Trump

Again, I have to confess to a morbid fascination with the Republican party of late.  Here again, I am not the first to say it, and I probably won't be the last, but it is difficult to "normalize" Donald Trump as a candidate.  He has played the republican party for a sucker, and they didn't exactly fall for it, but couldn't quite believe "it could happen here."   It has now happened, or is coming closer to happening, and their scramble to "unify" the party at one level points to a deep pathology that would be pathetic were it not, mostly, irrelevant.  While I might revel in their disarray, I don't know that the American public much cares if the republican party is united or not.  They continue, as it were, to miss the point of Trump.  He is not the result of party politics, but he has transcended party politics.  He doesn't have a "platform" on the issues, and whatever he has said in the past, is now "just a suggestion."  It is, of course, by definition, "just a suggestion." Anything said by a candidate is "just a suggestion," but it is either a direction that will be pursued or it is not.  One believes that Clinton or Sanders will do their best to take the country in the direction of their "suggestions," but with Trump the whole matter of platform is irrelevant.  He is the Nietzschian messiah, the one who has transcended the corruption of the politics and has "sacrificed himself to make American great again," to use the words of one responder to a critical Post article.  

The idea that Trump has "sacrificed himself," is ludicrous, but one cannot help but hear the resonance of the responder's language.  In the end, we have to remember that Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, not because the party elites selected and promoted him as such.  He is the presumptive nominee DESPITE their promotion of others, DESPITE their denigration of his candidacy, and he is where he is because "republican voters" have put him there.   The Trumpian theme song should be Megan Trainer's "it's all about that base, 'bout that base, no treble," because the shrill voices of the republican elite have had little or no effect on the Trump ascendancy, and he is where he is because the "republican voter," the "republican base," have put him there.   The Posts, both Washington and Huffington, Politico -- really all the more conventional news sources, even Fox News -- want to treat Trump as a "candidate" for a constitutionally defined "office" in the US government.  The office happens to the be presidency, and so has outsized importance, but they really want to cast the election as a run for "office."  Trump is not running as a "candidate" for a constitutionally bound "office," whose policy platform will help put America back on track, but as the new messiah, as an American savior.  The office, and the constitution that defines it, will be irrelevant.  Once elected, once given a mandate of the people, Trump and only Trump will be relevant.

Trump, of course, is a "huge" narcissist, a narcissist's narcissist, but to diagnose his core pathology is just too easy.  It's credible, for example, that he called a news source, posing as someone else, to sing his own praises and boast of his sexual prowess, among other things.  He believes, and so too should you believe BECAUSE he so absolutely believes in himself.  He is Trump.   I want to believe, however, that it will all prove to be a monumental practical joke.  There was a season of American Idol, where a truly awful singer was put forward by the "voters" in the audience.  As the field narrowed, and more and more were "in" on the joke, they continued to put him forward, not because they believed he was a good singer, but because they could.  In the end, he didn't become the next American Idol, and one hopes the idolatry of Trump is just as shallow, but one suspects not.  It may be a monumental practical joke, but it's altogether too credible that he is where he is because the "republican voter," the "republican base, actually WANT him there.  Beyond his core pathology,  it is again just too easy, based on past statements, to diagnose his attendant pathologies.  He is a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, among other things.  The evidence in support of his pathologies is just too extensive, and again just too credible, to be ignored.  Those pathologies SHOULD matter to the republican voter, the republican base, but in the end they just don't seem relevant, but why?

It is heretical to suggest that his pathologies reflect the pathologies within the American public, but the conclusion seems to be inescapable.  Trump gives license to our baser impulses in ways that a comedian like Andrew Dice Clay could not give license to our baser impulses, but was "entertaining" nevertheless because he gave himself license to parade those baser impulses.   He is just so BAD, and falls for some into that camp of the villain we love to hate, for others a vicarious wish fulfillment.  Andrew Dice Clay, after all, is JUST a comedian, nothing to be taken too seriously, and it might have been possible to view Trump as JUST a reality show celebrity, nothing to be taken too seriously, except he was not delivering stand-up punch lines fraught with irony.   He was delivering what to many, altogether too many, was a "serious" response to the sorry state of our nation,  devoid of irony, but rife with those attitudes expressed all too apocalyptically on talk radio, and only slightly less so on Fox News, again devoid of irony.   The nation's savior would come, wearing a big R on his chest, and lo!  he appeared, not only with the R, but a ball cap that promised he would make America great again.  It is not surprising that the republican voter, the republican base, filled with a steady stream of fear and loathing by the paranoid ranting of talk radio and only slightly less paranoid ranting of Fox News, responded.  It would be surprising if they had not responded.

The Alter of Wealth

So, on to the heresy.  He is Trump, our savior, first and foremost, because the American people worship at the alter of wealth.  Americans have always had a complex relationship with wealth.  Max Weber traced it brilliantly in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  Although a broad brush, in the absence of the catholic assurance of salvation that came through the authority of priests and their absolution, one had to look for "signs" to assure one's self that one was saved, one of the "elect."  First among the "signs" was, of course, wealth.  Here, I should probably distinguish between monies sufficient to "earning a living" and "wealth."  It is one thing to earn enough money to live, even to live comfortably.  It is quite another thing to accumulate capital in excess of a comfortable life, money that can be saved or invested.   In the protestant ethic -- and this should sound familiar -- one was simply expected to work hard enough at one's calling to "earn a living."  It was a minimum condition.  We weren't in Eden.  We were fallen men and women, cursed with the original sin to labor, and so we should labor.  Those who did not labor were damned, both in this world and the next, while those who did, fulfilled God's command.  If one followed one's god given calling with enough zeal, enough faith, then one would not only "make a living," but accumulate wealth.  It became the principle sign of one's "election," one's favor with God.  Although there were prohibitions against ostentatious display of wealth among our early christian forebears, it didn't hurt that wealth was also brought with it social recognition and power.

How easily this connects up with the more contemporary idea of "meritocracy."   Although Jefferson's phrase, "pursuit of happiness" opened the door a bit to secular "signs" other than accumulated wealth, behind it nevertheless lay the notion of labor in the "pursuit."  Again, as a sort of minimum condition, one was expected to labor in order to "merit" or deserve one's happiness.     Labor, of course, differentiated the "aristocracy," those who inherited their happy condition, from the "meritocracy," those who labored with greater success and accumulated the sorts of wealth that brought social recognition and power -- those who "merited" or "deserved" their happy condition.     Hard work, in other words, was a minimal condition, but those "labored with greater success" had, one assumed, personal characteristics that allowed them to do so.  They had "intelligence" or "grit," to use the popular term for dogged perseverance, that allowed them to gain wealth along with the social recognition and power wealth bestowed.  Their wealth was a sufficient indication that they were more "meritorious" human beings, a "natural" as opposed to an "inherited" aristocracy, and so deserved their happiness.  One hears the converse of this as well.  The coal miner who has just been laid off saying, "if god had given me the smarts and I'd gone to school, I could've been boss."  One hears the resignation, not only to one's inferior status, but one's inferior "merit" as a human being.  They "merit" their poor fortune.

Trump, first and foremost, is wealthy.  He believes so thoroughly that he labored with greater success than virtually anyone else that his wealth becomes for virtually everyone else a sufficient indication of his inherent superiority, his inherent greatness.  He believes so thoroughly that were he to labor on behalf of the American people, then clearly the American people should believe, have no reason to doubt, that they would benefit.  Position and policy are irrelevant.  Trump is bestowing himself on the American people.  Trump, of course, won't release his tax returns for a variety of reasons, or so we can speculate.  They might reveal, for example, that his business interests are the sort that allowed for "out-sourcing" of American jobs, denying otherwise good Americans the opportunity to meet the minimal condition, to labor and "earn their living."  They do not want a "hand out," and despise those who do, but they DO want the opportunity to have a job and profit from their labor.   They might reveal, for example, that his accumulated wealth isn't quite what he makes it out to be -- that he might not be so "naturally endowed" as his hubris might want us to believe.  Though he portrays himself as the consummate "deal maker," his powers are already under question.  For the bumper sticker crowd, it's not so much "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"  It's more, "if you're so smart, why aren't you richer?"  He started with a fortune that would make most power ball winners envious, and whatever his labors at the deal might have been, they were not as wildly successful as he would have us believe.  Had he invested in an indexed mutual fund, or so it is estimated, he would have had the same gains.  Finally, they might reveal, for example, that he labored essentially not at all -- that most of his accumulated wealth came not from his vaunted "deals," many of which led to well publicized bankruptcies, but from simple capital gains on his inherited wealth.   His tax returns, in short, might prove to the fatal pin-prick to his inflated, fatuous (and one suspects flatulent) hubris and the confidence of his worshipers.

At the Alter of Hate

The other day, for reasons that are mysterious to me, I was thinking about the Salem witch trials.  Perhaps because they're reviving Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" on Broadway and they interviewed the director or one of the actors on PBS.  Something of that sort.   It was written about the Salem witch trials.  I won't summarize the plot.  The historical events are familiar enough in broad outline, and it is easy enough to poo-pooh something like the witch trials as a wholly historical aberration,  something that couldn't possibly happen today, because, well, we have moved beyond witches and such things.    I am not so sure we have, and we find politicians, like Cruz, or his father, literally "demonizing" Obama and Clinton, seeing them and their agenda as nothing less than the work of satan.  That Cruz was held to be the last hope to "stop Trump," itself says something.  It also says something that the republican base rather roundly rejected him for Trump, along with key members of the so-called republican elite.  Turn about is fair play, I would guess, and we have Boehner supporting Trump and calling out Cruz as "lucifer in the flesh," though one suspects Boehner meant "lucifer" metaphorically, not literally.

The play was intended as an allegory, and Miller, as is widely recognized, used the Salem witch trials to make a point about McCarthyism and the "rooting out" of communists and communist sympathizers during the early 50's.   Here again, it is easy enough to poo-pooh something like McCarthyism as a wholly historical aberration, something that couldn't possibly happen today, because, well, we have moved beyond our fear of communists.  Here again, I am not so sure.  One of the reflex charges against Obama, one that will certainly be leveled at Clinton, is "socialism," a charge that is held to be self-evidently "true" and self-evidently "bad."  This too has its religious roots, but they are obscured by a more secular discussion of economics.   Man's original sin condemned him to "labor," both as a punishment for the sin, but also as a means of redemption.  Our puritan forebears were, consequently, not big on charity.  The destitute were destitute for one of two reasons, either they were "out of favor" with God or they lacked sufficient character to knuckle down and go to work, either of which was sufficient reason to withhold charity.  If one gave charity to the destitute, it would only reinforce their lack of character, remove the incentives to self-reliance.  "Socialism, "of course, is government "charity" writ large, and anything that smacks of an "entitlement," a benefit bestowed without the redemption of labor, is just self-evidently "bad."  Obama-care is "bad," not because it is ineffectual at providing American's with health coverage, but because the subsidies that make such coverage "affordable" are an entitlement, a government hand-out, that comes without the redemption of labor.

Hence, at least in part, the emphasis on "jobs."  Hence too, at least in part, the revolt against "taxes," or at least certain forms of taxation.  If one suspects that their tax money -- money that came as a result of their labor -- is being used to support the indolence of others, well then how "wrong" is that?  I doubt that even the most vehement of fox news commentators really believe that Obama plots in the back room to destroy America, but I don't doubt that they believe, really believe, that any "entitlement" whatsoever undermines the character of the American people, to include medicare, medicaid, and social security.   Here's the turn.  The republican base, those who have signed up with Trump, those who might be classed as the so-called "angry white men," don't want a government handout, and as I said, they despise those who do.

So who is getting the government hand-outs?  This would be an occasion for facts, and the facts are readily available, but it's not about facts. It's about how one "feels," which normally comes with an unapologetic apology, "I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel."  There is a level of hypocrisy involved.  Many of the angry white men get, or will get, their entitlements.  They'll take them, or scam the government if they can get away with it, but they do so with a deep sense of sanctimony, "I am just getting back some of what shouldn't have been taken in the first place."  If they are thieves, they are thieving from the biggest thief around, the taxing government.  "I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel."  The one's they truly despise are those who take from the system never having been a contributor to or victim of the system, and we all know who they are, don't we?  It's the blacks, and the hispanics, or at least the urban blacks and hispanics, those who live their whole life sponging off  the American tax-payer, those taking their welfare checks and food stamps.   "I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel."

Some of the republican base and those supporting Trump are simple racists, as his endorsement by the KKK indicates, and it is perhaps convenient for the actual bigots that lines of poverty and lines of race correspond.  More are likely have complex racial attitudes.  For them, it seems that every government action designed to alleviate out and out racism, or what might be called "systemic" or "institutional" racism, has the flavor of an entitlement or a preference.  Here again, this would be an occasion for facts, and the facts are readily available, but  here again, it's not about facts.  It's about how one "feels."  The entitlement is galling enough, particularly when it seems perfectly apparent that their lack of self-reliance, that their dependence on government hand-outs, has contributed to the moral decline of the black community.  "I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel."  The preference, however, goes over the top.  I suspect every one of the "angry white men" can tell how he was passed over for a job or a promotion because the employer is trying to meet some "quota."  I suspect every one of the "angry white men" can tell how he was "more qualified" or "better suited" for the job or promotion than the one who actually got it.   It might actually be true, but to continue with the "past preference" for white men insures that white men would be better qualified and better suited.  "I'm sorry, but that's just how I feel."

Whether out and out racists, or simply those who want to reset the clock to the social setting of the 1950s, it makes little difference.  The racial and ethnic resentments remain, and Trump has, in every sense of the word, capitalized on this resentment throughout his campaign.  The so-called republican elite has been ineffectual in addressing his more outrageous, his more overtly racist remarks, not to mention his misogynistic remarks, in part because they too have been capitalizing on this resentment for at least the last three decades.  It will fall on deaf ears to suggest, as one should, that any real gains toward equality for minorities, to include women and the disabled, came as a result of government action and legal protections.  It will also fall on deaf ears to suggest, as one should, that there is considerable hypocrisy among the republican elite's McCarthy like witch hunt of the slightest "socialist" tendency.  The base, as a matter of course, expects the so-called elite to be hypocrites.  Of course they want tax cuts and of course they want to make up the difference by a corresponding cut in entitlements.  The base responds with a resounding "so what?"   The base too wants tax cuts -- doesn't everyone? -- and yes, they should cut entitlements, especially those that contribute to the moral and economic lassitude of the "undeserving."  That Trump might be as cynical as the republican elite is irrelevant.  He clearly understands and gives unpolished voice to their resentments.

At the Alter of America First

As I have been thinking about this over the past few days, there is curious division within the American psyche.  On the one side, there is the "gated community" mentality, which finds various expressions within the Trumpish camp among the republican base, but perhaps the most infamous is his promise to build the wall along our southern border and to ban muslims from entering the country.  Behind the gates, of course, is wealth and a way of life that must be protected.  It pre-supposes, of course, that one's wealth and way of life is "enviable" -- that it creates not only "desire" to have what those behind the gates have, but also the self-loathing that comes of the unfulfilled envy of the unattainable.  The walls and gates are built out of fear, not of rapine, but of rape and murder -- the spree killer's urge to rise above their self-loathing by destroying that which rejects and humiliates them.  It also pre-supposes that normal civility among members of a community and the community police no longer be trusted to provide much in the way of protection.  They must create their own "security forces" and take matters into their own hands.

The phrase, America First, of course, is historically evocative of the America First Committee before the advent of the second world war.  Its most famous spokesperson was Charles Lindbergh, but it was a "principled" movement, supporting four basic ideas, all of them "gated community" in effect.  The first principle was self-defense.  The second and third, avoid entanglements in foreign affairs and the expenses associated with such entanglements, both of which weaken one's ability to provide for self-defense.  The fourth, if strong enough, in part due to our geographic isolation, no foreign power can successfully attack the US.  The attack on Pearl Harbor put an end to the America First Committee, but its thinking is endemic. The popular expression goes something like this:  "we have enough problems here at home, and should attend to them."  Just as the American First Committee expressed sympathy for the plight of the jews in Germany, the popular expression today goes something like this:  "I'm not sure why our troops have to solve YOUR problems."  Unlike Pearl Harbor, the attack on the World Trade Center, aside from the desire to go forth and punish the perpetrators, reinforced the need for better self-defense, and the Trumpian call to disentangle ourselves from NATO and the "unfair" expenses associated with our entanglement in European affairs, would free up the cash to bolster our own security forces and build a higher wall.  The Trumpian base wants a stronger military, not so we can more successfully defend Europe or Korea, but so we can more successfully keep the hordes on the other side of the wall.

As an aside, there is also a popular belief that we are "enviable" -- that we do not need a wall, like the Berlin wall, to keep people IN.  We do, however, need a wall to keep people OUT.  There is a normal human tendency to resent those who resent us, and another popular expression of anti-entanglement and anti-interventionist thought goes something like this: "We go in, help them out, but are they thankful?  Do we get gratitude?  No, they hate and envy us all the more."  I have been re-reading many of Tony Judt's essays of late, and in one, "It's Own Worst Enemy," he tells us, "the 'cultural' anti-Americanism is shared by Europeans, Latin Americans, and Asians, secular and religious alike.  It is not about antipathy to the West, or freedom, or the Enlightenment, or any other abstraction exemplified by the United States.  It is about America."  It is, he tells us, a function of "our self-assurance, the narcissistic confidence of Americans in the superiority of American values and practices, and the rootless inattentiveness to history -- their own and other people's."  It is, perhaps, more galling to all the rest of world, who might actually prefer that we hunker down behind our wall, in part because they need us.  American occupies a unique position of uncontested strength within the world, both militarily and economically, and does so despite all the  fox news talk of imminent armageddon.  As Judt put it, "America is indispensable."  The foreign reaction to Trump  as the "leader of the free world" stands as a case in point.  He exemplifies "self-assurance, the narcissistic confidence in his own superiority, and his benighted inattention to anything that might be called a "fact," and yet they will need him.

And for what will he be needed?  Much, but let me start with a simple observation.    If there is anything Trump knows, he should know that we cannot have modern communication and transportation technologies and a modern capitalist economy and live in isolation.  Although the mostly rural, mostly blue collar base that Trump draws upon might live in the illusion of provincial isolation.  They might believe that they can enhance the isolation by "building the wall," not simply to keep out the job stealing Mexicans, but also the imminent threat of the jihadist muslim.  The world is far more deeply interfused than any one person could begin to detail in a single lifetime, much less a single paragraph or two, so let me make another simple observation.  Our current military "doctrine," such as it is, might be called a "unilateralism."  Obama would prefer, I think, more bilateralism, or even a multi-laterism, but that would require behaving with a humility sufficient to compromise our interests on behalf of others. We more often than not do retreat to unilateralism, mostly because we can.  Our geography has given us unprecedented internal security.  Neither Canada nor Mexico could be remotely considered a "military" threat to the US homeland.  Neither would or could conceivably mount a war of territorial aggression.  Our military is not and never has been a "defensive" force, but a military force designed for intervention across the globe -- designed, that is, to project force where needed to protect "American interests."  If the wars in the middle east are, as some suggest, "all about oil," well, to be honest with ourselves and others, we have an interest in securing a steady flow of oil from reliable and stable partners in the middle east.  Reliable and stable does not mean "nice."  I doubt that Trump's base gives a rat's ass about which abusive dictator runs which subjugated country in the middle east, but they do care about a steady and cheap supply of fuel for the suburban that takes Johnny and Mary to football and soccer practice.  We are, as some suggest, usually with some disparagement, the world's police force.  Not unlike the traffic cop on the corner whose presence causes passing cars to check their speedometer, not without resentment, our over-whelming military presence causes the world to check their "interests" relative to the US, again not without resentment.  So long as we are willing to project force to protect our way of life here at home, the world will continue to check their "interests."  Do we really want to withdraw from that role?

Apparently, if we have a quick and easy way of dealing with such "threats" -- nuclear weapons.  They are not, I should add, military weapons.  They are instruments of mutual terror, and to use them would be the equivalent of strapping on a suicide vest with the intent of wiping out life on earth as we know it.  So long as we are not so desperate as a species to commit suicide, we have lived and will live with the nuclear terror, in part because we cannot "un-invent" them.  We are concerned with nuclear proliferation because there may well be those who believe, really believe, that strapping on the nuclear suicide vest might be a good idea within a war of genocidal aggression -- a quick and easy way to wipe out the indigenous population that is always of the "wrong" ideology or religion or ethnicity.  It is also a quick and easy way to wipe out a "problem" -- BOOM! -- it's gone.  The bellicose talk regarding ISIS and Islamic extremism during the convention cycle may have been just that, bellicose talk, of the sort one hears from a local red-neck three beers into his diatribe about the "towel heads" when he suggests we should "just nuke the f---kers."  If Islamic extremism is a problem, don't mess around with "troops" or "regime change," just deal with it, wipe the problem off the face of the earth -- BOOM! -- it's gone.  In an interview response to Meet the Press, Trump straps on the suicide vest to fix a problem with a nuclear war of genocidal aggression.  As commander in chief, he would authorize the use of nuclear weapons to combat Islamic extremism, adding "and thanks to Obama's failed policy in Iraq and Sytria, they're beheading Chrisitans all over the world."   Although it could be argued that the second Bush used 9/11 along with an illusory threat of WMDs cynically as a pretext for other more conventional middle east ventures, the non-proliferation doctrine nevertheless stood.   Like the gun control adversary who sees "more guns" as the solution to gun violence, Trump has suggested that even more nuclear weapons are the solution to potential nuclear threats.  In response to North Korea's program, he has suggested that South Korea and Japan obtain nuclear weapons, in part so we can withdraw the troops stationed in South Korea and Japan. Here's the thing.  Do we believe if Kim Jung Un is a rational actor?  He has said  North Korea "must always be ready to fire our nuclear warheads at any time" because enemies were threatening the north's survival.   Although one can doubt the overall capacity, there is some capacity, and if he really believes South Korea has or will have nuclear weapons, and can use them independently of the US, do we trust them NOT to act preemptively?   Do we respond in kind if one or the other does?  Here again, our over-whelming military presence assigns us the role of the world's police force against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other WMDs.   We are the world's deterrent.  Do we really want to give up that role?

The answer in both cases is a qualified "no."  I say "qualified," in part as a recognition that it is always possible to serve either role "better," and it begs a question of what exactly would count as "better," which in turn begs the further question of just exactly how one would go about achieving "better."  This is a matter, however, not for demagogic bar room diatribes, but rational democratic debate.  Not unlike Great Britain in the 19th century, we are currently the first among nations, and our military prowess guarantees it, but the ostensibly christian base should remember matthew 20:16.

Reality Show

I suppose I should admit that I'm as obsessed with Trump as any of his followers.   This morning the Post has run a piece by Sheldon Adelson endorsing Trump.  In it he writes,

I’ve spent time talking to Donald Trump. Do I agree with him on every issue? No. But it’s unlikely that any American agrees with his or her preferred candidate on every issue.

Sheldon Adelson's endorsement does nothing for me.  He's one casino owner endorsing another casino owner.  One could talk about the morality of the casino as a business model, or his endorsement of a nuclear detonation to get the attention of the Iranians in the negotiation of the "nuclear deal," which he put forward, then retracted claiming it was merely a metaphor for "actions speak louder than words."   Not unlike Trump, he switched party allegiance, and seems quite willing to say outlandish, frightening, repugnant things, then back away without any contrition.  In other words, Sheldon Adelson's endorsement is the anti-endorsement, another call to resist the donald.  

Here's the fundamental question -- how can one agree or disagree with Trump on an issue?  Trump is nothing if not protean.  Consider, for example, his stance on abortion. What exactly is his position?  Consider, as another example, his stance on banning Muslims.  If you watch the videos of Trump announcing the position, and read the statements now, you'd think he was retreating from a radical position he had once held as a college student, not something he said, forcefully, to cheers, just a couple months before.  What exactly is his position?  Consider, for example, his tax returns.  Is he, or is he not, going to release them?  Again, Trump is nothing if not protean.

He has been called out on this, repeatedly, time and again, redundantly, by the Post and others who continue, time and again, to award him four pinocchios for his statements.  Yesterday, in an editorial I cannot find, a writer for the Post lamented his lamentable lack of clarity and ideological position.  I wrote a response to it.  Sometimes, I just can't help myself -- so I DO have some empathy for Trump's need to tweet.  My response went something like this:

Trump's position, I believe, has been clear all along.  To use his own word, he is "unpredictable."  In an almost paradoxical way, he does have an unambiguous ideology, his unpredictability, which he demonstrates repeatedly.  Paul Ryan cannot "come together" with Trump.   Paul Ryan is an ideologue.  He has a set of positions which can be examined and understood.  One can mostly accept or reject those positions centered on one's understanding of their potential effects.  Hillary Clinton too is an ideologue, or perhaps more precisely, a policy wonk.  She has a set of positions which can be examined and understood.  One can mostly accept or reject those positions centered on one's understanding of their potential effects.  I choose to reject Ryan, accept Hillary, based NOT on their personalities, but the direction promised in their positions, though I do not honestly believe Hillary would not make much of a difference.   If Ryan is waiting for Trump to arrive at a set of ideas or positions around which the republican party can be united, he will wait forever, and he should.  Trump asks that we support him, not as a democrat, only marginally as a republican, but as Trump himself.  He offers, not a platform, certainly not a party platform, but no more, no less than Trump himself in all his glorious Trumpness.

In other words, he is the ultimate post-modern self-reflective ideologue for the age of the selfie, the ultimate Kardashian-like "celebrity because I am a celebrity" candidate, the ultimate "reality show" contestant for the be-all, end-all of "reality shows."  It is, perhaps, ironic that many of the "reality shows" ask the American populace to vote for their "favorites" to produce an ephemeral  winner, and so many do.   Voting on the next "American Idol" has morphed into the next "American President," and it is just expected that we will lavish on Trump, in all his Trumpness, the idolatry he believes he so justly deserves and make him the next president.  It is discouraging and disheartening that anyone has voted for Trump, anyone at all, but it shouldn't be surprising.   Trump is not playing the political game, but as we have known all along, the "reality show" game, and watching carries with it a sort of morbid fascination -- a can't look, but can't look away obsession -- in part because no one believes, really believes, the stakes are as high as they are.  It's just a "reality show."        

The Borg

As much as I fear mentioning it, I am a Star Trek aficionado.  When the Cubs are not playing, and Lora is at work, it's my go-to binge.  There is something ultimately very hopeful about the future it portrays.  Robert Reich, unwittingly I think, picked up on the theme that runs throughout Star Trek in his Saving Capitalism.  He asked us to imagine an iEverything, a device that could produce anything one wanted more or less instantaneously.  It seems, yes, we are trending in that direction.  The combination of the internet and Amazon, along with 3D printers and virtual reality consoles, all seem to be the primitive versions of the "replicator," the iEverything imagined first on Star Trek.

There are two ways to think of this, one utopian, one dystopian.  On the utopian side, the rhetoric is familiar.  Having the "replicator," along with a panoply of devices that free us from routine tasks, will free us to become the human beings we are destined to become.  We no longer need to scramble to "make a living," because everything we need and want is there, poof, for the asking, and so we are free to fulfill our destiny as individual human beings with unique and unlimited potential.   On the utopian side, that destiny, of course, is always imagined in halcyon ways, but mostly centered on the "creative" potential of mankind.  In some respects, this seems to be the future that Star Trek portrays.  The crew of the Enterprise or the Voyager is enthusiastically in pursuit of "exploration."  Of course, it being fiction and our fictions require conflict to drive their plots, the crew of the star ship does run into trouble along the way, but as their non-interference prime directive reminds us, they are not seeking new worlds to conquer, simply new worlds to know and understand, new worlds to explore.   It is a world, it seems, where everyone is either an artist, an engineer, a scientist, or an explorer -- someone who freely contributes their bit to the gigabyte of human "creativity."

On the dystopian side, the rhetoric is equally familiar.  One of the principle villains in the Star Trek series is the Borg.  The Borg are the ultimate totalitarians, a species that assimilates everyone and everything into their "technology collective."  Direction is important.  For the crew of the Enterprise, humans have intentionality, but the technology remains "instrumental."  It is distinct from and used by human beings to achieve their ends.  The technology that achieves "sentience" (Data on the Enterprise series, the Doctor on the Voyager series) want, like Pinocchio, to become more, not less like individual human beings with intentionality.  The crew of the Borg "cubes," however, are "drones."  Everything, including the bodies of those they assimilate, are enhanced with an infused technology and become part of the technology collective.  The Borg, in other words, free us from our individual humanity to become what we are destined to become, adjuncts to the technology collective.   The Borg, in other words, have freed technology to become all that it is destined to become.  The technology collective has intentionality and the humans, as such, are assimilated to and used by the collective for its ends, which seem to be nothing more than the assimilation and use of additional beings.  

We are, of course, somewhere between the crew of the Enterprise and the Borg.  I want to suggest that the driver of our current economic malaise is technology driven.  Before I can make that point, I need to  to make an heretical statement, but I would ask that you bear with me.  Both opportunity and potential are limited for the vast majority of human beings.   Opportunity is necessary to the fulfillment of potential, but not sufficient.  Put another way, one will never become Michael Jordan or Steven Hawking if one is not afforded the opportunity to develop one's athletic or intellectual skills.  To claim that one "makes one's own opportunities" is perhaps true, but only in a very, very limited sense.  Some obstacles simply cannot be overcome.  Assuming one is born with the genetic endowment that would allow one to become the next Michael Jordan or Steven Hawking, insufficient nutrition and education in the formative years trumps that endowment for good and forever.  The potential is lost.  Beyond that, assuming one is NOT born with the genetic endowment -- that one is an average, or even slightly below average human being -- no amount of "opportunity" will take one's jump shot or one's math skills to the level of a Michael Jordan or a Steven Hawking. The potential, both physical and intellectual, is limited from the outset.

We are accustomed to thinking of our physical potential as limited, but the heretical statement is, of course, that intellectual potential is limited from the outset.  We accept physical limitations, but we want to believe, and go to great lengths to believe, that we are all somehow equally endowed intellectually.  My wife, the other day, reminded me, for example, that I have a lot of "book smarts," but that she has "street smarts" and/or "common sense."  I would grant a couple of things.  First, if empathy is a form of intelligence, then she has it in great abundance over me.  This may mark me as a sociopath, but my "empathy," as such, is abstract.  I understand how others might feel, and so I can behave more or less appropriately, but I don't ever "feel" another's pain.  My wife clearly does "feel" their pain.   From a moral perspective, that is a greater gift than my abstract and analytical intelligence, and may even make her more human, but no amount of tutoring, no amount of education will bring her math skills up to mine.  Second, if we accept the compartmentalization of intelligence, (e.g. empathy vs analytic intelligence) then it might be possible to do some form of accounting where we all, in the end, are somehow equally endowed intellectually.  Having said that, however, I have known people, too many people, who lack both empathy AND analytic skills.  We would need to do some real digging to find the "intelligence" that would balance the books.

So, back to my point.  Our current economic malaise is technology driven.  Here's the axiomatic statement: "to the degree that our technology is 'instrumental,' to that same degree it displaces the need for human beings.'  Consider, for example, a "simple" technology, Archimedes lever and the "wheel."   Imagine a large stone block of the sort that goes into a Greek temple, about the size of a small car.  How many men would it take to lift and carry that block?  How many men would it take to  lever it up onto a series of logs and push it across a distance?  The answer is fewer.  Consider, for example, a "complex" technology made possible by digital technologies.  Imagine Amazon's warehouse with stacks upon stacks of goods waiting for distribution.  How many people would it take to person that warehouse before the advent of digital and robotic technologies?  How many people would it take to person that warehouse after the advent of digital and robotic technologies?   The answer again is fewer.  Think books.  How many are engaged in the production land distribution of a book.  If we imagine the supply train for a physical book, it involves not only the writer and publisher of that book, but also the printer, the suppliers to the printer, the driver who delivers it to the book store, the cashier in the book store, among others.  Think ebook.  How many people are engaged in the production and distribution of an ebook?  The writer, the publisher, those who maintain the commercial delivery platform.  The answer again is fewer, far fewer.  

Don't misunderstand me.  I personally have benefited enormously from the production and distribution of ebooks.    Almost anything I want is immediately available to me, and books in the public domain are available pretty much free of charge.   The technology has been enormously instrumental to me, but it has also displaced the need for human beings -- not the "writer" or the "technicians" who manage the delivery platform, but all those other people who performed tasks less demanding of "creative" or "analytical" skills -- the printers, drivers, and such.  Insofar as Amazon is a relatively "new" enterprise, it might even be possible to think of those who maintain the commercial delivery platform as "new" jobs, but that too is both true and misleading.   Those jobs are simply the assimilation of several physical jobs into a technology.   Amazon is less Enterprise, more Borg.  It has served me and many others through enhanced "opportunity" to access to explore the available intellectual inheritance.  Whether by doing so it has allowed me personally to fulfill my "creative potential" is another matter.  I doubt that ultimately it has made much of a difference.  There is only so much life available for reading, and I am relatively selective.  Its technology has, however, undeniably assimilated livelihoods, reduced the number and types of "jobs" available, and curtailed the overall opportunity for many to reach their economic potential.

I am not the first to say this.  I will not be the last.  I will, however, add a corollary to the axiom: "resistance is futile."  Trekkies will recognize the phrase.   Once one's livelihood has been assimilated by the  technological Borg, there is no "un-assimilating" it.  The prevailing winds of capitalism drive the enterprise, any enterprise, toward improved "profit."  There might be several ways to think of "profit," but right now, within the existing economic system, it means an improved monetary return on capital.   This can be accomplished in two ways, both of which are facilitated by technology.  

First, improvements in efficiency or productivity.  If a task can be automated, it can be performed with greater speed and reliability than humans.  The machines don't get bored, don't check out the ass of the worker next to them, don't worry that their kids might be experimenting with drugs, don't fantasize about the new "camper," don't ... the list of distractions is nearly infinite.  They do, however, attend to their task with relentless mindlessness.  Consequently, if a task can be automated, it will be automated.  Those charged with improvements to the profit margins of any large corporation today will automate whatever can be automated.  Failure to do so will mean the loss of competitive edge and profit.

A side note: this includes tasks that until very, very recently required "human" intelligence.  Think surgery.  It wasn't that long ago that surgeons were elevated to the status of demigods, and the accumulated "wealth" of a Ben Carson stands as a testament to the value our social systems placed on surgical skill.  Having said that, however, surgery is now being displaced with technology, or to use the definition of the Mayo Clinic, "robotic surgery, or robot-assisted surgery, allows doctors to perform many types of complex procedures with more precision, flexibility, and control than is possible with conventional techniques."  The technology will only improve, and a future without a broad cadre of surgeons is more than conceivable, it inevitable.  Insofar as the technology is proprietary, it is unlikely to decrease the cost of surgery by much, any more than the advent of the ebook decreased the cost of new books, but it will eliminate the need for very expensive surgeons and improve the profit margin of our increasingly corporate health care systems.  

Second, economies of scale.  Think ebooks as described above, or better think "education."  At the present, education is still a relatively "labor intensive" occupation.  I won't touch primary and secondary education, but consider "higher education" for the moment.  Nation wide, state legislators have cut back on their support to higher education, and in consequence there have been compensatory increases in tuition.   I say "compensatory" because those same state legislators often have veto power over any tuition increases, and often the tuition increases are not sufficient to cover the loss of state tax support.  The result has been an increasingly "privatized" higher education system subject to all the pressures of "private" business, particularly improvements in "efficiency" -- more "units of production" (i.e. "graduates") per dollar spent.

The first level of efficiency was achieved through "local outsourcing" and the hiring of  "adjunct" instructors.   Adjuncts are poorly paid period (about $15 per hour), but especially given their level of educational attainment (Masters+).  They are part time, without benefits, and strictly limited in the amount of work they can undertake at any particular school, so many travel between schools piecing together work -- hence the description "road warriors."   That so many are so willing to take on this work probably speaks to the over-production of advanced degrees in many fields, but that is a topic for another post.

The second level of efficiency is being achieved through "on-line" education.  Higher education hasn't quite arrived at this level of efficiency, in part because initial forays into "on-line" education attempted to replicate the old industrial model of the "classroom experience" with an on-line instructor with a "virtual" classroom of 30 or so students.  It has achieved, however, one level of efficiency.  It displaced "bricks and mortar."  Think of it this way.   For 1,000 students, it takes about 35 classrooms to house them in traditional face-to-face instruction.  To have 35 classrooms, one must have a relatively large building, with all the janitorial and other supports that a building requires.   At my last institution, we "educated" approximately 7,000 on-line students, or the equivalent of 7 relatively large buildings of 35 classrooms.   For our on-line classes, most of which were taught by adjuncts, we required a relatively large room in a small building for the servers and a row of administrative offices.

The "real" efficiencies in "on-line" education, however, will come with the automation of faculty roles.  We are seeing this already with the advent of things like the Kahn Academy, where a YouTube clip viewable by millions has replaced the "lecture" viewable by 30 in a classroom.  If one thinks of education as the dissemination of relevant information, you are looking at the demise of faculty, particularly when one "expert" instructor out of Harvard or Stanford can reach hundred of thousands through a well produced, well supported "instructional experience."  Such is the MOOC, or the Massive Open On-line Course, the "open" indicating that one need not be "admitted" either to the institution or the course to participate superficially as a matter of intellectual curiosity.  Those wishing "credit" toward a "degree" from a MOOC, however, will "pay for" admission as well as tutorial and testing "services," almost all of which can also be automated.  If the MOOC model of education becomes real, not only will faculty everywhere simply fade away, so too will the institutions that support them.  Our state universities can become what they want to become, subsidized research facilities and/or minor league sports franchises for the NFL and the NBA.   Already well subsidized research facilities, our "elite" universities can also go on providing an interpersonal "elite" education to the sons and daughters of the "elite" -- that is to say, for those that can afford it - generationally replicating and reinforcing the emerging class structures.                

I am, of course, just brushing lightly over the surface.  Most of the standard remedies won't work to improve the lot of Americans.  Although MOOCs might extend opportunities for a version of a Harvard or Stanford eduction to thousands, just extending educational opportunity won't work.  Only a limited number of people have, I suspect, the innate capacity to achieve the sorts of education necessary.  Even so, assuming that we haven't yet reached the "limit," that a greater number of people could achieve the sorts of education necessary if racial and cultural barriers to "educational attainment" were systemically removed, it still doesn't follow that "educational attainment" equates to "employment opportunity."  There is an ever shrinking pool of jobs that require higher levels of "educational attainment."  A degree remains necessary, but it is not sufficient.  Investing in an education is like buying a lottery ticket with ever increasing odds against winning, particularly if there is no way of "guessing" up front whether the technological Borg will assimilate the livelihood.    How many physics PhDs does it take to drive a taxi?  None, if the Google "driverless" automobile comes fully into being.

Seven of Nine aside (again trekkies will recognize the reference) one cannot go back.  Once one's livelihood is assimilated, it is always assimilated.  There is a sort malthusian pessimism behind all this.  We cannot continue down this path indefinitely.  As more and more human jobs are assimilated to the technological Borg, as fewer and fewer people can "earn a living," there will be fewer and fewer people able to pay for the goods and services produced by the Borg, no matter how efficiently produced, no matter how well protected by the assimilative power of sheer size and "intellectual property rights."  At some juncture, we will reach a point where there are too few people with a livelihood, with the ability to actually pay for something.  Of course, Malthus didn't take into account "innovative agricultural technology" that allowed food production for the most part to keep up with population -- that is to say, an "agricultural technology" that allowed for the expansion of arable land and a simultaneous contraction of the numbers needed to cultivate it, freeing up the population for the rural exodus to the urban factories of the industrial revolution.  Now that "innovative industrial technology" is allowing for a similar expansion of industry with a simultaneous contraction of the numbers needed to person it, where will the "excess population" go?   If we are beyond the industrial age, and the so called information age has proved to be something of a bust (at least insofar in the gainful and meaningful employment of actual people) then what?  If the "excess population" cannot move from the country to the city, then perhaps we need to reconsider the space-age?  We could send them where no man (or woman) has gone before.  We could begin our "colonization" of Mars and parts beyond.   We have the technology, and the possibilities are even more limitless than western frontier of yore ...

   

Revolution

As I discussed in my previous post, Robert Reich believes it a false dichotomy to pit "government" against "free markets."  As I put it yesterday,

Reich's point, and I fully agree, is that the so-called "free market" is a myth.  There is ONLY the game defined by the "existing rule of law," such as it is, and this game benefits some more than others.  If someone comes along and wants to "change" the "rule of law," we should not wonder whether it trends to some halcyon "free market" where the beneficent "invisible hand" bestows blessings on all alike, nor should we wonder whether it trends to some "communist paradise" where the beneficent "government" bestows blessings on all alike, both of which are myths.  We should rather ask the more cynical question of "who would benefit from this change and how?"  Any change to the "rule of law" governing our economic life will simply change, so to speak, the balance of benefits.

It seems clear enough that the "balance of benefits" has tipped away from the American people as a whole, toward a very small segment of the American population, the so-called 1 percent, or the wealthiest of the wealthy.  To be frank, I have no truck with the republican party.  They have, I believe, misled the American people more profoundly than the democrats, hiding an economic agenda behind a "conservative" social agenda that itself is fraught with various and sundry forms of intolerance itself masked with fundamentalist religion.  The democrats, at least since Clinton, are only slightly better.  Rhetorically, at least, they acknowledge the current "balance of benefits," but the response has been, for the most part, a resigned shoulder shrug -- there seems to be little that can be done, except perhaps tinkering at the margins, especially in the current "polarized" political climate that stymies action.  If the Obama administration began with the "audacity of hope," it ends with the "whimper of resignation."

Think of it this way.  Right now, as we speak, we have a "status quo."  Truly revolutionary action, throwing the "status quo" out the window and beginning again, scares the hell out of people.  The social upheaval of the late sixties/early seventies resulted, not in fundamental systemic change, but the paranoid presidency of Nixon, who promised to restore "law and order." It has been downhill for the American people ever since.  The ineffectuality of Ford following the impeached Nixon was exceeded only by the ineffectuality of Carter following Ford.  The result was Reagan and the new conservatism which tilted the balance of benefits away from the many toward the wealthy few.  Reagan, at least, was effectual in helping create something of a "new" status quo.

This "new" status quo emerged not suddenly, but by a thousand little "tweaks" that tilted the balance of benefits in the direction of the wealthiest Americans. Think, for example, of the so-called Reagan tax cuts, the Economic Recovery Act of 1981.   The tax cuts reduced the top rate on the marginal income tax to 50% from 70% for those at the top to 11% from 14% for those at the bottom -- in other words, a 20% cut for those at the top of the income scale, a 3% cut for those at the bottom of the scale.  It doesn't take a math genius to see who benefits the most.  Likewise the reductions in the estate tax, which ONLY benefited those with an inheritable estate to tax.  Again, it doesn't a genius to see who benefits the most.  The ideological justification that the cuts "improved the economy" and consequently those "improvements" actually benefited all Americans has been discredited by the facts.  Income has gone up by leaps and bounds for those who received the lion's share of the cuts at the top of the scale.  It has stagnated for those who received the lamb's share of the cuts at the bottom of the scale.

I believe we are caught in a vicious circle.  I do not think our politicians are corrupt, at least not in the conventional quid pro quo sense of the word.  I don't think they take bribes, per se, but it seems counter-intuitive to think that large campaign donations do not translate into "access," and it seems equally counter intuitive to think that "access" does not translate into "influence."  The largest corporations spend a considerable amount of money on professional "persuaders" who work in the interest of the largest corporations. As money accumulates at the top, their "influence" increases, which in turn increases the amount of money accumulating at the top ... and so on.  How long can it go on?  Well, indefinitely.  It will likely go on until a combination of one of two things happen:  (1) the system, so to speak, crashes as it did with the great depression and as it ALMOST did with the great recession, or (2) the people find it intolerable and rebel.  We seem to be teetering on the edge of both.  Since there were few if any real changes made to the banking laws, few if any changes made to the status quo as reflected in the existing rule of law, it seems likely that greed with over come prudence and wall street will find new and exciting ways to play economic brinkmanship, particularly when the potential rewards are so great and the penalties so comparatively modest for those at the top.

Will the people put up with a second "bail out" of those banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to prosecute?  At the moment, I don't think the people find the current situation intolerable enough to rebel.  Neither of the populist insurgencies of Trump and Sanders are truly revolutionary, but they are, to use the current business jargon, "disruptive."  Trump has succeeded in unmasking many of the conservative pieties, and Sanders has succeeded in revealing just how little "progress" we have made on the "progressive" agenda.  The backlash is predictable.  All Ryan's and Romney's hand wringing aside, some of what Trump and Sanders propose -- e.g. a re-examination of our trade agreements -- might actually tilt the balance of benefits back in the direction of the American people, but it is unlikely to reverse the general direction, particularly if the republicans maintain control of the congress.

Six Principles

The other day I made the point, borrowed actually from John Searle, that "money"and our economic life is a "social construct."  This is an important concept, though one, apparently, not easily grasped in its full implications.  Perhaps the easiest explanation is the notion of a "game."  I've been spending a good deal of time watching baseball of late, and there's no denying the "reality" of the game.  Some players, like Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, make a considerable amount of money playing a boy's game, serious money, and so they take game very seriously.  As do others.  A stadium filled to capacity with paying spectators also represents serious money, and so the team owners and municipalities take the game very seriously.   By calling "money" and our "economic life" a game in no way portends a lack of seriousness, or that it lacks consequence in the lives of many, but merely points out that "baseball," as we know it, is fully described in its "rules."  The "rules" define the nature of the game, what it means to "win" and the behaviors allowed and not allowed in pursuit of a "win."  The game can be played because everyone playing agrees to abide by the rules, to pursue a "win" and engage in the allowed behaviors in pursuit of that "win."  This is not to say that there isn't "cheating" to gain an advantage, but we should note that it's "cheating" within the game, within the basic structure of the rules.  There is nothing like "baseball" that exists, independent of those rules, in nature.  We did not "discover" baseball.  We "created" it.

By suggesting that "money" and our economic life is a "social construct," I am again not suggesting that it is "merely" a game or that we could, like baseball, choose simply to ignore it with little consequence.  It is "serious" business, pun intended, but it nevertheless remains a "game."  The "rules" of economic life define the nature of game.  Robert Reich has made a similar point in his book, Saving Capitalism.  I won't recapitulate his entire argument, but one underlying point comes down to this -- we somehow "forget" it is just a "game."    There are probably good reasons for this, not least that we are born into and live our entire lives within an "economy."  Moreover, we cannot choose NOT to play.  Our lives, quite literally, depend upon how we go about "making a living."  Moreoever again, the "rules" of the game are enshrined within our legal system.  Consequently, unlike other "games," it carries a sense of inevitability and compulsion.   Nevertheless, as with baseball, there is nothing like "the economy" that exists, independent of those rules, in nature.  We did not "discover" the economy.  We created it.

To make this point, he focuses on the so-called opposition between "government intervention/regulation" and the "free market."  I suppose one could make the argument that there is a "free market" in the "state of nature," but it is a dubious sort of "freedom." We all know that very quickly the "strongest" among us will appropriate most, if not all of the "goods."  I suppose in some sense we are all free to become the "strong" man, but the reality suggests that our chances will be very slim until he ages out of the picture.  Reality suggests that there will be one "free" man, and the remainder will, to one degree or another, be enslaved.

This is in very broad brush the argument for at the creation of "government" and, of course, it is "government" that sets the "rules" of the game.  Consider, for example, the notion of "property ownership," particularly "home ownership," since it became such an issue in the last recession.  I check the box that says "home owner," but in reality, because I have a mortgage, the bank owns my home and I am allowed to call it my own so long as I pay the mortgage.  If I were to test that notion, and I simply quit paying the mortgage, the bank would not pay me the principle and take possession of the home, they would simply take the home in its entirety.  The "rules" associated with mortgage lending set this out.  Assume for the moment, however, that I have paid off my mortgage and have the deed to "my" property.  There is that pesky issue of property tax which suggests, at some level, the "government" owns my home and I am allowed to call it my own so long as I pay the property taxes.  Again, if I were to test that notion, and I simply quit paying the taxes, it wouldn't be long before I had forfeited the property.  Beyond sitting on the front porch with a rifle, keeping the foreclosure agent and the tax man away, the government defines not only what it means to own a house, but also the rules associated with both the mortgage lending and taxation that allow us to acquire and keep it.

Reich's point, and I fully agree, is that the so-called "free market" is a myth.  There is ONLY the game defined by the "existing rule of law," such as it is, and this game benefits some more than others.  If someone comes along and wants to "change" the "rule of law," we should not wonder whether it trends to some halcyon "free market" where the beneficent "invisible hand" bestows blessings on all alike, nor should we wonder whether it trends to some "communist paradise" where the beneficent "government" bestows blessings on all alike, both of which are myths.  We should rather ask the more cynical question of "who would benefit from this change and how?"  Any change to the "rule of law" governing our economic life will simply change, so to speak, the balance of benefits.

I lay awake thinking about this last night.  My wife, the hospice worker, was with a dying patient and her family.  I had listened to a Dan Carlin podcast that talked at some length about the late sixties/early seventies when I came of age, when there was a sense of "revolution in the air" and many felt, including me, that our social structures were on the verge of collapse.  So the air of general foreboding hung over my thoughts.   I do not think we're nearly as close now as we were then to social collapse, but we're getting closer.  The "insurgencies" of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are each, in different ways, point in that direction.  If Trump is a conservative candidate, it is because he wants to press the reset button to the "balance of benefits" that existed in 1950, before the racial and social turmoil of the late sixties and early seventies.  It is a conservatism, not unlike all regressive conservatisms, that ignores demographic "realities" among other things, but it does point, rather emphatically, to a deep seated dissatisfaction with the "existing rule of law" among a broad swath of our population.  If Sanders is a progressive candidate, it is because he too wants to press the reset button to the days of Roosevelt and begin again where he left off.  It is a regressive progressivism, however, that ignores the rise of "corporate capitalism" that began shifting the balance of benefits with Reagan, a shift toward the richest of the rich that has continued more or less unabated through the Bushes, Clinton and Obama.  It ignores also the fundamental shifts that our digital and medical technologies hath wrought, and after such knowledge, there is no going back to the pre-Walmart, pre-Amazon main street, and big phrama will make us happier and harder with prozac and viagra.  Still Bernie points to a loss of hope, whether audacious or not, among another swath of our population.

Such is the rise of "populism."  Reich made another point about the "convergence" of populist thinking on six principles (more six actions, but I'm not going to quibble -- much).  They are, without elaboration:

1.  "Cut the biggest Wall Street banks down to a size where they're no longer too big to fail."
2.  "Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act," separating commercial from investment banking.
3.  "End Corporate Welfare," to include "tax breaks."
4.  "Stop the National Security Agency from spying on Americans."
5.  "Scale back American interventions overseas."
6.  "Oppose trade agreements crafted by large corporations."

Reich believes that "left and right-wing populists remain deeply divided over the role of government," but even so "the major fault line in American politics seems to be shifting from Democrat versus Republican, to populist versus establishment -- those who think the game is rigged, versus those who do the rigging."  We are no where as near social collapse as we were in the late sixties/early seventies, and Hillary Clinton, as the "continuity candidate," will likely prevail in the coming election.  We can expect, perhaps, some tweaking of the "existing rule of law," but not much, certainly nothing from the list of six principles above, and Fox News will berate her as mercilessly as they berate Obama if she even thinks of moving in that direction.  If she does not prevail, and Trump is elected, then we can expect what?  As I and others have repeatedly pointed out, he cannot do what he promises to do without disenfranchising  the emerging "minority majority," without throwing existing international relationships out of the window and the "military industrial complex" that supports those relationships, without rescinding much of the constitution.  So he won't do what he promises to do?  Can we expect him, over the course of the general election, to back-peddle and become more and more a "continuity candidate?"  The sense of betrayal among his "followers" will be profound.  If he does, or he doesn't, we would be one step nearer the sort of social collapse we saw in the sixties.

Democracy

I have made the statement "more democracy, less capitalism" on a couple of occasions, and I'm not backing away from it, but over the last few days, I have had too much time on my hands to think.  I've been ill, not dangerously ill, more annoyingly ill, but ill enough that I have been sitting around reading, commenting on news articles, and otherwise killing time.  During that time, I read Andrew Sullivan's piece on the election.   It is in the May edition of the New York Magazine, and I have to say it is the best piece I've read on the current state of affairs in some time.  The titular headings -- "democracies end when they are too democratic" -- lays out the thesis clearly enough, but I suspect that it's the work of editors, not Sullivan.  His argument is a bit more nuanced.

Sullivan begins with a description of democracy paraphrased from Plato's Republic:

Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.” 

That is more the description of a state of affairs, less a description of a political system, but it does seem a prescient description of where the US and most advanced democracies are heading -- "maximal freedom and equality."  We tend in this direction, in part, because it is desirable, even utopian.  As Sullivan, channelling Plato, put it, "the freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed."  But insofar as it undermines traditional forms of authority, indeed any form of authority other than the authority one confers on one's self, it is inherently unstable.  He called it "late-stage democracy," and added Plato's caution that the "tyrant" emerges in late-stage democracy as the one who can restore order.   As Sullivan, channeling Plato, put it "It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities."

All of this should sound uncannily familiar.  I won't repeat the fullness of Sullivan's argument, but it goes something like this:  we live in a late-stage democracy.  Several things have contributed to this development, and we have been on this path for some time, but the internet is perhaps chief among them.  It gives unprecedented "freedom to information."  Our language falters here a bit.  I said "to," not "of," intentionally.  Any sort of information, any sort at all, can float free on the internet, and as bits and pieces of "information" they are all pretty much equal -- equally true, equally false, depending upon the use one makes of them, but even then there are an infinite variety of uses. There are remnants of "authority" in "trusted news sources," but even that has been undermined.  My favorite scourge, Fox News, has pretty much killed off the idea.  The degree to which it remains "true," as in "faithful," to an ideology, is the degree to which it can no longer be trusted to provide a "true," as in accurate, representation of the world, such as it is.

Here's another way of thinking about it -- a thought experiment.  Ask yourself, what is the final authority on X?" where X can be just about anything.  To use a current example, "What is the final authority on climate change?"  I am not asking what the final authority might be for YOU, personally, but the final authority for each and all.  I would tend to take the word of the NASA scientists and believe that their data is true and accurate, but there are those who would discount their data, in part because it is inconvenient for certain business interests and a particular ideological stance, in part because it is irrelevant within a biblical world view, in part ... the list goes on.  Once you discover that there is no "final authority" for each and all, it becomes impossible to resolve arguments.  As my wife would put it, "we're all entitled to our beliefs," but this extreme egalitarianism, this entitlement to a "belief," in this particular case, can lead to a disaster of the first magnitude.  By the time consensus develops, it may well be too late, and in the meantime we have a hornet's swarm of contending ideas, stances, attitudes, et cetera, with "no one better than another." 

Sullivan, in other words, has a point.  We live in a post-industrial, post-enlightenment, post-modern, post-structuralist world, where everything, including science, has been "deconstructed" and while it allows a giddy amount of maximal freedom, it also becomes chaotic and, yes, frightening.  There is a sense of foreboding, a sense of impending doom, and it's perhaps not surprising that there is a corresponding desire for certainty.  One can, of course, find it in a variety of places.  There isn't a religion on earth, particularly the theistic religions, that won't put itself forward as the "final authority."  It isn't surprising then that so many cling to religious certainty.  I can decry the hypocrisy of it, the use of modern science to cure their diseases and to call their neighbors, but it nevertheless provides a sense of certainty in a world that has all but given up on certainty.  Modern science provides another sort of certainty, but if we're honest with one another, it is a source of certainty incomprehensible to the vast majority of earth's inhabitants.  If I were to ask you to explain the "time differential" that provided a plot point in the movie Interstellar, for example, could you do it?  I cannot, as they say, do the math, and as a consequence, I'm sure that it seems as "mystical" or as "fictional" as any biblical miracle.  As we stumble into the third millennium, neither religion nor science provides "certainties" that can be embraced by the "average joe and jane."  

So what?  Most, of course, can do without the certainty implicit in religion or science, and would be quite content to bumble through life with more quotidian "certainties."  There seem to be few, if any, quotidian "certainties" left.  I don't need to enumerate the ways in which Americans have become frustrated, particularly with their economic prospects, but as Robert Reich and many others have pointed out, the stop gap measures that allowed for the semblance of a middle class life have been used up.  The dual income household has become the norm, we have drained the equity on our homes, and we have maxed out the credit cards -- now what?  

It used to be "finish high school" and you were guaranteed a reasonably good life.  Then it became "finish college" and you were guaranteed a reasonably good life.  Unfortunately, however, even that been eroded.  Retraining?  More education?  In the community colleges where I spent most of my active career, there was an idea, never quite articulated, but nevertheless always there in the background -- the student's right to fail. We had the responsibility to give them an "opportunity," even a responsibility to equalize the playing field and insure that no artificial barriers stood in the way to their success, but it was "equal opportunity," not "equal outcome."  The community college represented a second chance at college for some, the only chance for others, but they were all given the equal opportunity to fail and the vast majority did.  Their pictures did not go on the brochures.  The successes went on the brochure.  The success were the "man-bites-dog" story, the exceptions to the general rule.  The "losers," the majority, never completed, drifted away, and failed to "achieve the dream" that so enthusiastically marked their beginning.  In an increasingly techno-meritocratic society demanding some degree of higher education, they would be neither technicians nor technocrats, and so what to do with them?

We have, perhaps, never been so free to do anything we please.  Top to bottom.  We have, as it were, an almost unbounded right to fail, and most do.  As Sullivan points out, it is into this slipstream of failure that the likes of a Donald Trump inserts himself.   He writes: 

he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.

Trump is now all but the nominee of a major party, and if anyone has offered himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess, he has. As Sullivan notes, his campaign parallels the rise of the nazi party in Weimar Germany with uncanny precision, but actually even sells the nazis short.  They had a coherent ideology, at least, but Trump offers nothing but himself and a string of promises that, given a moments reflection, would require thoroughly despotic action to fulfill.  Begin with just one example, the deportation of illegals, 11 million of them.  Assuming we continue routine law enforcement, the deportation would require a massive internal police force and curtailment of "due process."  I can imagine his supporters cheering this on, and what he and his supporters appear to despise, more than the "monied elites," are the "educated elites." 

Plato, of course, was not an egalitarian.   Neither is Sullivan, and he provides an impassioned defense of the "elites."  This is not just, or not only, the "monied elites," what I will call the oligarchs for the sake of brevity.   Plato believed in the so-called philosopher king, and it's worth pausing a moment to consider what that might mean in a current context.   Thomas Frank has written a provocative book, Listen Liberal, in which details "what happened to the party of the people."  He contends that it has become the party of the technical/professional class, those that have "elite" educations commanding top-tier salaries because they also command highly specialized knowledge.  I inhabit, or did inhabit, this class, with an ivy league PhD, I was the chief academic officer at two of the largest community colleges in the nation and was paid well over six figures.  I didn't achieve the "top of the class" status, but close enough that I could occasionally rub shoulders with and observe those who had.  The contemporary philosopher king is, of course, the Steve Jobs type, commanding enormous sums of money because they leveraged a specialized knowledge of digital technologies, an "aesthetic" sensibility, and above all else an intellectual "creativity" into a massive fortune all with a rom-com plot -- boy creates company, boy loses company, boy gets company back and "saves" it into a fortune. 

We can admire Steve Jobs, well, because his legacy is truly a legacy, but there is other versions of the contemporary "philosopher king," represented by the Clintons and the Obamas.  If I can be blunt, Obama represents everything, and I mean everything, that the disaffected Trump supporter despises in his bones.  We shouldn't set aside the racisism of the "uppity n----r" syndrome.  Obama can't help himself.  He "sounds" smart, even when he's playing the "smart ass" at the press dinners, much smarter than most of his peers.  He is a smart "n----r" and clearly a part of that technical/professional class, who has leveraged the very best education, at the very best school, into the highest level of success within his profession.  Obama can't help but remind the disaffected Trump supporter of that "college kid," twenty years their junior, who got THEIR job right out of school, not because they had good "school of hard knocks" experience, but because they had a "piece of paper" from a hoity-toity school and a "racial preference" to boot.  They don't despise the oligarchs.  They want to BE the oligarch, and if they cannot BE the oligarch, they want to be in his entourage.  They will sign that loyalty oath, hell yes, hail Trump!  because, apparently, he shares their attitudes.   He too, thoroughly despise those "college kids" who look down on them as, to use Bill Moyer's word, "rubes." 

 If the national statistics are correct, then the "rubes" are not exactly a minority.  About 40% of the American populace has finished college to one degree or another.  The technical/professional class, Bill & Melinda Gates among them, have lavished enormous sums of money to budge that number, particularly in the so-called STEM field of science, technology, engineering, and math.  State governments have run commercial ads encouraging people to stay in college.  Still the percentage completing has hovered between 30 and 40%.  I could speculate on the reasons for this, but it would be just that -- speculation -- but there it is about 40% complete some college.  What do we do with the 60% who are being left behind by the new "knowledge economy?"  

The "left behind" includes, of course, large numbers of blacks and hispanics, but the blacks and hispanics have never been inherently entitled the way the whites were inherently entitled.  Their entitlements, such as they were, came as a result of government action -- the Equal Employment Opportunity Act -- and those acts are still on the books.  They have not been wholly effective, and one can cite a wide range of statistics to show that blacks and hispanics and women still lagged behind, but nevertheless, if they are to make further gains, it is government, through legislation, that will help them along.  This coincides nicely with at the attitude of the technical/professional elites that things can be "fixed" through a paternalistic social engineering of the sort espoused by the Clintons and the Obamas.  This, in part, is why they continue to lean democratic.  The whites, however, did feel inherently entitled.  Things like the Equal Employment Opportunity Act nibbled away at their privilege, and they could bemoan it, but the ultimate ineffectuality of such acts left their inherent entitlement pretty much as it was.  Less government meant less government nibbling at the edge of the cookie, meant fewer tax-supported government sponsored entitlements, meant that things would continue to stay pretty much as they were with inherent entitlements in place.  This, in part, is why they began to lean toward the republicans.   Of course, the republican elites had no intention of doing anything FOR them, and they didn't.  All they promised was to refrain from doing anything TO them.  If they are disaffected with the republican elites, the insiders, however, it's because the latter promise was broken.   Less government, it seems, meant that large scale entities, like the banks, could stick it TO them.  They were getting it from both sides.

So again, what do we do with the 60% who are being left behind by the new "knowledge economy?"  Clinton, of course, is the continuity candidate, and it's clear enough that we'll get "more of the same" if she is elected.  Trump, of course, is the discontinuity candidate, but it's completely unclear what we'll get if he is elected except the "strength" of his personality.  Indeed, he revels in the lack of clarity, his "unpredictability."  Having said that, we do know something about Trump, the personality.  We might want to "check" him, rein him in, but the rather ineffectual efforts by the Republican elite to "check" him have shown, he's nothing if not difficult to "restrain."  Sullivan captures this well:

if Trump’s policies are checked by other branches of government, how might he react? Just look at his response to the rules of the GOP nomination process. He’s not interested in rules. And he barely understands the Constitution. In one revealing moment earlier this year, when asked what he would do if the military refused to obey an illegal order to torture a prisoner, Trump simply insisted that the man would obey: “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse, believe me.” He later amended his remark, but it speaks volumes about his approach to power. Dick Cheney gave illegal orders to torture prisoners and coerced White House lawyers to cook up absurd “legal” defenses. Trump would make Cheney’s embrace of the dark side and untrammeled executive power look unambitious.

Trump will, of course, swear to uphold and defend the constitution, but he's shown all along very little regard for its "protections" for the people.  The first amendment, perhaps the bulwark of our democracy, would be the first to go, if he follows through on his ban of muslims and his "relaxation" of libel laws.  The fourth amendment and due process would be next to go, if he follows through on his promise to deport Mexicans.  The list can go on, but it is clear that Trump is interested in Trump, not in the "rules," and we have already seen how he responds to critics.  It's one thing to send tweets, another to use the power of the presidency to deal with a critic.  As Sullivan notes, "were Trump to win the White House, the defenses against him would be weak. He would likely bring a GOP majority in the House, and Republicans in the Senate would be subjected to almighty popular fury if they stood in his way."

Sullivan sees in this an "extinction level event" for our fragile democracy.  I'm also not completely sure, given Trumps rise, that the extinction level event hasn't already occurred, that there may be no repair.  This seems rather dire hyperbole, and begs some explanation.  What exactly do I mean by democracy?   I have been giving this some thought of late and it's not the easiest question to answer.  I do not want to provide a civics lesson on the constitutional shape of our government.  Books upon books have been written on the subject, and anything I say here would be simplistic in the extreme. Let me just repeat Lincoln's formulation -- that "democracy" is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."  Given this simple formulation, there are some fundamental questions that can be asked and answered.  Let me work through them in reverse order.

For the people -- it perhaps bears pointing out that I didn't amend Lincoln's formulation to read "white people" or "protestant people" or "capital owning people" or even "citizen people."  It is, in the broadest and must fundamental sense, the people, undifferentiated by race, religion, property, nationality, or any other distinction.  If you are human, you are among the people.   It is at this level that we can begin to discuss "basic human rights."  So we don't get sidetracked, le't me differentiate between "political rights" and "basic human rights."  Our constitution, by definition, sets out political, not basic human rights.  Political rights are always reciprocal with political duties.  My right to freely speak my mind implies a duty to respect your right to speak your mind.  My right to bear arms implies my duty to respect your right to bear arms.  My right to worship as I choose implies a duty to respect your right to worship as you choose.  The list goes on, but it is important to note that they are guaranteed within our system of government that protects those rights.  Outside our system of government, if I get my rifles and missiles first, I can probably prevent you from getting yours, from speaking your mind, or worshipping as you might choose.  Moreover, we can choose to selectively curtail those rights.  I can, for example, curtail my right to bear certain sorts of arms implies a duty for you to curtail your right to bear the same sorts of arms.  The list, again, goes on, but it is important to note that such "compromises" are worked out within our system of government.  I may not necessarily fully agree that, say, assault rifles should be banned, but if such a ban is enacted, if we wish to maintain full citizenship within our government, we must comply. 

I want to say that "basic human rights" are inalienable.  I borrow Jefferson's word from our Declaration of Independence, and by this, I mean simply, not subject to compromise.  The first  and most fundamental among the "inalienable" rights is the right to life.  I'm not going to quibble on this any more than on the people.   We can argue this point later, but I don't believe that "due process of law" has the right to deprive someone of their life.  Until we have an "infallible" process of law, I do not believe that the government has the right to take what it cannot restore.   Having said that, any government that is for the people will work to secure the lives of those under its charge.  I am not speaking simply or solely of protection from the threats that come from within or without, the criminals or terrorists who would actively take our lives.  It is important, of course, and a fundamental responsibility of government to provide such protection, but our thinking on this question should have evolved.  There are active threats to life, and there are passive threats to life, and one is no more conscionable than the other.  I can kill someone actively with a bullet or I can kill someone passively, albeit in ways more slow, more painful, more degrading, by denying potable water, basic nutrition, adequate shelter, clothing, and medical care.  It is equally important, and perhaps an even more fundamental responsibility of government to secure the basic necessities for the maintenance and preservation of life.

The question of the political season -- do we believe that our government is working to fulfill its fundamental responsibility to secure even the basic necessities for the maintenance and preservation of life for the people?   Before I say more, let me admit up front there is considerable rhetoric on this subject, most of it misleading.  Just one example -- the whole notion of "equal opportunity."  If we are honest with ourselves, "opportunity" is no more "equal" than anything else.  I did not have the sorts of "opportunities" that one Donald Trump has had, or for that matter that one Mitt Romney has had, and my children do not have the sorts of "opportunities" that their children have.  It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see that a black child, born into a poor Flint neighborhood, has even fewer "opportunities" than my children.  It's delusional to believe we all have anything approaching "equal opportunity," and for some, it's delusional to believe they have much "opportunity" at all.   When the lack of "opportunity" begins to bite away one's ability to secure the basic necessities for the maintenance and preservation of life, then it is a fundamental responsibility of government to either provide the "opportunity" or the "basic necessities of life."  

How to do that?  From the conservative elites we get the so-called supply side economics, where taxes on the wealthy and the regulatory restraints on business are reduced, ostensibly freeing up business investments that will create jobs.  Supply side economics has not produced the job bonanza promised, nor can it.  It is, to put it bluntly, a sham perpetrated on the American people.   It has improved and continues to improve the amassed wealth of the very wealthy, and we remain a wealthy nation in part because of that amassed wealth, but an increasing majority of the population has a decreasing share in the "wealth of the nation."   Moreover, contrary to popular belief, the business sectors are not "job creators."  They are "profit creators," and "jobs" are created only when absolutely needed and only when they contribute to the profit of the business enterprise, and they are discarded quickly with only the most abstract concern for the employees.   We are living in a world with contracting, not expanding, opportunities to actually earn a living.  It would seem to be otherwise, given the recent job numbers, but one should look closely at the so-called "job growth."  A good deal of that growth comes in sectors where there is little opportunity for full-time benefited employment, where there is little opportunity for wages much in excess of the minimum wage, where there is little opportunity for wage gain over time, where there is little opportunity period.  We are developing a "servant class" throughout the US.  They don't live downstairs in the manse, but the maids working for that "maid service" that comes in twice a week to clean the toilets aren't rolling in the dough, and are probably working two or three such jobs to "make ends meet."

From the democratic elites, the technical professionals, we get, more and more, a sort of edu-techno-utopianism.  I won't repeat Thomas Franks' whole argument, but this brand of utopianism sees "education" and "innovation," particularly technological innovation, as the solution to all problems.  It is true that college graduates have weathered the economic storms better than our less educated populace, but it does not follow that everyone, even an increasing majority of people, should get a college education.  In the so-called job market, as any recent graduate will tell you, there is not an unlimited demand for college educated employees, particularly those emerging from 3rd and 4th tier universities and community colleges.  I distrust those numbers claiming that we need graduation rates approaching 60% in the future, but assume for the moment, however, that we have not met that demand, what happens when we do?  An over-supply of college graduates is not unlike an over-supply of anything else, the increased competition will drive down wages for those who do get in and leave many others on the outside.  The college degree comes to resemble less and less the ticket guaranteeing a seat on the gravy train, more and more a lottery ticket --  you can't win unless you buy the ticket, but no guarantees that you will win if you do fork out all that time and money.

Sullivan's elites have not provided a government for the people.  My wife hates the phrase, "well, it could be worse."  Of course it can, and if we continue on the present path, it will get worse.  Neither the republican nor the democratic elites have delivered on the promised future, and increasingly the people are finding it more and more difficult to hold them accountable for their failure to deliver.  Indeed, in the finance sector at least, they seem to be rewarded for their failures, and into this slow, grinding decline comes the demagogue who appears at least to be for the people.  Neither of the demagogues in this election cycle, neither Trump nor Sanders, will deliver on their promises, but they appeal to those who wish to hold the failed elites accountable, and it is precisely that "climate" that threatens to unseat our fragile democracy.  Trump is, by far, the greater threat, not only because he is the presumptive nominee, but because he is Trump.  He cannot deliver on any of his promises, not one, without destroying the "miracle of constitutional craftsmanship and cultural resilience," to use Sullivan's words.  Will he even try to deliver on his promises?  As we move more into the general election, he seems to back away from his promises with the same élan, so one suspects that, once in power, he will behave as most demagogues who have been elected on empty promises.  He will work to maintain and consolidate his power.  We have enough historical precedent to know what that means.