition, we have given up rationality and skepticism on at least that one thing, the object of faith. Gerson doesn't say, but the mass of Americans would answer the question "faith in God," meaning not Allah, but the Christian God --meaning not Mohammed, but Christ -- and from there, of course, it grows ever narrower, ever more sectarian. To misuse Gerson's words, "in the midst of all our justified skepticism, we can never be skeptical" of this one thing, the object of faith. If those who seek governing leadership are often motivated by the twin emoluments of power and greed, what Gerson doesn't say, at least not directly, is that the mass of the governed behave like suffering (and often insufferable) sheep. If a moral order aims at the relief of suffering, for the mass of humanity, the moral order most in demand is indeed a moral order rooted in faith, in the unquestioned authority of a good shepherd who demands obedience, and gives in return, salvation. If this makes some conservatives, like Gerson, take notice, it is, again, the dawning realization that we have placed our faith, and given over undivided, unlimited power to a "finite and fallen creature" that is anything but a "good shepherd." Ann Coulter's book title perhaps says it all, "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!"
I admit that I have not read Coulter's book, and doubt that I could bring myself to do so, particularly if I had to spend actual money on it. I am reacting to her title alone, which strikes me as obscene on any number of levels. It conjoins and then makes a two-fold substitution of two common phrases, the official and unofficial mottos of the United States, and are familiar because they are on our money. The first, of course, is "in God we Trust." To substitute Trump for God, and subsequently to place faith in him thumbs its nose at the first two injunctions of the decalogue -- "thou shalt have no false gods before me." The second, of course, is e pluribus unum, out of many one. The substitution makes little sense, out of many awesome! unless one thinks of Trump, rising from the sea of commonality, like some Nietzschian ubermensch, as a quasi divine expression of a profane awesomeness. Having said that, the obscenity is compounded because it reveals conservatism, not for what it professes to be, but for what it has become and what it is. Gerson wants to believe in a "type of conservatism — a conservatism of intellectual humility and moral aspiration," which he claims "also has the advantage of being organic." I am not certain what he means by this, but his characterization of the organic reminds one more of the weeds grow "with tenacity in hidden places, eventually breaking down the cement and asphalt of our modern life." To be frank, I'm not at all sure that's what I or anyone else wants, a reversion to what? a "pre-modern" life? There is a sort of pre-lapsarian fantasy implicit in any wish for the disintegration of the modern, a reset to a better, greater time -- to a lost golden age. Different folk will ascribe a different time, a different place, a different cause for the lapse into the modernity that appears to cause us so much grief, and a different path back to the lost golden age. Nevertheless, as Gerson notes, it appeals to people "who probably wouldn’t use words like 'nadir' and 'zenith'"-- to people who have been been left out or left behind by the lapse into modernity -- and perhaps even more to people who have "played by the rules" and "provide examples of hard work, personal responsibility, unfailing decency, family commitment, quiet faith, inspiring compassion and resilience in adversity." It appeals to people who feel "cheated," and the impulse to seek out an avenger is as old as the cult of Mithras, or for that matter the cult of Christ -- the "good shepherd" who comes bearing a sword -- who promises not peace, but division -- who portends the apocalyptic reset to the golden age before. If Trump has revealed anything, the potential recruits of conservatism are not the hard working folk who inspire compassion and resilience in adversity -- traits that are really inherently neither conservative or liberal -- but resentful folk who feel cheated and want an avenger who will set things right for them.
Nature and power abhor a vacuum. If Trump fulfills the promise of a limited government -- and as Heuvel points out in another WAPO editorial, his colloquy of cabinet picks, almost all of whom oppose the very agencies they were chosen to lead -- an overarching goal seems clear enough, "stripping the federal government of its power, in nearly every arena." To do so does not return power to the people, nor does it even return freedom to the people, it merely "strengthen the hand of private enterprise." This is not a prescription for a moral order, but an amoral order. As just one example among the many cited by Heuvel, "Trump has also telegraphed his intention to smash organized labor and attack workers’ rights. His pick for labor secretary, fast-food executive Andy Puzder, is an outspoken enemy of minimum-wage increases with an appalling record of mistreating employees." He is the chief executive of the company that controls Carl's Jr. where "the Labor Department has uncovered violations of labor laws in 60 percent of its investigations of Puzder’s restaurant chain locations." While a violation here, or a violation there, can be written off as anomalies, sixty percent suggests that, as management, he encouraged the abuse of "hard working folk," usually by failing to pay even minimum wage or over-time wages for their work. Puzder, on the other hand, has an annual salary of at least 4 million a year, which, to put it in perspective, is $1,923.00 per hour as opposed to the $7.25 minimum wage. As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka recently said, Puzder’s career has been 'defined by fighting against working people.'” If money provides freedom -- a freedom from penury and the freedom to do as one chooses -- the conservative insistence on limited government does little to free the people, a good deal to free the plutocrats to push the people further and further into a wage serfdom. "With his sham populism giving way to shameless plutocracy," it is difficult to accept the false pieties of Gerson, his homiletic belief that "humans have a dignity that, while often dishonored, can never be effaced." Trump and the conservatives have not only dishonored, but virtually effaced anything resembling the dignity of a rational and skeptical approach to government, preying instead on the most irrational fears of the faithful while offering up an equally irrational hope for a savior. They have betrayed anything resembling a moral order, preying instead on the weakest among us with amoral abandon. The conservative faithful hear "let us pray," while the conservative leadership has long understood it as a call to "let us prey."
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Turning the Old Trick
Steven Levitski and Daniel Ziblatt have recently published an article in the NY Times Sunday Review asking, "Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?" Anyone who would ask that question has an answer in mind. They answer, of course, in the affirmative and end with the reassurance that "American democracy is not in imminent danger of collapse. If ordinary circumstances prevail, our institutions will most likely muddle through a Trump presidency." Having said that, however, one wonders. As many have suggested in various ways, Trump is symptomatic of the disease, and there is plenty of evidence that a sort of anti-democratic virus is disrupting the body politic of America. Consider, for example, what is happening in North Carolina, where, as the Times also reports, "Amid a tense and dramatic backdrop of outrage and frustration, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature on Friday approved a sweeping package of restrictions on the power of the governor’s office in advance of the swearing in of the Democratic governor-elect, Roy Cooper." That, perhaps, is even more portentous of Democracy's Demise.
Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that "Democratic institutions must be reinforced by strong informal norms," the first of which is "partisan self-restraint and fair play. For much of our history, leaders of both parties resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage, effectively underutilizing the power conferred by those institutions." Let me admit, first of all, that I'm not altogether sure our political parties have "resisted the temptation" until just recently. I have found myself going back to basics, as it were, and re-reading some of the documents of our founding as a nation, and the difficulties we face today are nothing particularly new and were anticipated by James Madison as "faction." In one of the seminal passages of the Federalist Papers, he writes, that the latent causes of faction are "sown in the nature of man, and we see them every where brought into different degrees of activity according to the different circumstances of civil society." He goes on to write:
A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders, ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions, whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their common good.
We do not need to be acute observers of the current political scene to agree that "the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." Religion, perhaps, is a principle source of more frivolous and fanciful distinctions, and is a strong contender as the most virulent cause of faction, but Madison felt that the "various and unequal distribution of property" was also great, and would suffice. As Madison put it, "those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society." I would agree, but add the caveat, "if people can discern their distinct interests." For reasons that I will come back to, in today's political climate, there is so much confusion, and so little relief, that people find it difficult to decide among their own interests, much less among those competing to represent those interests. Suffice it to say that the constitution was intended to regulate "these various and interfering interests," and to involve "the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government." And indeed, it does seem to take some sense of "partisan self-restraint and fair play" to get on with "the necessary and ordinary operations of government." I would agree, but would again add the caveat, if people could agree on the "necessary operations of government."
Clearly what is happening in North Carolina is factionalism at its worst, and they have succumbed to the temptation to use their temporary control of the state legislature to maximize partisan advantage, and violates anything resembling "fair play." Moreover, it violates "an even more basic norm" or "the idea of legitimate opposition. In a democracy, partisan rivals must fully accept one another’s right to exist, to compete and to govern." It's not unique to North Carolina, nor is it unique to elected officials. Public Policy Polling, for example, found that "only 53% of Trump voters think that California's votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote. 29% don't think they should be allowed to count, and another 18% are unsure." While 29% is still a distinct minority, even among Trump voters, it is nevertheless telling that nearly half, 47% of Trump voters, would disenfranchise California entirely or are unsure. As Rachel Maddow asked, what does that mean? Should dissenting votes simply not count? Should California be forcibly excommunicated from the union? Whatever it means -- whether the answer is just an expression of disdain for those who inhabit the land of "fruits and nuts," ignorance of the American political system, or an actual desire to vex and oppress those who dissent -- the polling results, along with the machinations in North Carolina, clearly indicate that the disagreement between factions has reached a sufficiently virulent fever pitch where one faction cannot "accept that the other side will occasionally win elections and lead the country" and calls into question whether the other side is even, what? American? As Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest, "without such mutual acceptance, democracy is imperiled," and one doesn't need to do much in the way of research to discover that "governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism."
The feeling may be mutual. I have to admit there is a part of me that wouldn't be terribly disappointed if Texas decided to succeed from the union, or for that matter California. Given the choice, given my own predilections, I would move to California, and I would do so without the least hesitation. Perhaps we DO need smaller, more homogenous nations. Again, going back to basics, there was a good deal of discussion about the absolute size of the nation, and whether a nation, even of 13 loosely confederated states, was simply too large for democracy. By "democracy," the founders meant what might be referred to today as "direct democracy," where the "public good" is decided, as Madison put it, by "the people themselves, convened for that purpose." The logistic difficulties of "convening the people," of course, are obvious, but Hamilton, at least, felt acutely dangers of the short-sighted and overweening passions that could sweep over "the people," transforming them from a deliberative body into a mob. The constitutional solution to this was a "republic," and again, as Madison put it, "the two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are, first, the delegation o the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest." It is, in short, a representative government, democratically elected, and it was hoped that the people would elect those "whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations." As Madison recognized, however, "the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister design, may by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people." Absolute size was seen as a protection for the former against the latter, making it "more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts, by which elections were often carried." Madison believed that the most deeply held prejudices, and consequently the most contentious tempers that arose from them, were local. As he put it, "the smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it." Following on that, "the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party." Following on that, "the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression." Spread over larger territories, the strictly local factions would cancel each other, and allow greater interest in the greater good. What Madison did not predict, and given the time in which he wrote could not have predicted, was the growth of modern lines of communication.
I do believe, along with Chomsky, that the GOP is the most dangerous organization in the world today, for some of the same and for different reasons. It is, to borrow a word from Thomas Frank, the party of "derangement." He traces the source of the derangement, correctly I think, to the Great Backlash, "a style of conservatism that came snarling onto the national stage in response to the partying and protests of the late sixties," though I would also suggest that his dismissive tone would engender some of the same backlash. It was not simply the parties and protests of the late sixties, but the fundamental challenge they presented to what many, the Silent Majority, felt were fundamental American values -- religion, racial and gender hierarchies, and love of country. If LSD opened the gates of perception and provided a different variety of religious experience, it was not one that could be endorsed by heartland Americans. Equal rights were one thing in the abstract, another thing when it actually encroached on a privilege so long established that it seemed hewn into the bedrock of social order by nature and nature's god. If Vietnam brought home the vicious reality of the American anti-communist crusade, it was nevertheless America's war, America's crusade, and one could not question it as a policy decision, or the authority that prosecuted it as a policy decision, without being in some way treasonous. America, love it or leave it, as the bumper stickers of the time had it. The counter culture of the 60s and early 70s was indeed just that, an insurrectionist counter culture, and so it is not surprising that there was a backlash by THE culture. More by default than design, the GOP took up the cause of the culture against the insurrectionist counter culture, and cultural anger was "marshaled to achieve economic ends." We have been fighting the "culture wars" ever since, and for those engaged in the battle, it is fought in deadly earnest, but Thomas has it right, I think, when he tells us that it is the "economic achievements -- not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars -- that are the movement's greatest monuments," though again his dismissive tone again would engender some of the same backlash. The culture wars are not simply a clash between a "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" liberalism and a "revival tent" conservatism, but the more fundamental conflict setting cosmopolitan against parochial values, setting the urban and urbane against the rural and unsophisticated, the over-educated elite against the under-educated, but more genuine, more down to earth, more common-sensical folk. The culture wars go back to the very beginning of our republic, the clash between the New York values of Hamilton, who by the way favored abolition, and the Monticello values of Jefferson, who might have had qualms about slavery, but fewer about the racial hierarchy or the maintenance of his coterie of slaves.
The culture wars, of course, will go on, and on, and on, and on. The liberals seem to be winning, but each successive victory is a pyrric victory, in part because there will always be a fresh outrage to enrage the cultural warriors on either side of the divide, and it will continue to distract and confound any economic agenda the liberals might want to advance. The liberals DO seem to be winning the culture, but this just seems to create another species of "derangement." THE culture can now see itself engaged in a rear-guard action, engaged in a resistance movement against the usurpations of an illegitimate authority imposing an illegitimate culture. THE culture can now see itself as the victim, forced to tolerate the intolerable, with all the moral authority that accrues to the victim, the white male fighting the impositions of the femi-nazis with all the valor of the French resistance of old. What to make of it? On the one hand, although it is a discredited meme, one can (I can) actually hear Trump say that, if he ran for president, he would run as a republican because republican voters are so stupid. If I want to distract my dog, all I have to do is say "treat," and he runs to the pantry door doing the "puppy dance" in anticipation. If I want to distract a republican from my economic agenda, all I have to do is say "gay marriage!" and they will run to the ballot box to register their disdain. As Thomas put it, "the trick never ages," and the distracted republican will "vote to stop abortion, [but] receive a rollback in capital gains taxes." The deranged republican will "vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors, receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive social security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining." It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see the economic elite cynically using a fresh outrage, a fresh slab of red meat, to distract the republican voter from the actual economic agenda -- cynically shouting "OMG! Gay marriage!" a distraction amplified on evangelical and conservative radio from the economic buggering they actually get in the halls of congress.
To use Madison's words, "the effect has been inverted." Men of vicious temper have first obtained the suffrages, and then betrayed the interests of the people, and Trump may be the biggest, and ultimately, the last such betrayal. May be. As Livitski and Ziblatt suggest, we may muddle through, but as they also suggest, the signs are all there. "Drawing on a close study of democracy’s demise in 1930s Europe," as they put it, "the eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz designed a 'litmus test' to identify anti-democratic politicians," and he had at least three indicators -- a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments." Of course, "Trump tests positive." The litany of offenses is familiar. He actively encouraged violence among protestors at his rallies, suggesting he would cover the legal fees of those who actually acted on his incitement. He pledged to "jail" Hilary Clinton, his political rival, and did much to encourage, nothing to discourage, the chants of "lock her up." He threatened legal action against unfriendly media, among them the NY Times, but perhaps the most egregious offense against democracy was the suggestion "that he might not accept the election results." To follow through on any of these "promises," of course, would be the initial acts of a dictator.
Of course, it couldn't happen here, and so, not to panic. Everything will be fine. The American people wouldn't stand for it, and the Constitution has sufficient checks and balances to prevent an outright coup. Still, these are not just Trump's threats or tactics, they have been "normalized" as GOP tactics, endorsed by a sufficient number of people to place him in the white house. Although there is some room for some skepticism and doubt, the number of hate crimes, with their explicit intimidation and implicit violence, has spiked since the election. As the continuing outrage in North Carolina indicates, even in the face of a broad electoral victory, giving the GOP effective control of the government throughout the US, they STILL will not accept the few instances where they have lost. If the public policy polling is any indication, there even seems to be a core of GOP supporters who would actively support, or not actively resist, the disenfranchisement of the opposition, a disenfranchisement that has been going on for some time through the gerrymandering of districts and the measures to insure voting integrity, to prevent the imagined millions of votes that were cast fraudulently for Clinton. It is an insidious claim, insofar as we all know just who Trump and his supporters believe cast the fraudulent votes and where they cast them. It wasn't white folk, but those people who speak Spanish and Farsi on the streets of Chicago and Detroit. It wasn't in Idaho or Indiana, but in California, in LA and San Francisco, and so of course! the votes of Californians shouldn't be tallied. So, again, just to drive the point home, "governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism." And it doesn't take much to begin the process of militarization -- a series of minor terrorist incidents, or another major incident on the order of 9/11 -- and the right's vaunted fear of marshall law may well become a reality, much to their delight, as they use "the old trick," as Madison put it, "of turning every contingency as a resource for accumulating force in government."
The first line of defense against the usurpation of the presidency has failed. Despite the clear indications that the election was, so to speak, hacked by the Russians, the electoral college has given Trump sufficient electoral votes to assure a Trump presidency. I am not altogether confident that other lines of defense will succeed to check or balance the promised excesses. There is something of the Maginot Line about any discussion of constitutional checks and balances, and with the GOP in control of the government, virtually top to bottom, one suspects the defenses could be easily over-whelmed. In truth, one suspects they have already been over-whelmed. Although the GOP has taken on the persona of la grande resistance to the "liberal" coup, and even though they have ostensibly "won" they continue to target Obama as though he were the font of all evil in the world, there is, as I have suggested elsewhere, already something Vichy about the democratic party. Battle after battle on the cultural front has gone to the left, only enraging further those on the right, enflaming their aggrandized sense of aggrievement, but the economic battle has been lost, and the electoral battle has gone to the right. The people know they are being buggered sore. One suspects that many Trump voters -- those who might find him personally distasteful, but voted for his ostensible "change" agenda -- may even know that they are being treated like a hobo's whore by the GOP, but then the so-called alt-right, Trump's real party, is only slightly less enraged at the entrenched GOP elite than they are by the entrenched Democratic elite. They are both cut from the same piece of cloth. Wars take money. Wars of attrition take even more money, and both parties have "sold out" to big money interests. The Wikileak hack of Clinton's Goldman Sachs "conversations" were not examined for content, but vilified for occurring at all (a vilification to which Clinton herself, with her characteristic reserve, contributed by not releasing them early enough for actual examination). There is, as the Washington Post put it, the eternal mystique of Goldman Sachs, and the biggest betrayal of all, a betrayal that Trump seems to be flaunting on the world stage, is this: vote to get big money out of politics; receive Goldman Sachs in an inordinate number of cabinet positions.
So what happens next? Trump may well give the culture warriors of the alt-right some long awaited victories, but such victories will simply provoke a reaction, which prove a pretext for a reaction to the reaction, which no doubt will provoke even greater resentment. We fought one civil war over the "old divides" of north and south, urban and rural, new economy and old economy, and always race, race, race. Why not a second?
Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that "Democratic institutions must be reinforced by strong informal norms," the first of which is "partisan self-restraint and fair play. For much of our history, leaders of both parties resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage, effectively underutilizing the power conferred by those institutions." Let me admit, first of all, that I'm not altogether sure our political parties have "resisted the temptation" until just recently. I have found myself going back to basics, as it were, and re-reading some of the documents of our founding as a nation, and the difficulties we face today are nothing particularly new and were anticipated by James Madison as "faction." In one of the seminal passages of the Federalist Papers, he writes, that the latent causes of faction are "sown in the nature of man, and we see them every where brought into different degrees of activity according to the different circumstances of civil society." He goes on to write:
A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders, ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions, whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their common good.
We do not need to be acute observers of the current political scene to agree that "the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts." Religion, perhaps, is a principle source of more frivolous and fanciful distinctions, and is a strong contender as the most virulent cause of faction, but Madison felt that the "various and unequal distribution of property" was also great, and would suffice. As Madison put it, "those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society." I would agree, but add the caveat, "if people can discern their distinct interests." For reasons that I will come back to, in today's political climate, there is so much confusion, and so little relief, that people find it difficult to decide among their own interests, much less among those competing to represent those interests. Suffice it to say that the constitution was intended to regulate "these various and interfering interests," and to involve "the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government." And indeed, it does seem to take some sense of "partisan self-restraint and fair play" to get on with "the necessary and ordinary operations of government." I would agree, but would again add the caveat, if people could agree on the "necessary operations of government."
Clearly what is happening in North Carolina is factionalism at its worst, and they have succumbed to the temptation to use their temporary control of the state legislature to maximize partisan advantage, and violates anything resembling "fair play." Moreover, it violates "an even more basic norm" or "the idea of legitimate opposition. In a democracy, partisan rivals must fully accept one another’s right to exist, to compete and to govern." It's not unique to North Carolina, nor is it unique to elected officials. Public Policy Polling, for example, found that "only 53% of Trump voters think that California's votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote. 29% don't think they should be allowed to count, and another 18% are unsure." While 29% is still a distinct minority, even among Trump voters, it is nevertheless telling that nearly half, 47% of Trump voters, would disenfranchise California entirely or are unsure. As Rachel Maddow asked, what does that mean? Should dissenting votes simply not count? Should California be forcibly excommunicated from the union? Whatever it means -- whether the answer is just an expression of disdain for those who inhabit the land of "fruits and nuts," ignorance of the American political system, or an actual desire to vex and oppress those who dissent -- the polling results, along with the machinations in North Carolina, clearly indicate that the disagreement between factions has reached a sufficiently virulent fever pitch where one faction cannot "accept that the other side will occasionally win elections and lead the country" and calls into question whether the other side is even, what? American? As Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest, "without such mutual acceptance, democracy is imperiled," and one doesn't need to do much in the way of research to discover that "governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism."
The feeling may be mutual. I have to admit there is a part of me that wouldn't be terribly disappointed if Texas decided to succeed from the union, or for that matter California. Given the choice, given my own predilections, I would move to California, and I would do so without the least hesitation. Perhaps we DO need smaller, more homogenous nations. Again, going back to basics, there was a good deal of discussion about the absolute size of the nation, and whether a nation, even of 13 loosely confederated states, was simply too large for democracy. By "democracy," the founders meant what might be referred to today as "direct democracy," where the "public good" is decided, as Madison put it, by "the people themselves, convened for that purpose." The logistic difficulties of "convening the people," of course, are obvious, but Hamilton, at least, felt acutely dangers of the short-sighted and overweening passions that could sweep over "the people," transforming them from a deliberative body into a mob. The constitutional solution to this was a "republic," and again, as Madison put it, "the two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are, first, the delegation o the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest." It is, in short, a representative government, democratically elected, and it was hoped that the people would elect those "whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations." As Madison recognized, however, "the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister design, may by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people." Absolute size was seen as a protection for the former against the latter, making it "more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts, by which elections were often carried." Madison believed that the most deeply held prejudices, and consequently the most contentious tempers that arose from them, were local. As he put it, "the smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it." Following on that, "the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party." Following on that, "the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression." Spread over larger territories, the strictly local factions would cancel each other, and allow greater interest in the greater good. What Madison did not predict, and given the time in which he wrote could not have predicted, was the growth of modern lines of communication.
I do believe, along with Chomsky, that the GOP is the most dangerous organization in the world today, for some of the same and for different reasons. It is, to borrow a word from Thomas Frank, the party of "derangement." He traces the source of the derangement, correctly I think, to the Great Backlash, "a style of conservatism that came snarling onto the national stage in response to the partying and protests of the late sixties," though I would also suggest that his dismissive tone would engender some of the same backlash. It was not simply the parties and protests of the late sixties, but the fundamental challenge they presented to what many, the Silent Majority, felt were fundamental American values -- religion, racial and gender hierarchies, and love of country. If LSD opened the gates of perception and provided a different variety of religious experience, it was not one that could be endorsed by heartland Americans. Equal rights were one thing in the abstract, another thing when it actually encroached on a privilege so long established that it seemed hewn into the bedrock of social order by nature and nature's god. If Vietnam brought home the vicious reality of the American anti-communist crusade, it was nevertheless America's war, America's crusade, and one could not question it as a policy decision, or the authority that prosecuted it as a policy decision, without being in some way treasonous. America, love it or leave it, as the bumper stickers of the time had it. The counter culture of the 60s and early 70s was indeed just that, an insurrectionist counter culture, and so it is not surprising that there was a backlash by THE culture. More by default than design, the GOP took up the cause of the culture against the insurrectionist counter culture, and cultural anger was "marshaled to achieve economic ends." We have been fighting the "culture wars" ever since, and for those engaged in the battle, it is fought in deadly earnest, but Thomas has it right, I think, when he tells us that it is the "economic achievements -- not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars -- that are the movement's greatest monuments," though again his dismissive tone again would engender some of the same backlash. The culture wars are not simply a clash between a "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" liberalism and a "revival tent" conservatism, but the more fundamental conflict setting cosmopolitan against parochial values, setting the urban and urbane against the rural and unsophisticated, the over-educated elite against the under-educated, but more genuine, more down to earth, more common-sensical folk. The culture wars go back to the very beginning of our republic, the clash between the New York values of Hamilton, who by the way favored abolition, and the Monticello values of Jefferson, who might have had qualms about slavery, but fewer about the racial hierarchy or the maintenance of his coterie of slaves.
The culture wars, of course, will go on, and on, and on, and on. The liberals seem to be winning, but each successive victory is a pyrric victory, in part because there will always be a fresh outrage to enrage the cultural warriors on either side of the divide, and it will continue to distract and confound any economic agenda the liberals might want to advance. The liberals DO seem to be winning the culture, but this just seems to create another species of "derangement." THE culture can now see itself engaged in a rear-guard action, engaged in a resistance movement against the usurpations of an illegitimate authority imposing an illegitimate culture. THE culture can now see itself as the victim, forced to tolerate the intolerable, with all the moral authority that accrues to the victim, the white male fighting the impositions of the femi-nazis with all the valor of the French resistance of old. What to make of it? On the one hand, although it is a discredited meme, one can (I can) actually hear Trump say that, if he ran for president, he would run as a republican because republican voters are so stupid. If I want to distract my dog, all I have to do is say "treat," and he runs to the pantry door doing the "puppy dance" in anticipation. If I want to distract a republican from my economic agenda, all I have to do is say "gay marriage!" and they will run to the ballot box to register their disdain. As Thomas put it, "the trick never ages," and the distracted republican will "vote to stop abortion, [but] receive a rollback in capital gains taxes." The deranged republican will "vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors, receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive social security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining." It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see the economic elite cynically using a fresh outrage, a fresh slab of red meat, to distract the republican voter from the actual economic agenda -- cynically shouting "OMG! Gay marriage!" a distraction amplified on evangelical and conservative radio from the economic buggering they actually get in the halls of congress.
To use Madison's words, "the effect has been inverted." Men of vicious temper have first obtained the suffrages, and then betrayed the interests of the people, and Trump may be the biggest, and ultimately, the last such betrayal. May be. As Livitski and Ziblatt suggest, we may muddle through, but as they also suggest, the signs are all there. "Drawing on a close study of democracy’s demise in 1930s Europe," as they put it, "the eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz designed a 'litmus test' to identify anti-democratic politicians," and he had at least three indicators -- a failure to reject violence unambiguously, a readiness to curtail rivals’ civil liberties, and the denial of the legitimacy of elected governments." Of course, "Trump tests positive." The litany of offenses is familiar. He actively encouraged violence among protestors at his rallies, suggesting he would cover the legal fees of those who actually acted on his incitement. He pledged to "jail" Hilary Clinton, his political rival, and did much to encourage, nothing to discourage, the chants of "lock her up." He threatened legal action against unfriendly media, among them the NY Times, but perhaps the most egregious offense against democracy was the suggestion "that he might not accept the election results." To follow through on any of these "promises," of course, would be the initial acts of a dictator.
Of course, it couldn't happen here, and so, not to panic. Everything will be fine. The American people wouldn't stand for it, and the Constitution has sufficient checks and balances to prevent an outright coup. Still, these are not just Trump's threats or tactics, they have been "normalized" as GOP tactics, endorsed by a sufficient number of people to place him in the white house. Although there is some room for some skepticism and doubt, the number of hate crimes, with their explicit intimidation and implicit violence, has spiked since the election. As the continuing outrage in North Carolina indicates, even in the face of a broad electoral victory, giving the GOP effective control of the government throughout the US, they STILL will not accept the few instances where they have lost. If the public policy polling is any indication, there even seems to be a core of GOP supporters who would actively support, or not actively resist, the disenfranchisement of the opposition, a disenfranchisement that has been going on for some time through the gerrymandering of districts and the measures to insure voting integrity, to prevent the imagined millions of votes that were cast fraudulently for Clinton. It is an insidious claim, insofar as we all know just who Trump and his supporters believe cast the fraudulent votes and where they cast them. It wasn't white folk, but those people who speak Spanish and Farsi on the streets of Chicago and Detroit. It wasn't in Idaho or Indiana, but in California, in LA and San Francisco, and so of course! the votes of Californians shouldn't be tallied. So, again, just to drive the point home, "governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism." And it doesn't take much to begin the process of militarization -- a series of minor terrorist incidents, or another major incident on the order of 9/11 -- and the right's vaunted fear of marshall law may well become a reality, much to their delight, as they use "the old trick," as Madison put it, "of turning every contingency as a resource for accumulating force in government."
The first line of defense against the usurpation of the presidency has failed. Despite the clear indications that the election was, so to speak, hacked by the Russians, the electoral college has given Trump sufficient electoral votes to assure a Trump presidency. I am not altogether confident that other lines of defense will succeed to check or balance the promised excesses. There is something of the Maginot Line about any discussion of constitutional checks and balances, and with the GOP in control of the government, virtually top to bottom, one suspects the defenses could be easily over-whelmed. In truth, one suspects they have already been over-whelmed. Although the GOP has taken on the persona of la grande resistance to the "liberal" coup, and even though they have ostensibly "won" they continue to target Obama as though he were the font of all evil in the world, there is, as I have suggested elsewhere, already something Vichy about the democratic party. Battle after battle on the cultural front has gone to the left, only enraging further those on the right, enflaming their aggrandized sense of aggrievement, but the economic battle has been lost, and the electoral battle has gone to the right. The people know they are being buggered sore. One suspects that many Trump voters -- those who might find him personally distasteful, but voted for his ostensible "change" agenda -- may even know that they are being treated like a hobo's whore by the GOP, but then the so-called alt-right, Trump's real party, is only slightly less enraged at the entrenched GOP elite than they are by the entrenched Democratic elite. They are both cut from the same piece of cloth. Wars take money. Wars of attrition take even more money, and both parties have "sold out" to big money interests. The Wikileak hack of Clinton's Goldman Sachs "conversations" were not examined for content, but vilified for occurring at all (a vilification to which Clinton herself, with her characteristic reserve, contributed by not releasing them early enough for actual examination). There is, as the Washington Post put it, the eternal mystique of Goldman Sachs, and the biggest betrayal of all, a betrayal that Trump seems to be flaunting on the world stage, is this: vote to get big money out of politics; receive Goldman Sachs in an inordinate number of cabinet positions.
So what happens next? Trump may well give the culture warriors of the alt-right some long awaited victories, but such victories will simply provoke a reaction, which prove a pretext for a reaction to the reaction, which no doubt will provoke even greater resentment. We fought one civil war over the "old divides" of north and south, urban and rural, new economy and old economy, and always race, race, race. Why not a second?
Friday, December 16, 2016
The American Nightmare
In a Times Sunday Review article, David Leonhardt gave us a synopsis of new research into the reality and myths of the American Dream. It should be noted that the whole idea of the American Dream -- personal and intergenerational social and economic mobility -- is fraught with language that Andrew Carnegie would find comforting. As Leonhard tells us, The phrase “American dream” was invented during the Great Depression." At the time, of course, it would have seemed aspirational, not descriptive, and the "popular 1931 book by the historian James Truslow Adams, who defined it as 'that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.'" As anyone who has read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), or at least seen the John Ford film version (1940), would have some sense that such a land where life would be "better and richer and fuller" would have seemed a remote possibility, not a present reality. Today, however, we have somewhat lost sight of a fundamental human truth. Rarely have conditions been such that a "better and richer and fuller" life were possible for some, much less everybody. More commonly, conditions have been such that a select few have lived "better and richer and fuller" lives, while the vast majority have toiled without much hope of something better. In class ridden societies, one doesn't have to be a fan of Downton Abbey, or before that Upstairs Downstairs, that it was considered a virtue to "accept one's station," and to demonstrate honor through forbearance. If one wanted a better or fuller life, it certainly wouldn't come through the acquisition of a "richer" life. Today, however, we have come to see the American Dream, more as an entitlement, more a mark of American exceptionalism that every child born with a modicum of intelligence, who works hard, will lead a better and fuller life, or at least a richer life than their parents.
As Leonhardt points out, "In the decades that followed" the great depression, "the dream became a reality." As Thomas Piketty and others have suggested, the "widely shared economic growth" was an historical fluke. As the Economist summarizes, "only the chaos of the first and second world wars and the Depression disrupted this pattern. High taxes, inflation, bankruptcies and the growth of sprawling welfare states caused wealth to shrink dramatically, and ushered in a period in which both income and wealth were distributed in relatively egalitarian fashion." I am not sure, in other words, that we would want to recreate the sorts of devastating chaos out of which emerged conditions where "nearly all children grew up to achieve the most basic definition of a better life — earning more money and enjoying higher living standards than their parents had." As Piketty warns, however, "the shocks of the early 20th century have faded and wealth is now reasserting itself, and on many measures, "the importance of wealth in modern economies is approaching levels last seen before the first world war." That in itself should be sufficient warning, but it falls on mostly deaf ears, in part because a whole generation grew up in a world where everyone actually did earn more money and enjoy a higher living standard than their parents. If one was born in 1940, the odds were stacked in your favor. As the research of Raj Chetty, David Grusky, and others have revealed, "about 92 percent of 1940 babies had higher pretax inflation-adjusted household earnings at age 30 than their parents had at the same age." Things were good for the baby boomers, and "achieving the American dream was a virtual guarantee for this generation, regardless of whether people went to college, got divorced or suffered a layoff. " and they "spent their prime working years in an economy with two wonderful features. It was growing rapidly, and the bounty from its growth flowed to the rich, the middle class and the poor alike." It was a halcyon time when the rising tide did lift all boats, in part because the post war conditions created such unprecedented demand, in part because the "sprawling welfare states" had created tax structures that insured some measure of redistribution from those upstairs to those downstairs. Since then, however, wealth has reasserted itself, the historical anomaly has corrected itself, and money is again flowing as it always has from those downstairs to those upstairs.
Halcyon days, however, have a way of creating mythologies, and America's emergence on the world stage as a pre-eminent power after the second world war did a great deal to reinforce and aggrandize the mythology that we were indeed an exception, a land of opportunity, the big rock candy mountain where, in the Burl Ives 1949 children's version, "you're going on a holiday/Your birthday comes around once a week and it's Christmas every day." For those born in 1950, it was still mostly true, with 79% of Americans living a better life than their parents, reinforcing the notion that with a little luck, but mostly pluck, one could get on. I was born in 53, and given a bookish introverted nature, I did get on, thanks in part to higher education, and perhaps in larger part an overwhelming desire to escape rural Nebraska where my parents had taken me in my middle teens. My brothers, not so lucky. Born in the latter part of the decade, younger and more acculturated to the ways of rural Nebraska, they are still there, mired in the slow decay that is so endemic to much of rural America. For those born in the 60s and 70s, the odds were still a bit better than a coin toss, at 61% and 60% respectively, but in the 80s, one's chances of living a better life than one's parents is a coin toss at 50%. Though the returns aren't in for the 90s and the new millennia, there little reason to believe that the trend has reversed itself, considerable reason to believe that it has continued. If halcyon days have a way of creating mythologies, present realities have a way of undercutting them. As Leonhardt notes, "psychology research has shown that people’s happiness is heavily influenced by their relative station in life. And it’s hard to imagine a more salient comparison than to a person’s own parents, particularly at this time of year, when families gather for rituals that have been repeated for decades." McClintock's original, more "adult" version of big rock candy, for many of the millenials, may seem closer to the truth:
It's not altogether clear, however, why they are being "buggered sore," and even less clear what can be done to prevent it without at the same time destroying what is essentially American.
At one point, writing to Washington in 1787, Hamilton felt that a "disinclination to taxes and of course to a strong government" would derail approval of the constitution. Money, as we all know, is freedom -- freedom from the worst sorts of want, but it also provides the freedom to do as one wants. Of course, it is all relative. Contrary to most talk about "freedom," as if it were some sort of abstract absolute available to all in equal measure, in reality, as most of us recognize, some are simply more free than others. If happiness is heavily influenced by their relative station in life, we should understand that our "happiness," as such, derives more from those below us on the ladder of life -- more from those with greater need and fewer options -- more from the invidious comparison to those immediately inferior to us. We at least are happier than them. If we are charitable, it is because charity makes us feel "good," not because we have actually done "good" -- though, of course, we will expend considerable effort convincing ourselves and others of our essential "goodness." We are charitable because it is a tangible demonstration of our superiority. Taxes make us feel "bad" -- even those that go for ostensibly "charitable" purposes, like feeding the poor, schooling other people's children, providing medical care to the indigent -- in part at least because they are compulsory. They rob of us of charity, and our ability to feel good about ourselves. Taxes are particularly bad, when they confiscate our money and our freedom to make the inferior equal, or (god forbid!) even superior to us -- give to them freely an entitlement which we can barely, if at all, afford.
At another point, writing as Publius in the first of the Federalist Paper, Hamilton felt that "an enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of power, and hostile to the principles of liberty." When one examines closely the "principles of liberty," it becomes clear enough that we should distrust "strong" government not (or not only) for its ability to impose laws that would suppress "liberties" like our first and second amendment rights -- talk and guns, after all, are cheap -- but rather, most of all we should distrust government for its confiscatory power, its taxing power, and its ability to abscond with one's money, because, as we all know all too well, money is the real freedom. "It will equally be forgotten," however, that "the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty." He is not (or not only) thinking of government's role in securing our right to speak our mind, or own an AK-47, but rather most of all government's role in securing one's property. It's OK for government to use its confiscatory power, if (and only if) it uses that power to maintain "law and order," to hire the police that protect our person from the murderers and rapists streaming across the border, but also and especially our property rights, our first and fundamental liberty.
"History teaches us," Hamilton writes, that "the specious mask of zeal for the rights of people" has been "a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism." How so? Apart from the one tenth of the one percent at the very pinnacle of the pyramid, who enjoy an almost unimaginable freedom and are exempt from the wants that plague the vast majority of humanity, the rest of us are concerned with those immediately above, but especially those immediately below us. If we have a "democratic" jealously of those immediately above us, and would, if we could, attain a status equal to them, it is not unreasonable to suspect that those below us harbor the same sentiments. The higher we go on the pyramid, the more people we have to suspect and "a tyranny of the majority" becomes a real object of concern. The people, the dispossessed rabble, might rise up en masse, democratically seize control of the government, and use its confiscatory power to abscond with my money, and as we all know, my money is my only "real" freedom. Consequently, "the nobel enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a narrow and illiberal distrust," as Hamilton put it, particularly a distrust of those immediately below, the poor who might use the power of government to dispossess me of my possessions, and this "narrow and illiberal distrust," working its way back down the pyramid, opens the door to a peculiar American despotism, a republican despotism. This despotism champions "freedom," and if the only freedom is money, then so be it. It champions too the idea of the American dream, the idea that a "better and fuller and richer" life is available to all willing to expend sufficient effort, take sufficient risks, make sufficient sacrifices. This seemed true enough during the halcyon days of the 50s, although less true successively in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and now into the new millennium the American dream it seems has been betrayed, but by whom? This despotism is perpetuated by the ones who, pay "obsequious court to the people," ballyhoo their entitlement to the American dream and promise to "make American great again," but does so by sowing "a narrow and illiberal distrust" of those at the base of the pyramid. This despotism is perpetrated by the ones who promise to save us from a distant government "hostile to the principles of liberty," a government that taxes away my only real freedom and (god forbid!) redistributes it to undeserving others, those huddled masses who struggle just beneath me, and often struggle beneath my contempt. This republican despotism assures us that the American dream has been betrayed by a democratic government that taxes YOU and doles out your hard won wealth in easy welfare to the undeserving poor, a democratic government abetting an invasion of wetbacks willing to steal your job, your income, your freedom.
This republican despotism has succeeded, not by leaps and bounds, but by taking two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, grinding away at the sprawling welfare that taxed the wealthy to support programmatic aid to the less fortunate and the equally sprawling regulatory state that curtailed the worst excesses of capitalism, and helped "usher in a period in which both income and wealth were distributed in a relatively egalitarian fashion." It will equally be forgotten that a vigorous democratic government secured the "widely shared economic growth," the halcyon days of the fifties that so embodied the American dream for everyone -- well, almost everyone. If Martin Luther King had a dream, it was at least in part a dream that black America could share equally in the American dream, the rising tide of wealth and freedom. The racial unrest, perhaps, was the tipping point. The disinclination to taxes and strong government is so embedded in the American psyche, along racial attitudes that cannot be wished or legislated away, that the "great society" and the civil rights legislation provided the tipping point for the first two steps forward with "law and order" Nixon, a man of narrow and illiberal distrust of almost everyone. If the emerging republican despotism had to take one step back with Carter, so be it. He was at least willing to deregulate the airline industry and, perhaps more important, the beer industry, which had the salutary effect, in my opinion at least, of fostering the micro-brew explosion. Still, though, his lucklessness and fecklessness on the international front, he paved the way for the next two steps forward with "government is the problem" Reagan, "whose "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, control of the money supply to curb inflation, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending." If Clinton represented another step back for the emerging GOP depotism, so be it. He was at least willing to sign NAFTA and scale back welfare. And so it goes, two steps forward, one step back.
Until we arrive at Trump. He is, of course, the embodiment of the republican despotism. Vote for the re-emergent American dream and a richer, freer life for all, and get (here's my prediction) the American nightmare -- not only an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, but the narrow and illiberal distrust that guarantees the calcification of that gap across social classes -- not only a diminishment of the sprawling welfare state as the wealthy are taxed ever less, but a weakened government that has abdicated its power. As a sort of maxim, a first principle, there will always be rules, and those empowered to set the rules, and if it's not government, then something will flow in and fill the vacuum, and increasingly the government has abdicated its power to the corporate behemoths who have no interest what-so-ever in distributing income and wealth in a "relatively egalitarian fashion." If money is freedom, they are certainly interested in freedom, their own freedom, and seem willing to take egregiously undemocratic steps to preserve it. The people's only hope is a democratic government, precisely the sort of government that Hamilton feared -- a democratic government that uses the cumulative power of the people to check corporate power, balance the books, and begin slow to recover the American dream.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
vox popul
OK, we are not a democratic country, and we haven't been for some time. I mean that not in the party sense but in the broader sense of rule by the vox populi. I am supposing, of course, that my use of "vox populi," which the imbedded spell checker keeps changing to "box populi," makes me one of those snarky over-educated elitists, but I like the sound of it. The use of latin gives it the aura of the ancient, venerated principle, and it is perhaps, the voice of the people as represented by a majority. If we really were a democratic country, many of the trigger issues could have been decided long ago.
How could this be? Here's one way of thinking about it. Forgive me, but it will take a couple of steps to get at my answer. article pointed out that there were basically three types of Trump voters. There are (1) the die hard supporters, the Trump primary voters, who turned out basically to "nominate a person who didn’t have the basic attributes of a traditional presidential nominee" and they did so principally as a vote of no confidence in the existing "rigged" systems. They tend to be extreme, vocal, and committed to their views. They represent, give or take, about 20% of the voting population. Then there are (2) the typical Trump voters, as Ygelsias put it, "basically republicans," who "weren’t especially enthusiastic about Trump, but did what they do every four years and voted for the GOP nominee." They represent, as you might expect, a little less than half of the population, and are numerically the largest group. Finally, there are (3) the marginal Trump voters, or the swing voters. There were enough "independents" who voted for Trump to give him an edge in key rust belt states, and the reasons they did so are no doubt legion. Although they probably didn't believe that Clinton murdered her aides, or ran a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza parlor, not unlike Bush, she represented an entrenched power elite that many (including me) found distasteful. I could not bring myself to vote for Trump, but as my wife said, "it's going to be difficult to cast a vote for Clinton." Others, couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton, and said, "what the hell," gritted their teeth, and pushed their last three chips onto the red square for "change." Red won, but we'll see whether the bet on "change" pays off in any meaningful way.
Part of Ygelsias' point, if I understand him correctly, however, resides in difference between "primary" processes, and "general" elections. As it turns out, the die hards, the extremists, seem to be good at primary processes, and have focused a good deal of attention on the selection of candidates. Once the more extreme candidate has been selected, the "mainstream" have a choice of ever greater extremism, or the other party. Most will go with the extreme, because, well, at least they're NOT democrats. As a result, however, we are selecting representatives that are, well, less, and less, and less representative of the vox populi, more and more representative of the extremes. There are a number of reasons why the candidates offered are growing progressively more extreme, but mostly I think it can be leveled at "failed expectations." The republican party has failed on both the social and economic front.
On the social front, the march toward greater "liberalization" seems inexorable. One can blame it on "liberal elites" who control the media, pushing an unsavory agenda on heartland America, but as Thomas Frank points out repeatedly in his What's the Matter with Kansas, the media is merely an expression of less regulated, free market economics. Although it is an affront to many a conservative American's sensibilities, Modern Family is popular, draws an audience, gives exposure to advertisers, et cetera. Although it too is an affront to many a liberal American's sensibilities, Fox News is popular, Bill O'Reilly draws an audience, gives exposure to advertisers, et cetera. So it goes, right on down the list. If a show turns out NOT to be popular, et cetera, the media execs are very quick to pull it off the air for something else that might be popular. If one really wants to return to the innocent pleasures of Father Knows Best and the more affable Walter Cronkite, one would also need to return to a much more heavily regulated media, contrary of course to the other great republican principle, the free market. I suspect that media executives are not interested in fighting the culture wars, but in making the most money possible. If the crock pot of heartland America stews with disgust over the homosexuality in Modern Family, so what? It's what certain people want, and it makes money. When it fails to do so, it will give way for something else that does.
On the economic front, the free market has not done well by heartland America. Main streets across small town America have pretty much closed down because a heavy hitter like Walmart has moved in or "sorry, but I can get it much cheaper on line from Amazon." Coal has faded, not because EPA has regulated it out of business, but because natural gas is suddenly more abundant and cheaper -- but wait, there's more! it's cleaner. Manufacturing has moved over-seas, not because foreign agents are using NAFTA or TPP want to undermine the American worker, but because labor is more abundant and cheaper in the second and third world. Despite the PR hype, United Technologies and its subsidiary Carrier are STILL sending most of its jobs to Mexico, and will continue to do so as long as it's cheaper to produce in Mexico. Plenty of manufacturing money is being made in America, but its not being made by union workers. The invisible hand of God that guides the free market has, apparently, decided to smite hometown retailers and coal miners and other forms of union labor. If one really wants small town retail to rebound, coal mines to crank up production, and manufacturing to keep the factory open, one would need to return to a much more heavily regulated market, with restrictions on "big retail," price supports for coal, and tariffs on "imports," all of which would be paid for by -- you guessed it -- the American people, not once, but thrice -- in taxes for subsidies to industry, in lost services resulting from tax abatements, and the higher prices that inevitably result when markets are no longer competitive.
The republicans are beset with "failed expectations," but the explanations for their dashed expectations are simply unacceptable to the faithful. As a metaphor, think of the preacher who, after years of study and prayer, decides that the world will end on March 14th, 2018, at 4:37 p.m. He is absolutely and unquestionably certain of it. Those who follow his path will be whisked away by the rapture. Others, well, good luck to you. March 14th, 2018, comes, and the "faithful" sit watching the clock as it clicks closer and closer, 4:34, 4:35, 4:36, 4:37, and then 4:38, 4:39, 4:40. Five o'clock comes and goes, the day fades into night, and the night into the next day, and the world goes on. How many times has this happened? How many times have the faithful regrouped and selected another day? How many times have they been disappointed yet again? Two millennia have passed since the promise of rapture. Will we need to wait a third millennia? and then a fourth? Common sense might suggest that the whole premise is bogus. -- that there will be no rapture, ever -- that we should buckle down and make the best of our life on earth, such as it is. But NO! that the whole premise might be bogus is simply unimaginable, unacceptable, and I have staked to much of myself and my identity on it. If the premise is bogus, it would mean a rejection of the faith altogether, and what would that say about me? We have been taught over and over again, we should not abandon faith, especially not in the face of adversity. We have been taught that the true believers, the most faithful will be rewarded -- that we should meet adversity head on with unbending steadfastness to reap those rewards -- that we should double down on "faith" and reject challenges as apostasy, as blasphemy to the true faith.
The republican primary process, I am suggesting, resembles the pattern above. It is a gathering of the "faithful," and they have suggested over and over again that a "liberal" government would mean, quite literally, the end of the world as we know it, an apocalypse now. The Jade Helm conspiracy theory is one rather egregious case in point. A routine (hough large scale) military training exercise was believed to be a coup by the Obama administration to impose martial law on the great state of Texas, confiscate their guns, impose sharia law, et cetera. The conspiracy was taken seriously enough that the governor of Texas ordered his militia to monitor it, and Ted Cruz, a presidential candidate, a Senator from Texas, reached out to the pentagon, with the following statement: "We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don't trust what it is saying." Of course, the military coup didn't occur, nor did social order collapse with integration of gays into the military, nor did the economy collapse under Obamacare, nor any of the other dire predictions made over and over and over again in the conservative media. It was just another, among many "failed expectations." Common sense might suggest that the whole premise has been bogus all along, but NO! that would be unimaginable, unacceptable. When Ted Cruz suggests to the faithful, that the "federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy" under the Obama administration, he is not making a statement about the "truth" or "falsity" of any Obama claim, he is suggesting rather that he has engaged in blasphemy to the true faith.
So here we are. Although the republican elite -- those most concerned with the accumulation, consolidation, and heritability of capital -- might have wanted another candidate, the republican "faithful" doubled down and chose Trump. The republican moderates held their nose and went along with it, because, well, what choice did they have? And besides, he at least calls himself a republican and gives appropriate lip service to the "trigger" issues. And finally, enough "independents" were disgusted enough with the whole process, and disenchanted enough with the democratic candidate, that they were willing to blow it up. They did. Some, like Andrew Sullivan, have suggested that we suffer from an excess of democratization, and Trump could have been avoided if the conservative elite has simply held sway in a way similar to the democratic elite. We would likely be talking about a third Bush presidency were that the case. I would suggest, however, that we are not suffering a failure of too much direct democracy, but rather a failure of our "representative democracy." Neither of the political parties is representative of the vox populi and it is getting worse, not better. Although my predilection is to blame conservatism, and its ever deepening cycle of extremism, there is plenty of blame to go around. As my wife would say, "people need to own their own shit," and the democrats have plenty of shit to own, and in many respects, they too are the party of failed expectations.
On the social front, fewer failed expectations. The democrats do appear to represent more fully the emerging vox populi. The abortion issue outlined above is a case in point. If that were not enough, one might think about "gay marriage" as another trigger issue. Again, if a popular referendum were held today, and for the sake of argument assuming the ballot results would match up with Gallup polling, gay marriage would be legal. A whopping 60% of Americans support it, with just 37% opposing it. This represents a change from as recently as 2012, but the trend line is unmistakably in the direction of greater tolerance and has been since the mid 90s.
On the economic front, however, there have been significant failed expectations, particularly among those who seek some measure of economic justice, particularly among those who have witnessed the grinding decline of rust belt and rural America. There is an air of vichy concession surrounding the democratic party, a sort of "know better" but "do nothing" response to oligarchic dominance. Take NAFTA, for example. One might say, for example, that "the impetus for NAFTA actually began with President Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on a North American common market," and Congress went along, passing the Trade and Tariff Act in 1984. That act "gave the President 'fast-track' authority to negotiate free trade agreements more freely" by restricting "Congressional input to the ability to approve or disapprove. Congress lost the ability to change negotiating points." The treaty was negotiated through the Reagan and Bush administration, but finally signed into law by the Clinton administration, for whom "it was a priority" and its passage "considered one of his first successes." Although NAFTA became an issue during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Obama "blamed it for growing unemployment," saying "it helped businesses at the expense of workers in the U.S." and "didn't provide enough protection against exploitation of workers." Although Obama "knew better," what has he done? The answer should be obvious, and in the 2016 presidential campaign, we have Trump campaigning, saying it was a "bad deal" for the common man. If that isn't enough, how about the banking industry? Obama inherited one of the worst economies since the great depression, and there was little doubt that it was brought on by the banking industry exercising its new found unregulated freedom, but the banks are as big as ever, as un-regulated as before, and the bankers as "well compensated" as never before. Again, an air of vichy concession to the "know better," but "do nothing." The gallows humor of The Big Short more or less sums it up, making it perhaps one of the most depressing comedies of the new millennia.
Trump might actually do something, but one suspects that it will, ostensibly, be done on behalf of the people, but it will, in reality, serve the interests of the oligarchs as they have always been served. The Carrier deal, ostensibly, saved jobs, though not nearly as many as the hype might suggest. Union leadership has called it out, and the response of the president elect was an attack not on the leadership of Carrier, not on the leadership of its parent United Technologies, not on the oligarchs, but on leadership of the union, those representing the workers he so supports. One doesn't need to cross a paddock to recognize horse shit for what it is, so I have been asking myself where "strong liberalism," of the sort that could engage the people and raise the vox populi in its support, went astray. One possible answer might be the moment when the conservative wing of the democratic party pushed aside Henry Wallace for the more "amenable" Harry Truman. There is a separate longer post for this subject, but the name of Henry Wallace bobs to the surface as one of the great "what if's" of American history. Had he ascended to the presidency on the passing of Roosevelt, would we have had the "Century of the Common Man?" Instead of what we ended up getting -- cold war, a nuclear arms race, increasing civil strife. Of course, one can't really say, but one could deliver his seminal 1942 speech today, and it still resonates, with perhaps one exception. We are no longer engaged in a great struggle against totalitarianism abroad, but against our own worst impulses as a country. Wallace would, one suspects, have found our current state inconceivable, certainly unacceptable, but his speech, linked above, is worth a listen, if only to renew faith in a liberalism that speaks to and for the people.
Consider "abortion," as just one trigger issue, and imagine for a moment a "national referendum" on abortion. When I say "national referendum," I mean just that -- a national vote on that issue alone, and that issue alone, isolated from the machinations of the pols who ostensibly represent us in national elections -- a national election, binding in its results, where one doesn't need to worry whether the particular pol on the ballot also favors, say, "gun rights," or transgender bathroom rights, or any of another myriad of other compelling issues in the traditional way of party political "platforms." For the moment, assume that Gallup polling represents the vox populi accurately. After the national referendum, we would discover that 29% of the population believe that abortion should be entirely legal while only 19% believe it should be illegal under all circumstances. The people, so to speak, have spoken. That leaves 50% of the population who believe that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances. Altogether, however, that makes 79% of the population that believes abortion should be "legal," or "legal" with restrictions. It is not hard to tease out the primary restrictions -- 61% believe that abortion should be legal in the first trimester. After that, however, the percentages shift and 64% of the people believe that abortion should be illegal during the second and 80% believe it should be illegal during the third trimester. Again, the people have spoken. Abortion should be legal through the first trimester, illegal after. We could refine it further by asking "if a physician determines, after consultations with at least two other physicians, that the mother's life is in jeopardy, should abortion be permitted in the second trimester or beyond?" Likewise, we could ask "if a physician determines, after consultation with at least two other physicians, that the fetus has significant untreatable abnormalities that would prevent 'quality of life,' should abortion be allowed in the second trimester? or the third?" I won't go through all of the restrictions outlined on the gallup site linked above, but there is nothing "unreasonable" about banning second and third trimester abortions outright, or placing onerous restrictions on them for "special circumstances."
I say "could" have been decided long ago, if the vox populi really mattered. Increasingly, however, it doesn't. Increasingly what really matters in America is not the vox populi, but the voice of the extremist. For example, as the Times reported, again looking at abortion, "Ohio lawmakers approved a bill that bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks after conception, clearing the way for one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the United States if it becomes law." The Ohio representatives are in step with the 19% of the American population that favor outright bans on abortions, period, but out of step with the 79% percent who favor abortion under certain circumstances, and the 61% of the population that believe abortion should be legal through the first trimester. Nevertheless, the good people of Ohio have sent representatives to their legislature that are reflective, not of the plurality, but of the minority. "The Republican-led state House of Representatives and Senate passed the so-called "heartbeat" measure late on Tuesday," the Times reports, "sending it to be signed into law by Republican Governor John Kasich." To his credit, "Kasich, an abortion opponent, has in the past questioned whether such legislation would be constitutional," and it will be interesting to see if he vetoes the bill on that basis, but odds are not in favor of a veto. There is likely to be a quick nomination of a "pro-life" judge to the supreme court, and that will tip the balance, which could effectively eliminate the Roe v. Wade decision that makes the Ohio law unconstitutional. The 19% are close to having their way, and imposing it on the 79% of Americans who might feel differently.
How could this be? Here's one way of thinking about it. Forgive me, but it will take a couple of steps to get at my answer. article pointed out that there were basically three types of Trump voters. There are (1) the die hard supporters, the Trump primary voters, who turned out basically to "nominate a person who didn’t have the basic attributes of a traditional presidential nominee" and they did so principally as a vote of no confidence in the existing "rigged" systems. They tend to be extreme, vocal, and committed to their views. They represent, give or take, about 20% of the voting population. Then there are (2) the typical Trump voters, as Ygelsias put it, "basically republicans," who "weren’t especially enthusiastic about Trump, but did what they do every four years and voted for the GOP nominee." They represent, as you might expect, a little less than half of the population, and are numerically the largest group. Finally, there are (3) the marginal Trump voters, or the swing voters. There were enough "independents" who voted for Trump to give him an edge in key rust belt states, and the reasons they did so are no doubt legion. Although they probably didn't believe that Clinton murdered her aides, or ran a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza parlor, not unlike Bush, she represented an entrenched power elite that many (including me) found distasteful. I could not bring myself to vote for Trump, but as my wife said, "it's going to be difficult to cast a vote for Clinton." Others, couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton, and said, "what the hell," gritted their teeth, and pushed their last three chips onto the red square for "change." Red won, but we'll see whether the bet on "change" pays off in any meaningful way.
Part of Ygelsias' point, if I understand him correctly, however, resides in difference between "primary" processes, and "general" elections. As it turns out, the die hards, the extremists, seem to be good at primary processes, and have focused a good deal of attention on the selection of candidates. Once the more extreme candidate has been selected, the "mainstream" have a choice of ever greater extremism, or the other party. Most will go with the extreme, because, well, at least they're NOT democrats. As a result, however, we are selecting representatives that are, well, less, and less, and less representative of the vox populi, more and more representative of the extremes. There are a number of reasons why the candidates offered are growing progressively more extreme, but mostly I think it can be leveled at "failed expectations." The republican party has failed on both the social and economic front.
On the social front, the march toward greater "liberalization" seems inexorable. One can blame it on "liberal elites" who control the media, pushing an unsavory agenda on heartland America, but as Thomas Frank points out repeatedly in his What's the Matter with Kansas, the media is merely an expression of less regulated, free market economics. Although it is an affront to many a conservative American's sensibilities, Modern Family is popular, draws an audience, gives exposure to advertisers, et cetera. Although it too is an affront to many a liberal American's sensibilities, Fox News is popular, Bill O'Reilly draws an audience, gives exposure to advertisers, et cetera. So it goes, right on down the list. If a show turns out NOT to be popular, et cetera, the media execs are very quick to pull it off the air for something else that might be popular. If one really wants to return to the innocent pleasures of Father Knows Best and the more affable Walter Cronkite, one would also need to return to a much more heavily regulated media, contrary of course to the other great republican principle, the free market. I suspect that media executives are not interested in fighting the culture wars, but in making the most money possible. If the crock pot of heartland America stews with disgust over the homosexuality in Modern Family, so what? It's what certain people want, and it makes money. When it fails to do so, it will give way for something else that does.
On the economic front, the free market has not done well by heartland America. Main streets across small town America have pretty much closed down because a heavy hitter like Walmart has moved in or "sorry, but I can get it much cheaper on line from Amazon." Coal has faded, not because EPA has regulated it out of business, but because natural gas is suddenly more abundant and cheaper -- but wait, there's more! it's cleaner. Manufacturing has moved over-seas, not because foreign agents are using NAFTA or TPP want to undermine the American worker, but because labor is more abundant and cheaper in the second and third world. Despite the PR hype, United Technologies and its subsidiary Carrier are STILL sending most of its jobs to Mexico, and will continue to do so as long as it's cheaper to produce in Mexico. Plenty of manufacturing money is being made in America, but its not being made by union workers. The invisible hand of God that guides the free market has, apparently, decided to smite hometown retailers and coal miners and other forms of union labor. If one really wants small town retail to rebound, coal mines to crank up production, and manufacturing to keep the factory open, one would need to return to a much more heavily regulated market, with restrictions on "big retail," price supports for coal, and tariffs on "imports," all of which would be paid for by -- you guessed it -- the American people, not once, but thrice -- in taxes for subsidies to industry, in lost services resulting from tax abatements, and the higher prices that inevitably result when markets are no longer competitive.
The republicans are beset with "failed expectations," but the explanations for their dashed expectations are simply unacceptable to the faithful. As a metaphor, think of the preacher who, after years of study and prayer, decides that the world will end on March 14th, 2018, at 4:37 p.m. He is absolutely and unquestionably certain of it. Those who follow his path will be whisked away by the rapture. Others, well, good luck to you. March 14th, 2018, comes, and the "faithful" sit watching the clock as it clicks closer and closer, 4:34, 4:35, 4:36, 4:37, and then 4:38, 4:39, 4:40. Five o'clock comes and goes, the day fades into night, and the night into the next day, and the world goes on. How many times has this happened? How many times have the faithful regrouped and selected another day? How many times have they been disappointed yet again? Two millennia have passed since the promise of rapture. Will we need to wait a third millennia? and then a fourth? Common sense might suggest that the whole premise is bogus. -- that there will be no rapture, ever -- that we should buckle down and make the best of our life on earth, such as it is. But NO! that the whole premise might be bogus is simply unimaginable, unacceptable, and I have staked to much of myself and my identity on it. If the premise is bogus, it would mean a rejection of the faith altogether, and what would that say about me? We have been taught over and over again, we should not abandon faith, especially not in the face of adversity. We have been taught that the true believers, the most faithful will be rewarded -- that we should meet adversity head on with unbending steadfastness to reap those rewards -- that we should double down on "faith" and reject challenges as apostasy, as blasphemy to the true faith.
The republican primary process, I am suggesting, resembles the pattern above. It is a gathering of the "faithful," and they have suggested over and over again that a "liberal" government would mean, quite literally, the end of the world as we know it, an apocalypse now. The Jade Helm conspiracy theory is one rather egregious case in point. A routine (hough large scale) military training exercise was believed to be a coup by the Obama administration to impose martial law on the great state of Texas, confiscate their guns, impose sharia law, et cetera. The conspiracy was taken seriously enough that the governor of Texas ordered his militia to monitor it, and Ted Cruz, a presidential candidate, a Senator from Texas, reached out to the pentagon, with the following statement: "We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don't trust what it is saying." Of course, the military coup didn't occur, nor did social order collapse with integration of gays into the military, nor did the economy collapse under Obamacare, nor any of the other dire predictions made over and over and over again in the conservative media. It was just another, among many "failed expectations." Common sense might suggest that the whole premise has been bogus all along, but NO! that would be unimaginable, unacceptable. When Ted Cruz suggests to the faithful, that the "federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy" under the Obama administration, he is not making a statement about the "truth" or "falsity" of any Obama claim, he is suggesting rather that he has engaged in blasphemy to the true faith.
So here we are. Although the republican elite -- those most concerned with the accumulation, consolidation, and heritability of capital -- might have wanted another candidate, the republican "faithful" doubled down and chose Trump. The republican moderates held their nose and went along with it, because, well, what choice did they have? And besides, he at least calls himself a republican and gives appropriate lip service to the "trigger" issues. And finally, enough "independents" were disgusted enough with the whole process, and disenchanted enough with the democratic candidate, that they were willing to blow it up. They did. Some, like Andrew Sullivan, have suggested that we suffer from an excess of democratization, and Trump could have been avoided if the conservative elite has simply held sway in a way similar to the democratic elite. We would likely be talking about a third Bush presidency were that the case. I would suggest, however, that we are not suffering a failure of too much direct democracy, but rather a failure of our "representative democracy." Neither of the political parties is representative of the vox populi and it is getting worse, not better. Although my predilection is to blame conservatism, and its ever deepening cycle of extremism, there is plenty of blame to go around. As my wife would say, "people need to own their own shit," and the democrats have plenty of shit to own, and in many respects, they too are the party of failed expectations.
On the social front, fewer failed expectations. The democrats do appear to represent more fully the emerging vox populi. The abortion issue outlined above is a case in point. If that were not enough, one might think about "gay marriage" as another trigger issue. Again, if a popular referendum were held today, and for the sake of argument assuming the ballot results would match up with Gallup polling, gay marriage would be legal. A whopping 60% of Americans support it, with just 37% opposing it. This represents a change from as recently as 2012, but the trend line is unmistakably in the direction of greater tolerance and has been since the mid 90s.
On the economic front, however, there have been significant failed expectations, particularly among those who seek some measure of economic justice, particularly among those who have witnessed the grinding decline of rust belt and rural America. There is an air of vichy concession surrounding the democratic party, a sort of "know better" but "do nothing" response to oligarchic dominance. Take NAFTA, for example. One might say, for example, that "the impetus for NAFTA actually began with President Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on a North American common market," and Congress went along, passing the Trade and Tariff Act in 1984. That act "gave the President 'fast-track' authority to negotiate free trade agreements more freely" by restricting "Congressional input to the ability to approve or disapprove. Congress lost the ability to change negotiating points." The treaty was negotiated through the Reagan and Bush administration, but finally signed into law by the Clinton administration, for whom "it was a priority" and its passage "considered one of his first successes." Although NAFTA became an issue during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Obama "blamed it for growing unemployment," saying "it helped businesses at the expense of workers in the U.S." and "didn't provide enough protection against exploitation of workers." Although Obama "knew better," what has he done? The answer should be obvious, and in the 2016 presidential campaign, we have Trump campaigning, saying it was a "bad deal" for the common man. If that isn't enough, how about the banking industry? Obama inherited one of the worst economies since the great depression, and there was little doubt that it was brought on by the banking industry exercising its new found unregulated freedom, but the banks are as big as ever, as un-regulated as before, and the bankers as "well compensated" as never before. Again, an air of vichy concession to the "know better," but "do nothing." The gallows humor of The Big Short more or less sums it up, making it perhaps one of the most depressing comedies of the new millennia.
Trump might actually do something, but one suspects that it will, ostensibly, be done on behalf of the people, but it will, in reality, serve the interests of the oligarchs as they have always been served. The Carrier deal, ostensibly, saved jobs, though not nearly as many as the hype might suggest. Union leadership has called it out, and the response of the president elect was an attack not on the leadership of Carrier, not on the leadership of its parent United Technologies, not on the oligarchs, but on leadership of the union, those representing the workers he so supports. One doesn't need to cross a paddock to recognize horse shit for what it is, so I have been asking myself where "strong liberalism," of the sort that could engage the people and raise the vox populi in its support, went astray. One possible answer might be the moment when the conservative wing of the democratic party pushed aside Henry Wallace for the more "amenable" Harry Truman. There is a separate longer post for this subject, but the name of Henry Wallace bobs to the surface as one of the great "what if's" of American history. Had he ascended to the presidency on the passing of Roosevelt, would we have had the "Century of the Common Man?" Instead of what we ended up getting -- cold war, a nuclear arms race, increasing civil strife. Of course, one can't really say, but one could deliver his seminal 1942 speech today, and it still resonates, with perhaps one exception. We are no longer engaged in a great struggle against totalitarianism abroad, but against our own worst impulses as a country. Wallace would, one suspects, have found our current state inconceivable, certainly unacceptable, but his speech, linked above, is worth a listen, if only to renew faith in a liberalism that speaks to and for the people.
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