"There will always be rules, and rulers"

In this country we want to believe that two things are inextricably intertwined -- indeed that one thing is not even possible without the other thing -- capitalism and democracy.  A theoretical outline for this can be found in Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.  I won't repeat his argument here, but the crux of it was, simply put, a free people is not possible without a free market.  There are any number of quibbles with his basic assertion, not least that, in the abstract at least, it's a question of degrees -- that is to say, one is only free to the degree in which one has the means to access the goods and services available on the market.  Theoretically, I am free to purchase any home I desire, but practically, I am really only only free to purchase the home I can afford.  If I cannot afford to purchase a home, then I must rent or simply go without.  The same might be said of the other basic necessities of food, clothing, and medical care.   If I cannot afford to purchase food, clothing, or medical care, then I must simply go without and suffer the consequences.  One might question medical care in the list of basic necessities, but today's medical care is no longer the medical care of even a half century ago.  Today, to deny medical care for certain "curable" or "preventable" diseases is as much a death sentence as the denial of food to the starving.    As Henry James might have put it, money is freedom, both the freedom to exercise one's choices in the world and the freedom from the worst forms of penury.

This argument is radically "individualistic."  There are various forms of individualism, and they tend to confuse the argument somewhat.  One confusion seems to be the renunciation of a "monied civilization."  There is, for example, a sort of "pioneer individualism" of those who left behind civilization and its discontents for a subsistence living "on one's own" in the wide open reaches of the western states.  It is still possible to leave behind "civilization" and live "completely off the grid," but in today's world it seems more a lifestyle choice -- albeit an extreme lifestyle choice -- mythologized and romanticized in various publications like Modern Pioneer.   Although few actually do choose to live "on one's own" and "off the grid," the mythology nevertheless has a powerful attraction, particularly in the west.   If I believe myself to be a rugged individualist, however, I can also believe that I am not "beholden" to anyone, in part because I don't "owe" anyone, because I haven't accepted "charity" or a "handout" from anyone and have carved out a living "all on my own."  If I believe myself to be a rugged individualist, I  can also easily convince myself that I don't owe the distant (and mostly mysterious) government anything, particularly not taxes, because I haven't taken any government handouts or welfare, neither housing or food stamps.  Moreover, I can resent those who do, because,  let's face it, they're "moochers," or "takers," or "whiners," and they lack "moral fiber" because they don't take "individual responsibility" for their own selves.  Even if one doesn't "have a pot to piss in," one can, and should, live simply within one's means.

I mention this because there is a corresponding "entrepreneurial individualism" for those who don't quite subscribe to the stoicism of the frontiersman.  Even though they have embraced civilization and its various comforts  -- I particularly like flush toilets and warm showers -- they have left behind various forms of security for a different kind of subsistence living "on one's own" in the wide open reaches of the "free market."   It is still possible to leave behind the subservience of paid employment, become one's own boss, and become a "self-made" man or woman.  It too seems a life-style choice, and it too is mythologized and romanticized in various publications like  Entrepreneur.   If Modern Pioneer teaches proper methods to build a useful composting toilet and grow healing herbs, Entrepreneur teaches one how to develop a "growth mindset," all of which are guided by the Horatio Alger  assumption that, not unlike the pioneers of yore, "successful entrepreneurs take risks" by striking out "on one's own."  They are "willing to fail and live with the consequences," and if they are not willing to fail and live with the consequences, they "are likely not meant to be entrepreneurs."  "Even the most 'talented people have fixed mindsets and are unwilling or unable to make the necessary changes to improve," one billionaire entrepreneur writes, reinforcing the notion that success is contingent wholly upon the character of the entrepreneur.  The two mythologies come together in the celebration of "grit," reminiscent of the 69 western True Grit, in which the personality traits of  "perseverance", "hardiness", "resilience", "ambition", "need for achievement" and "conscientiousness" were all on full display.  If I believe myself to be entrepreneurial, I can also convince myself that I don't owe the government anything, particularly not taxes, because it was my own "grit" that built the business, because it was me against the world.  Moreover, I can resent not only the "takers," who live off the government and its annual confiscation of taxes, but also "labor," who live off me and always seem to want more for less.  They might "work hard," some of them, but they nevertheless lack the essentials of character that would remove them from their subservience. They are, in effect, losers by definition, and should learn to live with the consequences, humbly, without complaint.

Radical individualism is so hardwired into the American psyche, its mythologies so prevalent, that it is, so to speak, the "default position," but particularly so for American conservatives.  Even the most meager anti-poverty measures, insofar as they encroach on individual responsibility and threaten to create a dreaded dependency, are deemed "socialist."  Consequently, a message like Hayek's resonated, particularly with American conservatives, for whom any form of "socialism" has long been anathema. You can embrace the attitude of any one of a hundred country songs that romanticize rural poverty, growing up a "coal miner's daughter," for example, where 

Daddy loved and raised eight kids on a miner's pay
Mommy scrubbed our clothes on a washboard ever' day
Why I've seen her fingers bleed
To complain, there was no need
She'd smile in mommy's understanding way

Anyone with a half once of historical sense would know, of course, that mommy had plenty of need to complain.  Mommy was scrubbing clothes on a washboard, scraping her knuckles raw in lye-water, not because she chose to do so, but because the dominant elite hadn't seen fit to invest in a rural electrical grid.   The collective action of the TVA, helped along by a willing government, made possible an end to the bleeding fingers with use of an electric washing machine, and the electric pump made possible an end to backs deformed by the need to haul bucket after bucket of water from the well.  Daddy may have shoveled coal to make a poor man's dollar,  but the work was dangerous and grotesquely unhealthy, and it was ONLY a dollar because a good deal of effort was expended to suppress the unions that demanded safer working conditions and better pay.  Nevertheless, their collective action, ultimately helped along by a willing government, made possible an end to black lung disease and a reasonable living for dangerous work.  It may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and the poor do take solace in the thought that their real reward will come in the next life, but that does not, in my mind, justify the avoidable suffering inflicted on others in this life.  The suffering remains a reality, no matter how thoroughly its stoic moral and ethical superiority is romanticized.

Or you can "buckle down" and find it in yourself to do what is necessary to win and win big -- be the owner of the mine, the one on the other side of the podium, the one lecturing wannabes on the growth mindset or the 22 leadership traits -- but to win big, you need to go all in, which is, to my mind at least, the equivalent of mortgaging one's home to buy lottery tickets.  If you win, great on you, but for every ounce of pluck necessary to success, there's also a pound of luck, and if you lose, as most do, then you must live with the consequences.   Loretta Lynn made it out, but there can only be one Loretta Lynn and one wonders how many other "coal miner's daughters" with voices like sparrows  nevertheless went on to live lives of knuckle bleeding penury not unlike their mommies?   Moreover, what is rarely said outright, increasingly, the ticket most necessary to success is the winning genetic lottery ticket, "choosing" the right mommy and daddy.  As the gap widens between the "winners" and the rest of us, as "death" taxes on inherited wealth are eased on inherited wealth, increasingly, we are becoming a nation with an inherited aristocratic oligarchy, and one's best chance of getting to the top is to be born to parents at or near the top.  Still, it's possible all on one's own -- the self-made "winners" are broadly mythologized -- so really,  if you lose, it must be that you didn't "buckle down" hard enough, you didn't "dig deep" enough, you didn't possess sufficient "grit."  Or you didn't pray hard enough.  It doesn't matter if one looks up or down the economic ladder, you can always say, "there, but for the grace of god, go I."  Luck as we know is dispensed by the grace of god, and if the lilies of you field didn't come to you gilded, as they have for others, then perhaps one is not sufficiently in God's graces.  Either way, as they say, "suck it up" and don't complain.

At any rate, radical individualism is so hardwired into the American psyche, its mythologies so prevalent, that it is, so to speak, the "default position," and as we know, when things are not working properly, one reverts to the default position.  Clearly, things are not working properly.  In today's NY times, Roger Cohen, writes "Democracies, it is clear, have not been delivering to the less privileged, who were disenfranchised or discarded in the swirl of technology’s advance," though I would probably quibble a bit.  First of all, democracy has little or nothing to do with it, except insofar as the "people," the "less privileged," have reverted to the default position, even though reverting to the default position,  so to speak, wipes out most the last century's gains, the "right" to safe working environments, the "right" to collective bargaining, and the "right" to a social safety net if one has been arbitrarily "discarded in the swirl of technology's advance."  I would amend Cohen's sentence to read, "capitalism, it is clear, has not been delivering," which is not at all the same thing, though Cohen assumes that "liberal democracy" and "liberal, free-market societies"  are the more or less same thing when he writes that "a lot of thought is now needed to find ways to restore faith in liberal, free-market societies to show that they can be fairer and more equitable and offer more opportunities across the social spectrum."   I would suggest rather that a lot of thought is now needed to find ways to restore faith in collective democratic action against the obvious abuses of the so-called "free-market."  

Cohen is right, however, when he writes that "a quarter-century after the post-Cold War zenith of liberal democracies and neoliberal economics, illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the march. It’s open season for anyone’s inner bigot. Violence is in the air, awaiting a spark. The winning political card today, as Mr. Trump has shown and Marine Le Pen may demonstrate in the French presidential election next year, is to lead “the people” against a “rigged system."  I also think Cohen is right when he writes that "The impact of the smartphone on the human psyche is as yet scarcely understood" that "its addictiveness is treacherous and can be the enemy of thought," and that the "virtual direct democracy" it provides "through social media has outflanked representative democracy."  As the Trump social media ascendency and his rallies demonstrate, there is a desire for collective action, a sense that the system is not working properly, and the sense that "the 2nd amendment people" are willing to take up arms, both literally and figuratively, against it.   As Plato predicted, and Trump may well confirm, democracies fail when fall prey to a demagogue, and Trump's demagoguery is so painfully obvious, his threat to democratic values so casual, that it beggars the mind that he wasn't roundly rejected.   Nevertheless, he is now the president, and he is, at the helm of a "movement," with guns out and drawn, both literally and figuratively, but to borrow Frank Thomas' metaphor, they are pointed in the wrong direction, at the very institutions that make possible collective democratic action against the obvious abuses of the so-called free market.  

For the last half century, there has been a sense that things are going "progressively" wrong.  I think, perhaps, the pundits may have it mostly right when they attribute the beginning of the decline with the tumult of the 60s and the backlash it inspired.  The election of Nixon was the first step onto a slippery slope that has finally led to Trump.  We have been pushed the default button of radical individualism harder with Ronald Reagan, and then harder again with George W Bush, and now hardest yet with Donald Trump.  There is, with the election of Trump, a sense of the final "fuck you" aimed at a government that seems no longer democratic ("no one asked my permission to let gays into the military, or to let women kill their unborn babies, or to prohibit prayer while teaching godless darwinism in the schools, or to restrict my god-given constitutional right to carry my self-protection") and that seems no longer fair or filled with economic opportunity ("the factory moved to Mexico, half of main street is boarded up, and the only stores left are the Goodwill selling other people's cast-aways and the Walmart selling cheap junk from China.")   I do think too, perhaps, it is altogether too ironic that the visceral ire raised by an undemocratic government is brought on by the democratic party, and the ire it provokes always seems to trump the economic degradation brought on by the free-market policies of republican elites like the Koch brothers.  Trump cast himself as a pudenda grabbing republican, a candidate respectful of the two corinthians, but mostly filled with recapped, redneck bonhomie, but his economic policies, his cabinet appointments, and his behavior all tend to suggest he will continue to support the sorts of rapine that gives unrestrained wealth "some secret bond with crime," as Thomas Frank would have it.  It is not a wide stride from an oligarchy to to a kleptocracy.  Trump promises to bring back the coal mine, but why?  So mine owners can grow rich while daddy and mommy both work themselves to an early grave, living humbly, authentically, without complaint?  So the mine owner's progeny can inherit the earth, while the next generation of coal miners' sons and daughters, like their parents before them, work themselves to an early grave? 

So, here's the thing.  There is no inextricable connection between democracy and capitalism -- indeed, the very purpose of democracy is to restrain capitalism.  Think of it this way:  there will always be rules, and rulers who impose rules. If government doesn't set the rules, if it withdraws into a "free-market ideology" and abdicates its ability to make the rules, then who gets to make the rules?  If OSHA doesn't make the safety rules for the mine owners, then it seems clear enough that the mine owners will get to make the safety rules.  It also seems clear enough that some level of human compassion may guide the behavior of the owners.  In the end, however, the mine exists, not as a pretext for christian benevolence, but for profit.  The mine owners will protect the safety of the miners only insofar as it enhances the mine's profitability or at the very least doesn't impede profitability.  And so it goes.  Another example.  If the government doesn't make the rules for health insurance providers, then it seems clear enough that the health insurance providers will get to make the rules.  They will be quick to proselytize their role in "keeping America health," and they may even believe it.  In the end, however, health insurance exists, not as a means to provide healthcare for all, but for profit.  The health insurance industry will keep America healthy only insofar as it enhances their profitability or at the very least doesn't impede their profitability.  They will be loath to cover pre-existing and chronic conditions, where payments on claims will far exceed their revenue on premiums.  And so it goes.  Another example -- this one sort of Trumpish.  If government doesn't make the rules for companies who want to outsource labor to Mexico or India, then it seems clear enough the companies will get to make the rules.  Companies do not exist to "create jobs."  They exist to "create profit."  A large number of employees may be a useful PR tool when they want to emphasize themselves as economic behemoths, but employees are an expense against profit, and the more employees they have, the more expensive those employees become, what with their benefits and all, the more they are an expense against profit.  Limiting labor costs in Mexico will always trump creating jobs in the US.  And so it goes.

So again, here's the thing.  There is no inextricable connection between democracy and capitalism -- indeed, I would say the very purpose of democracy is to restrain capitalism.  A government of the people, by the people, and for the people should set the rules.  Of course, the problem is the obvious one.  No one really believes that we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.   The "conservative" fueled with culture war resentment against an encroaching "liberalism," can't really believe that a government mandating that a transgender male can piss in the women's restroom at Walmart is really THEIR government.  The "liberal" fueled with self-righteous indignation at the petty bigotry of the "conservatives," can't really believe that a government which allows a cop to shoot an unarmed black man and go scot free is really THEIR government.  There is always plenty of resentment to go around, and its icing on the cupcake when we all can resent the other's resentment.  There is, ultimately, no resolving the culture wars, and they are HUGELY distracting from the fundamentals, or at least what I would call the fundamentals.  I do not believe we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people because we have abdicated the government's ability to make rules that restrain capitalism.  In doing so have given over the ability to make the rules to the oligarchs and surprise! most of the rules seem to benefit them if the growing disparity of wealth is any indication.   Let's face it, if you have sufficient funds at your disposal, legal or not, you will be able to procure a safe abortion, even a safe late term abortion, and no one need be the wiser.  If I were a billionaire, I would be pro-life as well, and contribute to the pro-life campaign of Senator Emanuel, if Senator Emanuel supports my economic agenda and beating that drum provides a distraction.  What difference does it make to me?  Let the plebes argue over it.   The people do need to seize control of their government, and in some ways the voters who cast their votes for Trump believe they are doing just that.  Unfortunately, whether out of ignorance, insecurity, the raised middle finger of resentment, or some combination of all, they have fallen for the biggest con of all.  Although he has all the cultural sophistication of Elvis, he is nevertheless one of "them," not one of "us," no matter how narrowly you define "us."  He will act in their interests, not ours, and the only thing that might salvage some good from his election, the only thing, is his insatiable need to be adored by millions.  Perhaps that need will lead him, on occasion, to do the right thing.  

"The Triumph of the West"

The most recent Krauthammer piece, titled "After a Mere 25 Years, the Triumph of the West is Over," appeared in todays Post.  Part of me wants to say, thank goodness, because another way of writing the same headline might be "after a mere 25 years, American imperialism is over."  I started a post yesterday, suggesting that I needed to resign myself to living in a facist country, but then deleted it, partly because I don't want to believe we ARE a fascist country, partly because I'm not sure I can muster the proper resignation to the new regime where our facism is on proud display.  I mention this only because I believe Krauthammer might be right in eulogizing the short lived triumph of the west, though not for the reasons he might think.  We are in decline because, like many advanced western democracies, our civilization is beginning to feel its discontents, our superpower superego is finding it more and more difficult to repress our facist id.  Pardon the Freudian metaphor, but it seems to fit.  The manifest discontent arises from "the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual," and "the primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual's quest for instinctive freedom and civilization's contrary demand for conformity and repression of instincts."  

At any rate, back to Krauthammer's argument.  He writes, "Twenty-five years ago — December 1991 — communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared.  It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired. It was an event of biblical proportions that my generation thought it would never live to see."  I can't help but agree.  I was still in the AF at the time, still embued with cold war rhetoric of the sort that led my wing king to hang a poster reading "kill a commie for mommie" in the command post, and the very idea that we had triumphed, that marxist-lenninism as an effective ideology was effectively dead, did mark a significant historical turning point.  Whether it was of biblical proportions, one could argue, but I wanted to believe, along with Francis Fukuyama, and apparently Krauthammer, that we had reached the end of history, and that the fall of the soviet empire "marked the ultimate triumph of the liberal democratic idea" and "promised an era of Western dominance led by a preeminent America, the world’s last remaining superpower."

Although for almost a decade the argument seemed to hold and  "the community of democracies expanded, first into Eastern Europe and former Soviet Empire," but as Krauthammer suggests "that era is over," and despite some modest advances toward the liberal democratic idea, "the autocracies are back and rising" and "democracy is on the defensive." Worst of all, the US, as the beacon light on the hill for the liberal democratic idea, "is in retreat."  Although I would quibble, it is an important quibble.   Setting aside the putative power struggles in the developing world, it is not so much autocracies that are back and rising, but oligarchy.  One might argue that an oligarchy can exist with an autocrat at its helm, so long as the autocrat serves the common interests of the oligarchs and is adept at resolving their competing interests.  One might argue too that oligarchy can exist with democratically elected officials, again so long as the elected officials represent the common interests of the oligarchs and are adept at resolving their competing interests.  Although the signals from the Trump camp are still too mixed to read -- aside from his continuing admiration for himself as a proto-fascist autocrat in the making -- there are few signals that his populist agenda will in any significant way trump the interests of the oligarchs.  The so-called "Carrier deal" being a case in point.  As Bernie Sandars has editorialized, "Carrier just showed corporations how to beat Donald Trump," though I suspect there was little competition involved.  It was, in business parlance,  a "win-win" deal.  Trump got his PR coup.  They got their tax concessions and  without doubt the parent company, United Technologies, will benefit hugely from the military expansions promised by candidate Trump.  

There is, and always has been, a difference between "running for office" and "governing in office," and now that Trump is faced with the horrifying prospect of actually governing, his cabinet is filling, as one NY Times headline put it, with "the guys from government Sachs," not unlike a long line of duly elected officials before him, I see little reason to believe he will "drain the swamp."  I see plenty of reason to believe that he will serve the common interests of the oligarchs.  How adept he is at resolving their competing interests, however, only time will tell, but then again, who am I kidding.  His actions throughout the campaign don't portend much hope, and his actions as president elect don't either.  On the one hand, we have headlines like, "Silicon Valley Chiefs Notably Absent From Trump’s Cabinet of Business Advisers," which suggests that Trump, despite his many tweets, may be stuck in a 1940s, or charitably, a 1950s version of the economy.  On the other hand, we have headlines like,  "In Affront to China, Trump Speaks With Taiwan Leader," which suggests that Trump may be too enthralled with the Russian oligarchs, and the Russian autocrat, to see our economic interests in the "greater" China. 

Krauthammer, however, seems to see American greatness in the lapse of western ambitions -- or perhaps more precisely, our failure as the leader of a free world with our own  manifest destiny to spread "liberal democratic ideas" throughout the globe.   " The West," he writes, "is turning inward and going home, leaving the field to the rising authoritarians — Russia, China and Iran."  Indeed.  Setting aside an Iranian ascendency in the middle east, as I implied above, twenty-five years later, the West seems to feel that our victory was pyrrhic, that we have exhausted ourselves, and that the real "winners" were those nations that emerged from the communist debacle with "strong," ambitious, and above all else autocratic, leadership.  Trump's odd deference to the "leadership" of Putin is just one case in point.  "In France," as Krauthammer notes, "the conservative party’s newly nominated presidential contender is fashionably conservative and populist and soft on Vladimir Putin" and it might just be the peculiarity of France were not Italy too getting in on the putsch.  The Times headlines, "with populist anger rising, italy may be the next domino to fall,"  and, as Krauthammer notes,  "several of the newer Eastern Europe democracies — Hungary, Bulgaria, even Poland — themselves showing authoritarian tendencies."   Instead, we have exhausted ourselves, and  Jeane Kirkpatrick, the quintessential neoconservative, seems to have been prescient.  As the Cold War was ending in 1990, she "argued that we should now become 'a normal country in a normal time.'  It was time to give up the 20th-century burden of maintaining world order and of making superhuman exertions on behalf of universal values.  Two generations of fighting fascism and communism were quite enough. Had we not earned a restful retirement?"

The answer would have been yes, perhaps, if we had really been true believers in our own manifest destiny, if we had fully embraced and internalized the moral imperative to spread "liberal democratic ideas" and make "superhuman exertions on behalf of universal values" -- if in fact we had taken up "the 20th century burden of maintaining world order."   Had that been the case, we could well have "declared victory" and begun the demobilization of the "military industrial complex" in order to attend to our own manifest problems here at home.  Krauthammer seem to suggest that "the West’s retreat began with Obama, who reacted to (perceived) post-9/11 overreach by abandoning Iraq, offering appeasement (“reset”) to Russia and accommodating Iran."  Moreover, he retreated because "he’s always felt the U.S. was not good enough for the world, too flawed to have earned the moral right to be the world hegemony."  Although this just echoes the ad nauseam conservative complaint against Obama "apologies" for America, there is a significant enough grain of truth to the complaint to make it resonate, and Trump's ascendency has made our flaws altogether too visible.  We are not a country committed to "liberal democratic ideas" -- or perhaps more precisely, a sizable minority within this country are committed with passionate intensity to overtly fascist ideologies that Trump tolerated (even courted?) during his campaign, and still seems to court with the appointment of Bannon to his advisory staff.  Still a minority, one might say, but a wide swath of America seems more than willing to ignore the connections, to "see no evil" and "hear no evil."  So, no, we have not "earned the moral right" to be the world's spokesperson for "human  rights."  We have our own issues right here at home, and if anyone should know how far we need yet to go in order to actually earn the "moral right," it would be Obama.

Then too, there is that pesky problem of "maintaining world order."  One might ask, legitimately so, what exactly is the idea of order that we are so burdened to maintain?   God bless Eisenhower (what's not to like in Ike?) but he saw it perhaps more clearly than Truman, that the "real" solution to the great depression was not Roosevelt's nibbling at the edge of the cookie with the WPA and the CCC and the other transfusions of cash into the American economy, but the spreading debacle across Europe, which created, in abundance, the gold standard of economic recovery -- demand.  Although the standard and retrospective version of American history would have us entering the war to fight the good fight, the moral fight, against the tyranny of fascism, at the outset, it wasn't entirely clear that we gave a great hoody-doo to whether or not the great empires of Europe succumbed to fascism, particularly when fascist Germany and their war machine provided such a lucrative market.  One does not need to be a devotee of conspiracy theories, or even Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States, to suspect that initial conservative opposition to entering the war wasn't just a desire to stay out of Europe's troubled business, but to actually continue doing business with what appeared to be an inevitably fascist dominated Europe.  All was good until war itself forced the choices, and then war itself, however, created, in abundance, that gold standard of economic growth -- more demand -- and it was demand in service to the moral good of stopping tyranny.  In the immediate aftermath of the war, the world's recovery from the devastation created, in abundance, the gold standard of economic growth -- even more demand -- and lo! it too was demand in service to the moral good of rebuilding the devastation.   

War, as it turned out, was good for capitalism, and so what do when the war and its recovery are over?   The cold war fueled by outsized nuclear fears, would seem to suffice, and so it did, though it never quite lived up to expectations.  It never quite recreated the prosperity that America enjoyed in the 50s, those halcyon years following the good war, but even so, what to do when even the cold war is over?  The answer seems, well duh! a new war, one handed over to us as "radical islamic terror," and we entered into it with gusto -- well, not exactly.  First Korea, then especially Vietnam, had exhausted any pretense we might have had about fighting the good fight, the moral fight.  It was a new war, for a new generation, but after the initial patriotic urge following 9/11 had seemed to be diverted away from the wholly understandable need for revenge and misdirected toward the old cold war bogey man of WMDs.  Our middle east adventures seemed, almost from the outset, a proxy war, a war fought on behalf of "others," though it was never quite clear who the "others" were.  Nor was it ever quite clear who exactly the "enemy" was.  At least during the Cold War, we had sovereign states as enemies -- Russia and China -- but we didn't bomb the Saudi capital of Riyadh, even though most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi, we bombed Baghdad instead.  Why exactly again?  WMDs?  Terrorists?  Obama's subsequent "failure" to name the enemy, call out the "radical islamic terrorists," may have been in deference to the millions of muslims who were neither radical nor terrorists, but in the end the idea that "radical islamic terrorists" were a threat on the order of communist Russia or communist China was just too ludicrous for the urbane Obama to countenance.  Sharia law in America?  It was a new war, for a new generation, but there was no "draft" to engage that generation either in the fight or the fight against the fight.  In the end, our middle east wars were being fought not by "Americans," except in the putative sense that the largely mercenary forces actually fighting the war were comprised of Americans, the technicians (often, quite literally, the technicians) of state sponsored violence.  Really, let's face it, unless one reverts to the crusades of the middle ages, and believes (really believes?) that spreading christianity justifies the use of state sponsored violence against muslims, then its difficult to find a moral purpose in our middle east wars.  Stopping genocide and repression?  Perhaps, but doesn't it seem the worst sort of hypocrisy, then, that we didn't intervene in, say, Rawanda?  

I don't quite accept the "apologist for America" narrative leveled at Obama,  nor do I fully accept its close cousin the "blame America" narrative advanced by the likes of Noam Chomsky or Anonymous.  If our behavior is blameworthy, and some is, it is no more, no less blameworthy than any other sovereign nation, though perhaps what makes us exceptional in this regard is the sheer hypocrisy of it all -- the very idea that we are NOT merely one among many self-interested forces in the world, but rather THE moral force advancing "liberal democratic ideas" and "world order" -- the very idea that we are NOT merely "a normal country living in normal times," but rather THE country forever engaged in an existential struggle against the forces of evil within a world that rarely acknowledges, much less appreciates, our sacrifice for them in tax dollars, in flag draped coffins, in the constant reminder of maimed and damaged veterans.  Consequently, one hears the sort of sentiment that Trump has expressed, that we should "continue the pullback, though for entirely different reasons."   It is the altogether human reaction to an unappreciated sacrifice.  We can take our toys -- our over-whelming military technologies -- and go home, "disdaining allies and avoiding conflict, because the world is not good enough for us."  It is "undeserving, ungrateful, parasitic foreigners living safely under our protection and off our sacrifices" and now is the "time to look after our own American interests."   Although this sentiment plays well in the heartland, it may be too soon to assume that Trump will indeed "continue the pull-back."  He has he given consideration to a number "generals" for cabinet posts, "who reflect the President-elect's predilection for leaders with a 'tough guy' profile, but they also mark a 180-degree turn from some of the insults he leveled at military figures during the campaign."  There is nothing unusual in this, and most had distinguished careers, like Petraeus, until he didn't.  Moreover, as revealed in the discussion surrounding his potential conflicts of interest, as the oligarch in chief, he himself has any number of "assets" abroad that might need "protecting." So I strongly suspect that Trump may well turn out to be the difference that makes no difference so far as our use of military force abroad, and I am sure the heartland will again suck it up lest their patriotism, their support for the troops, be questioned.  We are, after all, the good guys, and it is our duty, no matter how little appreciated, to advance democracy and maintain world order.  

At any rate, as the recent election has revealed, we really don't have the "human rights" standing at home, and the exceptional hypocrisy of our imperialist (or just self-interested) ambitions abroad, have undercut our standing as "the world's hegemon."  We may have won the cold war, and stood briefly as the world's sole superpower, but it was a slow, excruciating, exhausting war of attrition, and the war on terror is a poor substitute, though no less a slow, excruciating, exhausting war of attrition, all of which may well leave us utterly bankrupt both morally and fiscally.  War may no longer be as good for capitalism as it was in the past.  Its demands no longer seem to create the gold standard of economic boon that it created in the last century.  We have become so technically proficient that its demand no long create much demand -- no large scale redistribution of capital into the paychecks of a mobilized population -- at least not enough redistribution to sustain a thriving economy, and it has come to resemble, metaphorically speaking, a credit card debt that has grown beyond our ability to pay the interest, much less the principle.  We had a balanced budget with Clinton, more or less, but the subsequent Bush investment in the war on terror threw us into debt and near depression, and Obama gave us something of a reprieve, but he has not done (was not allowed to do) nearly enough to really reverse course.  Will Trump reverse course?   Will he continue the pullback.  One might actually hope so, but there is little indication that he will do so.   What seems clear enough, however, is that a sufficient number of republican voters have decided to cede the republic to the oligarchs.  The irony is not lost on me.  One hesitated to vote for Clinton, in part because she was too enthralled with the oligarchs, and perhaps a bit too bellicose.  Whether Trump, the very incarnation of our messianic fascist id, will cross the Rubicon, and put an end to the constitutional republic once and for all, seems unlikely, but then too so did his election.  What will stop him?  The moral rectitude of Paul Ryan?  of Mitt Romney?  The idea that a republican house and a republican senate will restrain a putatively republican president is almost too ludicrous for this commentator to countenance.  

Suffering is Real

The standard, high-school English definition of irony is "saying-one-thing-meaning-another."  From there, it gets complicated.  Satire is one form of irony, and perhaps the iconic example is Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal."   In it, after describing the economic plight of the Irish and dismissing many viable solutions to their plight, he suggested that they could solve all their problems by selling their children as comestibles to the much more prosperous British.  Or, as Swift himself put it, "A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."  The satire works, in part, because there was a sort of factual "truth" to the economic plight, and a sort of metaphorical "truthiness" to the solution -- the British were already consuming the children of Ireland, if not at table, then in other ways.  The satire also works, in part, because it could be taken at face value.  Those who do, of course, are outraged at the suggestion.  Having taught the essay on a couple of occasions, I can attest that there are those who DID take it at face value, despite its outlandishness, and who WERE consequently outraged.  There were also those who took it at face value and dismissed it as irrelevant to their current concerns -- "who cares what they did in 18th century Europe?  We wouldn't do that today, would we?"  My goals in teaching the essay were historical and technical, with perhaps an emphasis on the latter -- this is how satire works -- but the forces of ignorance and apathy were too powerful for my uninspired teaching. 

Nevertheless, from there, it gets even more complicated.  The very outlandishness of Swift's proposal signals that we are not to take it at face value or, as the vernacular today might have it, "seriously."   The outlandishness signals, in other words, that we are to interpret it as something other than a straight forward proposal, but the signal depends on the possibility of a straight forward proposal in the first place, one that actually means what it says.  It assumes, in other words, the possibility of a direct representation of an "actual" proposal, one that we are to take "seriously" at face value -- one that can be debated, its potential merits analyzed and  ultimately implemented in the "actual" world where we share space.  There is, however, a vein of post-modern philosophy that would suggest every statement should be treated ironically, that we can REALLY take nothing seriously or at face value.  For those statements that are "intended" to be taken at face value, there is a sort of subversion or deconstruction of the "intended" meaning.  I wrap "intended" in scare quotes because the whole notion of "intention" is problematic as well.  In a freudian scheme, for example, my superego might intend one thing, only to be subverted by my id.  In a nietzchian scheme, my Apollonian intent might be one thing, only to be subverted by my Dionysian will to power.  I am not necessarily aware or conscious of the subversion.  To the extent that I am aware, I buttress argument to fortify my intent, but ultimately the attempt fails.  Once written, the text floats free of my "intent" and the astute reader will see and reveal the irony of my argument, reveal how it says one thing but means another.   One should be cautious in suggesting that the astute reader reveals the "hidden" meaning of my argument, nor does he reveal the "true" meaning of my argument.  If there is "truth" in the revelation of irony, it goes no further than the truth of subversion's inevitability, the impossibility of an actual proposal that is free of irony and can taken "seriously" simply at face value.

And from there, it gets yet even more complicated.  I mention this, in part, because the internet troll, particularly the alt-right internet troll, is the apotheosis of the post-modernist philosopher.  A recent  Vox article delves into the realm of the internet troll.  They define the troll as "web-speak for that one rude commenter on a forum who just wouldn’t shut up or go away; the one who kept trying to goad the average reasonable person into a fight — and often an absurd one based on absurd logic, or a twisting of your assumptions regarding the basic principles you were arguing about."  At one level, they are merely the merry prankster's of the internet generation, providing an on-going satirization of the "establishment," goading those who have fallen prey to "political correctness" in much the same way that Swift goaded the establishment of his day with the absurd logic of eating children. Though it can be very annoying at times, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be confronted with a gad-fly, to have one's basic assumptions challenged.  The provocations themselves, however, are not to be taken "seriously," except insofar as they serve to discredit basic assumptions that are equally absurd, and consequently  initiate an more nuanced examination of the issue at hand.  

At another level, however, something more pernicious, more nihilistic may well be afoot, particularly among the alt-right trolls.  The Vox writers go on to suggest that their use of irony creates "a sincerity-proof chamber of distortion" and  "they do this by pretending that what they’re really doing is satirically spoofing how progressives and members of the media view conservatives."  They give an example:

For example: say I Photoshop a picture of Hillary Clinton so that she’s being chased by rabid wolves [or worse, facing a firing squad, or wise yet dangling from a rope]. You come along and claim that my image is alarming and sexist. I might then claim that the joke’s on you, because my image was really just a way to bait and skewer liberal hysteria and “the media’s” hyperbolic, distorted image of how the alt-right treats women and Clinton in particular. 

Such a claim puts one in a double bind.  If you continue to insist that the image is alarming and sexist, by "reacting to it and getting upset, you fell for it, proving that liberals are overly sensitive crybabies who habitually whine about trivial or nonexistent issues."  You, like so many other Americans, are irony deficient, but if you capitulate and say, "ok, I get the joke," and ask, "what is the more accurate, undistorted truth?" -- what exactly is the alt right position on women and what is their view of Clinton in particular? -- one never quite gets an answer, just more hyperbole, more goading, more ironic satire.  As a consequence, the Vox writer claims that the irony itself, the satire, is the ironic pretense.  The troll's comments taken at face value, ironically, ARE the "real" point.  The provocations themselves, ironically, ARE to be taken "seriously," and the "picture of Clinton and the wolves, and many more like it, continue to promote violence against women and a hatred of Clinton."  If that "was, of course, [the] real goal all along," the Vox writer, as an astute reader of internet trolls, has revealed the real meaning of their posts, hidden in plain sight all along.  If that was the goal, the ironic subversion of irony with "sincerity," albeit a noxious "authenticity," I would suggest that we are left nowhere, with only the inevitability of subversion, with irony subverting "sincerity" and "sincerity" subverting "irony," endlessly vacillating between "oh my god, they can't be serious!" and "oh my god, they're serious!"

Here I want to completely change the subject, but then again, not so much.  I want to say "suffering is 'real,' and the only legitimating purpose of any political action is to reduce suffering."  Of course, a good deal follows from that, not least the questions "for whom?" and "how?"   There are any number of nuanced conversations that follow -- on the notion of utility and utilitarianism as one such conversation.  If the purpose of political action is to reduce suffering, then shouldn't we aim at those actions that reduce suffering for the maximum number of people, even if it induces suffering in a small minority?  For those more attuned to popular culture, it's Spock's admonition that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."  The answer is yes, but only contingently so, and the contingency is always changing.  We would want to respond to the contingency and attend to the needs of the many, but if we are aware that our action induces suffering, even in a small minority, then morally our actions are imperfect, and it is our moral duty to seek perfection, no matter how difficult or unattainable it may seem.  The conversation does not end when we have satisfied the needs of the many.  Language is a tool for conversation, no more, no less.  It is an important tool, one that creates social consensus, and worthy of a great deal of thought in that regard, but in the end it is only a tool with pragmatic value.  Just as a hammer can be used to drive nails in the creation of a homeless shelter, or smash a skull in the perpetration of a robbery, language itself can be used to alleviate or create suffering.    

In this respect, Swift's satire held a moral purpose.  Its provocations were aimed, ultimately, at the reduction of suffering among the Irish people.  The satire of the alt-right, not so much.  Perhaps someone wiser than me can point to it ultimate good, but I have difficulty seeing it, with perhaps one exception.  It aims to further an ideological goal, which is taken to be "good" among those who adhere to the ideology, and so the actions are justified against that future "good."  For those more attuned to the popular culture, it's the admonition that one has to break a few eggs to get an omelet.  For the alt-right, who clearly advocate racial and ethnic and gender hierarchies, that ideological goal has long since been discredited. Indeed, although there was a strong vein of sympathy for the national socialist party within the US, particularly among the executives of many major US corporations, we nevertheless fought a world war to prevent the dominance of just such an ideology.  Although that ideology may attend to the needs of the majority, we cannot feign ignorance that the sort of apartheid social structure they imagine does not induce suffering in the minority.  Clearly it does, and so, just as clearly, it is imperfect, and we have a moral duty to develop a more perfect union, one that addresses their suffering, no matter how difficult it may seem.  Anything less shirks our moral duty, and if it does so intentionally, it is actively immoral.  

The conversation, in short, does not end when we have satisfied the needs of the dominant racial and ethnic majority.  The language of the alt-right, however, aims not at a continuation of the conversation, not at social consensus, but solely at contention.  If it has a satirical purpose, and is aimed at the over-bearing sanctimony of the liberal left, OK.  At times it can be over-bearing in its boo-hooing over "victimization" when so many of the victims seem to have brought it on themselves.  The alt right does not, however, propose an alternative conversation, one that actually does address the real suffering of racial and ethnic minorities, or for that matter the real suffering of the dominant racial and ethnic majority, and it ends smugly with the contentiousness.  If the satirical purpose is a ruse and the real message is a sort of apartheid social structure, it directly advocates for the suffering of the few and does so for the benefit of the racial and ethnic majority.   In either case, their trolling is ultimately immoral.  They are using the hammer of language to smash skulls, little more.

Having said that, part of the difficulty lies in the whole notion of an "ideological goal."  If they are smashing skulls in the furtherance of an "ideological goal," which is taken to be good, the brain spatter is justified, even called for, as a step in the direction of that good.  The white nationalist ideology simmering under the surface of the alt-right has long since been discredited, but I would suggest ANY set of end-game, ideological goals are a problem.  Perhaps I should clarify and suggest ANY set of ideological goals that purports to put an end to "contingency" once and for all are the problem.   I have suggested in previous posts that there is only the status quo, and the only question that arises against a political proposal, no matter how modest, is this: "who benefits and how?"  Phrased in that way, it simply reveals my own enduring cynicism and skepticism toward those in power, insofar as they tend to act in ways that benefit themselves, often at the expense of the broader public.  As a positive justification for the proposal, I might add that the only question is this: "does it alleviate suffering?  for whom and how?"  Implicit in both statements is an ideology of sorts -- the a priori assumption that we, together, have an moral duty to alleviate suffering, to form a more perfect union, and there are .  "More perfect" implies an on-going struggle against the  suffering implicit to the existing status quo, but I refuse, more or less on principle, to imagine the end game, the final state of perfection.  Implicit in any such imagined perfection is the "if only everyone" syndrome -- as in "if only everyone were white and christian and gladly followed biblical  law, then what a wonderful world it would be" -- as in (you can fill in the blank with your own imagined implausibility or impossibility).  Implicit in any such imagined perfection is a limited world where suffering is eliminated by eliminating those who would suffer under the imagined perfection.  What to do with the blacks?  What to do with the muslims?  What to do with headstrong women and overt gays under a biblical law that would repress and demonize them?  The national socialists of yore had an answer, and it is not an answer that we should resurrect.

So, in the end, I am, like Richard Rorty,  I believe that "the task of the intellectual, with respect to social justice, is not to provide refinements of social theory," though the on-going critical examination of the status-quo, can help  "sensitize us to the suffering of others, and refine, deepen and expand our ability to identify with others, to think of others as like ourselves in morally relevant ways."  Critique implies change, which often has unintended consequence, and necessitates more change.  To change one status quo, even for the better, simply creates another status quo, with its own set of beneficiaries and sufferers.  And there will always be the on-going moral imperative to address the needs of those who suffer.  Consequently, like Rorty, I am "a self-proclaimed romantic bourgeois liberal, a believer in piecemeal reforms advancing economic justice and increasing the freedoms that citizens are able to enjoy."  Not unlike Rorty, I am "sceptical toward radicalism" and the radical solution.  It plays well, particularly in the appeal to simplistic solutions, in the outraged appropriation of frustrated idealism and too often justifiable rage, but the simplistic solution rarely acknowledges the full complexity of any problem.  The insistence on complexity, on examining the problem from multiple perspectives and deliberating on the moral and technical merits of various potential solutions, all seems like obtuse pedantry to idealists who really want to believe its really that simple -- to the angry who want retribution, want it now, and want it in full measure, and want someone or something to take retribution against.  

Nevertheless, "political thought purporting to uncover hidden, systematic causes for injustice and exploitation, and on that basis proposing sweeping changes to set things right," always -- at least within human experience through the 20th century -- go awry.   Still, it is difficult, as Spock might tell us, to insist on LOGOS, the on-going critical examination, when there is so much PATHOS, so much misdirected and malignant emotion to overwhelm the mere pedantry of logic, and the outsized ETHOS of the latest demagogue to orchestrate it.  It takes little moral strength of mind to believe in to those who insist that the problems really are simple, when they are not -- to capitulate to one who believes that he and only he holds the keys to their solution, when he does not -- and to feel that THEY are the impediment to the imagined paradise, whether it be the jews, the catholics, or the muslims -- whether it be uppity blacks, or women, or their elitist sympathizers -- when they are not.  Democracy ends when the on-going critique is silenced to maintain the illusion of simplicity -- when we give over our own rational insight and moral authority to another -- when we allow ourselves to ignore and perhaps even celebrate the suffering of others.  

The "faithless" media and Trump

There's a front page story in the Washington Post this morning headlined "a defiant Trump meets the TV news crowd in private -- and let's them have it."  For anyone who followed the campaign, there's nothing particularly surprising in it, neither Trump's criticism of the press for being "unfair" and "dishonest," nor his lack of graciousness.  "One participant asked Trump for his definition of 'fair,'" the post writes, "noting that part of the news media’s job is to critically examine a candidate’s words and background. Trump replied that his definition was 'truth.'”  For many of us, this assertion has been (and remains) somewhat baffling, particularly coming from someone who has been called out by "fact-checkers" more often than "lying Ted" or "crooked Hillary" combined.  It would seem that Trump's version of "truth" comes back to a certain sort of image that he holds of himself and that he wishes to project to the world.  One could delve into the self-image, his selfie-self, but it would have to include assertions like "no one respects women more than I do" and his "I called it" prescience.  Neither stands up well to "fact checking," and there is almost always evidence to contradict the assertions, but nevertheless the "truth," the only truth that counts, is Trump's revelation of himself.  And so, "the truth is no one respects women more than he does" and "the truth is Ford kept jobs in the US because he called out their Mexican plant," never mind that Ford planned all along to "repurpose" the US plant and that their plans were well publicized and well reported.  Anything that contravenes his revealed truth is "unfair" and "dishonest."  

Trump is right about one thing, however, the press did not understand him well, or his appeal to the American public.  That much, however, is patently obvious in the fact that he won.  Only a few called it, and those who did understood something about Trump that most missed.  One of the more prescient, as it turned out, was Richard Rorty.  A rather contentious philosopher in his own right, he wrote a defense of an European style democratic socialism in Achieving our Country, and a part of that defense came in the form of a warning that is now circulating in social media.  He wrote:

[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

If that doesn't sound prescient, I'm not sure what does.  Whether it was a result of his "big brain" or just visceral instinct, Trump's hammering of Ford's plan to open a plant in Mexico drove home the point that neither big business nor the government had any real allegiance to the American worker -- that neither were trying prevent wages from sinking -- that both were, "in truth," conspiring to export jobs through trade agreements and sink wages through foreign competition.  If ever there were a symbol of American industry, with the possible exception of Chevy, it was Ford, and so the Mexican plant had the acute sting of betrayal.  Trump's "truth" had nothing what-so-ever to do with the particular business decision at hand, which, it turns out is easily fact-checked and easily debunked.  Trump's "truth" was the symbolic revelation of betrayal and no amount of fact-checking, no amount of debunking, will dissuade those for whom the symbolism of betrayal resonated.  Trump's truth is a different kind of truth altogether, and by all accounts it resonated with a "non suburban" electorate.  Like Zarathustra's prophecy come to life, Trump descended on his golden escalator to promise that, once elected "the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen," not to mention the entrenched politicians and the Clinton News Network that facilitates them, "will no longer be calling the shots."

There is a cultural clash, of course, between Trump and the press, many of whom want to believe that they are observant of "truth," in both senses of the word observant.  They have not only a commitment to truth, but the sort of truth that can be verified through multiple sources.  (Metaphorically speaking, the reporter may see a ghost, may be absolutely convinced he sees a ghost, but nevertheless nudges his companion and asks, "do you see that?"  If the companion says, "no," the reporter thinks to himself, not "what is wrong with my colleague?" but rather "I wonder if I need to lay off the bourbon?")  Symbolic truth is fine, of course, but only if it accords with the facts, and the facts are available to everyone who cares to look.  Trump, however, is appealing to a revelatory truth, and Trump is the prophetic revealer of truth.   It is one thing for Joe Dirt to call out the tricky lawyers and entrenched politicians, quite another thing for the likes of Trump, who has all that any American could want and then some, to call out wall street and the coastal elites.  He is, if not exactly an "insider," nevertheless someone who should "know," and has come to "testify" on behalf of the common man.  He is speaking to an audience long observant of "truth," who have not only an on-going commitment to the revealed truth of the Lord, but one should note it is always the sort of truth that comes from on high and is revealed only to those blessed to receive it.   Trump clearly has been blessed.  If Joe Dirt were to imagine heaven, it would look a lot like Trump tower, and while Melania may not be one's cup of coffee, there are plenty of other super-models to imagine in her place. Trump is, perhaps, more Zarathustrian than Christian, and some evangelicals were queasy in their support for him, but the archetype is clear.  Trump clearly sees himself less as a "strong-man," per se, more as a messianic figure, descended from heaven as the singular revealer of a truth that cannot be contravened. 

Within this frame, it seems almost silly to ask, "can Trump tolerate dissent?"  The answer is clearly, "no," and not only "no, but hell no."  The first commandment is always, "thou shalt have no other gods before me," and Trump touches on something basic.  For those who found it odd that Trump, with more four-pinocchio and more pants-on-fire ratings than any other politician over the last two decades, could be seen as more "trustworthy" than Clinton.  She lied, of course, but she lied in ways that all politicians lie, to cover or obscure inconvenient or embarrassing "facts."  Trump's lies were of an altogether different order, and the first media mistake was to assume a false equivalency between Clinton's lies and Trump's lies.  His lies are a test of faith.  For those who find it odd that evangelicals can believe (really believe?) that the earth was created in a week with Sunday off, don't fully understand the nature of "faith."  If one chooses "faith," one has also chosen to believe that modern astro-physics and Darwinism are "lies," despite all the contrary evidence, as a demonstration of that faith.  It is not credulousness, or under-educated stupidity -- and to assume a condescending attitude, as I sometimes find myself doing, is insulting.  Faith, rather, is an act of choice, of will, and Trump's loyalty oaths, among other things, were no different in kind from the evangelical preacher who asks his parishioners, as a public demonstration of faith, to come forward.  If one has chosen faith, if one has chosen Trump, one must as an act of will believe (really believe?) the revealed truth that they are now blessed to receive.  The media are simply tools of a corrupt elite, and their truth is at best a distraction, at worst a seduction away from the deeper, more profound, more significant truth -- the truth with a capital T emblazoned in the golden glow one "feels" as the message resonates in one's heart.   Trump has asserted over and over that only he really knows, only he can really save us, and he demands nothing more than complete faith, then too nothing less than complete faith in the singular gift he brings to the American people.

Do I think Trump has tapped into this archetype cynically?  No, not really.  Personally, I think he's crafty, but I don't think he's smart enough to think it through as a plan.  Although the golden glow of Trump most likely conceals a profound emptiness at the core, and there is the narcissist's outsized need to be loved, I do think he believes (really believes?) in his own mythology.  He has been proselytizing his own exceptionalism throughout his life.  While his three a.m. tweets are perhaps the pathetic push of a man who cannot stop proselytizing lest the doubt seep through the cracks, he nevertheless WANTS to believe, and he REALLY wants us to believe, he is the messianic figure he presents himself to be.  So, no, I don't think Trump is setting out with dictatorial designs, but I do think, emphatically so, that he won't be able to help himself.  He will demand nothing more, but then again nothing less than complete faith.   If there is a lesson to be learned it is this: it's not simply, or not only, that faith cannot tolerate dissent and gets a bit pissy in tweets.  The whole point of choosing faith is the choice to purge one's self of the anathema of doubt, and to purge one's environment of those "satanic" forces that foster doubt, and it's easy enough to find those who are "faithless" -- they are the one's who dissent, the one's who reveal antipathy and skepticism, the one's who do not submit to the true authority -- and from there, in the history of "faith," bloodshed ensues and in the chaos that follows, more bloodshed in the efforts to restore order.  

Identity Politics and Voting Rights

In my post right after Trump's election, I made a comment that we should expect two things right up front, one of which was a continuing attack on "voting rights?"  I use "voting rights" in a generic sense to mean that all citizens should be able to vote without overt or covert attempts to impede their ability to do so.  Race should not be a factor.  Ethnicity should not be a factor.  Religion should not be a factor.  Only two factors should impede a person's ability to vote -- citizenship and having reached the legal age.  Any other marker that places individuals in one group or another, to include prior convictions for having committed a felony, should not be a factor.   It stands to reason, of course, that the minority party would want to suppress voting rights, more so than the majority party, and it would want to do so among those voting blocks that help create the majority.  In the current political landscape, the republican party remains a minority party in sheer numbers.  Despite her considerable flaws as a candidate, Clinton nevertheless won the popular vote.  Due to quirks in the electoral process, however, the minority candidate won the election.  Assuming we have another election, it still stands to reason that they would want to suppress voting rights among those who are expected to vote for the opposition.  Now, they want to retain power, and because they are in power, they have greater opportunity to rig the process in their favor.   I should say, "further rig the process in their favor," because in someways the process has already been "rigged" to favor the minority party.  David Daley outlines the history and effect of gerrymandering in his book Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy.  Although I took hope in Obama's re-election, the current election has drained me of any real hope in this regard.  The majority of state governments, the House, the Senate, and now the executive branch are controlled by republicans. Increasingly, we are living in a single-party country -- the republican party.  It remains a minority party, unreflective of the majority of Americans, but it has, admittedly, been much more successful at seizing and retaining power.

The Times today published an op-ed piece by Ari Berman that suggests something similar.  He points out that "In June 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a long history of racial discrimination no longer needed to approve any proposed changes to their voting procedures with the federal government, as had long been required under the Voting Rights Act."  As Berman points out, "fourteen states had new voting restrictions in effect in 2016, including strict voter ID laws, fewer opportunities for early voting and reductions in the number of polling places. These restrictions depressed turnout in key states like Wisconsin, particularly among black voters."   This, of course, was a republican victory, and it will likely be replicated.  If as expected, a conservative justice is placed on the court to replace Scalia, and it could happen shortly after Trump's coronation, "there could be five votes to further gut the Voting Rights Act. Conservatives will target Section 2 of the law, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race or color."   The change will likely be subtle, a change in standard not statute.  As Berman again points out, "When the current chief justice of the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr., was a lawyer in the Justice Department in the early 1980s, he led a charge against Section 2. He argued in a 1981 memo that the provision should block only those voting laws that were found to be intentionally discriminatory."  Intention, of course, is notoriously difficult to prove,  and mis-direct.  Trumps repeated claims that the election was rigged, for example, pointed away from the gerrymandering that actually rigs the elections, to the potential for machine era voter fraud, like ballot stuffing.  Of course, the dangers of "voter fraud" are themselves fraudulent, but it's easy enough to put in place measures INTENDED to reduce "voter fraud," whose RESULT is "voter suppression" of particular voting blocks.  To adopt Roberts position, and to confirm it with the 5th vote, would effectively kill he most important civil rights legislation.

As an aside, two electoral reforms would effectively end such efforts and make the one person-one vote more a reality.  Both are difficult to argue against from a "justice for all" perspective, but given the above, one could expect considerable opposition, and not just from the red side of the aisle.  The first reform would be "mandatory voting."  To vote, or not to vote, should no more be a question than to serve jury duty, though I appreciate the irony in my saying as much.  If citizen of legal age were REQUIRED to vote, and fined if they did not, the focus would change immediately from who we can get to or keep from the polls to creating systems that made it easy for EVERYONE to do their civic duty.  A blank ballot is fine, and shouldn't cause the consternation that it did for Saramago's burghers in Seeing, so long as it is cast.   I don't vote for each and every point on the ballot because I simply don't know enough to make an informed decision.  Although there are technical details to consider -- literally and figuratively -- nevertheless mandatory voting comes closer to insuring that ALL voices are heard.  It would effectively end the sort of hand wringing that David Leonhardt brought to the table in today's NY Times. 

The second reform would be proportional voting, particularly in the electoral college.  It is, perhaps too difficult to imagine a "stateless" United States, instead of the "winner-take-all" the electoral votes could be proportionate.  Using my own state as an example, the meager four electoral votes went to Trump, but if the vote had been proportional, Trump would have received 2.3 electoral votes, Clinton would have received 1.0 electoral votes, the remainder "at large" among the independent candidates.  In Texas, the 38 electoral votes went to Trump, but if the vote had been proportional, Trump would have received 19.9 votes, Clinton 16.4, with the remainder likewise at large.  Finally, just to be fair, in California, the 55 electoral votes went to Clinton, but had they been proportionate Trump would have received 17.9, Clinton 33.4, and the remainder at large.  It would end the "illegitimacy" of the election going to the minority candidate.  Also, as one might imagine, in an election as distasteful as the last, the small percentages that went "at large" might have grown, in part because it would take away the onus of having used one's vote into the outhouse.   If neither of the principle candidates received a majority, how the "at large" votes are ultimate cast would make a suspenseful difference.  

Of course, both reforms would be met with considerable opposition, if not dismissed outright, because the current gerrymandering and the electoral college actually favor the minority party.  It is worth noting that the last two "illegitimate" elections, where there was a disparity between the popular vote and the electoral college, it went to the conservative party.   Then too, though like many I would have liked to believe that we had come a long way toward overcoming outright racism, that the disputes were "technical" disputes over how best to eliminate "institutional" racism and remove "bias" from policing, this election cycle disabused me of such hopeful notions.  Altogether too many believe that blacks should simply NOT be allowed to vote, period, that their franchise was illegitimate from the outset.  Laws to suppress black votes are mere half measures toward an outright prohibition.  Many of the same people would also believe that muslims, among others, should simply not be allowed to vote because to BE an American is to BE first and foremost white and christian.  Trump may look in the camera and say "stop it," but there are any number of reasons to question the sincerity of his appeal to end the gloating of the white supremacists, not least his appointment of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General.  Both have a long been associated with racism.  One could take a "wait and see" attitude toward both picks, but me-thinks anyone who has to say "I am not a racist," protests too much and should perhaps examine their attitudes.   Even setting the appointments aside, clearly, we do not live in a post-racial America, far from it, and those who harbor racial and gender attitudes that I do find deplorable have come out of the closet, perhaps to make room for the gays once again.  Thus we have the NY Times reporting that white nationalists "have lurked in the web’s dark corners, masking themselves with cartoon images and writing screeds about the demise of white culture under ominous pseudonyms.  But on Saturday, in the wake of Donald J. Trump’s surprising election victory, hundreds of his extremist supporters converged on the capital to herald a moment of political ascendance that many had thought to be far away."

So, again, both electoral reforms would be met with considerable opposition, in part at least because "mandatory" voting would insure black turnout at the polls and many, of course, simply don't want to see blacks at the polls, period.   They certainly don't want to give their voice weight, not even a proportionate weight.  I say all of this, in part because I cannot help but agree with Mark Lilla's recent editorial where he writes "One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end."  Before I agree too strongly, however, a word or two of caution, one of which is captured by Lilla's remark that "Liberals should bear in mind that the first identity movement in American politics was the Ku Klux Klan, which still exists."  At the extremes, the deplorable irrationality of identity politics becomes readily apparent, and indeed, as Lilla suggests, the best response to blind bigotry is to assert the common humanity of their targets, their victims.  In the middle, however, the irrationality of identity politics becomes less apparent, more fraught.  The move to suppress the voting rights of minorities is not, or not necessarily, a "racist" move.  Insofar as black voters tend to vote reliably democratic -- that is, when they vote -- the move to suppress their votes can be seen as a purely pragmatic, purely rational "political calculation."  As such, it has nothing to do with race, per se.  If more and more of the black community were to slip into the conservative camp, the "political calculation" would lose its force and dissipate.  Not all, perhaps not even most, conservatives are "racist," and would be happy to welcome black votes into the party. Their own "political calculations," however, make that eventuality unlikely, in part because he move to suppress the voting rights of minorities does have an racist result, and it is this result that the white nationalists applaud and the liberals deplore.  I really would prefer NOT to have one more conversation about race, but there it is, in our face, and how do we even begin to talk about the "racist result" of a "political calculation" without some measure of "identity politics?"

I am not sure how to answer that question, but it does seem clear enough that Lilla has a point when he writes that liberals, to some extent, doom themselves in thinking that "Trump won in large part because he managed to transform economic disadvantage into racial rage — the “whitelash” thesis."  The "whitelash" theory is convenient on a number of scores, not least in that the omnipresent rhetoric of minority victimization has "encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored."  Indeed, and to confess, as a middle-aged white male, there have been times when I have felt the sting of discriminatory practice only to be informed that I was not a member of a "protected class."  At such moments, I don't resent the gains of minorities, but I have asked that ubiquitous, human question, "what about me?"  My neighbors are asking that question, and Lilla is correct when he writes that "such people are not actually reacting against the reality of our diverse America," or not necessarily reacting against the reality of our diverse America.  For them, the "reality" of our diverse America is mostly a fiction, and I mean that literally -- their representation and, yes, their self-presentation in popular culture, to include Fox News -- and it is a fiction that might as well be set in a foreign land.  New York, Chicago, LA  are foreign lands to most of my neighbors.   They do "tend, after all, to live in homogeneous areas of the country," Mountain Home being no exception, and many of those areas have declined significantly and have done so in the living memories of many residents, Mountain Home again being no exception.  The "whitelash" theory is "convenient because it sanctions a conviction of moral superiority," not to mention a whole series of sanctimonious talking points, and it allows liberals to ignore the inconvenient truth of what "those voters said were their overriding concerns."

Lilla suggests, a post-identity liberalism would

refocus attention on the main political responsibility in a democracy: to form committed citizens aware of their system of government and the major forces and events in our history. A post-identity liberalism would also emphasize that democracy is not only about rights; it also confers duties on its citizens, such as the duties to keep informed and vote. A post-identity liberal press would begin educating itself about parts of the country that have been ignored, and about what matters there, especially religion. And it would take seriously its responsibility to educate Americans about the major forces shaping world politics, especially their historical dimension. 

My hardly original suggestion of mandatory voting would emphasize that "democracy is not only about rights," but that those same rights carry a reciprocal obligation "to keep informed and vote."  Of course, there is a bit of "if only" wishful thinking implicit in this: mandatory voting would do little to insure that citizens "keep informed"  -- the forces of ignorance and apathy are tough to battle in a land of social media lotus eaters -- but it helps highlight the goal, committed citizens -- and that is something, at least on paper, that transcends personal identity -- something, at least on paper, that we all share in common.