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.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Monday, May 9, 2016
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Dream Works and the American Dream
OK, so here's something that few will notice and few will care about. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Comcast is in talks to buy DreamWorks Animation for three billion dollars. To get some idea of the magnitude of such numbers, written out it looks like this: 3,000,000,000 USD. If we divide it by the median annual income of Americans, let's say $50,000, that's enough for 6,000 families. It has become relatively easy to throw around numbers of 3 billion here, 7 billion there, without really being cognizant of the magnitude of those numbers. Just saying.
My point, though, is otherwise. This deal, ostensibly, as the WSJ put it, "could make the cable giant a rival to Walt Disney Co. in the lucrative family-entertainment business." The word "rival," of course, points to what we would like to believe about capitalism in general -- that the competition for revenue is essentially a democratic process more or less equivalent to voting with one's pocket book. When I buy a ticket to a Disney movie, or a DreamWorks movie, or both, I am essentially giving them a thumbs up vote. With enough thumbs up votes, one has an enterprise worth 3 billion dollars.
The competition between DreamWorks and Walt Disney, however, more or less misses the point. As we all know, Comcast Corporation isn't just a "family entertainment" provider, but is, rather, an American multinational mass media company. It is the largest broadcasting and largest cable company in the world by revenue, and it owns NBC and Telemundo as well as Universal Pictures. All of which makes an acquisition of DreamWorks essentially a "portfolio" acquisition and they are making such an acquisition, not so much to compete with Disney, but to absorb another asset that might potentially compete against them as content providers.
Having said that, Comcast is both content and access providers, and as access providers they have been broadly criticized for monopolistic tendencies. As anyone who has sought cable or internet service for their home knows, there is very limited competition among providers. Their sheer size gives them considerable leverage when it comes to "paid peering" agreements (a full discussion is a post unto itself) which impacts directly on the quality of one's internet connections. In short, without meaningful competition in most markets across the US, it is not surprising that their customer service and customer satisfaction are notoriously bad, nor is it surprising that the Consumerist called them the "worst company in America" both in 2010 and 2014.
In short, for many Americans, Comcast controls a good portion of what one sees and how one sees it. Even so, one might feel a bit of sympathy for Kerry Kratzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks, insofar as he might well be out of a job soon -- might feel some sympathy were it not for the 21.9 million settlement "payout" he would receive should the acquisition take place and he would still control 60% of the common voting stock of the company. With a 5% return on 21.9 million held in "savings," he could have an annual income of 1,095,000 USD and do nothing else ever. Although it would take some sacrifice, I'm sure, most Americans could live on that return. Just saying.
Also, let's, for a moment, consider what that 60% of the common voting stock means, just generally speaking. It has been said that shareholders, as such, represent another democratic aspect of corporate life -- that CEOs and the company generally are "beholden" to the shareholders in much the same way that politicians are "beholden" to the individual voter. That might be true, sorta, if the shares were widely distributed, but someone who own 60% of the shares is by definition already a "majority of one," though I'm pretty sure that's not what Thoreau had in mind when he encouraged individual American's to be a "majority of one." If Mr. Kratzenberg is "beholden" to shareholders, he is "beholden" mostly to himself.
Here's the kicker. As the WSJ reports,
Some of DreamWorks Animation's challenges have come from nimbler new competitors such as Illumination, which rather than building a large studio infrastructure such as Dream Works, produces its movies with foreign animators at significantly lower cost.
That has led investors to pressure DreamWorks to lower its costs of production, which typically range between $130 million and $145 million, compared with about $80 million for Illumination.
So, ultimately, making an animated movie and making a Trump tie are ultimately no different. They both can be "off-shored" to reduce labor and production costs, which in turn increases profits and returns to shareholders. Ask yourself, however, just who are these "investors" who are putting "pressure" on DreamWorks to "lower its costs of production" by using cheaper foreign labor? Am I mistaken in assuming that 60% of those "investors" are Mr Kratzenberg himself, the CEO of DreamWorks? It seems that Mr. Kratzenberg is mostly "pressuring" himself, and doing so at the expense, again, of domestic jobs. Should Comcast acquire DreamWorks, the "necessary changes" would, no doubt, be easier to effectuate and it won't put much of a crimp in Mr. Kratzenberg's style.
Please understand me. I don't think this is a "conspiracy" against American workers, per se. It is rather just the way international capitalism works. The "global" workers employed by Illumination, I'm sure, enjoyed a boost in their standard of living, and taking a global perspective, global capitalism has improved the standard of living in many second and third world nations. From that perspective, it's not all bad, but having said that, it has done so at the expense of American workers. It has indirectly "redistributed" wealth from the American worker to those same "global" workers. The phrase I heard too many times, that "education" will make Americans more "competitive" in the global labor market is horse hockey. The only thing that will make Americans more "competitive" in the global labor market would be to "lower the cost of production" -- that is to take less in pay and benefits for the same or greater levels of productivity. If there is a new American Dream among the international capitalists, we would look more and more like India today with an over-supply of very cheap labor -- and indeed and the disparity between those with and those without grows, as all but "service sector" jobs slowly disappear, we are looking more and more like India every day.
When I say that the likes of Mr. Roberts and Burke of Comcast, Mr. Kratzenberg of DreamWorks, or Mr. Meledandri of Illumination are "international capitalists," however, I am asserting that they are ultimately less and less concerned with any "national" impact of their actions, more concerned with their own benefit, which, yes, is tied to the "profitability" of their multi-national enterprises. In some very broad sense, considered globally, they are indeed the so-called "makers." The search for greater and greater "profitability," however, enriches a few considerably, but does nothing to maximize domestic employment and does nothing maximize American pay and benefits. Quite the contrary, it has led to considerable pressure to "lower the costs of production," labor being one of the most significant "costs of production," and the "internationalization" begun with Reagan, perpetuated by Bush, Clinton, another Bush, and Obama through various trade agreements, has allowed American corporations greater and greater latitude to change, well, their longitude and latitude. I don't know that we can put that cash cow back in the barn, but it bears thinking about.
My point, though, is otherwise. This deal, ostensibly, as the WSJ put it, "could make the cable giant a rival to Walt Disney Co. in the lucrative family-entertainment business." The word "rival," of course, points to what we would like to believe about capitalism in general -- that the competition for revenue is essentially a democratic process more or less equivalent to voting with one's pocket book. When I buy a ticket to a Disney movie, or a DreamWorks movie, or both, I am essentially giving them a thumbs up vote. With enough thumbs up votes, one has an enterprise worth 3 billion dollars.
The competition between DreamWorks and Walt Disney, however, more or less misses the point. As we all know, Comcast Corporation isn't just a "family entertainment" provider, but is, rather, an American multinational mass media company. It is the largest broadcasting and largest cable company in the world by revenue, and it owns NBC and Telemundo as well as Universal Pictures. All of which makes an acquisition of DreamWorks essentially a "portfolio" acquisition and they are making such an acquisition, not so much to compete with Disney, but to absorb another asset that might potentially compete against them as content providers.
Having said that, Comcast is both content and access providers, and as access providers they have been broadly criticized for monopolistic tendencies. As anyone who has sought cable or internet service for their home knows, there is very limited competition among providers. Their sheer size gives them considerable leverage when it comes to "paid peering" agreements (a full discussion is a post unto itself) which impacts directly on the quality of one's internet connections. In short, without meaningful competition in most markets across the US, it is not surprising that their customer service and customer satisfaction are notoriously bad, nor is it surprising that the Consumerist called them the "worst company in America" both in 2010 and 2014.
In short, for many Americans, Comcast controls a good portion of what one sees and how one sees it. Even so, one might feel a bit of sympathy for Kerry Kratzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks, insofar as he might well be out of a job soon -- might feel some sympathy were it not for the 21.9 million settlement "payout" he would receive should the acquisition take place and he would still control 60% of the common voting stock of the company. With a 5% return on 21.9 million held in "savings," he could have an annual income of 1,095,000 USD and do nothing else ever. Although it would take some sacrifice, I'm sure, most Americans could live on that return. Just saying.
Also, let's, for a moment, consider what that 60% of the common voting stock means, just generally speaking. It has been said that shareholders, as such, represent another democratic aspect of corporate life -- that CEOs and the company generally are "beholden" to the shareholders in much the same way that politicians are "beholden" to the individual voter. That might be true, sorta, if the shares were widely distributed, but someone who own 60% of the shares is by definition already a "majority of one," though I'm pretty sure that's not what Thoreau had in mind when he encouraged individual American's to be a "majority of one." If Mr. Kratzenberg is "beholden" to shareholders, he is "beholden" mostly to himself.
Here's the kicker. As the WSJ reports,
Some of DreamWorks Animation's challenges have come from nimbler new competitors such as Illumination, which rather than building a large studio infrastructure such as Dream Works, produces its movies with foreign animators at significantly lower cost.
That has led investors to pressure DreamWorks to lower its costs of production, which typically range between $130 million and $145 million, compared with about $80 million for Illumination.
So, ultimately, making an animated movie and making a Trump tie are ultimately no different. They both can be "off-shored" to reduce labor and production costs, which in turn increases profits and returns to shareholders. Ask yourself, however, just who are these "investors" who are putting "pressure" on DreamWorks to "lower its costs of production" by using cheaper foreign labor? Am I mistaken in assuming that 60% of those "investors" are Mr Kratzenberg himself, the CEO of DreamWorks? It seems that Mr. Kratzenberg is mostly "pressuring" himself, and doing so at the expense, again, of domestic jobs. Should Comcast acquire DreamWorks, the "necessary changes" would, no doubt, be easier to effectuate and it won't put much of a crimp in Mr. Kratzenberg's style.
Please understand me. I don't think this is a "conspiracy" against American workers, per se. It is rather just the way international capitalism works. The "global" workers employed by Illumination, I'm sure, enjoyed a boost in their standard of living, and taking a global perspective, global capitalism has improved the standard of living in many second and third world nations. From that perspective, it's not all bad, but having said that, it has done so at the expense of American workers. It has indirectly "redistributed" wealth from the American worker to those same "global" workers. The phrase I heard too many times, that "education" will make Americans more "competitive" in the global labor market is horse hockey. The only thing that will make Americans more "competitive" in the global labor market would be to "lower the cost of production" -- that is to take less in pay and benefits for the same or greater levels of productivity. If there is a new American Dream among the international capitalists, we would look more and more like India today with an over-supply of very cheap labor -- and indeed and the disparity between those with and those without grows, as all but "service sector" jobs slowly disappear, we are looking more and more like India every day.
When I say that the likes of Mr. Roberts and Burke of Comcast, Mr. Kratzenberg of DreamWorks, or Mr. Meledandri of Illumination are "international capitalists," however, I am asserting that they are ultimately less and less concerned with any "national" impact of their actions, more concerned with their own benefit, which, yes, is tied to the "profitability" of their multi-national enterprises. In some very broad sense, considered globally, they are indeed the so-called "makers." The search for greater and greater "profitability," however, enriches a few considerably, but does nothing to maximize domestic employment and does nothing maximize American pay and benefits. Quite the contrary, it has led to considerable pressure to "lower the costs of production," labor being one of the most significant "costs of production," and the "internationalization" begun with Reagan, perpetuated by Bush, Clinton, another Bush, and Obama through various trade agreements, has allowed American corporations greater and greater latitude to change, well, their longitude and latitude. I don't know that we can put that cash cow back in the barn, but it bears thinking about.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
The current party coalitions
are beginning to show their internal contradictions, as many are pointing out. Before I add my two cents worth, it might be worth suggest that certain positive values may well be contradictory and irreconcilable. For example, our pledge of allegiance contains the words "with liberty and justice for all." If one's notion of "liberty" includes the freedom to discriminate against those I feel are repugnant or morally reprehensible, then it clearly bumps against "justice for all." If one's notion of "justice," that is, includes "fair and equal treatment," then the sense of moral outrage must be tempered by laws which would require us all to set aside our repugnance and provide equal access to, say, weddings and wedding cakes.
You probably jumped to the conclusion that I was thinking about "gay rights." Not so, I am thinking about the FLDS "prophet" who, in addition to his six other wives, wants to marry the 12 year old promised to him in a recent revelation. I want the "freedom to" discriminate against him. I don't want to set aside my repugnance and bake him a cake. So round we go round we go round. There are all sorts of ways to twist and turn the words, but ultimately one cannot achieve perfect liberty and perfect justice at the same time, in all cases, though both ultimately are laudable goals.
The Hegelian view of history, taken in its broad outlines, is mistaken -- that is to say, the thesis and antithesis do not necessarily lead to anything that might approach a grand synthesis. Moreover, though I have heard it said all too many times, I cannot "take the best of both" and seek compromise. If there are sincere believer in the revelations of the FLDS prophet -- and I have to acknowledge that there are sincere believers -- then there is little or nothing in their ideation or way of life that I can "take the best of," nowhere that I can find common ground for compromise, nor can we just "agree to disagree." We are talking about a girl the age of my grand daughter about to be married to a man my age. In the end, we must decide which value trumps the other, not always and forever, but in just this case, which answers the perennial question, "why can't we all just get along?" It's because I simply cannot overcome my repugnance at Warren Jeffs. If he is indeed speaking with god, as he claims -- and on what basis do I discount the "sincerity" of his claims? -- then frankly I cannot overcome my repugnance with his religion and his "right" to practice it unmolested. That just by way of example. We cannot escape the moral question, the decision between values, and it matters how we answer it.
Here, I want to say that "core conservatism," the belief that unrestrained capitalism will produce the greatest good, is itself something of a religion. It is, in other words, a tenant of "faith," and must be maintained despite all the evidence to the contrary. "Unrestrained capitalism" and the "invisible hand" cannot fail, we can only fail it by insufficient faith, insufficient trust in the "invisible hand," by falling prey to the "sins" of regulatory restrictions and taxes that we place upon it. If there is common ground between evangelical conservatism and capital conservatism, it is perhaps that both ultimately are based on tenants of faith. One can even conjoin the two tenants if one sees the hand of god in the invisible hand of unrestrained capitalism, and one need only think of Weber's "Die Protestantische Ethick und der Geist des Kapitalismus" for a more complete discussion. For a tenant of faith, evidence to the contrary must either be explained away, or bracketed in willful ignorance. If contradicted, the emotional volume turned up, as if to trumpet ever louder, with ever more foreboding conviction, will somehow make it truth.
complete tmr ....
You probably jumped to the conclusion that I was thinking about "gay rights." Not so, I am thinking about the FLDS "prophet" who, in addition to his six other wives, wants to marry the 12 year old promised to him in a recent revelation. I want the "freedom to" discriminate against him. I don't want to set aside my repugnance and bake him a cake. So round we go round we go round. There are all sorts of ways to twist and turn the words, but ultimately one cannot achieve perfect liberty and perfect justice at the same time, in all cases, though both ultimately are laudable goals.
The Hegelian view of history, taken in its broad outlines, is mistaken -- that is to say, the thesis and antithesis do not necessarily lead to anything that might approach a grand synthesis. Moreover, though I have heard it said all too many times, I cannot "take the best of both" and seek compromise. If there are sincere believer in the revelations of the FLDS prophet -- and I have to acknowledge that there are sincere believers -- then there is little or nothing in their ideation or way of life that I can "take the best of," nowhere that I can find common ground for compromise, nor can we just "agree to disagree." We are talking about a girl the age of my grand daughter about to be married to a man my age. In the end, we must decide which value trumps the other, not always and forever, but in just this case, which answers the perennial question, "why can't we all just get along?" It's because I simply cannot overcome my repugnance at Warren Jeffs. If he is indeed speaking with god, as he claims -- and on what basis do I discount the "sincerity" of his claims? -- then frankly I cannot overcome my repugnance with his religion and his "right" to practice it unmolested. That just by way of example. We cannot escape the moral question, the decision between values, and it matters how we answer it.
Here, I want to say that "core conservatism," the belief that unrestrained capitalism will produce the greatest good, is itself something of a religion. It is, in other words, a tenant of "faith," and must be maintained despite all the evidence to the contrary. "Unrestrained capitalism" and the "invisible hand" cannot fail, we can only fail it by insufficient faith, insufficient trust in the "invisible hand," by falling prey to the "sins" of regulatory restrictions and taxes that we place upon it. If there is common ground between evangelical conservatism and capital conservatism, it is perhaps that both ultimately are based on tenants of faith. One can even conjoin the two tenants if one sees the hand of god in the invisible hand of unrestrained capitalism, and one need only think of Weber's "Die Protestantische Ethick und der Geist des Kapitalismus" for a more complete discussion. For a tenant of faith, evidence to the contrary must either be explained away, or bracketed in willful ignorance. If contradicted, the emotional volume turned up, as if to trumpet ever louder, with ever more foreboding conviction, will somehow make it truth.
complete tmr ....
Monday, April 25, 2016
"Clinton may be the best option"
or so, ostensibly, said charles koch, of the koch brothers. The Post published the story, and the real quotation is more equivocal. When asked if he could support Clinton, he said, "we would have to believe her actions would be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way. But on some of the Republican candidates we would -- before we could support them -- we'd have to believe their actions will be quite different than the rhetoric we've heard so far." I'm really not sure what the pundits might make of this, but it seems to be a tremor of the quake to come.
Before I say anything else, let me set aside some of the divisive point issues of the conservative base -- say for example, gun "control" laws. If the NRA has made sway, it's not entirely a matter of money and donations to candidates, it's more the annoyance factor. People on either side of this issue tend to care deeply and irrationally about this issue. On the one side, no one is trying to take away ALL the guns, only those that serve no particular civilian purpose. The sportsmen can rest assured that they will be secure in the ownership of their hunting weapons, and those concerned about self-defense can still have access to weapons appropriate to personal defense. I'm pretty sure, however, that one can't justify ownership of military style automatic weapons, unless one is "hunting" a rival narco-gang and "defending oneself" from the onslaught of a gang similarly armed -- unless one is concerned about the "coming race war" and must arm one's self against the onslaught of the "inferior races." On the other side, it's pretty clear that guns are a "public health issue," and as such, should be "regulated." We require licensing, registration and insurance for the possession of most motor-vehicles, in part at least to reduce the menace on the road. Why not similar "regulation" for gun ownership? Yes the "gov'ment" will have some discretionary say about whether we have guns or not, but they already have discretionary say over many, many things and "we the people" have given it discretion for good reason.
My point, however, is this: no where in this do I see a "core" party-based issue -- nothing that will determine the shape of this country in the years to come. It's important, but politically it's more a distractor, a way for both parties to tap those so-called hot button icons with guaranteed sorts of responses from the "base." Ditto abortion. And for the most part, ditto religion, though that's a bit scarier. If something like dominionism actually DOES gain real power, we will begin more and more the christian mirror to saudi arabia's muslims, but I want to believe that the secular america ensconced in the constitution can survive even eight years of a ted cruz.
The "core" party-based issue has been and will be money. Koch cannot support a trump, mostly because he is a loose cannon. The ban on muslims, the thinly veiled xenophobia and racism, the America-first neo-nationalism, et cetera, may appeal to the biker-base, but tit also makes him something of a loose cannon. His policies would undo many years of persistent political activity on the part of the big money oligarchs, who for the most part are internationalists favoring the trade agreements that reduce restrictions on the free flow of capital and labor across borders. Cruz too is a loose cannon. Although the Americans for Prosperity supported tea-party brought candidates like Cruz into their seats, Koch cannot really support him, not because of his bellicose "make the sands glow" sorts of language, as he asserts, but because he just might be crazy enough to see his election as a mandate for evangelical dominion, and one should remember that one of the mountain over which they want dominion is "business." Just what that might mean is anyone's guess.
So we come to Clinton. She is "soft" on many of the issues that the Koch brothers DO care about, like the minimum wage, which, of course, they oppose. She is also, at least, "softer" on climate change, which, of course, as gasoline refiners, the Koch brothers dismiss. Although she favors cap and trade as one answer to climate change, it is a "market based approach" unlike the outright tax favored by Sanders. She is "soft" on trade issues as well. Although initiated by the first Bush administration, NAFTA was signed into law by her husband. She has also supported, though a bit lukewarmly, the Trans Pacific Partnership. As one Huffington Post blogger, Dave Johnson, put it, she is the "continuity candidate:"
Clinton is not an oligarch, at least not quite like the Kochs, not one of the one-tenth of one percent, but she is one of the well-to-do elites. She is a member of that "class" on which the on-going enterprises of the oligarchs absolutely depend -- let's call it the technical professional class. Not unlike Obama, she is one for whom current versions of the American dream have worked out well, thank you very much. She went to the right schools, no doubt worked very hard, and has as a consequence enjoyed considerable success within her "field of expertise," within "politics." Although their attitudes are more liberal than the oligarchs, or at least the libertarian Kochs -- that is to say, they tend to see government as a source of potential "solutions," not the problem in and of itself -- their "liberalism" stems from the world view of the "professional," where life appears to be a succession of "problems" -- or better, "challenges" -- for which there are always good "technical" solutions. They are, in other words, the people to whom the oligarchs delegate their "problems" for "solution."
The oligarchs are frustrated, in part, because they do not always get to define the "problem." As Dave Johnson goes on to write:
Before I say anything else, let me set aside some of the divisive point issues of the conservative base -- say for example, gun "control" laws. If the NRA has made sway, it's not entirely a matter of money and donations to candidates, it's more the annoyance factor. People on either side of this issue tend to care deeply and irrationally about this issue. On the one side, no one is trying to take away ALL the guns, only those that serve no particular civilian purpose. The sportsmen can rest assured that they will be secure in the ownership of their hunting weapons, and those concerned about self-defense can still have access to weapons appropriate to personal defense. I'm pretty sure, however, that one can't justify ownership of military style automatic weapons, unless one is "hunting" a rival narco-gang and "defending oneself" from the onslaught of a gang similarly armed -- unless one is concerned about the "coming race war" and must arm one's self against the onslaught of the "inferior races." On the other side, it's pretty clear that guns are a "public health issue," and as such, should be "regulated." We require licensing, registration and insurance for the possession of most motor-vehicles, in part at least to reduce the menace on the road. Why not similar "regulation" for gun ownership? Yes the "gov'ment" will have some discretionary say about whether we have guns or not, but they already have discretionary say over many, many things and "we the people" have given it discretion for good reason.
My point, however, is this: no where in this do I see a "core" party-based issue -- nothing that will determine the shape of this country in the years to come. It's important, but politically it's more a distractor, a way for both parties to tap those so-called hot button icons with guaranteed sorts of responses from the "base." Ditto abortion. And for the most part, ditto religion, though that's a bit scarier. If something like dominionism actually DOES gain real power, we will begin more and more the christian mirror to saudi arabia's muslims, but I want to believe that the secular america ensconced in the constitution can survive even eight years of a ted cruz.
The "core" party-based issue has been and will be money. Koch cannot support a trump, mostly because he is a loose cannon. The ban on muslims, the thinly veiled xenophobia and racism, the America-first neo-nationalism, et cetera, may appeal to the biker-base, but tit also makes him something of a loose cannon. His policies would undo many years of persistent political activity on the part of the big money oligarchs, who for the most part are internationalists favoring the trade agreements that reduce restrictions on the free flow of capital and labor across borders. Cruz too is a loose cannon. Although the Americans for Prosperity supported tea-party brought candidates like Cruz into their seats, Koch cannot really support him, not because of his bellicose "make the sands glow" sorts of language, as he asserts, but because he just might be crazy enough to see his election as a mandate for evangelical dominion, and one should remember that one of the mountain over which they want dominion is "business." Just what that might mean is anyone's guess.
So we come to Clinton. She is "soft" on many of the issues that the Koch brothers DO care about, like the minimum wage, which, of course, they oppose. She is also, at least, "softer" on climate change, which, of course, as gasoline refiners, the Koch brothers dismiss. Although she favors cap and trade as one answer to climate change, it is a "market based approach" unlike the outright tax favored by Sanders. She is "soft" on trade issues as well. Although initiated by the first Bush administration, NAFTA was signed into law by her husband. She has also supported, though a bit lukewarmly, the Trans Pacific Partnership. As one Huffington Post blogger, Dave Johnson, put it, she is the "continuity candidate:"
America’s
well-to-do elites think everything is going fine. Their stock portfolios are
way up, so they’re feeling good. They’re writing op-eds about how well things
are going and how our corporate paradigm is doing so well for us and the world.
The elite “donor class” is giving huge sums to “continuity” politicians. This
is elites talking to other elites and not at all hearing what is going on in
the country.
The oligarchs are frustrated, in part, because they do not always get to define the "problem." As Dave Johnson goes on to write:
Donald
Trump is not dependent on this donor class and he is saying that things are not
fine, that wages are not going up, that jobs are hard to find, that trade is
killing us. So people for whom things are not going fine, for whom jobs are
hard to find, for whom wages are not going up and who trade is killing are
listening. And that is most people in the U.S.
Donald Trump is an oligarch who wants to define the "problem," and the problem, mostly, for him, is that he is "not president." Of the college-presidents that I served in the past, I used to make a mental distinction between those who wanted the job to "do" president, and those who wanted the job to "be" president -- those that had a vision for the school and wanted the position to implement it, and those that simply who had a vision for themselves and wanted the position to fulfill it. Donald Trump falls in the latter category. I don't believe for an instant that he actually wants to "govern," but he certainly wants to "be" president, and the more recent, toned-down Trump simply indicates that he is listening to the technical professionals who are providing "solutions" to the "problem" of not yet having fulfilled his ambition. He is willing to tap into the rage and mostly misplaced resentment around the "problems" of the average American in order to "be" president, but for the vast majority of Americans, who are neither oligarchs or well-to-do technical professionals, the real problems begging for solution are, indeed, the lack of decent, living wage employment which comes with the benefits of health insurance and a retirement plan.
Koch too is an oligarch who wants to define the "problem," and the problem for them, mostly, is anything that threatens to diminish their ability to extract wealth. They, however, want to "do" president, or more precisely hire a technical professional willing to "do" president in their way, and as a consequence tend to be more "principled" than someone like Trump and what they want is a more "pure" form of capitalism. They oppose legal and regulatory restrictions that inhibit the free flow of capital and labor across borders, in part because they believe in "free trade," but in larger part because "free trade" allows them to maximize the return on their capital. They oppose taxes, in part because taxes are policy tools to enact legal and regulatory restrictions, and in part because they redistribute their wealth in ways that may not meet with their approval. They oppose hikes in the minimum wage and collective bargaining, in part because the minimum wage and union worker represents that segment of the labor market that cannot be "exported" and has not yet been automated out of existence.
The oligarchs have been, until recently, been fairly adept at displacing the rage and resentment of the populace with slogans like "we fight for freedom" and "we protect the American dream by fighting each day for lower taxes, less government regulation, and economic prosperity for all," but their own rhetoric is wearing thin in the face of reality. Where is the promised "economic prosperity" for all? Although they have been, until recently, been fairly adept at vilifying Obama as a "socialist" to maintain any creep to the left, the emergence of Sanders as an actual (well, almost) socialist who, not unlike Trump, criticizes both Obama and his heir apparent as "continuity candidates," those who might be more liberal than their oligarchic donors, but who nevertheless have benefited from the donor class. He too is tapping into the disappointed hopes of many Americans for whom the American dream has become a pipe dream -- for whom "lower taxes" of the Reagan and Bush (and Obama) years have had little to no effect on their personal situation -- for whom unemployment, under-employment, and wage stagnation are day-to-day realities -- for whom health care is essentially not existent and at the same time increasingly expensive.
They have been, in other words, fairly adept at "defining" the problem that needs solution, and the well-to-do technical professionals have been fairly adept at providing what have been, at best, stop-gap solutions that satisfy the broader populace, but have done nothing to change the under-lying status quo, which increasingly benefits the few at the expense -- literally, the expense -- of the many. We need structural change, less capitalism, more democracy ...
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Sunday Morning Anti-Sermon
There is something purgative about this blog. I do nothing in the way of self-promotion, so I know that I'm throwing it out there without any expectation of a readership. That, of course, is a confession that I temper my speech much more in my day-to-day life. So, let me start with a not entirely outrageous idea -- there is no God. Then what?
For those who are queasy imagining, as John Lennon might put it, "there's no hell below us, above us only sky," you can consider it a thought experiment. If you can't even bring yourself to consider it even as a thought experiment, well then, you're hopeless. You're living in a sort of denial that is very common among human beings, who seem to need religion, but I would submit that god, if he does exist, would encourage the thought experiment, perhaps he even demands it. Why else would an omnipotent god, who could so easily appear and over-awe us all, leave his revelations to a few divinely inspired prophets? Moreover, divinely inspired prophets who lived over two thousand years ago? Don't mistake me, there seems to be no shortage of "divinely inspired prophets." They pop up everywhere -- Jim Jones and David Koresh come to mind -- and they do gather their followers, but it seems they always turn out to be altogether too human.
So, as a thought experiment, there is no God, then what? the first qualm I normally hear goes something like this: if we are not "accountable" to god for moral and ethical behavior, then to whom are we responsible? There are a couple of assumptions behind such statements. The first is that moral and ethical guidance has come to us from god through religion. I do not dispute that religion has often codified what it believes to be moral and ethical behavior, and has sought to impose that behavior on the populace on the authority of god. As some on the christian right would like to suggest, we were a christian nation, and should restore the strictly puritan, calvinist christian governance of our original colonization. Here again, I am thinking of Cruz and his dominionism -- i.e. the "theocratic ideology that seeks to implement a nation governed by conservative christians ruling over the rest of society based on their understanding of biblical law." It seeks what is called a theonomy, from theos (god) and nomos (law) , and is the idea that mosaic law should be observed by modern societies." As pointed out, various theonomic authors have stated such goals as the 'universal development of biblical theocratic republics, exclusion of non-christians from voting and citizenship, and the application of biblical law by the state. Under such a system of biblical law, homosexual acts, adultery, witchcraft and blasphemy would be punishable by death. Propagation of idolatry or false religions would be illegal and could also be punished by the death penalty." One need only imagine the witch trials of Salem to get a sense of what it means to be governed under religious law, but that is nevertheless what some would reinstate. Cruz, of course, should beware. Though I doubt really that they're true, if the enquirer stories are "believed to be true," well ...
Dominionism and theonomy specifically rejects "the reformed belief that the civil laws of the mosaic law are no longer applicable." As perhaps they should. Either the mosaic law is the word of god, or what? On what basis do the reformers suggest that the civil laws of the mosaic code are no longer applicable? I would suggest, of course, that the very existence of "reformed belief" -- the redaction of the biblical code to eliminate public execution by stoning among other things -- belies the ostensible fact that moral and ethical guidance comes to us through religion. It comes to us, rather, through the evolution of our own better sense -- I almost said "angels," but most biblical angels are anything but angelic. These shores may have been colonized by christians seeking escape from the perceived degeneracy of the anglican and catholic church, but our governance is wholly a result of the enlightenment's secularism. You cannot have theonomy AND the first amendment, which on the one hand allows for the propagation of dominionism and its related ideological projections, but on the other allows me to call it utter medieval bullshit, descendant upon us from the heights of eighth mountain, the one Jon Stewart called "bullshit mountain." Indeed, you cannot have a theocracy AND a modern, secular, pluralistic democracy, and despite my impatience with all variety of people, I choose that over a theonomy or closed ideology.
When I say, "the evolution of our own better sense," I am being a bit provocative. Ideation evolves over time. If, on the one hand, we are more tolerant of "homosexual acts" than we were as little as twenty years ago, it need not be taken as a sign of our moral degeneracy, our slipping away from god, but rather a sign of our moral evolution. We simply have a better and broader (though still imperfect) understanding of human sexuality, the range of "choice" associated with gender identity and preference, et cetera. It just seems increasingly unreasonable to vilify a whole group of people for what? If, on the other hand, I do not commit adultery, it need not be taken as a sign that I am adhering to mosaic law, that I fear god's punishment either here or in hell, but simply and solely out of consideration for my wife and her well being. She would feel betrayed and degraded, and I do not want to betray and degrade her. Having said that, if someone does betray his spouse with a clandestine affair, I might think them jerks of the first sort, I might think the ensuing divorce and the civil penalties associated with divorce justified, but I wouldn't have them stoned in the public square. It just seems unreasonably harsh for a sin that christ himself excused. (john 8:11).
Since we're on the subject of sex and sexuality (it does seem that religion is always altogether too concerned with my penis) if we are LESS tolerant of pedophilia and pedophiliac acts, it is likewise because we have a better and broader (though still imperfect) understanding of the developmental consequences of those acts. Pedophiles might argue, not unlike a gay man or woman, or that matter a heterosexual man or woman, that they were "born that way," but what happens BETWEEN consenting adults and what happens TO a child are different matters. The evolution of our better sense is not always in the direction of greater tolerance, but at times in the direction of greater intolerance, more severe sanctions.
It is ultimately, though, a matter of public consensus, and that consensus is always and for ever in development, and the evolution of our better sense comes not from revelation, past or present, but from public discussion -- from, that is, our secular, pluralistic democracy, which has, always and forever, this background question in mind: well, what sort of world DO you want to live in? One answer to that question might well be a theocracy, but thank god, if there is a god, that public consensus has not decided on a theocracy, that here at least religion and religious law is still a matter of discussion and dispute under the protection of the first amendment.
For those who are queasy imagining, as John Lennon might put it, "there's no hell below us, above us only sky," you can consider it a thought experiment. If you can't even bring yourself to consider it even as a thought experiment, well then, you're hopeless. You're living in a sort of denial that is very common among human beings, who seem to need religion, but I would submit that god, if he does exist, would encourage the thought experiment, perhaps he even demands it. Why else would an omnipotent god, who could so easily appear and over-awe us all, leave his revelations to a few divinely inspired prophets? Moreover, divinely inspired prophets who lived over two thousand years ago? Don't mistake me, there seems to be no shortage of "divinely inspired prophets." They pop up everywhere -- Jim Jones and David Koresh come to mind -- and they do gather their followers, but it seems they always turn out to be altogether too human.
So, as a thought experiment, there is no God, then what? the first qualm I normally hear goes something like this: if we are not "accountable" to god for moral and ethical behavior, then to whom are we responsible? There are a couple of assumptions behind such statements. The first is that moral and ethical guidance has come to us from god through religion. I do not dispute that religion has often codified what it believes to be moral and ethical behavior, and has sought to impose that behavior on the populace on the authority of god. As some on the christian right would like to suggest, we were a christian nation, and should restore the strictly puritan, calvinist christian governance of our original colonization. Here again, I am thinking of Cruz and his dominionism -- i.e. the "theocratic ideology that seeks to implement a nation governed by conservative christians ruling over the rest of society based on their understanding of biblical law." It seeks what is called a theonomy, from theos (god) and nomos (law) , and is the idea that mosaic law should be observed by modern societies." As pointed out, various theonomic authors have stated such goals as the 'universal development of biblical theocratic republics, exclusion of non-christians from voting and citizenship, and the application of biblical law by the state. Under such a system of biblical law, homosexual acts, adultery, witchcraft and blasphemy would be punishable by death. Propagation of idolatry or false religions would be illegal and could also be punished by the death penalty." One need only imagine the witch trials of Salem to get a sense of what it means to be governed under religious law, but that is nevertheless what some would reinstate. Cruz, of course, should beware. Though I doubt really that they're true, if the enquirer stories are "believed to be true," well ...
Dominionism and theonomy specifically rejects "the reformed belief that the civil laws of the mosaic law are no longer applicable." As perhaps they should. Either the mosaic law is the word of god, or what? On what basis do the reformers suggest that the civil laws of the mosaic code are no longer applicable? I would suggest, of course, that the very existence of "reformed belief" -- the redaction of the biblical code to eliminate public execution by stoning among other things -- belies the ostensible fact that moral and ethical guidance comes to us through religion. It comes to us, rather, through the evolution of our own better sense -- I almost said "angels," but most biblical angels are anything but angelic. These shores may have been colonized by christians seeking escape from the perceived degeneracy of the anglican and catholic church, but our governance is wholly a result of the enlightenment's secularism. You cannot have theonomy AND the first amendment, which on the one hand allows for the propagation of dominionism and its related ideological projections, but on the other allows me to call it utter medieval bullshit, descendant upon us from the heights of eighth mountain, the one Jon Stewart called "bullshit mountain." Indeed, you cannot have a theocracy AND a modern, secular, pluralistic democracy, and despite my impatience with all variety of people, I choose that over a theonomy or closed ideology.
When I say, "the evolution of our own better sense," I am being a bit provocative. Ideation evolves over time. If, on the one hand, we are more tolerant of "homosexual acts" than we were as little as twenty years ago, it need not be taken as a sign of our moral degeneracy, our slipping away from god, but rather a sign of our moral evolution. We simply have a better and broader (though still imperfect) understanding of human sexuality, the range of "choice" associated with gender identity and preference, et cetera. It just seems increasingly unreasonable to vilify a whole group of people for what? If, on the other hand, I do not commit adultery, it need not be taken as a sign that I am adhering to mosaic law, that I fear god's punishment either here or in hell, but simply and solely out of consideration for my wife and her well being. She would feel betrayed and degraded, and I do not want to betray and degrade her. Having said that, if someone does betray his spouse with a clandestine affair, I might think them jerks of the first sort, I might think the ensuing divorce and the civil penalties associated with divorce justified, but I wouldn't have them stoned in the public square. It just seems unreasonably harsh for a sin that christ himself excused. (john 8:11).
Since we're on the subject of sex and sexuality (it does seem that religion is always altogether too concerned with my penis) if we are LESS tolerant of pedophilia and pedophiliac acts, it is likewise because we have a better and broader (though still imperfect) understanding of the developmental consequences of those acts. Pedophiles might argue, not unlike a gay man or woman, or that matter a heterosexual man or woman, that they were "born that way," but what happens BETWEEN consenting adults and what happens TO a child are different matters. The evolution of our better sense is not always in the direction of greater tolerance, but at times in the direction of greater intolerance, more severe sanctions.
It is ultimately, though, a matter of public consensus, and that consensus is always and for ever in development, and the evolution of our better sense comes not from revelation, past or present, but from public discussion -- from, that is, our secular, pluralistic democracy, which has, always and forever, this background question in mind: well, what sort of world DO you want to live in? One answer to that question might well be a theocracy, but thank god, if there is a god, that public consensus has not decided on a theocracy, that here at least religion and religious law is still a matter of discussion and dispute under the protection of the first amendment.
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