Our Continuing National Nightmare

One of the last times I wrote about politics in this blog (having made the futile promise to myself to stay clear of the topic to preserve my sanity), was after the midterm elections:  “I had only one wish for the Midterms: gain the House, although like most moderate progressives, I was rooting for Beto, Gillum, et al.  Still, I sleepily emailed ebullient messages to a few friends at 3.00 AM declaring ‘victory’ with the subject heading ‘bring on the subpoenas.’”

How naïve I was.  We now all know the effectiveness of subpoenas when the Attorney General is a shill for those under scrutiny.  Instead, investigate the investigators his boss suggests.

For a while I fantasized that maybe indeed Biden might be the best qualified candidate to “unite” the nation and make nice with the Republican Party so things can get done.  It was a dreadful, misplaced hope I now think.  Remember the Merrick!  (Merrick Garland, that is, the Obama appointee to the Supreme Court who was kneecapped by Mitch McConnell.) 

The critical nature of winning the 2020 election is no better spelled out than in a recent article in The Nation by Edward Burmila, “Empty Calls for Bipartisanship Could Doom Us All.”

 

Among his salient points are the following:

*Joe Biden’s assertion that President Donald Trump is an “aberration” in the Republican Party is naive at best and revisionist at worst

*Birtherism and Tea Party rhetoric about taking back “our” country were a product rollout, a test marketing of Trump’s politics of white identity

*The Democratic Party seems unable to recognize the seriousness of the moment. It is only luck that the right has not yet found a skilled autocrat

*Imagine what that person could accomplish with the support of a pliant Republican Senate and conservative-packed federal judiciary

*The Democratic Party has an opportunity to influence what happens next. It will not do so with empty promises to unite Americans.

*It is imperative that the eventual Democratic nominee articulate a worldview based on the belief that public policy, not markets, can address social and economic problems, with specific proposals to that end. If ever there was a time to be bold rather than to play it safe, this is it. Without a compelling alternative, ideologues like Trump will succeed by filling the vacuum with a simple—and vile—worldview.

OK, then, what kind of public policy?  We are dealing with a populace who is anti government everything.  Bring on chaos is their mantra.  They have it with their leader. The conventional extreme left progressive “wisdom” of promising to take care of everyone from cradle to grave is not going to sweep Trump and sycophant Republicans out of office.  This is where I disagree with the implication of Burmila’s argument.  There must be a place for “markets” or progressives will merely defeat themselves.  But I agree with the urgency of Burmila’s call to action.  Boldness is required.

This is underscored by Bret Stephens’ opinion column in the New York Times this weekend, “How Trump Wins Next Year” 

He argues that around the world recent elections have ushered in Trumpian populists or have solidified ones already in office, in India, Australia, the Philippines, Israel, Brazil, and Italy – and what is about to happen in the UK.

The core of Stephens’ line of reasoning is:

The common thread here isn’t just right-wing populism. It’s contempt for the ideology of them before us: of the immigrant before the native-born; of the global or transnational interest before the national or local one; of racial or ethnic or sexual minorities before the majority; of the transgressive before the normal. It’s a revolt against the people who say: Pay an immediate and visible price for a long-term and invisible good. It’s hatred of those who think they can define that good, while expecting someone else to pay for it.

When protests erupted last year in France over Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise gas prices for the sake of the climate, one gilets jaunes slogan captured the core complaint: “Macron is concerned with the end of the world,” it went, while “we are concerned with the end of the month.”

Stephens accurately accuses the left of being their own worst enemy: … it self-consciously approaches politics as a struggle against selfishness, and partly because it has invested itself so deeply, and increasingly inflexibly, on issues such as climate change or immigration. Whatever else might be said about this, it’s a recipe for nonstop political defeat leavened only by a sensation of moral superiority.

He makes the point, and here is where my thinking and his especially conjoin, that moderate liberals of the past, a Tony Blair or a Bill Clinton -- and while neither could be held up as perfect politicians (in particular Clinton’s moral failures) -- that neither would ever have been bested by someone like Trump.

So where is that person?  Far be it for me to speculate who that should be.  Perhaps as the primaries develop that person will emerge, but I fear that if it is someone from the far left or a reach-across-the-aisle placater singing 'Kumbaya', we will have missed our opportunity to turn back this wave of populist, know-nothing, nihilism.   

‘Waiting for Someone to Explain It’ Now Published

Having written this blog for some dozen years, by the end of last year I felt it was time to make it less of “a job” and more focused on things I enjoy rather than those I obsess over.  That meant less political and current affairs commenting (although I’ll never say never to those subjects in the future).  The present political and economic landscape invites day to day commentary, but I’ve decided to resist it to preserve my sanity.  It is truly a case of existential dread and exhaustion.

Nonetheless, I also decided to mostly exit those subjects by making a declarative statement in the form of a book based on the extensive entries from the past.  Therefore, Waiting for Someone to Explain It; The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense (North Palm Beach, Lacunae Musing, 2019),348 Pages, $13.95 is now available in paperback from Amazon and their extensive distribution network. 

The irony of selecting Amazon KDP as my publishing platform hasn’t been lost on me as when I was a publisher I dealt with Amazon in its infancy and now it deals with me in my dotage. 

It is also ironic that it should be published the same week as the Mueller Report which to some extent provides some of the answers I’ve been “waiting for.”  Yet Trump is as much a symptom as a cause. The book reveals the deep roots of our cultural civil war and the intransigence of political polarization, and one person’s quest to come to terms with them. 

It argues that we’ve become inured to the outrageous and accommodative of the absurd.  It points to a deep vein of anti-intellectualism in this country, questioning the veracity of climate change, championing the “right” to open carry weapons, and leading to the worship of false idols: 24 x 7 streaming entertainment.  We’ve become a nation needing immediate gratification, no matter what the societal consequences of borrowing against the future or becoming somnambulists in front of liquid crystal display screens.

Who could have imagined the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States?  As his candidacy ramped up, so did my commentary, all encapsulated in “Waiting.”

The book documents the election of such an unsuitable candidate, who has proved to be worse than feared, a “crazy maker” a gas-lighter of reality, a believer in his own mendacity.  These issues populate the entries.  As Eric Hoffer said in his classic The True Believer (1951), “We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”  During the period I sought out other expert journalists, psychologists, bloggers, economists, and even novelists in an attempt to understand.

The publicity release at the end of this entry explains the title and more about the rationale.  It is not simply a collection of entries from the blog.  There is a narrative tying things together and the entries themselves have been edited to minimize redundancies and present them better in print. 

As an ex-publisher it’s also been a labor of love, to write a book, even participate in its design, bringing me back to my start in publishing in 1964 as a production assistant.  So much has changed since then in the industry.  For me, the publication was as much about the journey. I think of it as an act of professional closure as well as a cry for the kind of democracy our forefathers envisioned. 

“Only I can save you!”

During my publishing career I reprinted Gustav Gilbert’s Psychology of Dictatorship.  He was my professor in 1962, teaching a course of the same rubric during my brief tenure as a psychology major.  He was all business in the classroom, nary a smile, but no wonder what he witnessed.   Gilbert was the American Military Chief Psychologist at the Nuremberg trials, writing the Nuremberg Diary shortly thereafter and later his more academic Psychology of Dictatorship.

I’m reminded of this by yesterday’s bluster of our president, threatening to shut down the government to “save” us from “criminals pouring into the U.S.” and those who are not criminals, at the very least, carry “deadly diseases.”  “It’s my wall or the highway.” Scares the bejezzes out of his faithful followers. 

At Nuremberg Gilbert interviewed some of the head Nazis, including Herman Goering, who confided the following to Gilbert:  “…people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

How prophetic.

Gilbert, Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop at Nuremberg Trials

Post Midterm Thoughts

So broken: our political system and our way of life.   And still another mass shooting, this one in a CA bar.  We’ve become inured to them by lack of any action, the NRA’s tentacles wrapped around Congress.  There are solutions.  It only takes the will.

Anyone who caught Trump’s news conference yesterday, his firing of Sessions and replacing him with a Yes Man, should understand the fragility of our democratic system.   Demagogues play the Press to their propagandist advantage.  Demagogues demand obedience.

I had only one wish for the Midterms: gain the House, although like most moderate progressives, I was rooting for Beto, Gillum, et al.  Still, I sleepily emailed ebullient messages to a few friends at 3.00 AM declaring “victory” with the subject heading “bring on the subpoenas.”

But I am no Pollyanna, thinking that having control of the House will ameliorate the deep dark political divide in this country.  It might exacerbate it, but as with an operation, the aftermath therapy can be more painful than the procedure. 

We focus on Trump, which is the way he wants it but there are so many systemic issues. Our Constitution is the best political document ever drafted, but it was by 18^th century thinkers. 

The 2^nd Amendment needs updating.  Muskets are no longer the only “arms” that we have the right to bear.

The Electoral College needs fixing or abandonment, allowing the direct popular vote to determine the outcome of Presidential elections.  Slavery and concern that the average person might not be best suited to make those decisions led to the Electoral College.  We need to question its legitimacy in today’s world where information is readily available to everyone.

Similarly, another consequence of the great Constitutional compromise was the one giving each State the same number of Senators, irrespective of population.  I quote what Alexander Hamilton had to say about that in The Federalist below.  Who could have seen what now exists, with thinly populated states such as North Dakota, about the population size of an El Paso, Texas, having the same Senate representation as the entire State of Texas itself, giving the people of ND nearly 40 times the political clout to have their say over Supreme Court Justices, etc.?  Even a greater multiple when it comes to states like NY or CA.

Another bête noir of mine, and thankfully we now have a brief reprieve, is political advertising.  Super PACs representing special interests, as well as extremist political party advertising, are a form of government approved brainwashing, appealing primarily to emotional issues.  We’ve successfully removed cigarette advertising from our airwaves.  Time has come to remove political advertising and endless robo calls (spend the $$ on our decaying infrastructure, or healthcare, etc. instead!).  Make all political discourse over the airways subject to universally recognized debate rules.  If a candidate has something to say, write an opinion piece for local and/or national publication, maintain a Web site expressing plans and opinions.  Aren’t we sick of the political advertising which portrays the opposition as being sent from hell? 

Easier said than done, I know, but we have to do something to separate the democratic process from mass persuasion dollars.  The next couple of months before our new House representatives are sworn in are going to be critical. May we survive those days to get democracy back on track.

The Federalist No. 22 by Alexander Hamilton

Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third.