Get in Line? Nah.

Professor J,

You've asked about the political bullying of your female friends from those on the right.  I can't give you a precise answer because I'm sure the reason is a cocktail of some of the things you've mentioned. However, I might make this observation: conservatives see themselves as right, and I don't just mean in political leanings. This is the result (in my opinion) of the recent marrying of Christianity and political conservatism. Somewhere along the line my being a good Christian (which I miss by a mile, but that's where grace comes in) had to fall in line with my behaving as a citizen in a particular way. The recent Chick fil a dustup is a good example. There was an expectation that as a Christian I would buy a chicken sandwich on a certain day. My standing my ground and refusing to participate, for a variety of reasons, was looked at with bewilderment by some. And the attitude among some was --why couldn't I get in line? Literally as well as figuratively.

I'll admit that when everyone is doing anything it makes me nervous. But maybe I'm just a contrarian.

Thanks to the Moral Majority and other similar organizations, along with talk show hosts who make fortunes keeping the fire going, the "culture war" has been sold to vast segments of the country and in particular to the Republican base. This isn't my war. I am a Christian and a citizen. Those are two different things. I can't find in my New Testament where Christ told me to spread democracy and capitalism. To hear many speak these days you would think it was part of the Sermon on the Mount or the Great Commission. My job as a Christian is to spread His love and behave in a way that reflects His teachings. First and foremost is that LOVE thing. It is not to be a registered Republican or save the country from gay marriage and universal health care . My job as a citizen is (among other things) to be informed, know the Constitution, vote, and obey the law. At times the two things converge but not always.

Jesus didn't seem particularly concerned about the culture, except perhaps in reference to the religious establishment.

The problem is the group think that has taken over. Most people think like this: I believe this way on one important issue (let's take abortion for an example), so I will then unthinkingly accept another entire line of belief about totally unrelated subjects because that is how "we" think. I might point out that this can be a problem for Democrats as well, those who are social liberals but fiscal conservatives for example. And the conventional wisdom that conservatives "don't do nuance" is probably fair from what I see. This lockstep ideology makes me crazy.

Beyond all of that I would say that I often see a certain closed minded arrogance that our European friends might recognize as "the ugly American." The attitude of "knowing" one is right, sometimes without many facts and not much thought, is fairly common, I'm sad to say. It is frustrating in the extreme. If your female friends are getting this behavior from men, I would say that that goes back to an age old issue of control. I'd be interested in knowing the ages of these men as well. There might be a hint about the answer to your question there.

Post Facto

Madame M:

One thing (well, more, but this will have to do) more I meant to say on my post from last time: If disgust with the two parties occurs in a critical swing state or area, you could find yourself with the worst of the two unsavory choices, either by lack of voting or voting for a third party that the system has assured of no chance.

To your excellent post on civil discourse, I can add but little.  I have an observation though.   I have had friends, especially women, who tell me they feel bullied by their conservative friends.  It happens on all sides, of course, but it does come from the conservative quarter more.  Why? Fear?  Frustration?  Control? Intolerance?  Something else? What is the source or sources of political bullying?  We have spent a good deal of time in identifying sources of bullying among children.  Perhaps we need to expand that research.

On to the topic of the day. I said I would read and analyze the Ferguson article from Newsweek. Here is my analysis.

Although he lays out some criticisms of the Obama administration—criticisms that I can occasionally join in—he is intellectually dishonest in a number of others.  It appears to me that he has approached things from a marked bias, and set out to twist statistics and make projections to support that bias.  He’s a smart man and an occasionally gifted historian.  Why would he do that?  Is it merely because controversy sells?  Do his handlers at Newsweek desire such a thing?  I think it’s more direct than either of those.  First, it’s no secret that Ferguson is openly partisan: not only was he a Maggie Thatcher fan (he’s from Scotland), but he has enthusiastically supported in American politics McCain and now Romney and Ryan (who he’s friends with).  Second, Ferguson also has a record of oddly or poorly twisting facts to come to his desired conclusions, something he has been criticized for a number of years on.  Third, many of his criticisms of the Obama administration are economic.  While I have long said that presidents can often have a negative effect on economics, having a positive one (and especially a positive one without a cooperative Fed, Congress, and G-20) is sometimes largely out of their control.  Yet, Ferguson behaves like many non-scholars in not acknowledging this reality; worse, he perpetuates a misleading notion.  He has been credited as economic historian, but many economists would characterize his understanding of economics to be at best incomplete (and I found his book The Ascent of Money to be uninspiring).   Fourth, while I agree with him that the West sometimes does not give itself enough credit for the positive changes it has made in the world, he takes that to extremes and justifies numerous interventions and arrogant assumptions of cultural superiority.  Fifth, he is never apologetic or admitting of error.  He justifies his twisting of facts and statistics (prime example: mixing dates of comparison and being obviously misleading, just to make the point he desires) and does not acknowledge that he has done so, which as an historian is offensive due to its hostility to scholarly standards.

Some specific issues with the article:

Ferguson contributes to the highly misleading, non-contextual assertion that we are becoming a nation where half the people are on the dole and half the people are paying heavy taxes to support them.  This partisan assertion, precisely because there is a tiny kernel of fact in one part of it, then is seized upon to emotionally incense Americans who feel put upon by the system.  In perfect divide and conquer, Americans are pitted against each other, with those who perceive themselves as hardworking, honest, dedicated citizens encouraged to feel that they are bleeding themselves dry to support the easy lives of “welfare queens,” “low lifes,” “criminals,” “system abusers,” “morons,” etc.  That serves the 1% quite nicely.

What IS correct is that 46- 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income tax.  Aha, you say, Ferguson is correct.  Not really.  First of all, much of that 46-47 percent do pay state and local income tax, but more to the point, they still pay plenty in sales and other taxes, not to mention they are usually the working poor who pay Social Security and Medicare taxes.  And because they are the working poor, most aren’t the “bums and freeloaders” that the twisters try to focus on to get us pitted against each other.  But MUCH more to the point, the reason they don’t pay federal income taxes is that THEY DON’T MAKE ENOUGH: their average income is less than $27,000 a year. 

We have a problem all right.  But it’s not because we have become colonial Spain, where the productive got crushed under supporting all the people on the dole.  It’s because our policies have both knowingly and uncaringly undermined the middle class, which is now both weakened and shrinking.  Such policies have been 30-40 years in the making, and transcend Obama, who hasn’t been allowed to do much (and it’s not clear that he truly desires to do all that much, except maybe put a few speed bumps in).  The corporate and plutocratic powers desire certain things and do not desire others, and that’s what drives the economy now.  While they might somewhat prefer the fast-track convergence of a Romney to an occasionally reluctant Obama, they have already made sure the political machinery does not excessively interfere with what they want.

Ferguson is right in pointing out that economists and politicians who wave away debt by citing debt to GDP ratios are refusing to face a problem, and we need a marked squaring up to the collective debt problem of the world in general and this country in particular.  He is also right in that we are masking the true severity of our problems by our artificially low interest rates.  But Ferguson is being disingenuous by insinuating that our deficits are largely just because we aren’t facing up to living within our revenues.  Our revenues have been deliberately depressed by nearly continually dropping taxes for the wealthy and super-wealthy (at the corporate level certainly, but individually even more so), while at the same time providing loopholes and deductions to those same rich.  Additionally, we have made it easy for those wealthy and super-wealthy to hide trillions in wealth (and escape even more taxes) in tax-haven countries around the world, not to mention the further loopholes of international money movement and international “earnings.”  And all these facets have not only led to markedly self-serving behavior by the rich, but have provided the opposite of incentive to produce more jobs and more middle-class citizens.

Ferguson says certain things were not in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when they most certainly are, and even when confronted with these glaring errors, he does not admit any mistakes, which is inexcusable for an academic.  For instance, the Congressional Budget Office, the highly respected non-partisan analytical arm of Congress, says that ACA as written dramatically slows the wild growth in health care costs, especially government related health care costs, but Ferguson claims the opposite.   He could claim, as I do, that the CBO’s assumptions are optimistic, and that this slowing will not occur to the extent they project, but he doesn't.  He goes off into partisanville and does not return.

Ferguson does other ridiculously partisan things in his article, such as blaming Obama for the fact that China’s GDP will exceed America’s in the very near future, when nearly every social scientist recognizes this as well over 30 years in the making—and not necessarily a bad thing (and not just because China’s population is also over four times ours).   He blames Obama for “letting his party dictate the terms of the stimulus,” which has some truth (and the character of how much of it was spent was typical Democratic muddle-headedness), but, like many of Ferguson’s assertions, is just that—partial truth.  He leaves out that Republicans in the Senate assured that the stimulus would be much smaller than many leading economists said was needed to truly recover from the Great Recession, thereby leading to a no-win situation that would be portrayed as “failure” and “wasteful.”   He blames Obama for the “failures” of “financial reform and health care reform,” when both of those far-less-than-ideal efforts were undermined by the lobbying power of the very sectors they were trying to reform—and it didn’t matter a wit about which party, because both had been captured by the lobbyists.  He blames Obama for the “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and slashed spending that is in our future, when those things have been 30- plus years in the making.  That Obama got handed a situation where costs of government were going up and revenues dropping precipitously, meant he was going to be facing stark deficits no matter what he did.  And that pattern is what is precisely desired by those rich and powerful who want to make government weak and effectively powerless to oppose them.  Ferguson is also critical of Obama’s foreign policy, portraying it as aimless dithering.  It’s easy to criticize, but Ferguson’s prescriptions are largely only a repeat of the disastrous Bush foreign policies that set up so many of the problems that Obama has attempted to deal with.  I will agree with Ferguson, however, that the possibly extra-legal campaign of drone targeting is at least potentially problematic, but since its full aspects have not yet been examined (and indeed, may not be achievable without access to privileged information), it comes across as more partisan knitting.   We need entirely new and codified rules of warfare, and Geneva needs updating.  This needs to be an international discussion, however, not another hegemonic American dictation.  We also need a full rethinking of the sinister aspect of authorizing the president to assassinate an American citizen whom that president considers an enemy of the state.

Ferguson’s also intellectually dishonest in criticizing possibly unfounded assumptions about the ACA but being silent about those even more starkly, clearly unfounded (in fact NO assumptions, just assertions!) in the Ryan plan.  He also holds the Obama administration accountable for the fact that banks are not meeting funds requirements, when those things transcend times and administrations—the moneyed powers dictate things anyway.  Others have pointed out that the requirements haven’t even gone into effect yet, so trying to hold accountable would be dishonest if it were even applicable.

Ferguson supplies no evidence for how his calls for austerity have worked in actual practice, nor does he address the problems and complications that austerity have encountered elsewhere.  Again, it would be at least intellectually honest to bring up past times in American history to balance budgets in recessions/depressions, as well as the present measures in Europe, and show why his austerity call accounts for the same factors.

I will be one of the first in line to criticize Obama the firefighter, but I will also recognize that he’s had to deal with those standing on his hose, those driving the truck to the wrong location, those diverting trucks that could help, and those fanning the flames.  I’m certainly not going to clamor for a return to the policies and methods of the fire-starters –economic arsonists—and that is a good deal of what Ferguson is advocating.  I’m not a fan of an Obama, but that doesn’t translate into reaching for a Romney who would offer no change except for the worse.

Even Ferguson’s conservative friend Andrew Sullivan has problems with Ferguson’s writings and methods.  Ferguson has done, and continues to do so unapologetically, damage to scholarship.  In fact, he is another contributor to the post-facts world of illusion and delusion we are fashioning for ourselves, making Hedges’ prescience all the more telling in its starkness.

Civil Discourse as Defense

Professor J,

Civil discourse: Isn't this where we came in? After 3 years of discussing it and 2 years of publicly championing the cause, this week we were shown, a bit closer to home, the desperate need for it and the damage caused by the lack of it. Thanks to social networking and our ability to be voyeurs in a digital age we've both seen people participate this week in ways that made us cringe.

Civil Discourse, anyone?

Civil discourse is like that old joke about the weather: Everyone talks about it but no one ever does anything about it.

We could imagine what a nation full of educated citizens
(I know, one problem at at time, right?) who could work together to solve problems could get done. A country would be very strong indeed if its inhabitants could listen to one another and look for the best solutions possible instead of wanting to be right. We also have come to believe that anyone with an opinion different from ours is either idiotic or that their intent is an evil one. We no longer imagine that the other person has taken facts into account and come to a different conclusion about what the best course of action might be. We see less and less people who are willing to respectfully disagree or compromise. In fact, compromise has become a dirty word.

This attitude has grown more prevalent since everyone shouting at each other somehow became part of the news. This style of "debate" has seeped out of the cable box and into the population. John Maxwell said (I'm paraphrasing) we need to value people more than our opinions.  A lot of our lack of civil discourse is a result of our disconnection. So many discussions today take place in a relationship vacuum. What is the point of going to all the trouble of listening or spending time explaining your viewpoint to someone you don't know? No need for tact and diplomacy when there is no relationship to protect or when the relationship is viewed as less important than winning the argument.

 Finding common ground, even if you really have to dig for it, goes a long way in getting the other person to listen. It says "I value your opinion." You can hash out all the details where you disagree later, but pointing out areas where you have commonality shows the other person you are willing to meet them halfway.

Are we capable of taking our emotions, putting them aside for the sake of discussion or are we going to let our feelings override our thinking?  Are we sharing information and discussing things to look for the truth? Can we all agree that the TRUTH is more important than having our previously held opinion confirmed? If all we want to hear (really listen to and take to heart) are opinions that agree with ours (confirmation bias), and we lose our ability to learn, rethink, and reevaluate, then we are no longer being intellectually honest. Beyond that we just turn into mouthpieces for one side or the other, instead of thinkers. At that point we are just being used. The powers that be benefit greatly from our inability to have a rational and reasoned debate about things.

Here's a prior blog post about why some of us are more averse to change than others: This Is Your Brain of Fear.

But I would say we don't need to just have our ideas and opinions challenged by others. We need to be constantly sifting our thinking and challenging ourselves. We need to constantly be on the lookout for new information so that we can marvel at how much we don't know. That makes it possible to entertain that troubling thought...that due to misinformation, misunderstanding, or misreading events we could be...wrong. People who are on a quest for truth are going to have to admit that from time to time.

If we did a better job at not imitating the boorish behavior we see in the media we might be able to use civil discourse as a defense against small mindedness, division, and ignorance. Who knows,  we might even learn to stop only defending our opinions and learn to defend each other. 

In Search of Political Enthusiasm: Political Porn Examined

Madame:

I can certainly empathize greatly with the desire! What a fresh campaign that would be! While I’m not as sure as you that agreement could be obtained on the “big 3 or 4 things,” there is overlap, no doubt.  AFTER the election (assuming success without excessive positive thinking, lol) would be a bit difficult: since Reagan rejected Ford’s “co-presidency” proposal, such a thing has been considered cold stone dead (although Cheney upended this in Bush’s first term), and the vice-pres really doesn’t have any more power than the president allows or gives. But maybe it could work for extraordinary individuals of vision and character who would realize what the American people elected them for!

Yes, if we could get Americans to stop accepting sound bites and misrepresentations, this would go far. However, the average American is so put upon by the crushing demands of living and our society (and that everything is on the individual or nuclear family instead of spread a bit more via community), let alone those overworked poor or those without jobs or with only part-time jobs, I’m wondering if there is enough human reserves. But perhaps there can be awakened, in all the corners of this land, those who could help, but have become distracted or focused on only themselves, or even the retired or elderly who feel tossed aside or youth wasting their energy in directionless activity. So, good idea too!  And would love two cranky old men who can’t be bought.  If we ever needed the incorruptibles, it’s now.

Well, we’ve largely almost had a moratorium on new laws, given a deadlocked Congress, but I agree it might be great, if you could get legislators and executives to resist the urge to tamper or make their mark. Ego and feeling one has POWER are hard to resist, let alone the extreme pressure that constituents and lobbyists put on to do something about their particular issues. Freezing spending at current levels is a good idea, although it is less efficient than targeted cuts of misallocation of resources. As the super-nothing committee demonstrated last year on that however, getting to specifics is hard (even aside from ideological divides). I’m all for this idea. Maybe we could get the legislators to all sign a pledge? Worked for Grover Norquist! :)

As for the debates, if America becomes astute enough to see beyond the corporate media spin and channeling, this would be great! And of course, as your video demonstrates, the parties, through a private corporation, control the debates completely, and people would have to demand changes to that as well.

Yes, the two men would disagree on much, but you’re right: the country is in such poor shape that we need emergency/crisis focus on some key things, or little else will matter.  And your suggestions about volunteerism, and they way to go about it? PLATINUM. “What if someone said ‘Look at what needs to be done in your neighborhood and find a way to do it.’ People are desperate for a vision of possibility.” Okay, that’s it; I’m moving to your state and voting for you! :)

A great number of Americans do want this, are ready for this, want to change things for the better. But they want it to really matter, and they want everyone to sacrifice and contribute, and they don’t want the powerful or corrupt (either as corporations or as individuals) to evade justice, let alone responsibility. There is, I believe, a great latent desire to make our lives meaningful in restoration, and in building a new and better future, not just shoring up this corporatized dessicated thing we’ve become.   Many people know or at least feel at some level that their lives need a whole lot more meaning, and they have energy for that if there was something they truly believed in.    As Napoleon Hill would say, we’re needing to channel all that energy in a different direction! :)

Kennedy gave us that call you mentioned, and also reminded us of Proverbs (and Roman oration) that, without vision, the people perish. There is still a logjam on this one, because enough of the country is still in 1) denial, or 2) because the dessicated world hasn’t affected THEM yet they don’t see a problem, or 3) they are willingly believers in the propaganda of the manipulators, or 4) they still believe that MERE hard work and dedication is all that is needed to succeed in this country, plus a number of other reasons for the groundswell not reaching critical mass levels. But maybe, just maybe, the first faint signs of some movement in the logjam?  Too early to tell!

And now for the Party Rain (Reign?)/Raining on the party:

The iron-grip of the two parties means not only mountainous hurdles to get the realistic chance to be in the running, but that a team from outside those parties miraculously elected to the office of the president would find governing difficult if a slew of like-minded people are not elected to Congress (and statehouses, probably, as well) at the same time.  The power of the corporatists and plutocrats is great, and they control so much behind the scenes.

Getting elected from the outside is something beyond daunting.  It is nearly impossible to get on the ballot in all 50 states, so much have the two parties and their allies set up roadblocks and blatant obstructions to prevent the rise of competitors.  Even if a team could somehow surmount those high cliffs, there are the nearly equally high challenges of getting coverage from a corporate media, a corporate debate process, or  securing adequate financing to both fend off the endless money thrown at you in TV and other ads and state your message.

This is why the candidates I want are neither of what is usually served.  I would, possibly even more than a Paul and Nader, otherwise vote for a Buddy Roemer (for a link to his platform message, see here: http://www.buddyroemer.com/splash), a Stein/Honkala ticket of the Green Party, or possibly Gary Johnson or Jon Huntsman.  People like Honkala, for example, imperfect as they are, are the true (and largely unsung) heroes of our age. 

Until there is a groundswell of demand from the average American for real third parties, real and realistic choices, or even changing our voting and representation to be something other than single-member, winner takes all, we are left with either rear-guard actions or attempting to fill one of the parties with people who believe like you.  That is, those of us disgusted with the two plutocrat controlled parties can either: 1) attempt to take over every precinct committee in all the states with people who are focused on “the big 3 or 4” things, or 2) voting against whichever of the 2 candidates presented to us in various elections (all the way up to the President) will, in our opinion, do the least damage or the slowest damage.

People mostly only see number 2 as an option.  It is this sickening/disgusting second option that keeps too many away from voting, which only plays further into the plutocrats’ hands. 

We need to keep talking about alternatives, planting seeds of ideas, ideas about change.  Ideas, if they progress, go through the ignoring stage, then the ridicule stage, then the fighting stage, then the acceptance stage, then the enthusiasm stage.  At the latter two stages they become a movement, and movements are what bring change.

Our short-term culture will need uncharacteristically long focus to pull that one off, but what non-catastrophic alternative is there?

The Housewife's 50 Shades of Nonsense

Professor J,

Here's a little piece of political porn I made for you. We need a laugh, don't we? I can't decide, most days when I see the news, if I'm more sick or scared...always a little sad it seems. 

It's a fantasy, but why don't we see a Libertarian/Progressive alliance when they agree on the big 3 or 4 things (debt, wars, and investigating the Fed for example)? Whenever I see them in interviews together I think they would be great on the same ticket. Wouldn't this be the perfect time? It might be the LAST BEST time. Realistically, however with the conventions just around the corner, I know my dream team is unattainable. Still, a girl can dream can't she?

I'm surprised constantly how much people still react to the lies and innuendo from both sides. How much merit is attributed to a soundbite or a simple word or two, misspoken is absurd. My fantasy ticket would pull in people from the right and left. Let the "we'll say anything to get elected" politicians have their custom made suits, silk ties, and talking points. I'm ready for a couple of old, style-less, cranky men who can't be bought, aren't interested in getting invited to all the right cocktail parties, will give it to us straight, and refuse to sit down and be quiet while the country goes to hell.

 Maybe my two cranky candidates could get folks to participate in ways that image/power driven professional politicians aren't capable of because they reek with phoniness. Of course we'd have to revise the debate process as well, wouldn't we? Remember what happened to poor Ralph Nader? (Memory refreshing video here) And in the Republican primaries, though they let Paul participate, there was nary a question for him and scant seconds to answer.
 
I know they disagree on much. Why do they have to agree on everything? What's wrong with running a campaign that says "Listen, we disagree on lots of things, but if we don't fix these major things those other things won't matter. We're sorry if your child is in a terrible school but we can't fix education and many other problems right now. We're going to be busy trying to save something of the country for your children and grandchildren. So we'll need your help." I think honesty would work wonders. Honesty in politics. There's an idea.

Then put out a call to action for people to volunteer in schools and neighborhoods, working together to take up the slack. Put social networking to work in communities to keep people informed of what needs to be done. People in small towns, big cities, and neighborhoods did amazing things during WWII when they felt the sacrifice was needed and the burden was being shared by all.

Couldn't we put a moratorium on any new legislation (maybe undo some) that doesn't specifically deal with the big 3 or 4 major problems, and let the states handle everything else? Couldn't we freeze spending at current levels for a period of time while we deal with the things that might actually pull us under?

I'm fantasizing, of course. But we see people turn out in droves to help fill sandbags when flooding is imminent and volunteer at soup kitchens during the holidays. The rest of the time they don't know HOW to help. What if they were told? I think lots of good people want to be part of a solution if they think their efforts will really make a difference. I think something that frustrates everyone is that so little is expected of us. What if we told the public and civic organizations, and the churches that the government had its hands full ferreting out waste and corruption, and needed everyone to pitch in? What if someone said "Look at what needs to be done in your neighborhood and find a way to do it." People are desperate for a vision of possibility.

Can't we revive Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" concept? Or are we still not in enough pain to adapt for survival?

Quibbles and Bits

Madame M:

Actually, perhaps that’s a bit of a mistitle, as you have assessed the situation quite well, and although I might wonder at the completeness of some facets, I cannot disagree nor do I want to.  No Labels does look like a great place to start, and start we certainly need to do, especially in this, as you say, polarized environment.

I would add, however, that No Labels will achieve more if it also includes a constitutional amendment to repeal Citizens United (and a related decision whose name escapes me at the moment) as well.   Trying to do anything else while not doing that is like trying to swim upstream just three feet away from the water going over the waterfall.  The money streams just tilt things too much otherwise, especially when factoring all the other things the plutocrats have at their disposal, a corporate media being one of them.

World War Z is a wonderfully written piece of fiction that at the same time holds considerable social commentary and insight.  Madame will be interested to find that the author (who is Mel Brooks’ son), says we all need to get some real skills to use.  In the aftermath of deep trauma as laid out in the story, what was valuable, and needed, changed radically.  The chief of national resources was told to focus efforts on relevant things, for we were in the fight of our existence, one that made the previous existence seem so illusory.  His top-priority agency was “tasked with infusing these sedentary, overeducated, desk-bound, cubicle mice with the knowledge necessary to make it on their own.” (WWZ, p. 139, which discusses something called the Community Self-Sustainment Program and National Re-education Act).  What kind of things and skills were stressed?  Small gardens for every family, repairing any appliances, and much else.  Breaking our comfortable, disposable, consumer lifestyle. Going to local economic systems, where people see the fruits of their labor.  

Just like you’ve been saying for some time!

Doing those things might also go a fair ways toward addressing one of the great reasons behind the painful dissatisfaction with life, address the sad fact that few die to this mortal life with a contented smile on their face.  It is not just that people die not fulfilling any of the main things they wanted to do or become—itself tragedy enough—but they know they will die without passing on anywhere near the bulk of the knowledge, experience, and wisdom they have accumulated.  This is the generational angst, the true depression.   We do not value the knowledge, wisdom, and experience of our elders remotely enough.

And even the wanderers want to find a home.  We like to beat our chests and say how “individual” and “independent” we are, and there is a little to be said for that.  But the further we have disconnected, the worse things have become.  We long for connection, to be part of a community, to (turning Vance Packard on his head) be A Nation of Neighbors.  Ones that talk with each other.  Care about each other.  Learn from each other. Even socialize with each other.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King: We have a dream.

I thought about this while hearing yet another wealthy person saying how “self-reliant” they were, how they had achieved it all “on their own.”  Leaving aside how much the societal infrastructure, laws,  etc. provide necessary benefit and assistance, I will merely point out that self-reliance is easy when you’re in a gated community.  And if the person was true to his words about “self-reliance,” he wouldn’t be giving his kids help, paying for any of their education, arranging contacts and connections, etc.  Unless he interpreted “self-reliance” to mean family self-reliance.  But that sort of interpretation could just as easily justify the Borgias and a thousand other extended families who have visited misery upon humanity in the pursuit of power, wealth, and privilege for themselves.

Just advance warning for our readers.  Next week’s post from me will occur on Monday, not Sunday.

Let's Define Well Informed

Oh, dearest Professor J,

You make me laugh! A year wasn't enough? As to your guesses: 1) yes, 2) no, 3) maybe. I'm perfectly happy to let you have the last word on the book. :) We both know many of these topics will resurface from time to time.

We have an information problem in this country. Crazy, right? I mean all we get is information streaming non stop to our computers, televisions, phones, car radios. We should be very well informed. But a funny thing happened on the way to the public forum. Viewers and listeners began to strain out the the opposing opinion. It is now possible to get your news slanted exactly to your taste, which means being really informed is actually harder than ever. It is a lot of work to sort out truth in the midst of all the noise. On top of all that I still find myself fact checking things I hear, thanks to our new troubling brand of journalism where politicians want quote approval power before stories are published or aired.

In the aftermath of the Chick fil a dust up I heard a lot of Christians wonder aloud why Cathy's free speech had been labeled hate and why people who don't embrace the idea of gay marriage had been labeled as "haters." Well it does seem like you should be able to say you disagree with the idea of redefining marriage without necessarily having it come from a place of hate  (No one ever seems to ask why the state is in the business of sanctioning relationships, but that's another blog post).  The gay community can't really be against free speech, so what was going on here? My theory is that it has something to do with the video of a pastor suggesting concentration camps for gays and lesbians back in May. It reeks of "final solution" thinking. The video went viral among the gay community on Facebook and Twitter.  It was with this image of Christianity fresh in their minds they heard Cathy's comments. In that context the emotional reaction is more understandable. The problem is that people who have no gay friends in their social networking tribe, or who aren't real news junkies were likely to have missed the story.

We used to all watch the same news and the same TV programs for the most part. Now the idea that we are all getting the same news presented in the same unbiased way is a fantasy. You can pick the slant you want and if you don't like the facts being presented you can just change the channel. We are increasingly polarized. This fortifying our entrenched thinking and sandbagging our thoughts against any opposing view, this growing inability to listen is dangerous. It happens across racial, party, and religious lines. You can now lose an election because you sponsored a piece of bipartisan legislation or made a public service announcement with a member of the other party.

Just how bad is it? You have probably seen this chart:

While I was fretting about this yesterday and wondering if the rational center (nonexistent on this graph ) is going to become a "no man's land" I happened upon a little glimmer of hope. No Labels: Stop Fighting. Start Fixing.

Surely there have to be some things we could all agree on. We all pretty much agree congress is doing a lousy job (the most recent approval rating poll puts it at 17%), so maybe we could all start here. We have all these wondrous miracles of communication at our fingertips. We can connect and share in the blink of an eye. Can't we figure out how to get together at our shiny new techno-water cooler and do a little problem solving?

I think the No Labels campaign looks like a great place to start. But you, I suspect, might like to quibble? :)

The Rite To Vote

Madame M:

I’m guessing that Madame either 1) agrees with me, 2) finds it daunting, or 3) has been worn out by me, and so not responding to anything of my 3 closing posts on Hedges’ book. 

Very well.  “Last” word mine on that! :)  Or maybe Madame just is clever enough to be able to select the next topic! LOL

We have, as you relate in your post, undermined community in voting.  We don’t make it overall a connected, vibrant, exciting experience.  Our hyper-individualist, overworked, overtasked, society, coupled with the overburdened nuclear family, don’t make it all that easy to vote either.  We, as workplaces and society, and often as individuals, don’t carve out a sacred place to vote. 

Some of that deficiency is byproduct, some is thoughtlessness, some is desired (by those who benefit from it).

I would agree with you that the lack of voter ID should seem too lax, and combined with the fact that voter rolls are often deeply inaccurate, things should be ripe for the kind of fraud that occurred regularly in the 1800s and well into the 1900s.  But this intuitive fear would not match reality.  The Bush administration spent $70 million dollars looking for voter fraud and found next to none (and fired several prosecutors who refused to go along with wasting scarce resources when they knew there wasn’t a problem).  What was discovered instead by this and other investigations is that error, loss, and fraud is probably taking place at a dwarfingly higher rate with the electronic counting machines than any voter fraud (only a few instances of—in the entire country—that were found that MIGHT have been deliberate, and this out of just under the several dozen that occurred in TOTAL).   More chilling in its implications for our democracy is that the machines are supplied and controlled by, yes, certain private corporations.  Another public function, one for the public good, yet turned over to private interests. 

Juvenal once asked “who guards the guardians?”  Our question might be, “who counts the counters?”   In the days before all these counting machines, there were housewives and retired folks who did it out of a sense of service and community, and the votes were triply counted by members of each party as well (at least in the districts not completely dominated by party or corruption).   The reader will not be comforted to find that no such process usually exists where electronic machines are concerned.

Efforts to subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) disenfranchise voters are more common.  Even today, incredibly (I have been a Federal observer in elections), attempts—even blatant ones!—occur to prevent voting, discard people’s votes, make it difficult to vote, etc.  And not just for ethnic and racial reasons, but for party or extended personal reasons.  I have watched voters being told they weren’t registered, or weren’t registered properly, and being turned away, or told to go somewhere else far away and inconvenient, etc.  Even when they presented ID and registration, it didn’t help their situation.  Others were allowed to vote a “provisional” ballot, which was supposedly going to be tallied sometime (many weeks) in the future after the right to vote was supposedly authenticated.  According to a League of Women’s Voters person I talked to, it was a very delayed and inscrutable process, with the “results” often either never reported, or reported long after the election had been “decided.”

And this doesn’t even get into how difficult many states make it to register to vote, and especially how difficult they make it for some groups of people to register.  There is sinister intent in many of those cases.  And once again, we look idiotic, corrupt, and hypocritical even to many of our friends across the oceans.  Friends who offered to supply  unbiased monitors  to help us ensure our elections are fair across the board.   I don’t have to tell you how the howl meter went off the scale after hearing that offer.  And despite our sending monitors—and even more frequently strongly offering to do so—all over the world to monitor elections, we couldn’t hold ourselves to the same standard.  We don’t have a problem telling other people how they should do things—even think it’s proper and logical that they should follow what we say—but, as happens so often, our own actions belie our words.

Yes, all those things you list probably play a part in our low voter turnout.  It may also be that, at some instinctive level, they feel it doesn’t matter.  Like the old Soviet elections where each of the “candidates” had been selected by the Party, maybe they feel that, in a way, it’s not much different here.  Only this time, another P word does the selecting—Plutocracy.

Primarily Empty

Professor J,

Today is primary/local election day in my area. I'd like to say that I carefully timed my trip to my polling place to avoid the crowd. I knew better. I had no trouble finding a place to park and the small number of voters, equal to the number of poll workers (four) made the space inside the community center feel cavernous. A few things have changed since my first election. The process is streamlined. Of course it also eliminates the community chit chat that used to take place while a wrinkly finger scanned down the page, located your name, confirmed your address and told you how many of your neighbors she'd already seen today. No need for that; in our new age of connectivity, I'd already seen their "I voted" status updates.

On the wall was a list of all the people in our precinct who had early voted. County wide it totaled over 300,000. That's 60% more than in 2008. People love it. Early voting has several benefits in that it goes on for several days, and you can vote an any polling station and not just in your specific precinct. I did it two years ago. I had to stand in a fairly long line that day, in stark contrast to today's experience. I found I didn't really like it.

Something is missing, the feeling of community that standing in line with your neighbors brings on Election Day. Because it allows for a county full of folks to run into polling places all over town you are unlikely to run into anyone you know. There is something reassuring and rewarding about waiting around with the people you see at the grocery or in line at the post office to do your civic duty. I miss standing next to the WWII veterans (so rare now compared to that chilly November when I voted in my first election under their watchful eye) who made it possible for all of us.  I miss the  man or woman in uniform, a silent reminder that all our liberties have been paid for by others.  I miss chatting with the 18 yr. old who is excited to be voting for the first time. I miss the small talk and catching up that takes place, finding out who just had a baby, or who bought the house down the street.  It used to be nice to wait with my fellow voters, engaging in idle conversation and knowing they were going to cancel out my vote, or I theirs, and joking about it. I think it helped. I think it helped to see that the people with different ideas on what's wrong and how to fix it were people that I liked.  They were so very different than the people I see now screaming at each other on cable news.

 The other big change is that Tennessee is among those states now requiring a photo ID in order to vote. (Oh good, another chance to drag out that photo.) In our state this requirement became law over a year ago so people have had lots of time to become informed of the change and there are plenty of exceptions to the rule. Just today, closing arguments were wrapped up in a week long hearing over Pennsylvania's controversial voter ID law. For many low income voters it presents an extra hoop to jump through and it may keep many elderly voters from going to the extra trouble. It kept my mom and mother-in-law from voting today.  I was surprised however to find out how many states have no voter ID requirements. If the valid photo ID seems too strict, the lack of requirement seems too lax to me.

Strict Photo	Photo	Non-Photo	No Voter ID Law

Part of the conversation I overheard while I was bemoaning my choices on the the touch screen, was about how sad the low voter turnout was and the lack of young people showing up at the polls. I wondered about how disillusioned and jaded lots of 18-30 yr. olds would be growing up in our recent political climate. Voter turn out fell off 60% from '08 to '10.  But then presidential elections are sexy in a way that electing members of the school board or voting on a sales tax referendum isn't. I also wonder, as I'm sure you do, how much a lack of adequate history, civics, and economics education has to do with our inability to inspire people to participate.

Whenever I stroll into my polling place I remember a photo I saw in the paper many years ago. It was of a man in some emerging third world democracy, crawling on his stomach and dodging gunfire. He was trying to get to the place where he could cast his vote. I thought of him today when as I was turning in my electronic voter card the woman stuck an "I voted today" sticker on my dress.

"We need the publicity." she said.