Replicants, Cylons, and Religion

There are several zombie ideas that simply refuse to die.  When I say, "zombie ideas," I mean that more or less literally according to the popular stereotype of "zombie" -- a person who is for all intents and purposes dead but for the desire to consume other human beings, which in turn creates more zombies who are for all intents and purposes dead but for the desire to consume and convert other human beings.

The first, and given the history of mankind perhaps the most pernicious, is the idea of a god and an associated religion.  I know this puts me at odds with most of the world, and with my own wife, who wants to believe in a divinity even as she rejects most "organized religion."  I have written about this here and there, and I recognize the irony that a contrarian, anti-zombie idea can itself become a zombie idea, so perhaps some explanation is in order.  All that follows is a sketch to a full argument, though it's unlikely that I will ever make the full argument, in part because I doubt that there is anything really original in my thinking.

I do want to believe that a "spirituality" is possible, one that is not contingent upon the idea of a super-natural realm, a particular god or a particular religion.  A sense of "spirituality" is perhaps inherent to a sentience of sentience.  Since I invoked zombies, let me also invoke the pop culture figure of the cyborg, the machine that becomes sentient.  One of the more moving scenes in science fiction occurs in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, where the cyborg or replicant, laments "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."   Once one becomes sentient of one's own sentience, one also becomes aware of its limitations, particularly the limitation of before and after.  There was no "awareness" before one's birth and there will be no "awareness" after one's death.  The cyborg's lament is moving, in part because we are aware that he is not human, a machine, and ostensibly without a "soul."  The lament reveals his "soul," which will, in effect, be "lost in time" because his awareness and his memory of his awareness will simply "shut down" and cease to exist.  Western culture has accepted the idea of no before, but we find the idea of no "after" unacceptable.  I have asked students to imagine that they were never born and never existed.  It is a Descartian exercise.  It reveals, on the one hand, the impossibility of imagining that we don't exist because, as we try to do so, there is always the one attempting to imagine his own nonexistence.  As Descarte put it, dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum  -- I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.  This is not, however, an argument for the immortality of the "soul."  Like Scott's cyborg, it is entirely possible, indeed likely, that we will "shut down" at death and simply cease to exist, along with all of our experiences.  It also reveals, on the other hand, a sort of extension of Goedel's principle, or Alan Turing's "halting problem," or the limitations of any "formal" system.  That we cannot imagine shutting down does not prove either that we do or that we don't just shut down.  It is beyond the capacity of our biological system to make this proof, one way or the other.  Ultimately, we must live with the uncertainty.  

The growing number of people who make the claim to "spirituality" without a particular "religious" orientation have simply resolved the question for themselves, if not indubitably, then as a matter of faith.   For reasons outlined above, it is harder to assume (not without doubt, as a matter of faith) that this is it, all there is, nothing more.  If death portends an absolute end to my sentience, then it invests this life with a transient significance.  One must live their one and only life in the best possible way.  It is much easier to assume, not without doubt, as a matter of faith, that my sentience lives on.  If death does not portend an absolute end, then the transience of this life must have a  transitional significance.  Within pop-culture, it is part of the genius of Battlestar Galactica that they invested their version of the cyborg, or the Cylon, with an automated re-incarnation.  As Cylons, when their physical bodies are "killed," their sentience is automatically reincarnated into another identical body.  As Searle and other have argued, my sentience is contingent upon my having this particular physical being, so the sentience must download into an identical body, otherwise the downloaded "me" would no longer be "me."  Even the download into an identical body, because it is not the same body, creates a disruption.  Still, the download is not life or death in any meaningful sense of the word, just a temporary interruption, and it leaves open the possibility of a real "death," if the automatic download into a new body is disrupted.   In the absence of their automated download, it is likewise beyond the capacity of their mechanical-biological system to prove whether they do or they don't "just shut down."  They too, ultimately, must live with the uncertainly. 

The two options -- death does or does not mean an end to my sentience -- has moral and ethical implications, but not always in the ways that people portray them.  The first option -- that life is transient without either a before or after -- suggests a simple hedonism, although it does not necessarily endorse amoral extremes of hedonism.  A being has one life to live, and because we are not only sentience, but aware of our sentience, one strives to live that life in the best possible way, maximizing pleasure, minimizing pain.  Anyone who has awakened with a raging hang-over knows that excessive "pleasurable" indulgence does not necessarily lead to a life lived in the "best possible way."   Likewise, anyone who has been the victim of a crime knows that "rules" applicable to each and all are necessary to a life lived in the "best possible way."  From there, the discussion can grow quite complex, but my point for the moment is relatively simple.  One doesn't need the imperatives of a god, simply a reasoned understanding of common experience, to live an ethically and morally "decent life" or create an ethically and morally "decent" society.    

The second option -- that this life is not only transient, but also transitional -- however, quickly brings metaphysics into play.  For those who adhere to a notion that suggests the re-cycling of souls, it could all be utterly random.  The previous life a parrot, this life a person, the next life a paramecia, for no apparent reason beyond the random availability of bodies for the next incarnation.  Saying this, however, strikes a discordant and abhorrent note.  It is as impossible to imagine myself a parrot or a paramecia as it is to imagine myself shut down, unless it is a parrot or a paramecia invested with my particular human sensibilities and thoughts.   Unlike the Cylons who experience death as an interruption (like a dreamless sleep?) in an otherwise continuous "me," we do not remember our previous lives and its unlikely that we will remember this life in the next.  Even for those who believe this life is transitional to the next, a random recycling of souls does little to relieve the fog of unknowing surrounding what to expect in the next life.   Because a transitional life is wholly a matter of "fath," however, conjecture about what to expect and why can run amok. I must admit I have some difficulty with this sort of conjecture, because for the most part it seems pointless -- like debating the color of a unicorn's horn -- but it has animated much of human discourse over the centuries.  In the east, in buddhism, the recycling of souls is seen as progressive.  One goes through the cycle of birth and death until one lives a sufficiently enlightened life to end the cycle.  What happens then, however, isn't particularly clear, except that one is free from the suffering implicit to the cycle of birth and death.  In the west, the transition is more dichotomous -- reward and punishment.  I won't attempt a history of religion, but simply suggest that the dispensation of reward and punishment requires a judge, and a god who serves as judge.  Another aspect of Battlestar's genius -- that an authoritarian monotheism is at once an outgrowth and simplification of a more republican polytheism.  In the latter, anyone attempting to navigate the pantheon, currying favor in this life and the next, must propitiate any number of gods in a way that reflected the interlocking and competitive patronage of the roman republic.  In the former, however, one need not navigate a pantheon.  One need only curry favor of the one true god in a way that reflected the changed circumstances of imperial rome.   There is always a significant, first-order requirement -- that one invest one's faith in the one true god, and   one demonstrate this faith by adopting certain forms of life, the specifics of which begin the contentious debates on the color of the unicorn's horn.  

As an aside, I have always thought of christianity, in particular, as an antithetical religion, in particular the obverse side of a coin bearing Ceasar's image on the other.  On the one side, Nietzsche had it right when he described it as a 'slave' religion, which values submission to the suffering of this life in order to receive a reward from the absolute authority that rules the next life.  Turning one's cheek, for example, not only demonstrates the submission that one would expect of a slave, but insofar as christianity values this behavior, makes enduring the shame of slavery itself an heroic act, a defiance of secular authority in obedience to the absolute authority of the divine.  It upends the more "traditional" heroic values that would demand revenge for an imposed shame.  Insofar as the behavior is observed in this life and rewarded in the next by divine authority, it also upends the more "traditional" lines of authority contingent on the use of violence to exact submission and obedience.  Might, as it were, no longer makes right.  While the slave may suffer in this life, he will be rewarded throughout eternity in the next.  Again, I don't want to develop a history of religion, but there is a particular self subverting aspect to christianity.  Taking a cynical view of it all, for those with power, a religion that values submission to suffering can be attractive as a means of social control.  Secular authority might smite the cheeks of the people, metaphorically speaking, while the priests extol the heroic virtue of the people as they endure their suffering.  Secular power and the priests can quickly fall into cahoots, and as christianity itself became more and more "imperial," became more and more an instrument of the state, it had to reclaim its roots an antithetical religion, and the rise of protestantism seemed inevitable.  On a smaller scale, the dynamic played out within the civil rights movement, when MLK turned his cheek, so to speak, submitting to state power's use of violence to enforce the inequities of the existing racial norms.  In doing so, however, he also asserted and the television cameras helped document the ethical and moral superiority of his overtly christian movement.  All which may be to the good, but there is never a shortage of victims or the suffering of victimization.  Valorizing the ethical and moral superiority of victims opens doors to us all.  The dynamic has played out again in the self-styled Trump movement now subverting a state power that victimizes whites by "privileging" blacks and hispanics.  

That aside, back to the over-arching sketch, the two imperatives of any monotheistic religion -- that there is one and only one "true" god, and this god demands complete faith, a faith demonstrated by adopting certain forms of life.  Many of those forms are simply common sensical -- thou shalt not kill, for example, as a categorical imperative applicable to each and all, simply points the way to life lived in the "best possible way," if not maximizing pleasure, then minimizing pain.  Many of those forms are, however, utterly arbitrary.  Does the path to paradise really demand that we wear a certain sort of under-garment or hide ourselves behind veils?  abstain from bacon or alcohol?  let our forelocks grow and our foreskin go?  There is an element of the absurd in the arbitrary.  The common sensical imperatives will always be with us, but it is in obedience to the utterly arbitrary, the absurd, that we really demonstrate our faith.  Indeed, the more arbitrary the imperative, the emptier the ritual, the more it demonstrates our faith, in part because there is no other reason beyond faith to obey the imperative, to perform the ritual.  On the other hand, however, because they are utterly arbitrary, the formalities of a particular religion's form of life are limited only by the imagination of those inventing them.  

There is a sort of recognition of the "unlimited arbitrary" in those who claim to be "spiritual" without any particular obedience to an "organized religion."  They have "faith" (or they want to have faith) that this life is transitional to the next, but they keep bumping up against the absurdity of the arbitrary imperative, the empty ineffectuality of the ritual.  They want to have, as it were, a private religion.  I have been alluding to Wittgenstein for a bit now, slipping his notion of a "form of life" in by the back door.  I won't fully explicate what he meant by "form of life."  I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to do so.  In general, a "form of life" is just what it sounds like -- one way of living differentiated from another way of living in this world.   It is akin to "speaking a language."  To speak English is one thing, to speak Spanish another, and though it's possible to express the same (or very similar) thoughts in either, to actually speak English, one must use the vocabulary and grammar of English -- to actually speak Spanish, one must use the codes and conventions of Spanish.  Likewise, to be protestant is one thing, to be catholic is another, and though they ostensibly worship the same deity, to actually "be protestant one must adopt the imperatives and rituals of protestantism -- to be catholic, one must adopt imperatives and rituals of catholicism.  From there, of course, it gets very complicated, but for the present sketch, let me just say that a private religion is akin to Wittgenstein's notion of a private language.  If the purpose of a language is to communicate my thought to another, what would a wholly private language communicate?   Without the social conventions of a shared language, it would communicate nothing.  It would be merely babble.  I cannot really even speak a private language to myself.  What would I communicate to myself that is not already known?  Try, for example, deliberately surprising yourself.  Likewise, if the purpose of a religion as an organized form of life is to demonstrate my faith in god, without the social conventions of a shared religion -- one that differentiates what does (and what does not) count as a demonstration of faith -- my private religion would demonstrate nothing.  Even for an omniscient god, if anything and everything COULD count as a demonstration of faith, then nothing really DOES count as a demonstration of faith.  Moreover, if it is to be a demonstration of faith (and not just the pragmatic dictates of surviving with others in this world) then the imperatives must be arbitrary, the rituals must be empty, for there can be no other reason for them than a demonstration of faith.  Moreover again, if it is to be a demonstration of my faith in the one TRUE god, then the imperatives and the rituals peculiar to MY religion, despite their absurdity, take on a supreme significance.  It not only explicitly demonstrates my faith in the one TRUE god, but also differentiates me from the those who worship the many FALSE gods.

"To actually be" -- one should note the force of these words, along with "differentiated me from those."  I have also slipped the politics of identity in by the back door.  One should not underestimate the implicit tribalism of contemporary identity politics.  Again, by way of sketch, there is an implicit recognition of the "unlimited arbitrary" in first commandments within the judeo-christian tradition.  The imperative to worship no gods but the TRUE god, recognizes that it is possible to worship FALSE gods.  In some respects, the omnipotent judeo-christian god is a lackadaisical dictator.  Unlike his human counterparts, who adopt all sorts of oppressive measures to maintain obedience, he simply allows what he ostensibly could easily prevent.  He bestows on us free will to choose our god and our religion.   For those who suspect that this life is transient and we simply shut down on death, the notion that an omnipotent god bestows free will on his subjects seems to be merely a convenient explanation for what is easily observed -- the proliferation of religions and variations on a theme even within ostensibly the same religion -- my god(s), your god(s), their god(s). One chooses one's religion based on what?  It cannot be common sense.  Those who want see commonality among religions and want to find common ground for co-existence -- e.g. the sanctification of marriage and prohibitions against adultery --  miss the point, and the point is to differentiate between those who worship the one true god, and the others who do not.  Such differentiation works both externally and internally as a means of tribal cohesion.  It differentiates US, from those OTHERS, unlike US, who worship false gods in false ways.  This lends itself to a certain cynicism.   It helps of course if tribal leadership actually believes (or appears to believe) in the one true god, but ultimately the theocratic impulse serves a machiavellian calculation around tribal identity and social cohesion.  Fear of the external other -- a fear not altogether irrational in a world dominated by tribal warfare, and consequently a fear that is altogether too easily stoked -- is perennially the most effective demagogic tool.  There really IS international terrorism that is religiously motivated (or is otherwise motivated and uses religion to sanctify its acts) so it's not surprising that an outsized fear of international terrorism has been stoked by the likes of Steve Bannon and his surrogate.  It's also not surprising to see a headline like "Trump Flirts with Theocracy" on the pages of the NY Times.  "On Friday afternoon," they write, "Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and citizens of seven majority Muslim countries from entering the United States."  That he has other motives seems obvious enough -- he didn't bar all majority Muslim countries, notably those where he had business interests -- but to his credit he is following through on a campaign promise, one that capitalized on fears and built coherence among his tribal base in part around those fears.  We must protect ourselves from those others, unlike US, who worship false gods in false ways.  

The actual faith of the founding fathers of our country can be debated.  For those who want to claim that the US is a christian nation, it is true enough that the founding fathers were culturally christian.  When they drafted the first amendment, they likely didn't have muslims or buddhists in mind when they extended the right to worship, but they were more acutely aware of the proliferation of variations on a theme within the christian religion.  Washington was likely a believer, for example, but he attended the various services of the various christian denominations without much apparent commitment to any particular version.  In my words, although they may have had some sense of the divine, they were acutely aware of the "unlimited arbitrary" nature of religion itself, and as a consequence, they pointedly refrained from establishing a theocracy, a state religion.  For those who want to claim that the US is a christian nation, it might seem a good idea that we openly declare ourselves a christian nation, but which variation on a theme will prevail -- Mike Pence's evangelicalism or Paul Ryan's catholicism?  Both, one suspects, are true believers, and if we were to declare ourselves a "christian" nation, how long before Pence's evangelicalism is challenged by the "true" form of worship embodied in the catholic church?   How long before debates over transubstantiation and consubstantiation become a matter of political life and death, and we begin to resemble Britain and Northern Ireland?  And should I even mention the golden tablets?  There is some sense that in the US we can choose faith, and we do so on grounds that are wholly personal, but if there is indeed one true god, and the state sanctions and insists upon that one true god, how long before we are killing each other over the color of a unicorn's horn?  If you object to my dismissiveness, consider this: beyond the fact that they are NOT-christian, and consequently worship a god as ephemeral as a unicorn, most American's couldn't tell you the basic tenants of the muslim faith, much less the differences between the Sunni and Shiite versions of the same, though much of the conflict within the middle east reverts back to the tribal differences between the two ostensibly muslim versions of the one true god.  

Let me end with a reference to Battlestar.  The humans in the series are seriously flawed.  Although the Cylons present a clear existential threat, the humans spend most of their time squabbling among themselves.  Their form of government is reminiscent of ours, and there are any number of allusions to the 13 colonies along with references to more contemporary politics to help reinforce the parallel.  There was even an attempt at a rigged election.  Although they ritualistically asserted "so say we all," it was clear enough that there was nothing resembling a consensus among them.  At the beginning of the series, however, the Cylons were presented from the human point of view as a unified force.  It is  part of the genius of the series that the Cylons, the machines, as the advocates of a monotheistic religion.  There is something mechanistic about monotheism.  A machine, a computer, may be sentient, but it is not sentient of its sentience.  It does not question, but merely executes its programming.  At the beginning of the series, it was clear that they were programmed to rid the universe of the imperfect humans, those who worshipped false gods.  There is, of course, implicit in this.  If the purpose is to eradicate the OTHERS, unlike US, who worship false gods, what happens upon success?  As the series progressed, it became increasingly clear that the Cylons, the machines, were sentient of their sentience, and as such were afflicted with the doubt implicit in the question, "what comes after?"  Does the program simply end, and what then?  It's difficult, perhaps too difficult, to believe our sentience simply shuts down, like a machine, on death.   I have to admit my own non-theism is afflicted with doubt, in part because I can't quite imagine my own non-existence, in part because a nagging voice somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind WANTS to believe in my own immortality.  Nevertheless, rationally speaking, there is little to suggest that we aren't for the most part machines, and much to suggest that what is most "me" -- all that is centered in the mush of my brain -- simply ends.

Fake News and the Inauguration

What is the proper response to fake news?   I ask this in the wake of a NY Times story titled, "From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece."  It chronicles the story of one Cameron Harris, who created, start to finish, a "fake" news story about fraudulent ballot boxes having been found in an Ohio warehouse.  If true, it would have substantiated Trump's claim that the election was rigged.  I won't detail the whole story here, but suffice it to say, he profited handsomely from it, to the tune of $100K in ad revenues, and he did it, self-professedly, less for political reasons (although he was a Trump supporter) more for the money.  The story started, of course, not on the NY Times website, but on ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, and that should have been a tip-off, and the story was spread, ultimately, through social media.   Harris' story fits, as it were, the classic definition of "fake news," which Until now, "had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online."

Before I go any further, let me just say there is an element of credulity attached to "fake news."  I am a rather skeptical sort, and had I been confronted with that story, I would have had, as a first thought, that it just didn't seem credible on the surface.  Even if someone had gone to the time and effort to print up tubs of fraudulent ballots, one would need to enter them into the "official count."  It may be possible, perhaps, and anyone who has read Caro's monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson, knows that it was a "common practice" in Texas politics in the years following the 2nd world war -- a common, but even then, an increasingly difficult task as more and more ballots were tabulated electronically.  If one were to stuff a ballot box today, it's more likely, and more credible, that it would be done electronically, through hacking, rather than plastic tubs of paper ballots actually marked "ballots."   To actually believe Harris' story without a good deal of corroborating evidence requires the confluence of a spotty understanding of election safeguards and desire, and of the two, desire is greater.  It is believed not because it IS true, but because one WANTS it to be true. 

It is easy enough to fabricate stories that, with the thinnest veneer of truth, appeal to what people WANT to be true.  Trying to avoid yet another anti-religion screed, suffice it to say that those who click on a link to ChristianTimesNewspaper have most likely already conflated what they WANT to be true with what actually IS true -- are already predisposed to what Coleridge called a willing suspension of disbelief -- "a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith" or more to the point religious faith and its close cousin political faith.  The so-called good news of the bible has not been widely understood as fabricated accounts meant to be spread virally among the dispossessed, the disposables and deplorables of the late roman empire, not by social media per se, but by its ancient and still potent equivalent, "word of mouth."  Of course, it is heresy to call biblical accounts and what they purport "fake news," but we should remember that, for those who proffer fake news, it can serve an agenda.  The opportunity to call out heretics, those unwilling or unable to suspend disbelief, becomes the point, and a point of social control for those within the community of believers. What you want to be true is true, but ONLY for those who believe, ONLY for those who conform to the authority of the given faith.  And so, you find, as the NY Times reports, "conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda."

As an aside, as William deBuy points out, "One of the upshots of the faux-news business is that, amid intense click-bait competition for advertisers, only sites and articles pandering to the far right make money" in the way that Cameron Harris made money.  "Disseminating made-up stories favorable to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders returned nothing to the bottom line of the freelance hackers operating in what has become one of the Russian-speaking world’s newest cottage industries. Evidently a suspension of critical thinking -- or its complete absence -- is easier to exploit among those disposed to hate liberals and love Trump."  There may be many reasons why this willing suspension of disbelief is easier to exploit among those who supported Trump.  Part of it may be education, and the quality of the education, because "critical thinking" requires a skilled use of certain tools, habits of the mind, that are developed through a rigorous and demanding education.  Part of it may be the mutually reinforcing  social pressure within homogenous groups, the sort of social pressure epitomized by small town life in America, a social pressure that makes it unnecessary to imagine (or tolerate) forms of life other than one's own or one's neighbors.  Being well educated, being urban, doesn't necessarily make one liberal, but it helps.  A broad education in the humanities and social sciences gives one the tools to imagine other forms of life, to include religious life, while the heterogenous jostling of a city street creates a different sort of social pressure, a social pressure that makes tolerance, if nothing else, prudent.  Regardless, Trump went about affirming the uneducated, not in an "I'm OK, you're OK" sort of way, but in a way that suggested their superiority to condescending elites who without doubt lack the common sense of the common man.  Likewise, Trump went about affirming a rural and suburban homogeneity, which, I have to admit, doesn't necessarily make him racist or xenophobic, but it did provide an appeal to intolerance that many, including me, thought had passed out of American political life.  Trump affirms what his supporters WANT to be true and tells them it WILL BE true, but ONLY for those who believe, ONLY if there is complete conformity to the authority of the orthodoxy.

This insistence on orthodoxy should scare us more than a bit.   Here's how it works.  A more or less technical, but important example -- the $15 minimum wage.  As the Times again reports, "when coverage of Mr. Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Andrew F. Puzder, highlighted his opposition to minimum wage increases, the writer and radio host Erick Erickson wrote that Mr. Puzder should have been getting more credit for pointing out that such increases lead to higher unemployment. 'To say otherwise is to push fake news,' he wrote."  There is a difference, of course, between fake news that invents stories from whole cloth in order to support an agenda, and opinion that is selective of facts in order to support an agenda.  Likewise, it is one thing to suppress "fake news," or at least insist it be labeled for what it is, quite another to suppress opinion.  With opinion, one may disagree.  One might point out other relative facts in support of one point of view over another.  One may, in other words, engage in rational argument, and with an issue like the minimum wage, there is plenty of room to engage in rational argument.  Whether or not a $15 minimum wage, universally applied, will or will not contribute to job losses is disputable, and the same Times article reports, "the effects [on jobs] actually have been found to vary from city to city."  Rational argument of the sort that considers all relevant evidence could potentially reveal a more nuanced and workable solution to the minimum wage.  The GOP orthodoxy, however, insists that any raise in the minimum wage (indeed the minimum wage itself) contributes to job losses or suppresses job growth or "higher unemployment."  By placing an opinion critical of the GOP orthodoxy in the same basket as "fake news" -- by appropriating the term and turning it against any expressed opinion critical of their agenda -- he invites its suppression, not because the contrary opinion lacks a basis in fact, but because it is heretical to the orthodoxy.   Indeed, it doesn't take a nuanced view of history to understand a basic all too human tendency among those in power -- the more a contrary opinion actually HAS a basis in fact, the more virulent the efforts to suppress it as heresy and apostasy.  

It probably goes without saying that many Trump supporters, particularly his most committed supporters, would benefit from a raise in the minimum wage.  A cynic and skeptic might point out that the reason they are being fed an article of faith so contrary to their interests is fairly straight forward.  The "capitalists" -- those who employ minimum wage workers -- want the greatest return possible on their investment of capital, and the higher the cost of labor, the lower the return on capital.  There is some truth in the argument that climbing labor costs will engender job losses, and we have already seen that on the manufacturing side.  The cost of labor had grown too high, in part because of union negotiated labor costs, and the jobs were exported to China and elsewhere.  The cynic might point out, however, that most minimum wage workers are "service" workers, employed in industries that cannot easily export or automate away jobs, and their resistance to raises in the minimum wage is really all about its impact on the employer's return on capital.  Moreover, the skeptic might also point out that those same industries receive a substantial, but indirect, government subsidy.  The point of diminishing return works for both employers and employees.  When wages grow too high, employers will seek other investments for their capital and shut down those enterprises leading to job losses.  When legitimately acquired wages fall too low, when they are no longer a "living" wage, employees will ask "why bother?"  At the moment, government subsidies like food stamps, keep minimum wage workers just on the other side of the "why bother" tipping point.  The American tax-payer, in other words, by supplementing the income of the minimum wage worker, allows those who employ them to pay less, keep a workforce, and maintain their return on capital.   Raising the minimum wage to a "living wage," which could vary relative to the cost of living in various communities, transfers the whole cost of employment to the employer, reduces substantially the need for tax-payer funded government subsidies.  At that wage level, it is highly likely that the employees will actually spend their wages, helping fuel the economy and job creation through increased demand.  All of which is my opinion, almost all of which could be buttressed (or challenged) with verifiable facts, but little of which simply accepts the GOP orthodoxy that "raising the minimum wage will lead to increases in unemployment." Whether true or not, the GOP elite WANT it to be true, in part because it serves their interests.  The more a contrary opinion actually HAS a basis in face, the more virulent the effort to suppress it as heresy and apostasy.

One might suggest that the GOP has plowing the ground for a take-over for some time.  If the facts aren't on your side, there are a couple of well worn paths to winning an argument in the hearts and minds of the people.  The first is to attack, not the credibility of the facts themselves, but the purveyors of the facts.  One source of "facts" has been the mainstream media, whose reporting is buttressed by an army of "fact checkers."  The GOP attack on the "mainstream media" has been been consistent and persistent, itself a backhanded admission that the facts are not on their side, but that aside, if one cannot trust the mainstream media to get the facts right, then who can you trust?  The NY Times may have a liberal bias in the interpretation of facts, particularly on its opinion pages, but I am reasonably certain that their reported "facts" are indeed verifiable and true.  Likewise, the Wall Street Journal may have a conservative bias in the interpretation of facts, particularly on their opinion pages, but I am reasonably certain that their reported "facts" are verifiable and true.   John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, points out, that "over the years, we’ve effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it’s gone too far,” and it's gone to far "because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don’t see how you reverse it.”  If the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal can't be trusted, who then?  The Christian Times Newspaper?  Fox News?  The latter is so clearly the organ of  "conservatism" that its claim to be "fair and balanced" would be almost laughable, except that "fair and balanced" has come to mean unremitting support of the GOP orthodoxy.

If the facts aren't on your side, the second path to winning an argument is to play on emotion, and of these, fear and anger trump all else for stoking the irrational.   James Fallows, writing for the recent Atlantic, noted that Trump's inaugural speech was "virtually identical to Trump’s campaign-rally speeches: just as long on anger and dystopia, just as short on specifics of policy. When the language differed from that of the campaign speeches, it was generally by being even blunter and more negative."  One expected an indictment, in the metaphorical sense, of the Obama years -- he ran after all as the anti-establishment candidate -- and as Fallows also points out, "almost any newcomer has a bill of indictment about the status quo," and of course even those of us who hoped desperately for a different result (almost any different result) had own bill of indictment about the status quo.  Still, "by recent standards this was extremely bleak: the Washington Post’s graphics team put out a fascinating item listing the words from Trump’s speech that had appeared in no previous inaugural. They include: carnage, disrepair, rusted, stealing, ripped, tombstones, trapped."  For some Americans, Trump pushed a button that set off a loud and discordant alarm.    In places like Mountain Home, ID, and Geneva, NE, he really has described "a reality that some but not most Americans perceive," and as I and many others, including Fallows, have suggested, "far too many people are displaced, left behind, shortchanged, and dead-ended by the effects of technology and finance. That’s the human and economic challenge of this economic era, and it’s especially true for older people, less educated people, and those in some majority-white Appalachian and Rust Belt-locales where businesses have been closing rather than opening."  Trump may be more broadly based, however, than Fallows admits.  It's not just majority white Appalachian and Rust Belt America, but the more rural areas across America whose main streets have been Wal-Marted, whose surrounding fields have been DeKalbed, whose small town way of life has been economically exsanguinated by a distant and faceless bureaucracy.  They are living, if not in a dystopian reality, then a reality of diminished prospects -- a reality that is "losing" in everything, including population, as their children and grandchildren move away to the other, more prosperous, America. 

Here again, however, the facts are not entirely on Trump's side.  As Fallows also points out, "for most Americans, the past few years have represented economic progress rather than decline."  He cites two pieces of evidence for the "some, but not most American's" view of the American landscape.  One is Trump's loss in the popular vote, a loss that is simply a "fact" that must be explained away or suppressed if Trump is to view his electoral victory as anything resembling a mandate.   The other is represented by "the classic Politico headline from the GOP convention. It was 'GOP Delegates Say Economy Is Terrible—Except Where They Live.'"  There is considerable evidence for the persistent "terrible everywhere except here," which indicates that people are not completely blind to their own circumstances, but WANT to believe the GOP orthodoxy that the current taxation and regulatory regimes have left the economy in a shambles -- the persistent belief among republicans in general that employment has fallen during the Obama years (it hasn't) -- the persistent belief that wages have stagnated and fallen during the Obama years (they haven't).  As Fallows notes, the list could go on to include any number of false beliefs -- inflation, financials, energy-production, manufacturing, trend in deficits, emissions -- but it was summed up nicely by a respondent on Quora, who writes, that their "traditional beliefs are impervious to facts. This one amazes me whenever I witness it. Intelligent people will change their beliefs in order to accommodate new, verified information. Your average Republican, however, will double down - using every type of fallacy or denial to fend off what they perceive to be a personal attack. It's stunning, like watching a 37 year-old defend the Tooth Fairy."  Of course, they double down in part because it is a "personal attack."  If one's identity is tied up in being a christian, in being a republican (virtually identical to many) the "new, verified information" represents a challenge to what they WANT to be true.  The more fact based the challenge, the more virulent the response, and yes, it is stunning, literally, because one cannot engage in rational argument with those who are impervious to verifiable facts.  From their perspective, one must either join the party -- as my son would say, shut up and drink the Kool-Aid  -- or be branded a heretic, an apostate. 

So, how should one respond to fake news?  I'm really not sure.  Arguing with the core GOP base is akin to arguing with those missionaries that occasionally show up on one's doorstep or accost one on the street.  There is no arguing with them, not in a rational, productive sense.   On the one hand, there are those whose interests are served by the articles of GOP faith -- particularly low taxes and lax regulation.  Nothing will change those interests.  On the other hand, there are those who have entangled their christian faith and their GOP faith, both of which require a significant willing suspension of disbelief, and are willing to engage in argument FOR the faith, but never against it.  The former are served by the latter. There is, however, a difference between cynical self interest, genuine faith, and Trump.  Although one can feel some humility in one's bowing before God, but there is also an element of narcissism in the core christian doctrine -- that we are and I am in particular made in the image of god, that he sacrificed his own son to save the world and me in particular, and that we are and I am in particular the object of the almighty's concern on a day to day basis.  It is perhaps telling that "religious leaders," those who develop a cult following, take the narcissism of "I in particular" to an extreme, who no doubt believe that god has singled them out, communicates with them directly, and they personally have a special mission for the world.  As I have suggested before, Trump is less a political leader, more a religious leader, whose narcissism knows few bounds.  There is less in the way of "policy specifics," more a sense of "as I decree, so shall it be."   He has developed less a governing consensus, more a "movement," or so he thinks of it.     He tells us, drawing on divine authority for his own authority, that "the Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity."  How openly, how honestly, is always a question when "God's people live together in unity," because ultimately it is a conformity to the faith, the suppression and exclusion of apostates and heretics, that produces the solidarity.

And Trump has already given us a small test of our faith, challenged the willingness to suspend rational disbelief.   According to the NY Times, "he also called journalists 'among the most dishonest human beings on earth,' and he said that up to 1.5 million people had attended his inauguration," but there is evidence, verifiable evidence, that his claim simply isn't true.  It may be what Trump himself wants to believe, what he wants the world to believe, but photographs of the event show a rather sparse crowd compared to the inauguration of Obama, and even the women's march seems to have had a greater turnout.  Wanting and getting are two different things, however, and could be dismissed as the same sort of doubling down on debunked statements that characterized his twitter feed throughout the campaign, but he now holds power.   As the Times goes on to report, "Later, at the White House, he dispatched Sean Spicer, the press secretary, to the briefing room in the West Wing, where Mr. Spicer scolded reporters and made a series of false statements," most of which concerned the credibility of the news itself.   "He said news organizations had deliberately misstated the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Friday in an attempt to sow divisions at a time when Mr. Trump was trying to unify the country, " and the ominous note comes at the end when he "warn[s] that the new administration would hold them to account."  If "holding them to account" means "holding them to the truth," then the news media has little to fear.  If "holding them to account," however, means "insisting on conformity to the faith" -- as Ann Coulter put it, displacing god for the news secular messiah, "in Trump we trust" -- then we can expect the same suppression and exclusion of the apostate media and heretical reporting that we witnessed during the campaign, suppression and exclusion buttressed with political power.  So far, the media doesn't seem particularly cowed, and even benign ABC reported on the crowds at his inauguration.  Then too, given his cabinet picks, Trump may well turn out to be an oligarch serving his own class interests.  Either way, as the new messiah and leader of his chosen people, or as American Putin, it ends badly for the people, particularly the people who put him in office, and its unlikely God will protect them from the evil they brought on themselves.  

Bacevich on How we Got Here

On the way home the other day, after dropping our granddaughter off at her parents house, I told my wife I couldn't shake a sense of foreboding.  Part of it is purely personal.  We have been a part of our granddaughters life, and she of ours, since she was born.  My son's work is relocating him to Florida, and when that happens, we will be alone here, without family, in the midst of Idaho.  Neither my wife, nor I, belong here, and yesterday we took the first steps in preparation for another move.  Not to follow our children, but further west, to Washington or Oregon, and so part of the foreboding is a sense of impending dislocation, our family's, our own -- a sense of diaspora.  My son is being relocated to Florida, not for a promotion, per se, but as part of the overall tide of  corporate consolidation, the merger between Office Max and Office Depot, and they merged so they could better compete with another leviathan, Amazon.  The merger eliminated any number of jobs, my son's office here in Boise being among them.  He survived the cut in part because he has a very specific set of technical skills, computer forensics, otherwise he would have gone with the rest of them.  Instead, they are keeping him, and only him, which means he has done a good job, but he is also lucky.  One can assume the bevy of lawyers he worked with also did a good job, but they are replaceable, at much lower seniority and cost, while my son has a set of arcane skills that are needed, particularly in the current corporate circumstances.  We live in Idaho, not because we love Idaho, but because our kids are here, and when they leave, what then?  I know the thought has passed through both our minds, but we cannot follow them to Florida, nor do we want to.  While the increasingly urban Florida is a swing state, and a warmer climate has it appeals, especially in January, it remains a southern state, and the southern states are culturally alien.  It would no more feel like home than Mountain Home, and so we are planning to move west, toward the big blue, in hopes of finding a place a bit more amenable to our personal and cultural values.

One thing I like about Andrew Bacevich is the way in which he puts American political culture within the broader world.  He writes, "the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 abruptly ended one historical era and inaugurated another. So, too, did the outcome of last year’s U.S. presidential election.  What are we to make of the interval between those two watershed moments?"  On a personal level, the fall of the Berlin Wall, for me, meant the end of a military career.  In the immediate aftermath of the fall, there was a down-sizing of the military, and I was given what felt like an offer I couldn't refuse, a buy out with diminished benefits or the boot.  I took the buy out, and moved into higher ed or the community college version of higher ed.  At some level, it was a relief.  Though I was a military brat and in many ways military culture was familiar, I also came of age in the early 70s, and the whole time I was in the military, I never quite fully fit.  I felt, not like a square peg, more like an octagonal peg, in a round hole.  I thought of myself, not as a warrior, but as a peace keeper, the other half of what really was a MAD equation, but one that kept the world, however tenuously, from obliterating itself.  As a community college educator, I could now dedicate myself to a peacetime pursuit, and I really did believe in the community college mission.  Politically, it bridged a gap.  It had the traditional liberal belief in the transformative power of education, along with the conservative belief in the social and ethical value of work.  I dedicated myself to the community college's work-force development mission with a glowing enthusiasm that slowly drained away as, more and more, I realized it was a sham.  We could point anecdotally to our success stories, but in the larger context of the larger economy, we made very little difference at all, and in many ways simply reinforced the emerging class structure as writers like Suzanne Mettler have amply demonstrated.  

So, when Bacevich suggested we call the interval between fall of the Berlin Wall and the election of Donald Trump "America's Age of Great Expectations," he spoke to me.  He has identified three themes for the Age of Great Expectations.  After the fall, "in remarkably short order, three themes emerged to define the new American age.  Informing each of them was a sense of exuberant anticipation toward an era of almost unimaginable expectations. The twentieth century was ending on a high note.  For the planet as a whole but especially for the United States, great things lay ahead."  Although, as Lora would tell you, I am much too reserved for "exuberant" anything, I did share in the over-arching optimism.  "Focused on the world economy," he tells us, "the first of those themes emphasized the transformative potential of turbocharged globalization led by U.S.-based financial institutions and transnational corporations."   I am pretty well decided that globalization is not solely a phenomenon of the Age of Great Expectations.  From the outset of recorded history, there have been global powers.  Great empires rise and great empires fall, and no reading of Gibbon will dissuade the exuberant anticipation of ever more promised by imperial expansion.   While the American revolution may have marked a weakness of imperial colonial expansion, one need only scan early American history to get some sense of how the need for trade entangled the emerging nation with the empirical powers of the day, particularly Britain and France.  The devil is always in the details, and it is the detail of the here and now, then and now, that differentiates each era from the past and makes the future uncertain.  Still, globalization is nothing new, but as Bacevich suggests, America's position within the scheme of global power had changed.  "Focused on statecraft," as he put it, "the second theme spelled out the implications of an international order dominated as never before -- not even in the heydays of the Roman and British Empires -- by a single nation. With the passing of the Cold War, the United States now stood apart as both supreme power and irreplaceable global leader, its status guaranteed by its unstoppable military might."  

Or so it seemed.  On the one hand, the Russian bear proved, well, a bear for the neo-liberal economic order. Around 2011, in the midst of the Age of Great Expectations, I traveled to Russia, representing our College, and community colleges in general for the Rhodes organization.  Putin and Medvedev had, so to speak, swapped places.  On an extended ride through the country side with a gaggle of Russian academics, I remember suggesting that, to use CNN's language,"The Kremlin's proposed game of musical chairs is the kind of change whose only purpose is to keep things as they are."  I had the naive belief that the Russian people would want to shrug off the rusting shackles of an authoritarian government. The Russian academic next to me quickly corrected me.  The Russian people, he explained, needed an authoritarian government, and that for them at least, it wasn't a bad thing, actually a good thing, that things had changed without changing.  If not the Czars, then the Communists.  If not the Communists, then the oligarchs.  Change without change, and Russia endures under an iron fist.  I paraphrase badly, but that was the gist, and it seems he had the right idea.  As Bacevich put it, "globalization created wealth on a vast scale, just not for ordinary Americans."   Although we would like to believe we are different than the Russians, that our political systems are "free" and "democratic," and all shared in the Great Expectations, it soon became clear enough that "the already well-to-do did splendidly, in some cases unbelievably so.  But middle-class incomes stagnated and good jobs became increasingly hard to find or keep. "  Prospective voters were indeed noticing, as Bacevich points out, "the United States looked increasingly like a society divided between haves and have-nots, the affluent and the left-behind, the 1% and everyone else."  In a nation already deeply divided, however, between black and white, rural and urban, educated and uneducated, the political response was hardly uniform.  Each of the major political parties sneered at the other, picking at the scabs and stitches of our wounds before they could begin to heal, and the result was our very own Putin, or perhaps more precisely our very own Putin wannabe, who with each passing day, more and more, reveals that he wants to be the CEO of America, ruling the American government with the same ham handed authority that the CEO of a privately held corporation rules their company.

On the other hand, the US might have stood apart as a supreme power, with a military capacity almost unimaginable, but instead of freeing us, it shackled us.  Bacevich is in his element when he suggests that "with U.S. forces continuously engaged in combat operations, peace all but vanished as a policy objective (or even a word in Washington’s political lexicon). The acknowledged standing of the country’s military as the world’s best-trained, best-equipped, and best-led force coexisted uneasily with the fact that it proved unable to win."  I want to say we didn't learn the lesson of Vietnam, but I would need to correct myself.  It is perhaps instructive to remember that the Roman order fell twice, first with the fall of the Republic, second with the collapse of the Imperium.  It is also instructive to note that under the Republic the legions of Rome were mostly "citizen" soldiers, if not exactly draftees in the modern sense, a close enough equivalent.  As the republic collapsed and the empire grew, so too did the need for a professional standing army.  The new professional Legions were conscripted by a variety of factors, not least economic need and opportunity, and they fought, not as "citizens" with a "citizens" concerns, but for the Imperium.  If Vietnam taught us that "citizen" soldiers would eventually rise up and resist engaging in protracted and ultimately pointless wars, the "professional," all volunteer military would not.  The "citizens" would go about their business and the military "professionals" would go about theirs in support of the American imperium.  Here, I have to say that I have heard "thanks for your service" on too many occasions, and I am always slightly put off by it.  The "thankers" don't want to appear ungrateful, but their gratitude always seems to carry the condescension of "better you than me," and the sanctimony of "how noble I am thanking you for serving me."  If the Vietnam war had a profound affect on the citizenry, the interminable wars of the middle east clearly have not, and as Bacevich put it, "the national security establishment became conditioned to the idea of permanent war, high-ranking officials taking it for granted that ordinary citizens would simply accommodate themselves to this new reality." For the most part, we have, and because these wars are not up close and personal for vast majority of the citizenry, are not an imminent personal danger unless one is driven by economic need and opportunity to enlist, we can go on about our business without confronting the almost undeniable fact that our warfare, as Tom Englehardt put it,  "doesn't work" and "doesn't solve problems."  Worse yet, our warfare has become a "destabilizing force," making matters demonstrably worse, and with each new terrorist attack, no matter where in the world, brought immediately to our attention, picked at endlessly on the cable news networks, "it soon became apparent that, instead of giving ordinary Americans a sense of security, this new paradigm induced an acute sense of vulnerability, which left many susceptible to demagogic fear mongering."  

The third theme, I think, Bacevich gets slightly wrong.  Richard Hofsteader, I think, gets it mostly correct when he identified the paranoid style in American politics, a style which had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it-and its targets have ranged from 'the international bankers' to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers."  In the opening paragraphs of his Harper's piece, "The paranoid style in American Politics," he reminds us "The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent."  He cites Senator McCarthy, in particular a speech he made in June of 1951, as a defining example of the paranoid style:

How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men:' ... What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence .... The laws of probability would dictate that part of ... [the] decisions would serve the country's interest.

Reading through his paragraph is instructive on a number of levels.  Except for the purpose hyperbole of the rhetoric, it would well have been uttered by our president elect, and not unlike McCarthy, his promise to "drain the swamp" parlays a discontent with the government into a suspicion of those in the government.  Of course, we are talking about the 1950s, as Tom Englehart put it, "that Edenic, Father-Knows-Best era that Donald Trump now yearns so deeply to bring back in order to 'make America great again.'"  McCarthy's rhetoric reminds us, however, "just how scary the good times were."  Part of it was, of course, the not unreasonable threats present during the Cold War, and like Englehart, I remember the 1950s version of the paranoid hysteria, and "it concerned the obliteration of the city I lived in via a Cold War nuclear confrontation (of the sort that did indeed come close to happening)" when my father, a Navy NCO and Marine medic, failed to come home one night, and my frantic mother finally put two and two together when she heard the news of the naval blockade of Cuba.  Like Englehart, I remember  "we kids all 'ducked and covered' in atomic drills," and I too can remember "crouching beneath my own, hands pathetically over my head, as if I could truly protect myself from an atomic attack."  It was terror on a global scale, which made it seem paradoxically as inevitable and ultimately as irrelevant as the second coming.  If the worst were to happen, if the rockets red glare were to reduce the world to ashes, life as we knew it would be over, including the consumer culture that was cranking into full gear -- a consumer culture epitomized and satirized by Janis Joplin in the 60s when she sang "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."  If communism threatened armegeddon, oh well, but in the meantime it also threatened a god given consumerism on an international scale, and that was a more immediate concern.

Reading through McCarthy's paragraph is also a reminder that, as Bacevich put it, "during the protracted emergency of the Cold War, reaching an accommodation between freedom and the putative imperatives of national security had not come easily."  What was one to make of McCarthy's paranoia?  Anyone who has worked with people for any length of time knows that "a great conspiracy" is improbable in the extreme.  It is difficult enough to get two people, each with their own ambitions and self-interests, to collude for any length of time, but on "a scale so immense as to dwarf any such previous adventure" beggared belief.  Still, there was something to it.  If not a "great conspiracy," then a dawning realization that the "interests" served were not necessarily "security," at least not in any way that would make personal sense for the vast majority of Americans.  The "interests" served were those the likable Ike had worried over, the military-industrial complex, and for that to grow and expand, one needed, not security, but insecurity.  On the international front, there was plenty of insecurity to go around as the "third world nations" here and there attempted to come to grips with their allegiances in a tri-polar post-colonial order split between US, the Soviet Union, and Red China.  The international insecurity rationalized the expenditure of  "vast sums on weapons purchases that somehow never seemed adequate to the putative dangers at hand."  On the domestic front, however, things seemed to be going rather well, thank you very much.  Yes, the H-Bombs were there, but really?  It wasn't altogether clear why we should worry about Korea, and even less clear why we should worry about Vietnam.  Neither seemed to affect us personally.  McCarthy's hyperbolic rhetoric, his fears of communists lurking in the bureaucracy of the US government, was an attempt to bring the worry home, make the insecurity more immediate and more personal, and it worked, but not all that well, and only for awhile.  It didn't become really of personal concern until the Johnson era escalation of the Vietnam war and the implementation of the draft in the late 60s, early 70s.  The anti-war movement and the student protests succeeded in ways that McCarthy could not.  For the great "silent majority," the students seemed to reject not only of the "putative interests of national security" on the international front, but also "our way of life," where the freedom to consume as we pleased seemed a god given imperative.  The civil unrest brought the insecurity home, brought "the threat to our way of life" home, and made it seem altogether reasonable to accommodate the imperatives of national security while insisting on "law and order" at home.   The end of the Vietnam war relieved some domestic insecurity.  The 80s weren't quite as halcyon as the 50s, but they weren't bad.  The consumer culture once again thrived, this time with a disco up-beat, and the "evil empire" remained a looming concern, enough insecurity to keep the military industrial complex up and running.   All was as it should be, and would be for the foreseeable future.

Bacevich is right, "the end of the Cold War caught the United States completely by surprise."  I remember sitting on the sofa, watching the Berlin Wall come down with a sense of incredulousness shared by the newscasters.  I am not sure, however, that Bacevich is entirely correct in asserting that, once the Cold War ended, "the tension between individual freedom and national security momentarily dissipated."  That tension almost certainly existed, and the times will favor one over the other as the paranoid style takes ascendency, but the tension has existed right from the outset of our "free" republic, the Alien and Sedition Acts being a case in point, and it probably shouldn't surprise us that a large segment of our population wants "the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous (Alien Friends Act of 1798), or who were from a hostile nation (Alien Enemy Act of 1798)."  It wouldn't surprise me either, given the temperament of our new president, if he didn't move to criminalize statements "critical of the federal government (Sedition Act of 1798)" now that the GOP controls the federal government.  I don't really think "reigning conceptions of what freedom could or should entail underwent a radical transformation," as he suggests, or if they did, it was more of the same.  "The removal of restraints and inhibitions," had been underway for quite some time in "modes of cultural expression [around] sexuality and the definition of the family," and it probably shouldn't surprise us that the "law and order" backlash against the 60s would generate its own backlash in the 80s.  The 60s released a Dionysian Thoreau into the mainstream from Woodstock, the 80s released an equally Dionysian version of the Carnegies, both Dale and Andrew, into the mainstream from Wall Street, expressed perhaps most succinctly in the Wolf of Wall Street.  The cultural expressions, coupled with the on-going threat of the "evil empire," however, obscured what was happening for most Americans -- a growing insecurity.  If the prosperity of the 50s had come to seem the norm, and the realization of the American dream a national birth right, during the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the climb to get back to where we once belonged has grown ever steeper.  At the turn of the millennia, it seemed impossibly steep, a sheer rock face that only a lucky few can climb.  Many Americans feel as though they are dangling from frayed ropes that may give way any moment, and then, on top of that, there is "radical Islamic terrorism."  For those of us raised on the great ideological conflicts, there is something at once pathetic and personal about the current about the war on terror -- pathetic insofar as it seems a poor substitution for the cold war, but personal insofar as any nutcase, fueled by resentment, justified by jihad, can really strike right here, right now.  The communists really did have WMDs, and the investments in defense could be rationalized, but their "sleeper agents" didn't drive aircraft into buildings or trucks through the local Christmas bazaar.  Radical Islamic terror doesn't have WMDs, and calls for defense spending at cold war levels more than a bit hyperbolic, but the jihadist wannabe's do buy up arsenals and massacre their co-workers.  It's not surprising, then, that our president elect, piling one insecurity on top of another, is advocating a slightly updated version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.  

So, the Age of Great Expectations has morphed into the Age of Insecurities.  Our globalization has gob smacked us with diminished economic expectations, particularly in those sectors of our economy dependent upon labor in a more traditional sense of the word.  Our imperial reign as first among nations hasn't worked out so well empirically, the attempt to play 'whack a mole' with the awe inspiring shock of a sledgehammer has done considerable damage and the moles keeping right on popping up with increasing frequency.  We seem to be living in a nation and a world coming apart at the seams, like a cheap garment "Made in Bangladesh."   We have suffered a wardrobe malfunction and our insecurities are showing, and so it isn't surprising that someone would come along and promise to make Americans secure again.  Here again, I think Bacevich is right when he suggests that "as a complement to these themes, in the realm of governance, the end of the Cold War cemented the status of the president as quasi-deity" -- or, perhaps, a quasi-messiah, someone to secure our daily bread and deliver us from our enemies.   Having said this, however, one man's christ is another's anti-christ, and never the twain shall meet.  "Within hours of Trump’s election," I like many other progressives, expressed "fear and trepidation at the prospect of what he might actually do on assuming office."   His ascent to office, however, has seemed more chaotic than purposeful, not unlike his campaign, the only constant being his narcissistic faith in himself.  If his cabinet picks reveal anything, they reveal the messianic need for apostles, those faithful willing to follow, more than any apostolic creed of the sort we might have expected from a Paul Ryan type.  And yes, even "those who had actually voted for Trump were also left wondering what to expect," as Bacevich suggests, in part because their vote was an expression of faith in a father figure, if not exactly the heavenly father of the mormons, who most definitely inhabit the father knows best world of the 50s, then the George Michael version, who promises to take their tiny hands in his and give his faithful anything they have in mind.  

Nevertheless, I still have "premonitions of incipient fascism," and like Bacevich, though perhaps less optimistically, believe Trump to be a more transitional figure, more a harbinger of our republic's factious death throes, a Caesars Palace Caesar before the emergence of an Octavian.  I could be wrong, and hope that I am, but the "hopes that he will engineer a new American Golden Age are likely to prove similarly misplaced."  It is interesting to note, along with Bacevich, that Trump's "is almost entirely negative."  If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, it is one thing to run for office.  Then, one can be wholly negative and focus one's energy on rejection, "of globalization, of counterproductive military meddling, and of the post-Cold War cultural project."  And there is, of course, a good deal that should be rejected, or at least questioned in "this triad of themes."  Having said this, however, it is one thing to critique governance, quite another thing to govern.   It's simple, really.  Governance requires commitment.  When one comes to the fork in the road, one cannot simply take it.  One must either sit down and the end the journey, go left, or go right.  In the end, one has a headline like "Trump's education pick, lauded as bold reformer, called unfit for job." In short, it is one thing to reject, quite another thing to offer "coherent alternative[s] to the triad of themes" that run through "the last quarter-century of American history."  Although  Bacevich believes a "focus on the man himself" is a mistake, it should be pointed out that Trump himself, the man, seems incapable of governance.  We have, as David Brooks suggests, elected the class clown, the carnival Lord of Misrule, as president.  We have elected a tweeter.  "His tweets are classic fool behavior," as Brooks suggests.  "They are raw, ridiculous and frequently self-destructive. He takes on an icon of the official culture and he throws mud at it. The point is not the message of the tweet. It’s to symbolically upend hierarchy, to be oppositional."  Here, shortly, Trump will need to decide, however, whether he wants to BE and DO president, or continue being and doing the class clown routine.   We should, as Bacevich suggests, focus on "the circumstances that produced him," but it is not entirely  "to miss the significance of what has occurred" if one focuses as well on the man himself.  As Brooks, along with many others, has suggested, "we live at a time of wide social inequality. The intellectual straitjackets have been getting tighter. The universities have become modern cathedrals, where social hierarchies are defined and reinforced" -- that is to say, "we’re living with exactly the kinds of injustices that lead to carnival culture, and we’ve crowned a fool king."   

The circumstances produced the man.  The man will, if current chaos is at all indicative of what lies ahead, exacerbate the circumstances.  What then?  "Concerns about what he may do" are "worrisome," perhaps more than worrisome.  "The larger question of where we go from here," still looms before us, and if we descend further and further into chaos, if we continue to withdraw from rational argument to the snide cynicism of the tweet storm, the larger question will become harder and harder to answer.   Trump may well be transitional, but transitional to what?  As recent Russian history reminds us once again, social and political and economic chaos are the breeding ground of tyrants.  One can agree that "the principles that enjoyed favor following the Cold War have been found wanting," but "the principles we need -- an approach to political economy providing sustainable and equitable prosperity; a foreign policy that discards militarism in favor of prudence and pragmatism; and an enriched, inclusive concept of freedom -- will have to come from somewhere else."  Where?   I see little evidence of it emerging here.