Here and there – The United States of America

I had been living in the US for a little over a year when the news broke of a massacre.  It was Friday 12 December 2012.  The initial stories were unclear, just there had been a shooting incident in Newton, Connecticut.  As more facts emerged that day, we learnt that a disturbed 20-year-old young man had shot and killed his mother, and had then gone on to Sandy Hook Elementary School, armed with a Bushmaster rifle and ten magazines, each containing 30 rounds.  He had shot his way through a glass panel next to the locked front entrance doors of the school.  Hearing gunfire the school’s principal and school psychologist left a meeting to find out what was happening.  Both were killed.  A teacher in the meeting heard one of them shout  “Shooter! Stay put!” which alerted their colleagues to the danger.  The police were called.  A school janitor ran through hallways, asking teachers to lock themselves with their students in the classrooms.  This did not prevent 18 children being killed at the school (two others died from their wounds in hospital), and 6 staff.  The gunman committed suicide.

I think it is fair to say people across the country were stunned.  Even in America, events on this scale involving young children were rare.  Five years earlier there had been a massacre at Virginia Tech, when a 23-year-old student, armed with two pistols, had  killed thirty-two students and faculty members,  wounded another seventeen students and faculty before committing suicide.  We were not to know that five years hence a 19-year-old former student would shoot students and staff members with a semi-automatic rifle at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.  However, in the history of US gun violence Sandy Hook stands out because of the young age of the children – all but 4 were only six years old.

Sadly, stories about gun massacres keep happening.  Australia had experienced a terrible massacre at Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996, when 35 people were killed and 23 injured.  Most victims were adults, except for two young children in the toll.  As I have commented elsewhere, the response to that event was a dramatic change.  Under federal government co-ordination, all the country’s States and Territories moved to restrict the legal ownership and use of self-loading rifles, self-loading shotguns, and tightened controls on use by recreational shooters. The government also initiated a mandatory ‘buy-back’ scheme with the owners paid according to a table of valuations.  Some 643,000 firearms were handed in at a cost of $350 million, funded by a temporary increase in the compulsory health insurance levy.

However, I want to concentrate on some of the events that followed Sandy Hook, events which offer worrying evidence that a huge social experiment, its origins back in the 18th Century, is coming to an end.  I will return to that point later, but first, drawing on a recent article by Amanda Crawford in the Boston Globe, here is a selective summary on what happened after that dreadful day in Connecticut (‘The epic story of a Sandy Hook family fighting Alex Jones and the rise of conspiracy theories’, Boston Globe, August 17, 2022).

I suppose it was not surprising the first stories about what happened at Sandy Hook were confused and often incorrect.  It does take time to sort out facts.  In fact, after the shooting at the Elementary School, a great deal of what was reported early on was wrong.  For hours, the shooter, was widely misidentified; his mother was incorrectly described; and we heard the  shooter had been found dead with two handguns, while a rifle had been found in his car.  The police tried to keep control of what was reported, but it was already too late to stop doubts.  As Amanda Crawford explained: “Long before the shooter fired his first bullets, the seeds of conspiracy theories were lurking in the muck, sown by Second Amendment zealotry and nurtured by institutional distrust … Speculation about shadowy forces at work began immediately on a constellation of fringe Internet forums, message boards, and blogs — stoked by well-known conspiracy theorists.  ‘If we start seeing telltale signs of it being staged, we’ll let you know,’ pledged Alex Jones”. His Infowars audience debated issues on his company’s online forums.  Craziness on the margins was expected.  What was horrifying was how perversely twisted it became.  On the afternoon of the shooting, even as families waited at the firehouse and the dead still lay on the school floor, Newtown’s Police Chief started getting disturbing emails explaining the government was behind the shooting, and that the whole thing was being made up to take away Second Amendment rights.

Just one day after the shooting, Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, released the names and ages of the victims.  He confirmed how they were killed: each had been shot multiple times with a high-powered rifle.  Even that report was to stoke rumours.  When asked how the victims were identified, Carver explained they “did not bring the bodies and the families into contact,” but rather used photographs of victims’ facial features to identify them. “You control the situation, depending on your photographer,” he said, “and I have very good photographers.”  Listening, some thought the families never got to say goodbye (they did, of course).  Some thought Carver seemed bizarre, and a growing number of online sceptics didn’t see a man exhausted from examining dead children, and instead saw something sinister: “He is either under coercion or an imposter,” one commentator suggested.

The events in Newtown dominated the news.  I remember watching well-wishers piling hundreds of teddy bears, other toys, gifts and flowers at roadside memorials, while thousands sent in cash donations.  Within a couple of days, false information started appearing online. Imposters posing as victims’ families sought money.  We saw President Obama arrive in Newtown.  It was the fourth such visit he had made to a community ravaged by a mass shooting. We needed him to act, especially on assault weapons. The National Rifle Association had claimed Obama intended to destroy the Second Amendment (the so-called ‘right to bear arms’).  In fact, he hadn’t pushed hard for any new firearm restrictions. In 2010, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence rated him an F[ail] on every issue it scored.

However, it was clear the mass murder of young children had affected Obama.  In a brief television address to the nation that Friday, he wiped away tears.  By the time he spoke at a vigil, he was angry and emotional in a way the public had rarely seen.  “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?  Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children, year after year after year, is somehow the price of our freedom?”  He pledged to use “whatever power this office holds” to prevent future tragedies.  Little did we realise how little power he had.

The following Monday one mother prepared for the first of the funeral services, for her son Noah. As Amanda Crawford wrote, “White balloons lined the street outside the funeral home.  A sign in a tree read, ‘Our Hearts Are With You Noah.’  Police with bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled outside, worried about threats on social media … His mother spoke,  “The sky is crying, and the flags are at half-mast,” she began.  “It is a sad, sad day.  But it is also your day, Noah, my little man.”  National media outlets wrote about the decision to have an open casket, some calling it Newtown’s Emmett Till moment.  People at the service said they were impressed by her poise: She didn’t break down until the very end.”  But some read about events online, about the mother’s background, her eulogy, her decision to get a tattoo, or saw her wearing lipstick, and came to a much different conclusion:  ‘Would a grieving mother really act like that?’  And so it was to continue.

Like many others, Amanda Crawford wonders if ‘truth’ mattered anymore.  “Does the grief of so many mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, spouses, partners, loved ones, and friends of those lost in a bloody decade of mass shootings, from a theatre in Aurora to a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, from an elementary school in Newtown to one in Uvalde, Texas – and so many other horrors in between – matter?”  In the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook, many Americans organised and marched, found one another on social media, and formed new organizations that initiate a decade of activism trying to prevent gun violence.  ‘If not now, when?  If not this, what?’  They hoped to ensure effective debate on gun policy.  They weren’t to know their battle was against denial, denying the massacres were related to gun access, even denial of the deaths and the grief.

In mid-January 2013, Vice President Joe Biden announced proposals including universal background checks for firearm purchases and a renewed ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.  Even as he did, “doubts about Sandy Hook became the test case that showed how a new generation of outlandish conspiracy theories, born and spread on social media, would poison political discourse, polarize Americans, and paralyse public policy.”    Conspiracy advocates pointed to conflicting news reports and asked: ‘Wouldn’t frantic kids be a difficult target to hit?’ ‘Has the news convinced you there was only one shooter that morning?’ It scrutinized footage of victims’ families: ‘Is the behavior you’re witnessing right now, the facial expressions and body language, consistent with that of two parents who just lost their daughter?’  Two months after the shooting, Alex Jones said, ‘In the last month and a half, I have not come out and said this was clearly a staged event.  Unfortunately, evidence is beginning to come out that points more and more in that direction.’

In April 2013,  Governor Malloy signed a bill giving Connecticut some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, but at the same time the federal initiative was almost dead in the water.  A bipartisan compromise limited the federal proposal to expanding requirements for background checks to firearm purchases at gun shows and online, measures most gun owners supported.  It failed.  A Fairleigh Dickinson University survey on gun control found that 1 in 4 Americans believed facts about Sandy Hook were being hidden from the public to advance a political agenda.  Some observers dismissed the poll because they thought another finding was too unbelievable:  nearly one-third of those surveyed, including almost half of the Republicans, said they believed ‘an armed insurrection may soon be necessary in the US’.

When the State Police revealed the shooter had fired 154 bullets in less than five minutes and the rampage was over in 11 minutes, the Sandy Hook ‘truthers’ demanded more proof.  Millions of people were convinced they were being lied to – that their country was being stolen, that mass murders were being staged, that children were being kidnapped or raped or left to die.  From Sandy Hook onwards, social media took over.  Political leaders together with other Americans, including crime victims, first responders, restaurant workers, hospital staff, election officials, found themselves thrust into absurd plots and accused of terrible crimes, so awful that almost any action seemed justified.  I was living in a splintering country, threatening democracy, each more outlandish idea supplanting the one before.

In 2017, a mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas left 58 dead, setting off another round of fake news and conspiracy theories.  More horrific events followed.  On Valentine’s Day 2018, there was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida.  14 teenagers and three staff died.  You would have thought this would give renewed pressure to bring in gun controls.  The teenage survivors from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were extraordinary.  They demanded  politicians stop offering condolences and instead act.  They demanded stricter gun control measures and some of the student survivors organized Never Again MSD.  Days after the massacre, dozens of Stoneman Douglas High School students went to the state Capitol only to see the Florida House of Representatives reject a bill that would have banned those guns characterised as assault weapons.  As Wikipedia notes, they did pass a bill that day, to declare that pornography is a public health risk.  However, in March 2018, the Florida Legislature passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. It raised the minimum age for buying rifles to 21, established waiting periods and checks, and provided a program for the arming of some school employees.  On the day it was signed into law, the NRA sued, challenging the ban on gun sales to people ages 18 to 21:  the NRA’s suit wasn’t dismissed until June 2021.  Rather than seeking reduced gun access, Trump endorsed arming schools:  he called a ‘gun free’ school a ‘magnet’ for criminals, adding, “Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive”.  Conspiracy theories and disinformation flourished.  Students from the high school were criticised.  In March 2019, Marjorie Taylor Greene, later to be elected a US Representative for Georgia, was filmed heckling and harassing a survivor walking toward the Capitol.

In May 2022, a gunman with an assault rifle murdered 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Another massacre drawing attention to US gun laws. A month later Congress passed a bill to extend background checks for young gun buyers but did nothing to address the availability of assault weapons or high-capacity magazines.  Two days before President Biden signed the bill, the US Supreme Court struck down a century-old New York law that restricted concealed carry of firearms, casting gun restrictions across the country into doubt.

However, Alex Jones, under scrutiny for his role in the January 6  attack on the US Capitol, was found liable by default in 2021 for defaming and inflicting emotional distress on the Sandy Hook families. In the first of three trials, two parents were awarded ~$50m in punitive damages.  Ten years after the Sandy Hook massacre, you might be thinking at last, things are turning around.  They aren’t.  The gap between right and left, between facts and conspiracy theories, between faith in government and ‘go it aloners’ is growing.  The US is ripping itself apart.  The Supreme Court, once a bastion of legislative caution, is spearheading radical change.  Abortion rights have gone; gun rights will stay.  Decision making is being left  to right-wing state officials to deny or overturn elections.  Gay rights will be next to be demolished, then gender equality.  Earlier I said it takes time to sort out facts, but today, we don’t want facts:  we want to hear stories, and in a world of ‘free speech’ stories flourish, and any link back to reality is tenuous at best.  The media offer a ‘take what you want’ party

Earlier, I claimed a 200-year experiment seems to be coming to an end.  That experiment was democracy, the right for everyone to engage in the political process, to vote, and to seek a place in the legislature.  Democracy has been on the ropes for a while.  Most countries that do have elections run the process in such a way that rich men (sic) arrange things to ensure they are re-elected and do what is in their interests.  Already a sham, we see free general elections increasingly falling out favour.  There are exceptions.  You might think Australia and New Zealand are bucking the trend but keep alert.  Look at the way Finland, and then the rest of the world, attacked the young female Finnish Prime Minister for partying!  Misogyny is on the rise everywhere, violent men continue to rule, and democracy is on the ropes.  A recent New York Times opinion piece asked if we could come up with something better than democracy (12 September 2022).  The conclusion was bleak, concluding “ Churchill said, ‘Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.’ … He was right: better than all the others that have been tried, from time to time, and here we are, in one of those times again.”  Yes, we are, and it doesn’t look good.

Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent

We are in the middle of an American tragedy.  On the edge of our seats, we’re tense, unwilling spectators to a slowly unfolding and compelling drama, a further, possibly final episode in the longer story of the decline and fall of the USA, with its history of unresolved battles between traditionalists (conservatives, literalists, Republicans), and progressives (activists, innovators, Democrats); its dual inheritances of slavery and racism and the divisive confederacy; all overlain by the continuing and exploitative actions of self-serving patriarchal authoritarians out to retain power and control over the rest of the country.  A Shakespearean tragedy, half-way through.

As we go out for the interval, it seems we’re witnessing an unstoppable descent into disaster.  Drinks in hand, it’s time to ask how we got here and what’s next, based what we’ve seen so far.

Prologue:  This tragedy began in 2007.  Like any drama, a surprise sets the scene.  A hero is announced, a young, intelligent, empathetic African-American, Barack Obama, seeking the US Presidency.  Act 1 is to follow two years later, as Obama wins the election, brushing aside John McCain, [i] or maybe at his 2009 inauguration as the first African-American President.

Act 1: As might be expected, Shakespeare has the best lines to introduce a tragedy.  Richard III opens with Richard musing over his brother Edward taking the English crown:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. …

[and he goes on later to say] …  since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain

That could have been the Republican leadership confronting the upstart and charismatic couple in the White House.  Obama was their worst imagined fear, feted as if he was the sun casting light to obliterate the dark Bush years.  From the day of his election, they were determined to be villains, and rid the country of this Democrat administration.  Plans already in place years earlier were refined to retake the Presidency, the Senate, the House, and control the Supreme Court.

At the beginning of this first Act, the omens for the new President could not have seemed more favourable.  The Democrats had easily won both houses of Congress, a stunning repudiation of the previous Republican administration. [ii]  For two years, Obama faced few obstacles in introducing change and new policies.  In a whirlwind of action, hebegan the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.  He signed the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program’s coverage for four million uninsured children.  He appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, and Elena Kagan in 2010.  He took action on environmental issues, introducing new safety standards for offshore oil drilling, following a major offshore oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.  Finally, in March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed, offering low cost health insurance for low income earners

But disaster had been waiting in the wings.  Just months before Obama was elected, excessive risk-taking by banks^, and the bursting of a housing ‘bubble’ led real-estate based securities to plummet, damaging international financial institutions and creating  a global banking crisis.  All too quickly, banking collapses and the ensuing Global Financial Crisis became demanding.  By February 2009, Obama had signed a $787bn economic stimulus package, provided conditional loans to major car manufacturers, and enhanced broader federal loan provisions and spending.  Inevitably and despite this, unemployment rose, up to 10% before the end of the year.

The path towards tragedy was now established as Obama’s successes bred anger and accelerated plotting.  The Republicans worked hard to ensure they’d regain control, and turn back his various initiatives.  When the mid-term elections were held in 2010, they were ready, swept seats in Congress, took back the House and almost restored control of the Senate. [iii]  The second half of Act I was to follow a different path.  Now Obama had to negotiate, forced to seek compromises with the Congressional Republican leadership over funding, tax rates and his other plans.  Once in control of the agenda, now the Democrats were constrained.  By the end of his first term Obama’s vision was restricted, and the future outlook looked challenging.

Act II:  The second part of this tragedy began in November 2012, with the next Presidential election. As the incumbent, Obama was the Democratic nominee, facing Mitt Romney, who had survived a tough path to nomination.  The campaigns focused heavily on domestic issues, and debates centered around responses to Global Financial Crisis (and the ensuing recession), federal budget concerns, foreign policy, and the Affordable Care Act.  The Republicans were well-prepared, they’d learnt from the Democrats 2008 electoral strategies.  They had greatly increased funding, too, provided by independent political action committees, especially the Super PACs.

Establishing Super PACs in 2010 had been a major win for the Republicans, the outcome of the Citizens United case against the Federal Elections Commission in the Supreme Court.  This overturned parts of the 2002 Campaign Reform Act, and determined it was unconstitutional to prohibit corporations and unions spending from their general treasuries to finance independent promotions related to campaign topics, (but left in place the prohibition on direct corporate or union contributions to federal campaigns) . Unlike traditional PACs, Super PACs could raise funds from corporations, unions, individuals and other groups without legal limits on donation size.  With the advent of Super PACs, the big Republican donors were unconstrained and ready.

Despite this, Act II opened with a second win for Obama,[iv].  He was the first incumbent since Franklin D Roosevelt to win reelection with fewer electoral votes and a smaller popular vote margin than previously.  However, he was the first two-term president since Reagan to win both his presidential bids with a majority of the nationwide popular vote.  Once again, the Democrats won a majority in Senate (55 to 45).  Perhaps we were mistaken:  this wasn’t a tragedy.  We were wrong.  Focus and gerrymandering saw the Republicans hold on to the House, 234 to 201.

The result was predictable.  Despite his victory, Obama faced Republicans resistant to any new major proposals on the scale of his earlier legislation.  He won some battles, including federal recognition of same sex marriages, and signing the US to the 2015 Paris Agreement, part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  He introduced measures to reduce pollution, and increase wilderness and watershed protection.  He established rules to ensure net neutrality, and signed an order to protect LGBTQ Americans from employment discrimination.  It was like throwing fuel on the fire.  Each new area of legislation was a key target for the Republicans, whose plans focussed on reclaiming government and overturning every one of Obama’s actions.

In the 2014 midterms they struck back, winning the Senate (54 to 46), and increasing their House numbers (247, dominating the Democrats 188), a crushing blow.  Now six years into this drama, events were following a familiar path: let the audience believe the forces for good will win, then replace successes by failures.  As Obama’s time came up, the scene was set for Act III.

Act III: In preparing for the next election, the Republicans faced a challenge.  In Congress they had the ideal Senate leader.  Mitch McConnell was unprincipled, power hungry, and determined.  At the very least, they needed a compliant presidential candidate while McConnell and his team did the essential work.  Ideally, they wanted a charismatic and equally ideologically committed nominee.  No-one stood out among several far from ideal alternatives.  Possibly to their own astonishment, the primaries delivered an amoral, nasty and self-centred character, but one who was a perfect foil to upset the Democrat nominees.  Advocating a populist campaign to ‘Make America Great Again’, the Republicans found themselves with Donald Trump their candidate.

While Trump lacked political sophistication, as his party’s front-runner he launched attacks on political correctness, immigration, foreign business competition and even Washington itself, all larded with inflammatory remarks.  The resulting general election campaign was divisive and negative, as Trump ignited controversies over race, immigrants, his own sexual misconduct and incited violence.  His theme to Make America Great Again caught on.  Despite his rally chants to ‘lock her up’, and her lack of an equally compelling slogan, Hilary Clinton led in the pre-election polls, once again tricking us into thinking this wasn’t going to be a tragedy.  It was.  In one of the greatest upsets in modern US history, and with less of the popular vote, Trump won, receiving 304 electoral votes against Clinton’s 227, and, as we later learnt, doing so with some support channeled through Russian interference.  Politicians on both side of the house were stunned.

Act III was extraordinary.  Like a one-man demolition machine, aided by a determined Congress, Trump set about to obliterate everything Obama had done.  It became his personal manifesto.  He rolled back environmental protections.  He repealed part of the legislation designed to monitor banks and prevent another financial crisis.  He withdrew from trade deals and partnerships, and started a trade war with China.  He withdrew the US from the agreement with Iran to prevent their developing nuclear weapons.  He commenced building a wall between the US and Mexico.  He withdrew from the WHO, and from the Paris Agreement on climate change.  He replaced Secretaries and heads of agencies when they failed to carry out his often thoughtless instructions.  He added three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, and in doing so changed the likely balance of the court for many years.  And, non-stop, he tweeted and tweeted, and lied and lied.

Not everything the Republicans had sought was achieved.  Their single biggest failure was with the Affordable Care Act.  Despite successful attacks at its the edges, it remained in place, though precariously so.  The Republican program had also been set back by interruptions.  In the 2018 mid-terms Democrats retook the House and launched an impeachment enquiry.  Trump was impeached, but acquitted in the ensuing Senate trial.  Even more consequential was the Covid-19 pandemic.  Trump sought to dispel worries (‘it will just disappear’), but as infections grew, the economy moved into recession.  Finally, harsh police actions led to more deaths of African Americans, and the Black Lives Matter movement too off.  The Republicans were stalled.

The interval bell is ringing.  Our brief review is over, and it’s time for the next act.

Act IV: The Republican Party must have planned for the possibility Trump wouldn’t be re-elected: their long term strategies reach out to 2024 and beyond.  Despite concerns 2020 might be a disaster, their on-the-ground network ensured the only real change was to the presidency. [v]  Trump appeared ousted, but the Republicans kept control of the Senate and reduced the Democrat majority in the House.  As this American tragedy’s Act IV commences, it looks worrying.  In the opening scene, the election is not yet over.  Trump refuses to go, and, enabled by his craven supporters, every attempt will be made to steal the election.  Failure to regain the Senate (thanks, inappropriately unzipped Cal) it’s seems unlikely the next four years will see more than small advances.  Biden may be able to reestablish commitments to the WHO, NATO, the WTO, and act on climate change, but, as in Obama’s second term, it will demand continual negotiation.  The Republicans can’t lose.  Get Trump back in, a win.  Or stymie Biden while Trump runs the ‘real Presidency’ at Trump Tower, inflaming supporters, a win.  Meanwhile the Democrats still can’t find a uniting slogan, nor are they reaching out to voters they must win.

Act V:  Four years hence, we’ll be sitting in our seats, anxious, fearful, and most likely torn between unrealistic hope and a sense of doom.  Perhaps a second winter of discontent will be replaced with a spring of sunshine and fresh green shoots of change.  Perhaps, but if the forces of conservatism remain strong, this dreadful tragedy will continue, leaving Americans stuck in an oppressive, polluted world.  We will have to sit through another four years of tension and drama before we reach the final moments of this story.  When Act V opens, in the dying days of 2024, we will discover if it heralds yet further disasters, or if, improbably but hopefully, it transforms this story from a tragedy into optimism, an era of progress and recovery.

Perhaps the long term outcome won’t be tragic.  Perhaps the American people will return to decency, a sense of common purpose, a desire for democracy.  Perhaps the fateful inheritance of slavery, racism and the Civil War will be set aside. Perhaps.  Another of Shakespeare’s great lines was “Beware the Ides of March”.  Today, the omens appear equally discouraging.

[i] With 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes, compared to McCain’s 46% and 173 electoral votes.

[ii] 57 to 43 in the Senate, and 257 to 178 in the House of Representatives

[iii] Gaining more than 60 in the House of Representatives, a strong majority of 242 to the Democrats 193, while in the Senate Democrats kept a thin majority of 51, with the support of two independents, against 47 for the Republicans

[iv] With 332 electoral votes and 51.1% of the popular vote (compared to Romney’s 206 electoral votes and 47.2%)

[v] One key to Obama’s success had been a massive ‘on the ground’ network to bring in votes.  They copied the idea.

J is for Jane Jacobs

If you were to write about business, politics and morality, how would you set about it?  The usual approach would include chapters that covered the key issues and principles, followed by several exploring the complexities with helpful examples, and end with a set of conclusions.  You might offer an introduction, sketching out the major themes, and your concluding analysis would include a summary and reiteration of the major points.  Overall, somewhat boring!  However, when Jane Jacobs decided to write about the basis of morality, she reached back to an earlier approach: Systems of Survival addresses the topic through dialogue. [i]

Jane Jacobs is best known for her work in urban studies, and for pioneering a planning approach which includes respecting and responding to the needs of city dwellers as critical.  Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she proved to be a rule-breaker from early on.  After high school, she enrolled in the School of General Studies at Columbia University, taking a variety of courses (all the way from geology, zoology, law, to politics and economics).  She got good grades, but “This was almost my undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the property of Barnard College at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take, it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high-school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education.” [ii]  From such a beginning …

She was clearly destined to make a difference.  An article, ‘Downtown is for People’, appeared in a 1958 issue of Fortune, and it brought Jacobs to the attention of Chadbourne Gilpatric, then associate director of the Humanities Division at the Rockefeller Foundation [iii]  He invited Jacobs to begin work as a reviewer for grant proposals, and later in 1958, the Foundation awarded her a grant to produce a critical study of city planning and urban life in the U.S. She spent three years conducting research and writing drafts. In 1961, Random House published the result: The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a non-fiction best seller.

I first read her book back in the 1980s, and it was exciting, linking sensitive thinking with trenchant criticism.  It was Jacobs who may have been the first person to refer to the term ‘social capital’, a concept I have made use of over the years, which she used to accompany her emphasis on linking primary uses (neighbourhoods that contained businesses, leisure facilities and homes all mixed together) together to create real neighbourhoods.  By suggesting that cities were living beings, a form of ecosystem, she argued for  bottom-up planning, and criticised “slum clearing” and “high-rise housing” projects, the approach that had been a universally-supported planning practice in what she described as the pseudoscience of the male dominated planning profession.  It made her the object of continuing criticism, even to the present day, while also establishing her as one of the leading advocates for ‘cities for living’.  Despite attacks, she isremembered as an advocate for the thoughtful development of cities, and for leaving “a legacy of empowerment for citizens to trust their common sense and become advocates for their place”. [iv]  That legacy remains strong, still informing the approach of many people working in urban planning.

Jane Jacobs wasn’t just a writer.  In the 1960’s she built up a network of local protests against slum clearance development and the destruction of neighbourhoods, often undertaken to rebuild areas.  She gained notoriety arguing against proposals for the first stage of the Lower Manhattan Expressway.  A local hero, she was arrested in 1968 for energising a crowd at a public hearing on the project, and was accused of inciting a riot, criminal mischief, and obstructing public administration.   After months of trials conducted in New York City (to which Jacobs commuted from Toronto), her charge was reduced to disorderly conduct.  The project was abandoned.  She moved to Toronto in 1968, mainly to protect her draft aged sons, but partly to stop constantly leading fights with the New York City Government, living in Toronto for the rest of her life.

Although most of what she wrote on planning concerned New York, her arguments had an impact in many countries.  For example, her opposition to the demolition of local neighborhoods for projects of ‘urban renewal’ was taken up in Melbourne in the 1960s, where resident associations fought against the large-scale high-rise housing projects of the Victorian Housing Commission, arguing the plans had little regard for the impact on local communities.[v]  She, and they, were right in their objections, but the horrible high-rise projects still went ahead, leaving blots on the Melbourne landscape that are only slowly disappearing today.

While she is best known for her impact on urban planning, her concerns grew.  In emphasising the importance of community and a vibrant city life, she saw many trends as threatening and in 2004 she published Dark Age Ahead, in which see foresaw a continuing decay of five key ‘pillars’ in the USA: community and family; higher education, science and technology; taxes and government responsiveness to needs; and professional self-regulation.  It was a dark view, one in which she foresaw a “mass amnesia” where even the memory of what was lost was lost. [vi]

Fifteen years later, her worries read now with what seems an alarming prescience: [vii]

• “On Community and Family: People are increasingly choosing consumerism over family welfare, that is: consumption over fertility; debt over family budget discipline; fiscal advantage to oneself at the expense of community welfare.
• On Higher Education: Universities are more interested in credentials than providing high quality education.
• Bad Science: Elevation of economics as the main “science” to consider in making major political decisions.
• Bad Government: Governments are more interested in deep-pocket interest groups than the welfare of the population.
• Bad Culture: A culture that prevents people from understanding the deterioration of fundamental physical resources on which the entire community depends.

Overall, Jacobs argued that the very concept of “ideology” is fundamentally flawed and detrimental to both individuals and societies, no matter what side of the political spectrum the ideology reflects. By relying on ideals, she claimed people become “unable to think and evaluate problems and solutions by themselves, and simply fall back on their beliefs for “pre-fabricated answers” to any problem they encounter.”  Sounds familiar?

And so we return to Systems of Survival, which was written nearly 12 years before Dark Age Ahead, and is a signpost to her interests beyond the city.  As a dialogue, it involves six people, who have been brought together (almost tricked into doing so), to debate morality and work.  Early on, Kate, a scientist, whose easy to read book on animal memory has been criticised by her academic colleagues, produces what she describes as two radically different moral systems of work:  the commercial and the ‘moral guardian’ syndromes.  Each contains 15 moral precepts, and each precept in one of the syndromes has its opposite in the other.  Through Kate, Jacobs proposes the commercial moral syndrome underpins the views of business owners, scientists, farmers, and traders, and  the guardian moral syndrome informs government, charities, hunter-gatherers, and religious institutions.   In her dialogue, she explains there are other moral ideas and principles that are not related to work, and which apply to people under both syndromes.

In the preface, Jacobs explains, “This book explores the morals and values that underpin viable working life. Like the other animals, we find and pick up what we can use, and appropriate territories. But unlike the other animals, we also trade and produce for trade. Because we possess these two radically different ways of dealing with our needs, we also have two radically different systems of morals and values – both systems valid and necessary.” [viii]

Moral Precepts Guardian Syndrome Commercial Syndrome ·       Shun trading ·       Exert prowess ·       Be obedient and disciplined ·       Adhere to tradition ·       Respect hierarchy ·       Be loyal ·       Take vengeance ·       Deceive for the sake of the task ·       Make rich use of leisure ·       Be ostentatious ·       Dispense largesse ·       Be exclusive ·       Show fortitude ·       Be fatalistic ·       Treasure honor ·       Shun force ·       Compete ·       Be efficient ·       Be open to inventiveness and novelty ·       Use initiative and enterprise ·       Come to voluntary agreements ·       Respect contracts ·       Dissent for the sake of the task ·       Be industrious ·       Be thrifty ·       Invest for productive purposes ·       Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens ·       Promote comfort and convenience ·       Be optimistic ·       Be honest

Reproduced from Wikipedia, op cit

What follows is a witty, passionate and sometimes aggravated debate, as Kate; Armbruster (whose first name isn’t given), a retired publisher and host for the conversations, Jasper, a crime novelist, Ben, an environmentalist, Quincy, a banker, and Hortense, a lawyer, meet together.  The dialogue explores Kate’s two syndromes and the precepts, trying to understand both how these arose and their implications.  As views are challenged and analysed, so the Guardian Syndrome is seen to be demanding and fundamentally impersonal, the Commercial Syndrome opportunistic and fundamentally exploitative.

To where does the dialogue lead?  Unlike in her books on planning, where Jacobs sides with the community, fighting against both regulations and commercial interests, this is a more nuanced view.  In an analysis familiar from other writers, we see that moral behaviour is both complex and often inconsistent.  At one point she examines the role of deception, and as the debate develops it is clear that deception can be both morally and practically beneficial, to achieve a diplomatic outcome, or to advance a government agenda; at other times  is morally unacceptable, when a business lies to gain unfair, illegal or misleading advantage.

Do the two syndromes  have to be kept separate:  governments following the Guardian Syndrome, business the Commercial Syndrome?  She suggests it is only a theoretical apartheid: governments deliver services and seek efficiency and the benefits of competition, while commercial ventures seek the comforts that come from tradition and loyalty, especially through the rule of law.  Can we hold both syndromes in our heads, and switch flexibly from one to another? She uses history to suggest this raises moral conflicts that, eventually, may lead to one precept dominating the other, but surely there can be a middle path. [ix]  The dialogue is undertaken following one rule, personal and private morality were removed from the debate.  However, as the book progresses, it becomes clear it is impossible to excise the personal from the social, each influencing the other.  Jacobs seems to want to end with a sense of flexibility, with people being allowed to shift perspective as needs and situations require.  Since 1992, we have an abundance of evidence to show that personal self-interest exploits both syndromes for individual advantage.

I mentioned deception a moment ago.  In many ways deception is the converse of loyalty, and I have previously written about the competing pulls of loyalty, to a system of fair and impartial rules, or to intimate personal relationships; being loyal to the family, or to society and its set of impersonal laws.  In the last few decades, that division has become increasingly difficult to manage.  Many years ago, Robert Greenleaf [x] and Peter Block [xi] wrote about the manager of the company as a trustee, a steward, seeking to ensure both the company and its staff are nurtured and supported, not just for now, but for the future.  That businesses should be ‘guardians’ is central to today’s agenda as companies are asked to consider climate change, increasing income inequality, and longer-term sustainability.  Many young employees are concerned about business morality:  should they be loyal to the company, even if it’s actions are far from moral; loyal to the government, even if it is self-serving, avoiding commitment to the nation as a whole; or loyal to their own private moral or ethical principles?  Do they have to deceive themselves to survive?

Back in July 2016, President Obama had to address the shooting of two young African Americans by police officers, and the persistent feeling by many people of colour that they are second class citizens.  Memorably, he said “we can do better than this”. [xii]  In the 21^st Century, surely we can manage to address moral issues with insight and flexibility.  We don’t live in an ‘either-or’ world:  we can do better than this.  Jane Jacobs wanted us to think carefully about our public transactions, and, inescapably, about our personal principles.  Systems for Survival is an elegant and clever way to help us down that path.

[i] Vintage, 1994, originally published in 1992, by Random House

[ii] From: Allen, Max, ed. Ideas that Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs: Ginger Press, 1997

[iii] Peter Lawrence, The Death and Life of Urban Design, Journal of Urban Design, June 2006, vol 11, no 2, 145-72

[iv] For more see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#cite_note-academia.edu-20

[v] R Howe, The Spirit of Melbourne, O’Hanlon & Luckins, Go! Melbourne in the Sixties: Beaconsfield 2005, 218-30

[vi] Dark Age Ahead, Random House, 2004

[vii] This comes from Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Age_Ahead#cite_note-Jacobs-1

[viii] Op cit, p. xi

[ix] For an interesting perspective, see Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, The Narrow Corridor, Penguin. 2019

[x] Robert K Greenleaf, Servant Leadership, Paulist Press, 1977

[xi] Peter Block, Stewardship, 2^nd Edition, Berrett Koehler, 2013

[xii] https://time.com/4397611/president-obama-sterling-castile-shootings-we-are-better-than-this/

E is for Exceptionalism

Government mandated assassinations can be tricky.  Whatever else is to be said, they often reveal a great deal about the leader who claims responsibility for them.  Just a few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to look at one such action, and compare it with another.  Two images tell the story.  On the web, you can find two photographs of a US President witnessing an authorised military assassination from the White House.  One is of  President Obama when Osama Bin Laden was killed on 2 May 2011.  He sits to the side in a small conference room crowded with observers, as Air Force Brigadier General Brad Webb, sitting at the table monitoring the raid, keeps in touch with Admiral William McRaven, the Joint Special Operations commander in Afghanistan.  This was a military operation.  In contrast, President Trump was in charge when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed on 26 October 2019.  In the John F Kennedy Conference Room Trump sits at the head of the table, with military men to one side, Pence and others on the other.  He radiates authority as the ‘commander in chief’.  This was about the President.

Not just visuals, the comments of the two could not have been more different.  After giving some  details of the background to the exercise, Obama summarised the actual attack: “Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability.  No Americans were harmed.  They took care to avoid civilian casualties.  After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”  [i]

Trump was far more fulsome:  “U.S. Special Operations Forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style.  The U.S. personnel were incredible.  I got to watch much of it.  No personnel were lost in the operation, while a large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed with him.  He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way.  The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed.  Eleven young children were moved out of the house and are uninjured.  The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, and he had dragged three of his young children with him.  They were led to certain death.  He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down.  He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children.  His body was mutilated by the blast.  The tunnel had caved in on it, in addition.  But test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification.  It was him.  The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.” [ii]

Clear enough?  If you turn to videos and watch both men reporting, the contrast is even greater.  Obama’s announcement is low key, almost apologetic.  Alone, he walks away after his statement without delight or pride; what had to be done was done.  Trump was imperious when he spoke.  It was a triumph, he explained, lauding those involved, while omitting to mention the key role played by intelligence from the Kurds, (among others), the very people he had abandoned the week before.  I guess it is too much for me to understand Trump’s approach, as I am unable to grasp what his unmatched brilliance can encompass.  It’s all covfefe to him, after all.

However, while tempted to spend more time on the absurd behaviour of self-centred Trump, (who was unable to see what was happening as the killing took place, with only live audio being transmitted to the conference room), I want to ask a question that sits behind both these events.  What does it mean when it is said these actions were justified by ‘American exceptionalism’?

American exceptionalism is claimed to arise from three inter-related ideas. The first is that the history of the United States makes it inherently different from other nations, a country becoming, after the American Revolution, “the first new nation” based on the principles of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, democracy and free market capitalism.  Second is the belief the US has a unique purpose, which is to transform the world, captured by Abraham Lincoln’s address in claiming America had a duty to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, and to do this for every other country.  Finally, these two elements combine to create the belief that “the United States’ history and mission give it a superiority over other nations”: this is the final justification of American exceptionalism. [iii]

It is the second point that is the most consequential.  In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln stated America was a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”  and that America was inextricably connected with freedom and equality.  Claiming a fundamental responsibility, he went on to assert the country’s mission was to ensure that America’s approach to government should prevail.  “It has since been argued that Lincoln believed the United States would create a society that would be the best and the happiest in the world, the supreme demonstration of democracy in practice. However, the Union did not exist just to make men free in America. It had an even greater mission — to make them free everywhere. By the mere force of its example, America would bring democracy to an undemocratic world.” [iv]

How has this worked in practice?  One observer captured the US view well, observing “the most important respect in which the United States has been genuinely exceptional, about international affairs, international law, and promotion of human rights: namely, in its outstanding global leadership and activism.” He went on to state “To this day, the United States remains the only superpower capable, and at times willing, to commit real resources and make real sacrifices to build, sustain, and drive an international system committed to international law, democracy, and the promotion of human rights. Experience teaches that when the United States leads on human rights, from Nuremberg to Kosovo, other countries follow.” [v]  It is a view many share.

When interviewed in Strasbourg in April 2009, President Obama commented “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” adding, “I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can’t solve these problems alone” [vi]

Unsurprisingly, he was attacked by Republicans.  Mitt Romney argued it showed Obama did not believe in American exceptionalism, and former governor Mike Huckabee suggested Obama’s “worldview is dramatically different from any president, Republican or Democrat, we’ve had … He grew up more as a globalist than an American. To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation” [vii].  However, in a speech on the Syria Crisis at the time,  on September 10, 2013, Obama said: “however, when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our kids safer over the long run, I believe we should act  … That is what makes America different. That is what makes us exceptional.” [viii] Was he being careful with his words: exceptional but not exceptionalism?

Carefully chosen or not, his remarks drew a response from Putin, in an opinion piece in The New York Times, the next day.  He commented “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation… We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”    Putin’s views were soon endorsed by Donald Trump who declared Putin’s op-ed “a masterpiece … You think of the term [exceptional] as being beautiful, but all of sudden you say, what if you’re in Germany or Japan or any one of 100 different countries? You are not going to like that term … It is very insulting, and Putin put it to him about that.” [ix] As usual, Trump has continued to confuse everyone.  He has claimed he has redefined American exceptionalism by bringing an end to the neoliberal or neoconservative globalist project that many Republicans support, but he has also advocated an ‘America First’ policy, emphasising unilateralism, but only sometimes non-interventionism.

Well, to read that Trump has agreed with arguments both for and against exceptionalism is no surprise.  Not should we be amazed by Putin’s response:  well, perhaps a little surprised that he relied on religion to make his point!

Is the US exceptional?  Like Australia, it was a country created by pioneers, establishing colonies in a land not yet recognised as a state.  Both considered the existing inhabitants had no claim on territory, and could be safely swept aside, and it took centuries before their rights were given some acknowledgement.  Both made use of slave labour, from Africa to the US (and to other North and South American colonies), and from New Caledonia to Australia (along with other Melanesians, the Kanaks were also taken to California, Canada, India, South Africa, and Malaysia).  Australia also used its indigenous peoples as slaves.  Long before Australia, the US was an independent democratic republic, free from control the British crown’s control.  It is an odd quirk of history that a country created and developed with slavery, on land expropriated from the indigenous people, should end up an exemplar of a “new nation” touting the principles of liberty, egalitarianism, and democracy.  It is another strange quirk that Australia can’t quite throw off its link to the British crown: perhaps it needs a war of independence, too!

US history is not so ‘exceptional’.  However, Abraham Lincoln did offer the US a mandate.  To quote again from his memorable 1863 Gettysburg address, he said: “[O]ur fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He ended:  “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Of course, you might care to recall this was fifteen years after Marx and Engels had proposed a similar claim for government by the people .  In their 1848 Communist Manifesto, they set out an alternative agenda for liberty and equality: “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.  The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

Two very different approaches, both claiming to benefit (almost) everyone through ‘democracy’.  One has relied on the benefits of capitalism and the free market, the other on government and a managed economy.  Inevitably, those claims back in the 19^th Century were destined to come into conflict. And this links us to that third claim to exceptionalism that the US asserts: American history includes the ‘defeat’ of communism with the end of the Cold War, pushing Mikhail Gorbachev to make economic reforms, with the doctrine of perestroika.  A win for American democracy?  150 years later, we know that neither approach is ideal. America exceptionalism is asserted as the basis for it to defend democracy and sustain free market capitalism.  But free market capitalism leads to oligarchy and exploitation of the many by the few.  Communist countries quickly slip into dictatorships, their principles abandoned.  Was communism defeated by free market capitalism?  No, ideas aren’t defeated; they linger on, whatever happens.

America triumphant; isn’t that how other countries like to see themselves? In 1930, Sellar and Yeatman published a slim volume, 1066 and All That, ‘the book that takes history apart, and leaves it like that’.  To make things clear, it has an extensive subtitle: “A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings, and 2 Genuine Dates”!  I loved it as a child, and still laugh out loud when I read it.  Here they are on King Alfred’s life “Alfred had a very interesting wife called Lady Windermere (The Lady of the Lake), who was always getting clothed in the same white frock, and used to go bathing with Sir Launcelot (also of the Lake) and was thus a bad queen.”  Quite apart from anything else, all Englishmen know bathing is a bad thing.  I know, I know, you have to read it to enjoy it.

What has 1066 and All That to do with exceptionalism?  It reveals that an ‘exceptional’ country can also laugh at itself, gently, sending up its strengths and its foibles.  I think Barack Obama would both enjoy and understand this ‘slim volume’ if he hasn’t yet read it.  If Donald Trump were to read it (although I understand he doesn’t read books), he simply wouldn’t get it at all.  It reveals the gulf between them: for Obama, a claim to exceptionalism is balanced with humility; Trump sees himself and the US as exceptional;  alas, in him what we see is an exceptional fool.

[i] http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/02/bin.laden.announcement/index.html

[ii] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-death-isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi/

[iii] And a reason to export bad practice: e.g. medical charges https://grattan.edu.au/report/saving-private-health-1/?

[iv] Williams, T. Harry (June 1953). “Abraham Lincoln – Principle and Pragmatism in Politics: A Review Article”. Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 40 (1): page 97

[v] Harold Hongju Koh, “On American Exceptionalism” 55 Stan. L. Rev. 1479 (2003) quote at p. 1487

[vi] Michael Sheer “On European Trip, President Tries to Set a New Pragmatic Tone” Washington Post, April 5, 2009

[vii] Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith, “The New Battle: What It Means to be American,” Politico, August 20, 2010

[viii] Karen Tumulty, “American exceptionalism, explained”, The Washington Post, September 12, 2013

[ix] James Kirchik, “Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left, The Daily Beast, 15 August 2016

Wise

As I get older, am I getting any wiser, or am I just accommodating to what is happening?  That question keeps coming back to me as I think about America and Trump.  In these horrible times, I want him stopped, thrown out, so steps can be taken to heal a broken country, and measures put in place to make it a better, a more liveable place for everyone.  I am angry about what I see happening.  The man is an unmitigated, divisive, self-aggrandising disaster, careless uprooting what has been achieved over the past two hundred years.  Yet at the same time, and especially when I am being told this is the worse situation we have ever confronted, I sometimes become philosophical and suggest things will get better; we go through cycles, things will change.  “This too shall pass”: the wise words of an older person?  It doesn’t console me about the here and now, but it helps me see what is taking place in perspective.  Haven’t we had bad times before?

The phrase ‘this too shall pass’ is Persian in origin, and I read that a twelfth century poet and Sufi, Attar, retold a possibly much earlier story about a powerful king who asked his council to make some device that would make him happy when he was sad.  Eventually he was given a simple ring, inscribed with the  with the words “This too shall pass”.  According to Attar, the ring did make the king happy when he was sad.  However, the converse was also true, as it became a curse for whenever he was happy.  I like the phrase, but now I’ve read more, I can see it doesn’t really address cyclicity.  It is a corrective to extremes, but not a reminder – or a positive reflection – concerning the regularity with which good and bad times reappear.  I guess the ring could just have said “Things will change”.

The phrase I use, that things will get better, might be more of an accommodation than anything else, helping me live with the present, a tired nostrum to offer to everyone else.  There is something about a phrase like that which covers up a feeling of powerlessness.  Things are bad; Trump is a disaster.  However, I can’t see anything I can do that will make a difference, so why not offer a perspective that gives a little hope and mediates despair:  things will get better.  If that is what I am doing, it isn’t working well.  Accommodating implies some kind of acceptance.  In some ways that is true.  Donald Trump has been so outrageous for so long the sense of outrage, of horror at what is happening, is being dulled.  But I still know that.  I might be living with events in these bad times, but I am not accepting them: in fact, I know they are getting worse.

What is the difference between wisdom and accommodating?  There is another saying, “you can’t step into the same river twice” which implies that change is always taking place.  You can never go back, and perhaps the idea that seeing things in terms of cycles is misleading.  As it happens, that phrase was the focus of a recent short and entertaining commentary on Heraclitus and Wittgenstein. [i]  Wittgenstein has long been one of my heroes, and I was delighted to see his response to Heraclitus was brief and clear, ‘yes you can’! [ii]  I do like Wittgenstein.

Long ago, the point Heraclitus was making is that nothing remains the same, and that change is continuous.  You and the river have both changed by the time you dip your feet in a second time.  It’s not the same water (different molecules etc.) and you have changed, too.  No moment is the same as any other one.  In disputing this view, Wittgenstein is making a different point:  he is challenging our use of words like ‘same;’ and ‘different’.  It’s a river, the same river in the same place, and you are still you.  You can step in twice, or twenty times, but all you are doing is dipping your foot into the river again.  From that perspective, nothing has changed.

It’s a nice point.  Very practical.  Wittgenstein was interested in words and meaning (he was an advocate of the view that words mean what we choose them to mean).  He was fascinated by word games as a way of illustrating the logic that is to be found by different people using a word.  He wasn’t talking about Scrabble or Word Scramble, but rather how words can be used in ways to convey alternative or unfamiliar meanings.  In commenting on Heraclitus and the river, the point was that ‘river’ is a word used to describe an object (water flowing down towards a lower altitude within constraining banks – or something like that!), or it can be a way of referring to the flow of moments (a never ending series of river-water moments, ceaselessly changing and disappearing).  And that begs the question: what do I mean when I use the word ‘better’?  Is this about a state of being that on some objectively measured criteria can be seen as more enjoyable, productive, rewarding etc.?  Perhaps we should avoid such tricky questions, and assume there is a commonsense meaning of ‘better’ and leave it at that.

On the basis of that assumption, one of the problems with my assertion that things will get better is that it does seem to be contradicted at times.  I might be able to sustain an argument about the political climate swinging between more conservative (right-wing) and more progressive (left-wing, socialist?) phases.  History gives me some support, and based on recent history we can see evidence a shift in one direction will be replaced, in time, with a shift back towards the other extreme.  However, what about climate change?  Wasn’t I arguing just the other week that we are in the middle of a massive period of climate change, close to a tipping point, and once we have passed that point, we will not be able to go back to the way things were?

Perhaps we can stand back from what is happening right now, and ask about change on a longer time scale.  Over the past 4-5 billion years, roughly the time for which we have evidence of life forms, there have been at least five major ice ages, each followed by a much warmer climate world-wide.  The most recent of these huge cycles began around 2.6 million years ago.  As it happens, this was at a time when precursors to humans appeared on the scene (what evidence we have suggests Homo Erectus was around at least two million years ago).  The flimsy records available suggest humans, Homo Sapiens, were present some 300,000 to 500,000 years ago (although there is still considerable debate as to when Sapiens can be identified as a clearly separate species). [iii]  But perhaps Sapiens is an example of a major, irreversible change.

Since the beginning of the recent ice age, evidence suggests there have been some twenty of so smaller ice ages (shifts within a major ice age, comprising shorter periods of increasing glaciation followed by warmer phases when the ice retreats).  Each of these ‘mini’ ice ages lasted around 100,000 years.  Using past evidence, each warmer phase seems to be present for about 20,000 years.  Based on previous cycles, we would expect the earth to start moving towards another ice age in 6,000 years or so.  However, it seems we’ve messed that up!  At present, rather than the warmer period beginning to come to an end, we have successfully extended it, and now we are on course to an atypically long warm period.  Current climate change isn’t about a bit of global warming, it is about a profound change to the world’s environmental cycles. [iv]

In the long arc of the earth’s history, warming will not continue for ever.  Eventually, perhaps as a result of wiping out a lot of the planet’s animal life, carbon dioxide and methane release will slow down and begin to dissipate.  It might take tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years, but ultimately temperatures will drop, and almost certainly the postponed ice age will return.  That leaves us in a muddle.  As a public servant would say, on the one hand (minister), climate change is creating alterations to the earth’s environment that are irreversible.  On the other hand, over a much longer period, we are going to revert to the usual pattern of periods with ice ages, and periods without.  Like all the best advice to a minister, we leave the person in charge with two contrasting stories, no real reason to prefer one over the other, and neither leading to a clear set of actions.  As all public servants know, the best thing to do is to leave the minister confused, assume the status quo, and make small changes where appropriate!

At the outset, I said I was concerned about whether or not I was wise when I came out with a statement like ‘things will get better again’ (you can step in the same river twice).  There are at least two puzzles in this.  First, how strong is the evidence confirming we live in a world where politics are as cyclical as the world’s climate (assuming even that is true)?  Second, how have I changed, and what do those changes mean for how I look at things?  Reluctantly, I want to return to Donald Trump, and carry out an ‘on the one hand and on the other’ assessment.

On the one hand (!), the man is a wrecking ball, smashing things as soon as he is encouraged to do so.  Without dwelling how much of the decision-making is his, or by those that advise or manipulate him, one area for wrecking is anything that had been achieved by his predecessor.  The fixation to obliterate anything and everything achieved by an African-American President is both frightening, and at times almost unbelievable.  If Obama created a new national park area, let’s drill it for oil.  If Obama had a huge crowd at his inauguration, well, Trump’s was bigger.  Any step to make the US a better place for everyone, from health care to reducing domestic violence, is a move to be smashed apart, obliterated.  Obama drew up an agreement to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon: let’s rip that up.  In fact, Obama supported co-operation between nations, consideration and care for others.  Better destroy all that, too.  And it’s getting worse.

If that weren’t bad enough, Trump has ideas.  He can make deals, with everyone from ‘little rocket man’ in North Korea to Denmark’s PM (to acquire Greenland).  It turns out he is a dreadful dealmaker, but, no matter, he keeps going, and in so doing destroys credibility and confidence.  He can even stop hurricanes.  Did you miss that one?  Soon after his inauguration he came up with the idea of ‘nuking’ them.  Even his own staff tried to keep that idea quiet, but it emerged a few days ago. [v]  He can help the hapless Boris Johnson make Brexit work (a similarly dangerous man and weird man, who once said: “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”).  Hmm.

My own view of Trump is more worrying than merely seeing him as a wrecking ball, though that is bad enough.  I think he is like a fairground barker, out front capturing the attention of passers-by, selling what they will be able to see happening once inside the tent.  The barker works by exciting his audience, telling colourful and exaggerated stories they know can’t quite be true – can they?  The same is true with Trump, as his stories and provocations become even less firmly attached to any reality.  But unlike at the fairground, we don’t get inside the tent, or if we do it is only for a short time.  The real business is going on behind the scenes, as Mitch McConnell and his gang steadily work away, replacing judges, moving pieces of legislation along, blocking anything that goes against the conservative (and I mean right-wing conservative) agenda.  For those inside, Trump is a gift:  he can be guaranteed to keep the attention focussed on whatever he is prompted to say, leaving a veil over that which they’d prefer kept hidden.

That much we know.  In 2021 or 2025 (it looks more likely to be the latter right now), there will be a new President.  When I am persuaded of cyclicity, I see things swinging back, fair and due processes restored, systems repaired, a sense of common purpose and community back on the agenda.  There will be a massive work needed to establish values that hold the country together, and bridge the divides that separate us today.  Things are likely to be even worse by then.

On the other hand, these changes might be permanent.  The wrecking ball leaves an environment quite unlike the one we’ve known to date, but with it there’s the possibility of real change.  Might that be attractive?  With so much wrong today, the only path forward could be to trample on the past.  Look at the mess we are in.  Racial antagonisms are growing.  The gulf between the cities and the rural regions keeps growing.  Income and wealth divisions are accelerating.  Tens of thousands are dying from drug abuse and alcoholism every year, escaping from reality any way they can.  Shareholder capitalism is out of control.  ‘Entertainment’ relies on rape, murder and violence to women.  Democracy is falling apart in an oligopolistic world, and oligarchy rules.  Guns are everywhere.  Millennials face a disastrous future. [vi]  Climate change continues.

Right now, I can’t help feeling the best thing to do might be to let the system collapse, taking humanity with it.  Nature will prevail, just as has been the case before.  As environments go through catastrophic change, species get wiped out, and, each time around, a new world emerges.  Dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, and the mammals slowly took over.  In recent times, it was humans who changed the world.  Next time, another species will emerge to dominate the globe, possibly already here but out of sight from our imperious, inattentive eyes.

Am I wise to suggest that ‘this too shall pass’?  It is comforting to suggest that we are simply going through a phase, and soon (hopefully very soon) everything will swing back away from the extremes we see today, and the next cycle will commence.  It helps me adjust to what I see around me.  But accommodation is like a soft pillow, embracing, soporific, and likely to smother me without my noticing.  Easy to imagine all will be well, when in fact we are hurtling towards a time of catastrophic change for the environment and the ability of humankind to save itself.

I wish I was wise.  I know ‘I too shall pass’.  I don’t know what comes next, but I think I’d sleep better by keeping to the cyclical view.  As things are today, I’m not confident I can.

[i] https://aeon.co/ideas/can-you-step-in-the-same-river-twice-wittgenstein-v-heraclitus

[ii] The quote comes from Wittgenstein’s ‘The Big Typescript, published in 2012 by Wiley; it was sourced from The Literary Wittgenstein, Gibson and Huemer, Routledge, 2004

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens

[iv] A lot to read on this, but a useful starting point might be these two sources:  https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html, https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-06-15/what-is-an-ice-age-explainer/7185002

[v] https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-nuke-hurricanes-20190826-kunccf55wzdpdcy6pr3hw2ciye-story.html

[vi]  Read this to depress you: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/millennials-are-screwed-recession/596728/

 

It is easy to criticise Donald Trump.  He is a thin-skinned, narcissistic bigot.  Concerned only with adulation, the shouts of supporters and the fervour of the racist right, he does nothing but continue to destroy all the things that had made America great.  This country was a leader in the world, championing democracy, and the rights of all people, a symbol of the power of immigration to grow the economy, compassionate, caring, and considerate.  Today he is a pariah among world leaders, and nations large and small are turning away from the USA as they look for others to carry the flag of progress.  When history judges President Trump, the consensus will be clear: he was a disaster.  When he leaves office and contemplates the soggy foundations of his business empire, sinking into the rising waters of Florida, he might realise, too late, that he was wrong about climate change, wrong about immigration, wrong to support racists, and wrong in his self-serving belief that increasing the wealth of the rich creates a better, more egalitarian society.

However, I am not writing to offer a general criticism of President Trump today, far too easy a task.  Rather I want to explore what he is doing.  Not the speeches to his supporters, but the basis of his actions.  As I see it, his activities are all focussed on ‘undoing’.

First and foremost, he seems driven to undo everything that was done by President Obama.  Exercising his political power through unilateral executive orders and memoranda, he has rolled back the recognition of transgender persons in the military.  He has rolled back the protection of newly recognised heritage sites.  He has rolled back restrictions on mining, and on the use of fossil fuels.  He rolled back immigration to the USA by a partial travel ban on visitors from (selective) Muslim countries.  He has rolled back the opportunities for illegal immigrants to seek the right to stay by immediate deportation of anyone who has committed an illegal act, (which means everyone, since by definition they are in the country illegally, whatever the other elements of their situation).

The executive orders keep appearing.  He announced withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.  He has signed an order to reduce business regulations.  He has pushed ahead with approving the construction of two controversial pipelines.   However, one of the president’s most fateful undoings didn’t even require an executive order – when he announced the US would pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

Across the departments and agencies of the federal government, hiding behind the President’s grandstanding and continuing barnstorming, his appointees are working hard to eliminate many of the rules and regulations that were put in place over the past 50 years.  The Trump administration is implementing a right-wing agenda to destroy protections for workers, the environment and non-white Americans.

Of course, executive orders are not law, a fact he was keen to use in criticising his predecessor, although now it seems to be his favoured form of action.  There is good reason.  Much of what Trump says he wants to do requires Congress to pass appropriate legislation.

He wants to roll back the Affordable Care Act, but, so far, Congress has been unable to come up with an alternative that every Republican supports, neither through introducing a new health care act, or by simply dumping the ACA. However, if President Trump has given up on Congress repealing the A.C.A., his administration is still actively undermining it in other ways.  A death by a thousand cuts, as Federal funding and support for the ACA is slowly whittled away.

He wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico.  No progress there yet, but he will keep pushing Congress on this, and on tax cuts.

If he was asked, he would point to the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.  He did nominate him, but this was McConnell’s achievement, preventing President Obama’s nomination from being brought to a vote – for a year.  That was a triumph for the conservatives.  However, in the long run, it may turn out to be a strategy they will regret.  Cheating on the rules has a habit of rebounding on the cheater.

Overall, we can summarise his strategy quite easily.  It is undoing things.

But now his undoing is beginning to cause him problems.  He has announced that President Obama’s executive order on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals will expire in six months.  That announcement created a storm of criticism from all sides of politics.  President Trump was quick to backtrack, remembering his earlier promise: “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud.  They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

As local Republican Senator Thom Tillis has observed: “Immigration policy must be set through legislation, not executive orders … President Trump is wisely [??] giving Congress a period of time to fulfill its responsibility to legislate and take long-term action to address the uncertainty facing undocumented children, who were brought to America through no fault of their own”.  Perhaps the House will do the right thing, despite failure to address this issue over years.  But not because of the confused messages from President Trump.

How does the great undoer see his achievements?  He’s not concerned.  As he said on 16 February “I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done”.  That’s OK, we know he doesn’t think, or otherwise he would know that is simply untrue.

Donald Trump, the great undoer.

If only we could work out how to ensure the undoing of President Trump.