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.

1949 – A Fair Deal

As we emerge from the economic and social traumas resulting from the current pandemic, we’re hoping for a better future, a set of initiatives to restore our community.  Yet when we’re offered a deal, we become suspicious, wondering who the real beneficiaries will be.  If cynical suspicion informs responses to a personal deal, concerns are greatly increased when it’s a government plan or in political party platform promises.  When Harry Truman, early in his second Presidential term, announced his ‘Fair Deal’ in his 1949 Inaugural Address, he must have known his view as to what was fair wouldn’t be shared by a Republican controlled Congress.  Once it was clear his plans included many proposals they regarded as antithetical to business interests, the challenges began.  He wanted money for education, universal health insurance, fair employment practices, and to repeal restrictions on labour organisations:  who did he think he was kidding?

In many ways, Truman’s Fair Deal was a continuation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s approach in the 1930s.  FDR’s ‘New Deal’ was a program to enable recovery from the Great Depression.  The economy was in a mess, people were starving, and unemployment was high (does this sound all too familiar?).  Roosevelt set out an agenda for ‘relief, reform and recovery’.   Relief was aimed at the unemployed and the poor, recovery was intended to put the economy back on a path to growth, and reform was intended to fix the issue that had caused the depression, the failures in the financial and banking system.  It was necessary, ambitious and visionary.

Almost from the day he took office Roosevelt started making changes.  With fixes for the banks in place, his priority in 1933 was to get people back to work, setting up a Public Works Administration to undertake major construction activities, roads, dams and even schools, and a Civilian Conservation Corps, which hired 250,000 unemployed young men to work on rural projects.   He presented ways to give mortgage relief, encourage more productive farming, and, through a National Industrial Recovery Act, he wanted to force industries to accept minimum prices, non-compete agreements, and raise wages.  However, the NIRA was a step too far, and the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional.  Protesting, he continued his action program, which included establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority, (TVA), the largest government-owned industrial enterprise in American history, one which built dams and power stations, controlled floods, and modernized agriculture and home conditions in the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley.  An impressive public works led recovery; I’m sure Keynes was proud of him!

He was worried about the mid-terms in 1934, but the Democrats picked up seats in both houses of Congress, and he continued to develop initiatives.  Given his concerns over the financial security of workers, in his second New Deal Roosevelt established the Social Security Act.  Compared to similar provisions overseas, it might appear rather conservative, but the federal government took on responsibility for the economic security of the aged, the temporarily unemployed, dependent children, and the handicapped.  While resistance continued to build, especially from the business community, he was undaunted.  Winning a second term, in 1936, he kept up the pace of reforms.  FDR was elected twice more, but his third term in 1940 saw the agenda necessarily shift to a focus on international events and the Second World War.

Following the end of the war, the financial consequences of years of fighting began to hit home.  The UK was burdened with a huge war debt, having survived only through the US Lend Lease program.  That came to an end in September 1945, soon after Labour’s landslide victory in a General Election.  Churchill was out, Clement Attlee was the new Prime Minister, and he set in motion an ambitious program of welfare reforms, as well as nationalising many industries.  With a quarter of its national wealth gone, the abrupt withdrawal of America’s Lend-Lease support dealt a severe blow to Attlee’s plans.  However, an Anglo-American Loan was agreed, which restored some stability to the UK’s fragile economy, although the loan was limited to overseas expenditure, not the Labour government’s domestic policies.  It was a strange time.  Reforms and privation sat alongside each other, with extensive social services put in place while rationing continued.  The UK never used the terminology, but a ‘new deal’ was being implemented.

Back in the US, Roosevelt began a fourth term as President in 1944, but died only a few months later.  As Vice President, Harry Truman took over, and in September 1945 he outlined a 21-point program of domestic legislation to Congress.  Building on Roosevelts New Deal, it was the first step to his ambitious program of 1949.  The measures put forward in 1945 included a series of proposals on economic development and social welfare. Major improvements were planned in the unemployment compensation system and the minimum wage: in the maintenance and extension of price controls; in a variety of measures to grow employment and to keep down the cost of living in the transition to a peacetime economy; in a major expansion of public works, conserving and building up natural resources; and in other measures aimed at post-war recovery.

President Truman’s approach was hands-off.  He didn’t send legislation to Congress, but expected it to draft the bills, which proved a serious mistake.  Much of what he wanted faced opposition from the conservative majority in Congress  Despite setbacks and resistance, he persevered with his agenda, and by 1948 he was ready with a comprehensive program, the Fair Deal.  Truman set out his approach in his 1949 State of the Union address ,“Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal.” [i] The measures built on the 1945 proposals and extended them, including federal aid to education, a large tax cut for low-income earners together with an increase in the minimum wage, an anti-lynching law, a farm aid program, increased public housing, an immigration bill, establishing a new Department of Welfare, national health insurance, expanded Social Security coverage, and a $4 billion tax increase to reduce the national debt and finance these new programs.  Truman was determined to build on and continue the reforms Roosevelt had pursued under his New Deal.

Many aspects of his vision weren’t realised in practice, but he did establish an agenda for the Democratic Party for the longer term, especially in seeking universal health care. However, in a way that anticipates much of what would be repeated in the Post-Reagan era, the Fair Deal faced continued opposition from Republicans, who wanted a reduced role for the federal government, and preferred privatised social services.  Truman was successful in some areas, and Congress supported public housing subsidies and slum clearance.  Helped by the election of a Democratic Congress in 1949, the country saw change at a level not to be repeated until LBJs’ Great Society program in the middle 1960s.   As noted by one study:

“This was the Congress that reformed the Displaced Persons Act, increased the minimum wage, doubled the hospital construction program, authorized the National Science Foundation and the rural telephone program, suspended the ‘sliding scale’ on price supports, extended the soil conservation program, provided new grants for planning state and local public works …  Moreover, as protector, as defender, wielder of the veto against encroachments on the liberal preserve, Truman left a record of considerable success – an aspect of the Fair Deal not to be discounted.” [ii]

The Fair Deal achieved considerable social and economic progress in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Reports confirmed that gains in housing, education, living standards, and income under the Truman administration were unparalleled in prior American history. By 1953, 62 million Americans had jobs, an increase of 11 million in seven years, while unemployment had all but vanished. Farm income, dividends, and corporate income were at all-time highs, and there hadn’t been a failure of an insured bank in nearly nine years.  There were significant reductions in poverty, and incomes rose faster than prices, resulting in real living standards considerably higher than seven years earlier. Successes counterbalanced failures, and the Fair Deal, following on the New Deal, took major steps in creating a more egalitarian society.

One important area concerned civil rights.   As a senator, Truman hadn’t supported the emerging civil rights movement.  However, speaking to the NAACP [iii] in 1947 he said, “Every man should have the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share in the making of public decisions through the ballot, and the right to a fair trial in a fair court.”  His proposals were resisted by southern Democrats, but he used presidential executive orders to end discrimination in the armed forces and denied government contracts to firms with racially discriminatory practices. He also named African Americans to federal posts.  His progress on civil rights led one historian to comment Truman had “done more than any President since Lincoln to awaken American conscience to the issues of civil rights”. [iv]  The agenda was clear, yet, seventy years later, so much remains to be done:  key legislation is still to be enacted, and Trump is opposed to most civil rights reforms.

Reading Truman’s program today encourages a score-sheet perspective:  give a point for a win, and drop a point for a loss.  He lost on a comprehensive health care program, but increased funding for hospitals, and extended the range of research areas that came under the National Institutes of Health, especially in relation to aged care, mental health, dental health and numerous major diseases.  He managed to bring about many adjustments to the social welfare system, although he was unable to accomplish his plan to extend Social Security coverage to all Americans.  Despite this, 10 million received Social Security coverage, numerous specific programs were put in place, increases in Social Security benefits were authorized in 1948, and in 1950 welfare benefits were increased, Social Security coverage was extended to elderly Americans, and the minimum wage was raised.  According to one view, the 1950 act “was almost as significant as the original 1935 legislation.” [v]  While Truman failed to get the union-limiting Taft-Hartley Act repealed, his administration made several important changes in labour law.  Similar observations can be made about achievement in education and housing.  I don’t want to continue my game or scoring wins and losses, but there is no doubt the balance went to wins (even of you deduct two points for some of the major proposals failing).  Above all, the Fair Deal demonstrated government programs were essential to overcome the continuing effects of  the Depression by spreading the benefits of economic growth and social reforms throughout society, and doing so through federal policies and services.  For two decades, the US prospered.

Once again, the US, like many other countries, is facing disaster today.  The pandemic is closing businesses, leaving millions without income, many facing the loss of their homes, and the economy is sliding backwards.  Once again, this is the time for major change, and commentators are suggesting the US will be different in 2021.  While some of the ideas about this ‘new world’ are clearly unrealistic and even foolish, this is the moment to support a progressive agenda, the one being championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her fellow ‘Squad’ members Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, an agenda focussed on such critical and much needed reforms universal health insurance (Medicare for All) and a ‘Green New Deal’, amongst others.

Will the progressive agenda gain momentum?   As one example, early in 2019 Ocasio-Cortez submitted her first piece of legislation, the Green New Deal, to the Senate, a 10-year “economic mobilization” that would phase out fossil fuel use and overhaul the nation’s infrastructure, while creating jobs and boosting the economy.  Naturally, it’s opposed by Republicans, and even some Democrats are lukewarm.  However, support from younger voters is clear.  These progressives worry Trump.  In July, he attacked the Squad, saying that they should “go back and help fix” the countries they came from rather than criticize the American government (even though three were born in the United States).  Pointing out Trump’s words used the ‘hallmark language of white supremacists’, support for the Squad is growing, even while attacks continue, reprising 1949.

As Ocasio-Cortez keeps pressing for progressive changes, criticism is never ending.  She has shown grace and determination under pressure.  On July 21, Republican Representative Ted Yoho accosted Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol, called her “disgusting” and told her, “You are out of your freaking mind” for suggesting that poverty and unemployment were driving a spike in crime in New York during the coronavirus epidemic.  As she walked away, Yoho called her a “fucking bitch”  Two days later, Ocasio-Cortez responded in the House, condemning male privilege, systemic sexist behavior and culture, violent language against women, as well as Yoho hiding behind his wife and daughters in his apology the day before.  “Having a daughter does not make a man decent.  Having a wife does not make a decent man.  Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man.  I am someone’s daughter, too.  My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter.  My mother got to see Mr. Yoho’s disrespect on the floor of this House towards me on television.  And I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men.” [vi]

Can the US recover from the pandemic disaster and reclaim its determination to create a better world?  Will it re-emerge as a beacon for democracy?  One thing is clear.  If the US wants to stand tall in the world, it needs a new and inclusive deal to restore fair and inclusive political processes, to turn back the excessive income inequalities that exist today, and to restore justice and a sense of common purpose for all Americans.  To do that, it has to move past the many older, and often out-of-touch politicians in Congress, and build on the determination shown by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and young progressives like her.  A new Fair Deal needs new thinking, not a reliance on past allegiances, and we need it now.

[i]  Truman Delivers his Fair Deal speech, January 5, 1949, History.com

[ii] See E L Davin, Crucible of Freedom, November 2011, quoted in Wikipedia

[iii] The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

[iv] David McCullough, Truman, Simon and Schuster 1992, and Mark Byrnes, The Truman Years 1945-1953, Routledge, 2001 provide an excellent coverage of Truman and the Fair Deal. Please note President Trump!

[v] Byrnes, op cit.

[vi] Reported in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/23/aoc-speech-video-ted-yoho

V is for Velikovsky, Von Daniken and Others

If you drive some 250 miles north of Adelaide, you will find yourself in the Flinders Ranges, one among the many rocky desert areas that take up some two thirds of Australia.  Crossing over Rawnsley’s Bluff, you enter Wilpena Pound, a 5 mile by 11 mile enclosed oval area, looking rather like a huge amphitheater.  This striking rock formation has one range of hills to the north and east, and another to the south and west.  They almost join, with Rawnsley’s Bluff the lowest point linking the two in the south east, and Edeowie Gorge the exit to the north west.  Originally thought to be a volcanic crater, it is actually a syncline, a u-shaped basin formed by sedimentary rocks being pushed up almost vertically on either side of the central plain.  It isn’t clear where the name came from.  Some have suggested Wilpena is an indigenous name, meaning “place of bent fingers”; (possibly a reference to the mountains resembling the shape of a gently cupped hand, or the freezing cold of the ranges in winter).  However, the traditional owners of the land, the Adnyamathanha people, call it ‘Ikara’, which means a ‘meeting place”.

Like many of the areas of Australia, there is a story about Ikara from the ‘Dreamtime’, the time well before the Europeans came.  Here’s a summary of Kingfisher Dreaming:

 Yurlu, the Kingfisher, decided to go south for a ceremony …  As Yurlu was travelling, there were also two big Akurras (Dreamtime Serpents) … The two serpents also went on southwards and entered the Pound through Edeowie Gorge and camped at a large waterhole.  That night some people in the Pound were holding a ceremony. When they looked into the sky at the stars to see if it was time to start, the stars they saw were actually the eyes of the two Akurras.  The male Akurra told his mate to go to the south-west, while he went north-east to surround the people. When Yurlu reached Mount Abrupt he stopped and looked into the Pound. He could hear the sound of the ceremony. He threw a firestick into the air; it turned into the red star, Mars.  While this was going on, the two Akurras came up on each side of the ceremonial ground and ate up all the people except two initiates and Yurlu.  St Mary Peak is the head of the male Akurra and Beatrice Hill is the head of the female serpent, both watching the flight of the initiates. Their bodies form the two sides of the Pound.[i]

In addition to the snakes there today (!), I know this rocky, arid and sparse land does contain some of the earliest fossils found anywhere in the world, many of which indigenous tribespeople must have studied. “This is one of the few places in the world that preserves evidence of the first complex life on this planet.  The Flinders Ranges is the internationally recognised type section between the geological periods when there isn’t complex life and when first complex life evolves.” [ii] The Ediacaran fossils provide geologically important evidence of those first animals.

If we go further north into the heart of Australia near Alice Springs, the land is pitted with about a dozen strange depressions.  This is the site of the Henbury meteorite field, dating to around 4,700 years ago when a large, iron-filled meteorite slammed into Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart, scattering fragments.  As with Ikara, there are Dreamtime accounts of this site, too: the place was where a fire “debil-debil” (devil) had come out of the sky and killed everything. Later the story became even closer to home  as one guide has explained: “He said that his people wouldn’t camp within two miles of the depressions, get closer than half a mile or collect the water that filled some. A fire devil would fill them with iron should they dare. The guide knew this, he said, because his grandfather had seen the fire devil come from the sun.” [iii]  This legend  long precedes today’s view that these hollows were formed by a meteorite strike.

Dreamtime stories bind aboriginals to places through the sacred, an essential part of their respect and connection to an environment where empty land dominates, with few plants and even fewer animals.  Respect for the land has been an overwhelming part of indigenous sense-making, and it’s not surprising that references to memorable images and events are embedded in their sacred stories.  The same is true for us.  If we turn to an example from one of our sacred texts, there’s the biblical story of Noah and the great flood, part of the Abrahamic canon.  It’s an account, or a legend, which almost certainly has prebiblical origins, as it appears in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh from 5,000 years ago: “there is an account of the great sage Utnapishtim, who is warned of an imminent flood to be unleashed by wrathful gods. He builds a vast circular-shaped boat, reinforced with tar and pitch, that carries his relatives, grains and animals. After enduring days of storms, Utnapishtim, like Noah in Genesis, releases a bird in search of dry land.” [iv] Was there a flood?  Various archaeologists suggest there was a huge deluge some 6,000-8,000 years ago that hit an area from the Black Sea down all the way down into the ‘fertile crescent’.  Just like the case for indigenous Australians stories, legends and reality are often interwoven.

Many people regard myths as old and fanciful, and any correspondence to reality is seen as happenstance.  To think so is to misunderstand myths: they’re not mere fictions but explanations, theories about why this is the way our world is, drawing on what can be seen, and what is presumed to be but unseen, from debil-debils to big bangs and string theory.  However, when a modern writer combines strange observations with imaginative explanations, we often decide the work is science fiction, or, worse, the claims of a charlatan or crackpot.  On that basis, we can happily set aside anything to do with astrology, astral conversations, mediums and tarot card readings, but they remain a fertile ground for best sellers. For example, many claim to find links between the signs of the zodiac, dates of birth, and peoples’ later achievements and interests, but   although there are a few very weak correlations, they are easily explained by other factors.

Some of these accounts become famous for a while.  A classic example comes from the work of Immanuel Velikovsky.  A writer, his scientific training began in Moscow, later in Berlin, and Edinburgh, and he even worked with Albert Einstein for three years at the forerunner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He is usually described as an independent scholar, and undertook training as a psychoanalyst.  His most famous book was Worlds in Collision. [v]

In some ways Velikovsky was a modern myth teller.  He pulled together examples and material from a bewildering variety of sources to illustrate and confirm his underlying story, and what a story that was.  His books contain an amazing array of bizarre ideas, most relying on events supposedly occurring over the past 8,000 years, whether revealed in religious texts or ‘historical’ accounts.  I don’t want to spoil the fun of reading, but his claims are improbably exciting.  Back in 1950 he was writing about the catastrophic extinction of many species rather than by gradual Darwinian means, catastrophes that he saw recorded in the myths, legends and the written history of ancient cultures and civilisations. Velikovsky pointed to similar accounts in many cultures, and proposed that they referred to the same real events.  To use my earlier example, he records how the flood in the Hebrew Bible can also be ‘found’ in a Greek legend, and in an Indian saga.  True to his training, Velikovsky used his psychoanalytic concept of “Cultural Amnesia” as the process to explain why these literal records came to be regarded as mere myths or fictions.

His book gets really thrilling when he moves on to explain natural catastrophes as the result of close encounters between the Earth and other planets in our solar system, including Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus.  He argued they had moved in different orbits from those we see today, and did so within human memory.  To do this, he gave a key role to electro-magnetic forces as a way to get around classical orbital mechanics.  An amusing crackpot? [vi]  Having said that, rather than deciding to ignore them, we could examine some of Velikovsky’s ideas in the same way we look at myths, just as we might examine indigenous Australian dreamtime stories.  Anthropologists analyse myths to reveal their underlying logic and importance, both through the structure of the myths (one of the techniques use in structural anthropology), but also as guide to how the people concerned made sense of their environment.

As a scientist, Velikovsky was fascinated by the anomalies of our solar system, and was trying to explain them.  Briefly, the ‘standard story’ of the formation of the planets is they were formed from a disc shaped cloud of dust and gas.  The planets emerged through ‘accretion’, beginning  as dust grains in orbit around the still forming sun, and gradually increased through collisions.  A well-established theory, but this ‘nebular hypothesis’ doesn’t work well with two planets, Uranus and Neptune, which appear too large for where they are seen  There’s another puzzle in the small size of Mercury. Velikovsky managed to explain all this with a theory about planets having moved in different orbits previously, but, improbably, changing them a very short time span.

Seventy years later, work continues on resolving these same puzzles.  Current theory suggests Neptune and Uranus formed in orbits near Jupiter and Saturn where more material was available, and subsequently migrated to their current positions over hundreds of millions of years.  There’s a lot more, but, as a further example, the same theory also proposes that Jupiter and Saturn had migrated inwards, before they moved to their present positions. When closer in, Jupiter absorbed much of the material that would otherwise have made Mars larger.  Some 40 years after his death, Velikovsky would have smiled, although his time scale was 8,000 years, and the timing was more like 4-4.5 bn years ago!  Was planetary migration just Velikovsky’s lucky guess?  Possibly, but we do know he studied mathematics and physics, and his views hold a kernel of truth.  The latest thinking is given in an excellent BBC series:  “In a new, groundbreaking series we’ll be telling the story of the planets as never before.  This drama is on a planetary scale … We’ll meet tragic Mars – once a vibrant water world yet destined by a twist of fate to become the barren, cold desert world we see today.  Or tyrannical Jupiter, which the latest science suggests, wandered through the early solar system using its massive size to create havoc and destruction which could have destroyed the earth.”  Why, Velikovsky couldn’t have put it better! [vii]

Too tenuous for you?  Let’s look at a real crank.  Erich von Däniken is the Swiss author of several books making claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, including his best-selling Chariots of the Gods, published in 1968.  Von Däniken didn’t look at wandering planets, but focussed on far more exciting material, such as ancient astronauts and god-like space travellers who left their landing sites marked for us to see.  He knew how to capture the attention of the gullible, and his short, readable book is crammed with ‘facts’ and intriguing illustrations.  I won’t waste space on what he says to say, it’s ‘good for a laugh’, and is probably still available in local libraries if you’d like to be amused.  As for Von Däniken himself, he was convicted and served time for fraud.  Undeterred, he later co-founded the Archaeology, Astronautics and SETI Research Association (AAS RA), and designed Mystery Park which opened in Interlaken in 2003, but collapsed three years later (the site is now the basis of the Jungfrau Park).  You can’t keep a good man down: still here, his latest book, The Gods Never Left Us, came out in 2018.

Myths and charlatans pursue a common purpose; both offer ways to help us ‘understand’ the confusing and complex world around us without relying on verified science.  In many cultures, some of the more compelling myths are the ‘trickster’ stories.  For many westerners, the trickster is one of the cards in the tarot pack.  However, tricksters appear in many North American myths, characters who are often cunning, sometimes foolish and frequently both, disrupting normal life and then usually re-establishing it in a different form. The trickster openly questions and mocks authority, breaking rules, boasting, and playing tricks on both humans and gods.

Lévi-Strauss was fascinated by the trickster in indigenous North American cultures, observing the trickster has a contradictory and unpredictable personality, and is frequently depicted as a raven or a coyote, two creatures that mediate between life and death.  I can’t summarise his analysis here, but Lévi-Strauss points out that the raven and coyote eat carrion and are therefore halfway between herbivores and carnivores: like beasts of prey, they eat meat; like herbivores, they don’t catch their food. Thus, he argues, they offer an analogy to the opposition between life and death, and provide insight into the worlds of the living and the dead. [viii]  I rather suspect Lévi-Strauss was something of a trickster himself, and possibly a myth maker about myths!

If myths are not just entertaining but in some ways explanatory, then some modern writers may also combine the fantastical with important truths.  Over-excited by the ‘evidence’ he found in religious and historical texts, Immanuel Velikovsky was written off as a crank or worse, even though we can now look back and say he did identify important issues in analysing planetary motion.  Erich von Däniken is a different kettle of fish, a straightforward huckster and a fraud.

This seems to take us to Donald Trump.  Among the myriad of lies and attacks, he has been a salesman for hydroxychloroquine, a malaria treatment he has touted and used as a protection for coronavirus, despite studies demonstrating it is no more effective than conventional care and possibly dangerous.  He also promoted ingesting bleach!  However, like the von Dänikens of this world, he doesn’t seem to care.  Not because Mr. Covfefe has unmatched intelligence, but he sees it won’t matter, either way.  If this treatment proves effective, he’ll be able to crow about his brilliance; if it doesn’t, it will disappear under the waves of new claims and assertions.  Such is the fate of charlatans and cranks: they are believed until their stories are dismissed or forgotten.

[i]  This is abbreviated from Ian Short’s version: http://ianshort.com/wilpena-pound-dreamtime-story.  Please note he acknowledges the Adnyamathanha people of the northern Flinders Ranges as the owners and custodians of the Kingfisher Dreaming and the Yurlu Ngukandanh  story, and expresses his respect for their heritage and culture.

[ii] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-04/flinders-ranges-worm-ikaria-wariootia-oldest-human-ancestor/12119120

[iii] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/find-meteorites-listen-legends-australian-aborigines-180952941/

[iv] https://time.com/44631/noah-christians-flood-aronofsky/

[v] London, Gollancz, 1950.  I have the Abacus Edition from 1972.

[vi] http://defendgaia.org/bobk/velidelu.html

[vii] https://www.bbcearth.com/theplanets/

[viii] Structural Anthropology, Basic Books, 1963, page 224

T is for Trump

With so many articles about Trump, is there anything I can add?  We know he’s childish, self-centred, a narcissist, constantly seeking love and reassurance .  He says whatever he believes people want to hear, changing stories as he speaks to adoring crowds, to business leaders, or to the special interest groups that funded his 2016 election, and whom he’ll need again in 2020.  Unashamedly, he flaunts his ignorance, commenting on science, technology, economics, inter-national affairs, or any other topic where his ‘unmatched brilliance’ is brought to bear.  A bully who browbeats those who disagree with him, a hormonal adolescent, boasting about ‘grabbing pussy’ or ‘putting a babe’ in the White House.[i] George Packer’s recent article nails him.[ii]

All bullies fear being displaced, and so they denigrate, constantly attacking while inciting their followers.  All it takes is to make one mistake, even better a retraction, and the bully has you:  Senator Warren will never escape ‘Pocahontas’, Hillary Clinton her ‘illegal’ use of emails (“lock her up”).  But Trump isn’t just a nasty, vindictive bully; he’s obsessed with fame and fortune.  He wants to obliterate any suggestion he was elected by a minority, denying the popular vote (there were ‘millions’ of illegal voters), inflating attendance at his inauguration, and constantly harping on the ‘dishonesty’ of those out to thwart him.  In relation to his legacy, he wants to be the most successful president ever, and measures this in economic and business terms.  He wants to be up there with the Bill Gates of this world.  The slippery pole of fame and fortune:  he’s failed in business more than once before; now he needs the popular masses to help push him up.

His technique is simple: talk and tweet, stay relentlessly in the public eye.  Commentators keep analysing how he changes his mind, contradicts himself, and brazenly lies.  Believing honesty and transparency matter, they miss the point.  In an instant news world, Trump knows he has to be the news, and yesterday’s news is old news, forgotten, irrelevant.  The term ‘fake news’ was a masterstroke: other news is suspect, only Trump knows what’s going on, tweeting without a care and unconcerned about consistency or truth because ‘in the now’ such criteria are irrelevant.  Contradictory positions are good; one will turn out to be right!  Be in the limelight, push anyone else into the shadows, Trump loved his Covid-19 briefings (until they revealed his stupidity!).

However, rather than repeating what we all know, I have been trying to stand back, and look at Trump from a broader perspective.  As I have tried to make sense of events, I was helped by listening to a podcast series, (for the first time ever!).  It was on The History of Rome.  The underlying story was quite gripping, as in the early years Rome slowly put in place a complex, clever and effective democratic system.  Let me rephrase that:  Rome was a republic rather than a true democracy, an oligarchy, and for many years only land-owning patricians were able to elect representatives to various offices.  What made it ingenious was the requirement that most offices had strict terms; once elected, you could not be elected again.  For the time, it was brilliant; but then things began to change.  First the plebeians (male non-landowning Romans) were allowed to vote and to stand for office.  Candidates began to rely on offering a populist platform.  This change took place as Rome’s empire grew rapidly, increasing the wealth of the already rich.  Inevitably, many of these affluent people also wanted power.  Some gained prestige through military conquests, others were engaged in political maneuvering.  Step by step, the structures of the republic were disassembled.  Rome became a kingdom, then an empire. Eventually, emperors were chosen from family members, god-like dictators chosen on their bloodlines.

The podcast tells the story well, and it has had a rather salutary effect.  Is this the end of every republic, every democracy?  Is the desire for power inevitable, destroying more representative systems, leading to power grabs by the few, or even one person?  In Rome’s story, Julius Caesar was the individual who crossed the crucial watershed.  Before Caesar, the republic lingered on.  After Caesar, the dictatorships took over.  The more I heard, the more I understood Caesar as a complex man:  a brilliant administrator; an outstanding tactician in war (with some luck to help him), fiercely loyal to his troops and to the general population; magnanimous in victory, even to those he defeated.  A rule breaker who did seek respect, position, and power, but it was as much the machinations of the Roman Senate as his own desires that led him to grab absolute rule.

Hearing about the slow collapse of the Roman republic provides a good backdrop against which to examine events in the US over the last three years.  As in Julius Caesar’s time, are we at a crossing point?  The system of checks and balances that has sustained America’s democracy is falling apart, some elements deliberately smashed, and others eroding, step by step.  However, as in Rome, there’s been a long period of change culminating in the current massively restructured political system.  This process began long before Trump: he’s a Nero, certainly not a Caesar.

Looking back over the last few decades, one early step in the US decline took place with Richard Nixon.  Although conservative, Nixon was in office at the end of the 1960s, a time of student sit-ins and revolutionary thinking.  A wily man, taking credit for initiatives like the Environmental Protection Agency while reassuring the Republicans that, without this step, the Democratic Congress would have forced an even more liberal environmental legislation on him.  Sneaky!

In six years in the White House, however, his real impact was external, reshaping the US international role, fundamentally changing military, diplomatic, and political activities.  Before his presidency, American foreign policy had been marked by large-scale military interventions; in the two decades after, direct military intervention was by and large replaced with aid (sometimes covert, sometimes not) and military support.  His diplomatic  triumphs were the nuclear arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and the diplomatic opening to China, setting the stage for the arms reduction pacts and careful diplomacy that would bring an end to the Cold War. A slow withdrawal from Vietnam appeared to be a practical application of this ‘Nixon Doctrine’, but his secretly recorded White House tapes reveal he expected South Vietnam to collapse after the American troops came home.  He prolonged the war to help his reelection in 1972.  Like the bold generals of the Roman era, he saw winning major battles as consolidating his power.  It was those same tapes that ended Nixon’s presidency, revealing the lies and cynical political calculations hidden behind public decisions. Nixon’s presidency was an object lesson in the difference between image and reality, a lesson we apparently need to learn and learn again.

As with Rome, once the decline began, it’s continuation appeared inevitable.  The next and most consequential steps came with Ronald Reagan, implementing the conservative playbook from 1980 to 1988.  He promoted the importance of “trickle-down economics”, supported the private sector through tax reform, and shifted responsibility from government services to a user-pays approach, based on selling America as the embodiment of self-reliance, patriotism and family values.  He packed the judiciary with conservative judges to further this agenda.  If this sounds familiar, it is Trump’s agenda, too, with the added twist  of racism, sexism, and a pathetic longing to be admitted to the ‘really rich’ club – the people who don’t gather at Mar-a-Lago!

Does Rome’s decline give a perspective on where are we now?  Then and now, communication is critical; appealing to the ‘masses’ is a potent way to advance your agenda.  You need the support of the ignorant, uninformed and badly educated.  In that regard, Trump has shown his mastery.  It is the medium that matters, not the message (or, as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the massage [iii]).  Probably intuitively, Trump has grasped that in the 21^st Century what matters is immediacy and personalization:  with Twitter, his views appear on your smartphone instantly, and so does the next and the next.  The content is secondary.  What counts is the fact of the tweet, then the use of capitals and exclamation marks, and only as a last resort the actual content.  Worried about covid-19?  Don’t be, it will be over soon, it’s no big deal, let’s get back to work.  What really matters is the never-ending stream of messages: the president is constantly in touch.  Trump ensures he drowns out any others; from your point of view, you are getting stuff ‘from the top’.  He isn’t speaking to the masses; he is in personal contact, from him to you.

Leaving on one side his claims to extra-ordinary intelligence, Trump is smart, street smart if you like.  He is smart at two levels.  First, by constantly reiterating that ‘he knows’ about things, you become reassured:  yes, he knows.  At the same time, he has learnt to sound authoritative, neatly getting in the last word if another person at the podium says something with which he disagrees.  He has cottoned on to the power of musing: “well, you know, I think this might turn out to be the thing to do” or, “I sure this will be the answer, I know I’m right”.  Combining his clever ‘thoughts’, with which it is hard to disagree or contradict, with assertions of personal brilliance and authoritative sounding statements, he becomes thereliable source.  Yes, Trump knows. [iv]

You’ll recall a few weeks ago, Trump was explaining that the problem would be over by Easter of 2020.  Was he talking about the coronavirus problem?  Of course not.  He was explaining that we could all go back to work.  In doing so, he was addressing a problem at two levels.  First, it was Trump’s own problem, as he wanted to be seen as the architect of America’s economic growth:  people had to be back working.  But it was also everyone else’s problem:  they needed to be working to be paid.  If we stop worrying, start back at our jobs, we’ll all be fine.  However, it would be misleading to keep focussing on Trump to explain him: he’s a symptom as much as a cause.  To see this, we need to assess him in the context of that series of political, economic and social changes unfolding from a conservative agenda which took hold and grew 50 years ago.

The first of these, the economic changes, have two aspects, long-term and short-term.  Over the centuries, the capitalist free market system has become fundamentally unstable.  It rests on the need for continual growth.  Investors put money into a company in order to obtain a return, two returns in fact.  First, they want to receive a dividend, the ‘interest’ they are paid as a result of holding equity.  Second, they want the value of their ‘stake’ to keep increasing, and to do so at a higher rate than inflation, which otherwise reduces the value of their savings.  To meet these expectations and keep their support, businesses have to keep growing, they have to create value.

In this strange world of terms with special meanings, ‘creating value’ means extracting more income from customers, who are attracted by the value proposition the business offers.  Whoa, what does that mean?  Again, in the simplest terms, it means a customer is encouraged to buy more, or more customers are encouraged to buy, because they believe there is value on offer for their money.  We buy a new iPhone because it offers more value than the one you had last year:  that added value sits in a brighter screen with better colour reproduction, more ‘apps’ to allow you to carry out tasks, a smarter camera, and so it goes on.  In other words, the capitalist system grows because customers are willing to acquire ‘more’, in quantity or quality, or for other reasons like ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ (or the Kardashians!).  But unless the capitalist system can continue to develop new kinds of goods, the desire for more is not unlimited.

That would be enough of a problem were it not for  another.  In recent decades, businesses, shareholders and senior executives have become greedy.  They don’t just want more, they want ‘lots’!  Sitting on top of an inherently unsustainable capitalist system, income distortions are growing.  Like some kind of unstoppable disease, the more the rich have, the more they want.  In order to increase their wealth, they have to ensure the system is biased in their favour in relation to taxation, regulation, barriers and subsidies, deals and ‘sweeteners’.  Inevitably, that pushes a country towards an oligopoly, and in an oligopoly, you need to ensure the key players have the ‘right’ approach.  You bribe elected representatives, or offer them future board directorships.  In this, Trump is the perfect patsy, easily led as he longs to be as rich as those he admires today.

These economic challenges are interwoven with political issues.  Today, the US is an oligarchy.  Free market capitalism requires a ‘well-ordered government’.  Trump, often without realising the extent of his actions, is happy to threaten members of Congress failing to follow expectations:  a quiet word from an economic adviser, a public criticism from Fox News, and Trump is there to carry out the task.  We are encouraged to think he alone decides who is in or out.  Sometimes he is threated personally, but more often he is gently led to see where a problem exists.

Both political and economic changes require a complaisant public, the third issue we are facing today.  If  21^st Century America is characterised by an oligopoly and an oligarchy, then only democratic aspirations stand in the way.  Get rid of that, and all will be fine.  It isn’t hard to ruin  democracy.  Make the educational system a training system, fitting people for work, not for exercising their rights.  Reduce wages so that most people are on the margin, scared to disagree, worried for their future.  Frighten people with the threat of terrorists, rapists and murderers swarming into the US from other countries.  Dismantle the checks and balances in the political system.  Fill the legal system with ‘friends’ who will support decisions to tear down or eliminate what was in place.  Ensure Senators and Congressmen and Congresswomen are beholden to business.  Elect a President who is driven by envy, and a desire for adulation and wealth.

Just a minute, that’s exactly where we are today.  Trump is a bombastic, credulous and self-absorbed man who is the ideal and inevitable outcome of the system has been developing over the past 50 years.  Easily led, and unable to understand the consequences of what is happening, he is our Nero, tweeting while America burns.  Ideal, because the more he babbles on, so the real work can go on uninterrupted behind the scenes.  Offering a flimsy yet successful cover-up, Trump is our symbol for today, the thoughtless harbinger of America’s final decline and fall.

[i] That mission accomplished, we now see his wife is left there as a rather pale, melancholy shadow.

[ii] See https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/

[iii] Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, Penguin 1967.  The title was a misprint, but McLuhan quickly saw it made his point even more forcefully, the medium was the message because it ‘massaged’ our perception

[iv] E.g. Trump Now Claims He Always Knew the Coronavirus Would be a Pandemic, NYTimes, March 17, 2020

R is for Rawls

Over the last 30 years, I have been in discussions of one kind or another exploring the ideas of leading thinkers.  For some I have chosen passages from a key text, a selection which I think, or at least hope, will capture the essence of the author’s views.  From early on, one of these readings was from John Rawls, a 20^th Century philosopher who offers a compelling basis for liberalism, and provides the natural conclusion to John Stuart Mill’s classic work On Liberty.

Rawls believed the basis of justice was fairness, and developed two principles of justice which I would use as the focus for discussion.  However, in starting I would first explore Rawls’ methodology, the thought experiment he called ‘the original position’.  The original position imagined a group being brought together to agree on what kind of society, politically and economically, they would want to inhabit.  The group would participate behind a “veil of ignorance”, meaning each person would be unaware of his or her gender, race, age, intelligence, wealth, skills, education and religion, but would have two basic abilities;  first “to form, pursue, and revise a conception of the good, or life plan. Exactly what sort of conception of the good this is, however, the individual does not yet know … [and second,] each individual understands him or herself to have the capacity to develop a sense of justice and a generally effective desire to abide by it. Knowing only these two features of themselves, the group will deliberate in order to design a social structure, during which each person will seek his or her maximal advantage.”

I am sure you can see the importance of the veil of ignorance.  Proposals that would be obviously unjust would not be advanced or supported.  Why not?  Because you wouldn’t suggest limiting the franchise to men, for example, because you would not know if you were a man or a woman, and wouldn’t want to be excluded!  Rawls called this the ‘difference principle’, according to which, in a system of ignorance about one’s status, you would strive to improve the position of the worst off, since you might find yourself in just such a disadvantaged situation.

With the original position as the basis for his thought experiment, Rawls concluded two principles were central to justice:

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. [i]

It all seems so simple, yet over the years, these have turned out to be rather complicated, far from easy to understand and debate, and I’m still uncertain I have got them clear.

The original position and the veil of ignorance are ingenious.  Rawls doesn’t assume we are in agreement over the importance of justice as fairness.  Indeed, his thought experiment proceeds on the basis each participants is seeking advantage.  However, under the veil (such a lovely image in today’s world!), we might well propose a ‘fair’ world, given the possibility we might be in the worst of circumstances when the veil is removed.  As a result, he concludes ‘fairness’ is quickly translated into ‘equality’.  To be fairly treated we should all have ‘equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties’, the same scheme for everyone.  The second part of this first principle adds: ‘equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value’?  What does this mean?  His ‘equal basic liberties’ turn out to be freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, political liberties and freedom of association, freedoms integral to the liberty and integrity of the person, and the rights and liberties covered by the rule of law. [ii]  If that sounds like Mill, Rawls acknowledges the importance of Mill in his thinking.

However, ‘fair value’ is the key.  Rawls sees political liberties as a ‘family’, and no one of them can be given precedence over another.  To explain this, we can use his example of the funding of political speech.  In this situation, public funding alongside other contributions with limits on amounts, and other regulations would be appropriate, but subject to three conditions.  First, there are no restrictions on content of speech (freedom of expression is one of the other freedoms in Rawls family of political liberties).  Second, arrangements must not impose undue burdens on political groups (in other words, large contributions by individuals or corporations should be prohibited, so as not to disadvantage other groups which are equally important and relevant, but without access to such funds).  Finally, regulations on free speech should ensure the fair value of the other political liberties, which in effect, means the least regulation possible.  He accepts that fair value may mean these liberties have to be limited in some ways to ensure the others in this family are not unduly restricted.  You’ll recall the Supreme Court’s decision over political funding in the Citizens United case ignored fair value, interpreting the free speech clause in the first amendment to mean the government was prohibited from restricting expenditure on political communications by corporations, unions and other associations, (with the convenient excuse organisations are ‘natural persons’ in law). [iii]  Once again, big business can do what it likes!

Abandoning the logic of Rawls’ first principle is not just an American problem.  As I was re-reading Rawls, up popped my daily update from Australia, The Briefing.  It contained a couple of disturbing stories.  The first was an article concerning the likelihood of a right-wing terrorists attack in order to ‘accelerate the race war’.  A report by ASIO noted “the far-right movement in Australia has evolved from “loose, fragmented networks” to “highly structured, security aware, and strictly vetted groups, largely consisting of white males”. In the next 12 months these groups are likely to splinter, the report noted, adding: “We are concerned that splinter groups are likely to be more extreme than their predecessors.” The document says an extreme right-wing attack is “plausible” in Australian in the next 12-18 months.” [iv]  How can situations like this arise?  Just as is the case in America, allowing unrestricted freedom of expression to the exclusion of the other liberties Rawls identified provides space for extremists to flourish and freely promulgate their racist views.  If we are to recognise the family of liberties we uphold and their fair value, such behaviour would be unacceptable in the eyes of law (let alone the broader society).

The second was an update on a continuing scandal in which the government, prior to the recent general election, had carefully doled out grants to key marginal electorates, rather than to the list of recipients that had been initially drawn up by the relevant government department.  I have to quote the comment: “We were told all the grants signed off by the then sports minister, Bridget McKenzie, were eligible – until they weren’t. The government followed the caretaker convention – until it didn’t.  The PM’s office was never directly involved in the decision-making process – until it was.  This was all shown conclusively in evidence given in Senate Estimates.  But the prime minister is utterly unconcerned: he has his story and he is sticking to it … The pork has been delivered; now for the porky pies.” [v]  There are regulations in place to support democracy, but it seems they can be ignored, bypassed or overturned.  The Australian prime minister is said to be a friend of Donald Trump.  Whether or not that is true, the pair excel in similarly thwarting democratic processes, while happily lying, obfuscating and trampling on liberties.

Rawls first principle reads like an historical artifact right now.  Rather than focussing on justice as fairness, when Australia’s prime minister needed a distraction from uncomfortable issues he copied Donald Trump’s approach, making good use of the coronavirus situation: “By Thursday of last week, Scott Morrison was a politician sorely in need of a diversion”, under pressure over the economy, the disappearing budget surplus, the slow pace of relief funding following the bushfires and “the corrupted process by which they had disbursed $100 million in sports grants.  So, come 3.45pm, after the last bruising question time of the week, Australia’s leader took himself before the assembled media in the prime minister’s courtyard and endeavoured to show that the government was on top of the biggest issue of the moment – coronavirus”.  Deflection time, and here was the perfect opportunity.  “we need to take the steps necessary to prepare for such a pandemic.” Resolute and determined, “even though Australia was ahead of the game at this point”, Morrison said, “it was now necessary to elevate our response to this next phase”, such elevation possibly involving quite draconian measures.  He was “projecting resolution and decisiveness, referring to deliberations of the national security committee of cabinet, presenting as a man in charge of events.” [vi]  Misleading and late, but to be fair, he has come good since then.

However, it was a mirror image of events in the US.  We need to take steps to prepare for such a pandemic?  Years ago, I ran programs for senior emergency staff (police, ambulance, fire, etc.), using simulations.  One was on the basis of a major international pandemic.  Then, preparedness was part of these peoples’ working lives.  With governments consumed by a desire to be re-elected at any cost and an obsession with helping big business make even bigger profits, such planning slipped into the background, funding reduced, key personnel moved on.  Ahead of the game?  On top of the issue?  Prepared?  Like Trump, SocMo was seeking to consolidate his image, claiming to quickly put in place measures that should have been there, and had been before the government started cutting back, throwing plans for the future out of the window.

It is time to return to Rawls, and his second principle.  It’s has two aspects.  First, such social and economic inequalities as exist should be attached to positions and offices open to everyone on equal grounds, i.e. equality of opportunity.  The sting is in the second part: those social and economic inequalities are to “be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society”.  Once more, the meaning needs unpacking.  Some examples are easy.  Expenditure on compulsory education should be designed to ensure provisions are weighted towards lifting the skills and understanding of disadvantaged students.  Equally, voting locations should be chosen to increase accessibility to those suffering from mobility or other handicaps.  But what about salaries?  Here Rawls seems to leave this to the workings of a free, informed market:  we know that makes sense in an ideal world, but philosophical ideals may not mirror the way things are.

Even in Rawl’s imagined first position, he acknowledged that, in the real world (what a phrase), we are not motivated by a sense of justice as fairness, but by our own self-interest.  Clearly, we see evidence of this all the time, which suggests Rawl’s in principle model might be undermined by practice, an academic exercise at best.  Even worse, the suggestion “positions and offices [be] open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity” offers a possibility that looks like a mirage:  the market operates in a way far from this ideal.   Manipulated markets and self-interest seem likely to undermine any egalitarian system proposed under the veil of ignorance.  Over the years I have come to accept that Rawls is an idealist, conjuring up a basis for the way the world should be that makes great sense, but one which is clearly impractical.  It hasn’t changed my fascination with his work, nor my agreement that this is the way we ought to live.

In these dark times, I have to end with humour.  Recently Trump accused Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg of anti-Trump bias, saying they should stay out of cases involving him.  His comments followed Sotomayor’s scathing dissent in the court’s decision to allow the administration to enforce its “public charge” immigration rule in Illinois, yet another example of the Trump administration’s improper practice of skipping federal appeals courts to bring cases directly in front of the justices.  Also, he was still smarting over Ginsburg calling him a “faker” in 2016, (she later apologized).  “I just don’t know how they cannot recuse themselves to anything having to do with Trump or Trump related,” the president said. [vii]

The perfect response came in the humorous but biting Borowitz Report.  “Asserting that his personal interests put him in direct conflict with the interests of the United States of America, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has demanded that Donald Trump recuse himself from all decisions involving the future of the U.S.  Ginsburg said that Trump’s oft-stated allegiance to himself makes it impossible for him to render unbiased decisions on issues affecting people other than himself … Ginsburg enumerated a list of issues about which Trump should immediately recuse himself, including immigration, trade, taxes, the social safety net, women’s reproductive rights, health care, the economy, the military, the environment, “and any other issues related to domestic or foreign policy not listed above.” Ginsburg stressed, however, that, even after recusing himself from those matters, Trump would still be allowed to weigh in on other important decisions, like “what to eat and which channel to watch.”” [viii]  Seems fair!!

Rawls died 18 years ago.  He comes across as a somewhat private and withdrawn figure, not fond of public speaking, almost a parody of the academic Harvard philosopher.  Perhaps it is fortunate he didn’t live to see the USA ignoring every element of his views on justice and fairness, nor witness the self-interested, petulant and extreme behaviour of Trump.  Would Rawls be angry and disheartened?  Certainly.  However, I can imagine that he, like me, would have found momentary relief in reading Andy Borowitz.   As for justice, we can only hope.

[i] This is the version from his later work, as there are two changes from his original statement: The first principle reads “equal claim” instead of “equal right”, and “system of basic liberties” is replaced with “a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties”. The two parts of the second principle are also switched.

[ii] John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, 1993, page 291

[iii] Supreme Court: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)

[iv] https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2020/03/11/. Yes, I am putting a limit on freedom of speech

[v] Ibid.  To clarify: the Australian caretaker convention is that no major decisions are to be implemented between calling an election, and the appointment of the government after the election.  I guess redirecting money from the $100m sports grants program is major!  Porky pies Are, of course, lies.

[vi] Ibid.  Incidentally, ScoMo is the Aussie shortening of Scott Morrison.

[vii] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/trump-calls-on-supreme-courts-sotomayor-and-ginsburg-to-recuse.html

[viii] https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/ruth-bader-ginsburg-says-trump-should-recuse-himself-from-all-decisions-involving-the-future-of-the-country

N is for Novak

I can’t recall when I first came across Michael Novak’s work, but I clearly remember buying a copy of Business as a Calling while attending an Aspen Institute seminar.  At the time I was taken by the subtitle, ‘work and the examined life’, as the seminar readings included Plato and reference to grumpy old Socrates’ assertion that an unexamined life wasn’t worth living!

Checking the book cover, the blurb revealed he had been awarded the Templeton Prize in 1994.  I wasn’t surprised.  Novak had made it clear he was a Catholic and a Republican, and had been a lifelong proponent of the central place for religious faith in business.  Perhaps less well-known than the Nobel Prizes, this annual award is given to someone who has made an “exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”. [i]  A successful investor, Templeton was a supporter of management studies, establishing Templeton College at the University of Oxford, (today Green Templeton College). [ii]

At its inception, the Templeton Prize was awarded to people working in the field of religion.  It was first given in 1972 to Mother Teresa.  Other recipients include Billy Graham, Inamullah Kahn (former Secretary General of the Modem World Muslim Congress), Immanuel Jakobovits (former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth), and in 2012 the 14^th Dalai Lama.  However, in the last 20 years, awardees have come increasingly from theoretical physics, and, to a lesser extent, philosophy, but only to the extent these recipients had also shown at least a clear sympathy to spiritual beliefs.  Incidentally, there is another distinctive characteristic of this prize:  its value is always kept above that of the Nobel Prize (it’s currently around £1.1m).

Physicists contributing to “life’s spiritual dimension” might seem odd at first glance, but many work close to the borderline between the explicable and the inexplicable.  Paul Davies, awarded the prize in 1995, offers a helpful example. A leading physicist, he had a particular interest in cosmology, and astrobiology. [iii]  Astrobiology is concerned with three critical questions: How does life begin and evolve? Is there life beyond Earth and, if so, how can we detect it? What is the future of life on Earth and in the universe?  Davies was interested in the ‘Goldilocks Paradox’, that the existence of life depends on the value of several key constants found in the laws of physics. [iv]   Changing any one of these, even slightly, would mean the universe would become sterile, and uninhabitable: that’s much worse than finding porridge too hot!

Davies once said, “I do take life, mind and purpose seriously and I concede the universe at least appears [to be established] with a high level of ingenuity.” [v]  Ingenuity?  Clever design?  In contrast, Davies is less enthusiastic about multiverses: the theory innumerable universes exist, each with different key constants, a theory which eliminates any suggestion of clever design.  As you can imagine and despite his careful wording, Davies got into hot water with many other scientists.  One of his colleagues at Arizona State, the theoretical physicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss, was quoted as saying Davies is “more than happy to jump into an area that he otherwise doesn’t have background in”. Doing this can leave you vulnerable to negative criticism, but Krauss believes there is nothing wrong with that. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul is completely wrong in a number of things, but asking questions provokes new lines of inquiry.” [vi]  Perhaps it’s just that Davies likes to speculate out loud.  Other winners are more forthrightly religious, like Michael Novak, who had been awarded the Templeton Prize the year before Paul Davies.

When he wrote his essay, Michael Novak held the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, usually referred to as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Although it claims a non-partisan approach, AEI is a major neo-conservatism forum.  Members have included such stellar figures as John Bolton, Robert Bork, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Irving Kristol, and Antonin Scalia.  Before I’m accused of cherry-picking its membership, some others are Aayan Hirsi Ali, David Gergen and Seymour Martin Lipset.  However, the great majority are conservatives, or neo-conservatives, and, rather like The Economist, you know where AEI’s sympathies belong.

Business as a Calling examines what it meant to be a spiritual and moral person in business. [vii]   Starting from the observation that most religious people work in business (is that true?), Novak claimed that business should be moral, and that the existence of some ‘sinners’ was not a reason to discount the reality of business as a moral endeavour.  He went on to advocate the approach set out by Milton Freidman and colleagues at the Chicago School of Economics, which claims business is unbiased, gives opportunities for the poor, meets everyone’s needs, and promotes community, personal and economic liberty, supports creativity, and is practical, realistic and enjoyable.  Really?  I can only add ‘I wonder what they’ve been smoking?’

Much of that ideological nonsense has long been set aside.  However, Business as a Calling does address some key issues.  Despite its more extraordinary claims about business and society, the link between business and morality is important.  There are two strands to this.  The first is about the place of morality.  On that topic, it is hard to disagree: business, like any other human endeavour, should strive to be moral in every respect.  It’s a challenging expectation, given most believe the dominant measure of business success is profits, and performance is measured in financial terms.  It is easy to see why people go astray.  A CEO will believe his or her task is to maximise profits, and some seek to do so in any way possible.  If it involves ‘sharp practice’, a nice euphemism for lying and cheating, so “that’s the way it is”.  A manager seeking to avoid blame for a mistake may offload the failure to another’s activities, denying responsibility. An office worker might make false expenses claims. A shop floor worker on low wages might quietly steal raw materials for personal use, or to sell them around the back of the bar at night.

In every case, Novak argues, those behaving in this way will know their actions were wrong, although not all will describe them as ‘immoral’, a rather uncomfortable word to use.  I suspect that most people, even if it is only in the moments before facing discovery, do think about the morality of their behaviour: an examined life is not the sole province of philosophers.  Novak was right when he pointed out that there are moral standards.  He was a little slippery with what characterises what is moral, however.  In one example, he discussed “stratospheric executive compensation”.  He accepted the familiar argument that the skills needed to be a CEO are in short supply, and adopts the “what the market will bear” perspective.  Quite apart from the way in which the executive salary game is rigged, the approach presumes those chosen do have exceptional skills, and, as we see time after time, most don’t.  Even those who are highly skilled often have a rather limited time to use their skills.  Comparing business leaders to entertainment and sports stars, Novak wondered why the market pays them so much, and business leaders less.  For some reason, he failed to ask about the morality of markets, especially those, like these two examples, that are easily manipulated.  Surely he knew free markets are rare, and in practice most markets operate with imperfect information and asymmetrical relationships?  [viii]

The second strand in Novak’s book concerns the basis for morality: if  we should strive to be moral, from where do these principles originate?  Novak proposes we have an awareness, a spiritual insight, into moral principles, and religion is the system of beliefs that underpins the way we should live.  This is a tricky argument.  His book suggests the moral principles that mattered are to be found in the Christian religion, drawing on biblical quotes, papal statements, and the works of scholars on the protestant ethic and similar issues.  He briefly references Islam (which has many overlaps with Christian religion, of course), but not Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, or any other major non-Christian sources on morality.  Is this a surprise?  It might have been an omission, but the ethics advocated in these other religions happen to be those that are less clearly related to the practices of business and wealth generation.

Business as a Calling is a thoughtful book.  It offers good arguments for the place of morality in business.  It nudges the reader to ask how far practice is failing communities, failing to do good, and failing to make a better society, asserting spiritual and business practices can be compatible.  Although he never says so directly, he implies business or government employees should be a religious, and you know this means practicing Christians. Christianity as a recruitment device?  He went further, adding corporations could be a “wedge of liberty into closed societies” since they are “in themselves embodiments of practices of human rights”. [ix]  The thin end of a wedge?

The thin end of the wedge reminded me of the ‘Principle of the Wedge’, which has a very different connotation.  Published over a 100 years ago, Francis Cornford’s Microcosmographia Academica is a guide for the young academic politician. [x]  His views were clear, “If you are young, do not read this book; it is not fit for you; If you are old, throw it away; you have nothing to learn from it; If you are unambitious, light the fire with it; you do not need its guidance.  But, if you are neither less than twenty-five years old, nor more than thirty;  And if you are ambitious withal, and your spirit hankers after academic politics; Read, and may your soul (if you have a soul) find mercy!”  As is often the case, humour is a nice way to convey important truths:

“The Principle of the Wedge is that you should not act justly now for fear of raising expectations that you may act still more justly in the future — expectations which you are afraid you will not have the courage to satisfy. A little reflection will make it evident that the Wedge argument implies the admission that the persons who use it cannot prove that the action is not just. If they could, that would be the sole and sufficient reason for not doing it, and this argument would be superfluous.” and “The Principle of the Dangerous Precedent is that you should not now do an admittedly right action for fear you, or your equally timid successors, should not have the courage to do right in some future case, which, ex hypothesi, is essentially different, but superficially resembles the present one. Every public action which is not customary, either is wrong, or, if it is right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time.” [xi]

Older academics saw wedges and precedents as dangerous, to be avoided to keep the status quo.  It’s possible Michael Novak had never read Cornford’s good advice. For sure, tying religion to business, he established a dangerous precedent.  Today, in both the USA and Australia, the rigorous separation between church and state is crumbling, with alarming consequences.

One example, published just three years after Novak’s book, is David Marr’s The High Price of Heaven on “the enemies of pleasure and freedom”, offering a chilling example of how religion had invaded the Australian scene. [xii]  For years, major companies allowed informal meetings of Catholics to discuss issues of concern.  They were, I think, personal and probably had little impact, but today, this has become more serious.[xiii]  In his case, David Marr was focussed on politics, uncovering how religious extremists influenced policies on sexual preferences, stopped legislation to support diversity or indigenous rights, rolled back abortion, banned homosexuality, and pursued a fundamentalist Christian agenda, all to “save society”.  A high price, for sure.

Sounds familiar?  Yes.  In the US today, we have  Donald Trump, defender of gun ownership and destroyer of democracy, seemingly determined to enable the Christian right agenda on issues ranging women’s rights to racial miscegeny.  In his case, I doubt this comes from deeply held personal beliefs, but rather because the religious right is deeply embedded in his administration, a key source of support at rallies and elections.  This reactionary Christian wedge is being used to turn back change, pushing, manipulating and influencing government in a planned long-term agenda.  Trump doesn’t appear to think much about religion, but is happily erasing the separation of church and state to garner adulation and votes, serving a recalcitrant cause with little thought.

And what does this sorry saga illuminate.?  That, once again, conservatives play for the long game, while progressives think that an appeal to justice, fairness and logic will always win.  This is how politics is pursued, in government and in the boardroom.  As Cornford wrote, reactionary politicians in the university understood it well:  stop any new ideas, stay in control.  Conservative patriarchal leaders take the discussions in well-meaning but mistaken books like Business is a Calling, and use them to steadily advance their program.  New thinking and radical ideas have to be stopped.  Step by step, they are determined to restore their traditional dominance, stamping on the thin end of a dangerous progressive wedge.  Recruiting right wing Christians to their cause, spouting literal readings of the bible and any other texts that help their agenda, these backward looking dinosaurs are working hard to keep people in their place, controlling education, law, the workforce, the home, women and the disadvantaged, while stuffing the courts with like-minded thinkers: it’s politics as war, and the conservatives are winning.  Oh Michael, what would you say if you could see where the perversion of religious beliefs has taken us today?

[i] As usual, Wikipedia outlines key information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Prize

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton

[iii] https://web.archive.org/web/20081011192341/http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/about-astrobiology/

[iv] Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma, Allen Lane, 2006:  see pages 153-171 in particular

[v] Ibid, page 302

[vi] https://www.ft.com/content/f2479d9a-4cc5-11e3-958f-00144feabdc0

[vii] Free Press, 1996

[viii] These being the opposite of what Friedman suggested characterised a market.  See Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Markets, page 14, Univ. of Chicago Press (I am using the 2002 Edition – pages are same in other editions).

[ix] Op Cit, page 162, with the author’s own emphasis

[x] Published in 1908 by Bowes and Bowes, the Cambridge publishing house and bookseller.

[xi] Ibid, page 9

[xii] Famous for his biographies of Patrick White and Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick, Marr is a trenchant progressive critic.  The High Price of Heaven was published by Allen and Unwin, 1999.

[xiii] Does God Belong in The Boardroom? 1,800 CEOs Say Yes, Jerry Bowyer, Forbes, 12 August 2016

Lying

Most of the time I manage to avoid paying much attention to Donald Trump, but sometimes I can’t ignore a story, especially if it is quite simply extraordinary.  Last month, three reporters wrote an article for the Washington Post about his constant stream of false or misleading claims.  The numbers were incredible:  I hope you’ll forgive this extensive quote from their piece:

In 2017, President Trump made nearly 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added another 5,689, for a total of 7,688.  Now, with a few weeks still left in 2019, the president already has more than doubled the total number of false or misleading claims in just a single year.  As of Dec. 10, his 1,055th day in office, Trump had made 15,413 false or misleading claims, according to [the Post’s] Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of more than 32 claims a day since our last update 62 days ago.  In fact, October and November [of 2019] rank as the second- and third-biggest months for Trumpian claims … A key reason for this year’s jump: The uproar over Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25 – in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival – and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. Nearly 600 of the false or misleading claims made by the president in the past two months relate just to the Ukraine investigation.  The president apparently believes he can weather an impeachment trial through sheer repetition of easily disproven falsehoods.[i]

Once I got over the shock of their story, I thought lying deserved a comment.  Clearly, there are several issues here.  First, given the complexities of the topics they address, isn’t it inevitable and even necessary that politicians lie some of the time?  Not just politicians, other people too, often for good reasons?  Second, in case lying concerns you, surely we can be reassured it is possible and relatively easy to find what is true through services like Fact Checker?  Anyway, many statements are so often patently untrue, the only challenge is in finding the truth if it is important to do so.  Ah, but isn’t that what Trump wants?  A deluge of dishonest tweets, and soon it flows past without our attending to what is being said, let alone taking time to refute the lies.

Before we start, we might need to agree on the use of some key terms.  Lying is stating something as a fact when knowing what is said is untrue.  In the Washington Post report, false claims are lies.  Misleading is more devious.  It refers to being deceptive by saying something which may not be a lie, but which deliberately shifts our understanding or views so that we miss the critical issue within what took place or happened.  Today we can add fake news to this list, a neologism which seems to have several meanings.  In some cases, it means the news story is not new but old (and given that, by implication it ought to be discounted); in some other cases it means lying or at least misleading; and in some cases it means irrelevant, off the point, to be ignored.  I am certain you have picked up some additional nuances, too.

There are times when not telling the truth or misleading is necessary.  I am on the board of a therapeutics company, seeking to develop a treatment for cocaine addiction.  If we are successful in laboratory testing our potential drug, the process will move on to clinical trials, and Stage 3 drug testing almost inevitably involves deception.  This is the point at which a drug is given to a large number of people, most often using the ‘double blind’ approach.  In a typical review, this means while everyone is administered a dose, half are not receiving the drug, but a placebo (or sometimes an alternative and already tested treatment).  This approach helps discriminate between the effects of expectations (I am taking a drug so I will get better) as opposed to any real therapeutic benefit.  In other words, the trial rests on not telling the truth.

Defenders of the ethics of this necessary approach explain that no-one is being misled.  Every participant in the trial knows they are equally likely to get the trial drug or the alternative.  If the trial drug proves successful, those in the trial who didn’t received it may have the opportunity to take the effective treatment later.  But an equal chance is not the same as an equal outcome.  Those who receive the real drug may well benefit, those without will not.  This is a tricky topic, as I well know from chairing a Human Research Ethics Committee for a major Australian cancer hospital (in the US the equivalent body is called an Institutional Review Board).  The issues are even trickier when a trial is proposed involving people facing a life-threatening disease.

While there are good grounds to defend double blind drug testing, there is very little to justify the trickery that has been used in some psychological experiments.  The classic in this field is the notorious study carried out by Stanley Milgram in the 1960’s, whose ‘memory and learning experiment’ was set up to measure obedience to authority by looking at the effects of punishment on learning success.  Briefly, he recruited volunteers (through advertising in a local newspaper) to taking part in a learning test.  The volunteers were to be teachers, placed in a specially constructed booth with an intercom and a ‘Shock Generator, Type ZL’!  The learners were actors, briefed to play their role, and once they had been taken into a separate room with electrodes strapped to their wrists, the exercise began.  Each volunteer teacher was instructed to issue the ‘learner’ with an electric shock every time they gave a wrong answer in a memory task. With every mistake, the shock was to be raised by 15 volts. In fact, no shocks were being given, but the actor-learners made increasingly dramatic pleas and protests, and the volunteer-teachers were told to ignore them.  Whenever the volunteers faltered or refused, they were encouraged to proceed by a series of pre-scripted prompts.  “Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on”.

The study continued through several, often quite horrible, variations.  Quite apart from the ethics of what was done, the results proved unhelpful, as they left room for various interpretations.  Many volunteers did give increasing shocks, often to a high level:  however, there are competing perspectives on these results. The volunteers might have been responding to authority.  However, they might have been anxious to help people learn, or seeking to please the research assistant in the room.  They might have been responding to cues about the importance of science, themselves as quasi-scientists, etc.  More to the point, by lying the researchers were creating a situation which led to many volunteers becoming very disturbed by what they had apparently done. [ii]

It’s an old study, and an old story: scientists can be unethical.  Since we began with Donald Trump, perhaps we should return to politicians and lying.  Most people are likely to agree there are some circumstances in which we would accept lying by politicians is acceptable, especially by those in government.  We can recall examples of dishonesty during wartime or when rescuing hostages, where subterfuge was essential to allow the successful completion of a mission.

Outside of those times, it’s less clear cut.  This has been made clear in the recent debate over reporting politicians’ statements on Facebook, following Facebook’s decision to remove what is described as ‘manipulated media’, media that has been altered using some kind of smart software, to change a person, words, or whatever else is modified.  Apparently, if Facebook determines a politician has shared manipulated media, they will remove it. But Facebook will not censor political speech as such ‘if it is in the public interest to see it’, even if it contains outright lies – as long as it hasn’t been manipulated by some kind of smart digital application!  Moreover, it will be Facebook which determines what is in the public interest, judging this against the ‘risk of harm’.  What an extraordinary situation.  “Who exactly at Facebook will be doing that weighing? Who determines the nature of potential harms? It’s unclear.  But this much seems clear: It’s perfectly fine to lie, harass and manipulate by the millions online, provided you are an elected official or fall into the amorphous loophole of “newsworthiness.” It’s the one protected class of people who can get away with behavior that would see others banned.  Politicians, it seems, have a license to behave badly, made possible by technology companies that kowtow to the powerful rather than stand up to them.” [iii]  Hey, it’s all systems ‘go’, Donald!

Were he a reader, Trump would have been be happy to have seen a recent study of 42 US presidents, up to and including George W Bush.  The researchers asked historians, who were chosen as experts on each president, to identify both their negative and positive personality traits, and then correlated these with independent assessments of presidential performance.  It turned out that “successful presidents scored high in the prevalence of a trait known as ‘fearless dominance’, characterised by an almost complete lack of fear in the face of great danger. Heroes have the trait, but it ‘also reflects the boldness often seen in psychopaths’, Lillienfeld says. His study on the presidents, published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2012, noted that ‘fearless dominance’ was associated with ‘better-rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations’. It was also associated with ‘initiating new projects and being viewed as a world figure’ … Highly entitled people don’t have stronger desires, they just have less conflict – less guilt and overthinking when it comes to acting on those desires.”  Unconcerned lying – now why does this sound alarmingly familiar?

Returning to the work of psychologists, the field is packed with studies of deception, trickery, and a fascination with dishonesty.  I can’t quite bring myself to consider why this might be so.  However, some research does lead to interesting findings.  In 2014, Francesca Gino at Harvard Business School and Scott Wiltermuth of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California published a study on the connection between dishonesty and creativity inPsychological Science (in 2014).  Given creative people and divergent thinkers are involved in a certain amount of rule-breaking, thinking ‘outside the box’ and seeing possibilities between unrelated ideas or things that others might miss, the two researchers wondered if creative people might be prone to other forms of rule‑breaking, such as cheating and lying.  Going further, they proposed a study to examine whether dishonesty can lead people to be more creative.

Sad to report, that did seem to be the case.  Of course, the connection between dishonesty and creativity is complex, and the research was exploratory at best.  However, Wiltermuth explained: “I can’t go out and say to everyone: “Let people lie to you so they can be more creative.” Yet cheating gets people out of a rule-following mindset.” And creativity can be the result.” [iv]

What about research on cheating in the professions, in law and medicine?  One of many similar studies, researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston looked at cheating in medical school. The results were worrying: no conclusive data, but the researchers were “distressed at the level of cheating described and at how efforts to combat it have failed. The cheating behaviours that they looked at cover a wide range, from copying notes from class to entering data in the medical records that is not based on examination. ‘You hate to see this in a profession where you want everyone held to a higher standard,’ Falik tells me – one in which lives are at stake.” [v]

Surely lying can be uncovered.  Members of older generations like to think they know how to find out the truth, and most have sources on which they rely.  In the US, The Washington Post and The New York Times are seen as credible and authoritative, although many other people rely on Fox News for facts, which is less likely to offer a balanced, truth-laden commentary!  These older generations are following long-ingrained media habits, but what about younger people?

Towards the end of last year, The Economist reported on a study that revealed between 2009 and 2018 the share of teenagers who read newspapers declined from around 60% to close to 20%.  Where do they get their news?  According to Pew Research Centre, 95% of American teens have access to a smartphone and 45% are online “almost constantly”. That’s no surprise.  Technology gives teenagers an extraordinary reach, well demonstrated by those following Greta Thunberg’s global “school strike for climate”, now in 150 countries.  Six months of student led protests in Hong Kong are being supported by sharing digital data.  I read a US 13-year-old told Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “I’m not old enough to vote yet, but I can follow you on Instagram!” [vi]

Earlier, I commented on Facebook’s limited oversight.  No matter; many Western teenagers see Facebook as “deeply uncool. It is for old people. Nor do many of them hang out on Twitter, which plays an outsized role in journalism and politics only because it is full of journalists and politicians. They have little time for youth-focused websites such as BuzzFeed either. “It’s clearly adults trying to relate to young people,” says Victoria, a 16-year-old in Kentucky. … Action has shifted to Instagram (owned by Facebook), WhatsApp (ditto) and YouTube (Google), each of which has well over a billion users …  Common Sense, an American non-profit group, found in a recent study that 69% of American teens watch online videos every day, mostly on YouTube. They spend nearly seven and a half hours a day looking at screens of all kinds.” [vii]

How do teenagers know what’s true?  With less use of traditional media, are they are relying on peers, online celebrities, and activists, likely to believe those they follow?  If more ‘objective’ sources are ignored, claims can flourish unchecked, misleading statements taken on face value, and fake news accepted.  It’s not just young people.  As more people rely on smartphones and tablets for news, so digital media have created an environment ripe for lying, as truth manipulators like Donald Trump well understand.  Today, perhaps, the best liar wins?

[i] President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days, by Glen Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, Washington Post, Dec. 16, 2019.  Just over a month later, it shot up to 16,241!

[ii] For a summary, see Aeon, Antonio Melechi, 4 September 2015

[iii] Why Politicians Get a License to Lie, Charlie Warzel, New York Times, January 7, 2020

[iv] Reported in Kristin Ohlson, A touch of Evil, Aeon, 28 April, 2015

[v] Kristin Ohlson, op cit

[vi] Seize the memes: Teenagers are rewriting the rules of the news, The Economist, Print edition, Dec 18th 2019

[vii] Ibid

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

Two-faced Thom

Politics is a demanding profession.  Constantly in the public eye, with every statement and vote reviewed and analysed, politicians tend to adopt one of four familiar responses.  Some choose to be clear, assertive and bold:  “this is what I stand for, and I will not be swayed”.  They are the politicians we remember; Bernie Sanders is a good example.  Love them or hate them, they stick by their principles.  They are almost the complete opposite to another group, those who hide behind party loyalty, voting as the leadership demands, clearing their speeches with the people at the top; the almost invisible foot-solders of the party.  Enjoying a steady income while they can, they dream of business board appointments when they get dropped or lose an election.

These two categories include the majority, but there are two others.  There are politicians with a conscience, making clear their dilemmas, publicly voicing uncertainties or conflicts, questioning where their loyalties really sit.  We admire them for revealing the ethical challenges they see beneath a legislative decision.  John McCain was an exemplar of that approach.  Finally, some choose to be nice, agreeing with whoever is in the room, trying to say the right things to each and every audience.  Being nice soon runs out of credibility, however, and those in this group either may take a bold approach (rarely), or more often disappear from view as two-faced nonentities.

North Carolina has two Republican Senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis.  Richard Burr is a party line nobody, who will not be standing for re-election in 2022.  Looking back, I think his greatest claim to fame might be he has been the second highest recipient of gun lobby (NRA) funding among the 100 senators, beaten to second place by John McCain.  McCain received $7,740,521 in support, Burr $6,986,931, and he was nearly $1.5m ahead of the next two on the list.  Thom Tillis was the fourth, with $4,418,012, just a $150,000 behind Roy Blunt (a religious-right Missouri senator, with a track record against gay marriage, abortion, etc.).

Richard Burr is a straight party-line man, almost all the time.  Among the highlights, we might note he supported the infamous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.  That’s the one which allows unions and corporations (but not regular citizens) to spend an unlimited amount of money on political advertising and other activities, especially prior to elections.  From a banking state, as you might expect he believes the government should have less control over the banking industry.  He had a brief moment in the limelight in 2008 during the Global Financial Crisis when he claimed he was going to an ATM every day and taking out cash, as he thought the financial system was about to collapse.  Unsurprisingly, he is opposed to tax increases for any reason, especially raising taxes on businesses or high-income people to fund public services.

Back in 2015 he stated his belief  that climate change is not a hoax.  In 2016 he clarified his earlier statement by asserting humans hadn’t caused climate change, and opposing efforts by the government to restrict the release of greenhouse gases.  Just in case there was any confusion, in the same year he made it clear he does not agree with federal grants or subsidies to encourage the production of renewable energy.  It might seem odd that recently Burr was one of nine founding members of the Roosevelt Conservation Caucus, a group of Republican members of Congress, with a focus on environmental issues: its specific priorities include reducing plastic pollution, and heightening access to public lands and waters for outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing.

Ah, the key word there is hunting.  Did you forget his NRA funding?  On guns, he is keen to keep his A+ rating.  He voted against the 2013 legislation which would have extended background checks to internet and gun show weapon purchasing.  He consistently supports unrestricted access to guns.  Famously, in 2015, speaking on the topic of guns to a GOP group, he joked that a magazine cover of Hillary Clinton ought to have had a bullseye on it.  Yes, he quickly apologized for the comment, but it matched a reply he gave in 2017 on the campaign trail.  When asked about Trump’s offensive remarks regarding women, he replied Trump should be forgiven for a few mistakes and given time to change.  How much longer do we wait?

He’s a good, loyal foot soldier.  He has voted with Trump around 96% of the time, and only disagreed occasionally on international sanctions.  Having made it clear he would not stand for another term, Burr enjoyed a moment of glory this year.  The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Burr, daringly subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation.[i]  The younger Trump explained the project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow was Michael Cohen’s idea (President Trump’s former attorney): “We don’t know anything about it. Ultimately, it was Michael Cohen essentially trying to get a deal done.”  So that’s alright then; well done, Richard.

It’s time to look at North Carolina’s junior senator.  When 19 years old, Thom Tillis married his high school girlfriend, but later they divorced.  However, they got back together, remarried, only to divorce a second time. [ii]  That might seem irrelevant, but it’s one kind of introduction to Thom, who’s clearly able to change his mind!  OK, I know, it’s gratuitous comment: sorry!

Tillis was announced the winner of the close Senate race in 2014, with 48.82 percent of the vote, the lowest winning total in North Carolina history for a U.S. Senate candidate.   During the campaign, he paid $30,000 to Cambridge Analytica; the North Carolina Republican Party added $150,000.  Cambridge Analytica promoted their role in his election as a case study.  This was the company banned by Facebook in 2018 following reports that the firm had illicitly obtained data on Facebook users. [iii]  It’s still not clear whether Tillis benefitted from Cambridge Analytica’s illegal activities or if their role in the  Senate race did swing a close election, but is there any doubt?  Anyway, in Senate he looks after his supporters: for example, he’s keen to deregulate the major banks so they can act more riskily: oh, and yes, they’re among his major donors!

Perhaps looking at his views on marriage would help.  In 2012, when he was Speaker for the NC State government, Tillis supported a constitutional amendment to define marriage as occurring between one man and one woman.  In 2014 Tillis announced that he opposed a state ruling allowing same sex marriage. He was almost alone among the major elected North Carolina Republican officials at the time, even Governor Pat McCrory accepting the decision.  Standing for a principle?  In 2015, shortly after his inauguration to the Senate, Tillis voted in favor of an amendment to a non-binding resolution that would allow same-sex married couples living in states that don’t recognize same-sex marriage to have access to government resources.  I can’t imagine why but these contradictory actions have led some to criticize Tillis as being both “for and against” same sex marriage.  Are you confused?  Perhaps he’s just ‘for’ his own re-election?

Sometimes Tillis is blatant about both keeping his cake and eating it. In 2014, Tillis said that climate change is not a fact, and the following year voted against an amendment stating human activity is a contributor.  In 2017 he had been one of 22 senators to sign a letter to Trump to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.  Just to be on the safe side, in 2018, Tillis said that human activity was a contributing factor to climate change.  Just so you’re clear, Tillis has received over $260,000 from oil, gas, and coal interests since 2012.

His most notorious action was in early 2019.  In February, Tillis responded to Trump’s national emergency declaration to circumvent Congress and fund a wall on the southern border.  “I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress. As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms.”  Whoa, he took a stand!  It didn’t last long.  In March,  facing pressure from Trump and other conservatives to support the national emergency declaration, with several floating the possibility of a primary challenge against him in 2020, he changed his mind, voting to support the declaration.  It earned him a reputation as a flip-flopper (a remarkable flip-flop according to the Washington Post, and an Olympic gold flip flop according to the NC Fayetteville Observer). [iv]  Now there’s an achievement!

He likes flip-flopping.  In December 2018 Tillis had warned about an early withdrawal in Syria.  “We need to make sure the withdrawal of America’s presence from Syria is done the right way, at the right time,” he said. “Withdrawal from Syria at the current time could lead to the resurgence of ISIS and provide a boost to Russia and Iran.”  Clear?  But in October of this year he said he was giving President Donald Trump “the benefit of the doubt” on his decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria, breaking with fellow Republicans who have criticized the decision.  Justifying this flip-flop he added “The president may be working on more information than I have.” [v]  Perhaps the key information for Thom is that re-election time getting close: like Burr he is supporting Trump all the way through the impeachment hearings.  No flip-flopping there!

I had already decided Tillis was interesting.  Two years ago I wrote to him after reading his letter in the Charlotte Observer:  [vi]

“I’ll be reaching across the aisle to find opportunities to work with Democrats on the issues that desperately need to be addressed: reforming the nation’s broken immigration system, providing regulatory relief, overhauling the VA, reforming our criminal justice system and modernizing our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.  Republicans are in power and have the potential to deliver historic results — but only if we work together with the Democrats who also want to see progress. We owe it to the American people to set aside the areas where our ideology may prevent progress and find common ground where there are plenty of opportunities to produce good results.”

Among other topics, I asked about his health care plans, and he wrote back on 10 May 2017:

I believe that Obamacare is on an unsustainable course and that reform is necessary before it gets worse.  We must find a way to control health care costs and give Americans access to affordable care. Even some of Obamacare’s strongest supporters have acknowledged that the law has fundamental flaws that must be addressed, confirmed by the continued trend of insurers dropping out of Obamacare exchanges throughout the nation … The mandates and coercive penalties on health insurance have also placed costly burdens on families and businesses … I support efforts to correct this flawed law to provide quality care and certainty to American families. Reform must be aimed at improving health care outcomes for hardworking Americans by controlling costs and providing access to affordable care without the burden of costly mandates.

Two years later and I’m still waiting to see any of this action.  Is he still reaching across the aisle?  I guess that’s a long distance to go, even for a flip-flopper.

Another topic I had asked about was on DACA.  He replied on 18 September 2017:

As you are aware, on September 5, 2017, the Trump Administration announced it would end the Obama era program known as DACA with a six month delay. I firmly believe that Congress, not the executive branch, must confront the issue of undocumented people who arrived as children through a decision made by their parents to stay in this country where they have begun to build their lives.  I am in the process of drafting legislation that will provide a fair and rigorous path for undocumented children to earn legal status by requiring them to be employed, pursue higher education, or serve in our Armed Forces. … This legislation would be a permanent fix to address the long-term uncertainty facing undocumented youth.

Still waiting on that, too!  No action, so now the likely permanent fix will be to kick them out.

Finally, this year I asked about his current views on Climate Change.  In September, he wrote:

Climate change is a complex, multifaceted issue. I believe that innovation will be the key to curbing human contributions to climate change – just as American innovation and ingenuity allowed our country to lead the space race, the development of modern medicine, and the creation of the Internet. I support an all of the above energy strategy that balances energy security and industrial competitiveness with climate concerns. … I support real, tangible, free-market solutions to the very serious problems that face our state, which is on the front lines of sea level rise and increasingly frequent natural disasters. … I will continue working with my colleagues, Republican and Democrat alike, to find responsible and achievable policies that work for all Americans. We must use an all of the above strategy to adapt, become more resilient, and to mitigate damages from climate change. There are policies that can help bend the curve of human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, without placing the United States at a competitive disadvantage or harming low-income and rural communities.

I replied, asking for some rather more specific information, but, guess what, I’m still waiting on that one, too!  I guess Tillis must be busy, helping “bend the curve” maybe?

All the while, Thom keeps wriggling, and like a worm he turns first one way and then the other.  With Senate elections on the horizon, I think it’s time to send him off to a well-deserved (??) bank directorship.  Goodbye, two-faced Thom; we’ll be delighted to see you go, and we promise we won’t miss you.  By the way, unlike us you don’t need to wait – you could go now!

[i] https://www.axios.com/senate-intelligence-committee-donald-trump-jr-subpoena-russia-

[ii] https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/10-things-to-know-about-thom-tillis-106445

[iii] https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article205946479.html

[iv] For a full discussion see Paula Specht, News and Observer, 20 March 2019

[v] https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article235958147.html#storylink=cpy, 18/1/17

[vi] I had urged him to respect his oath of office, as are Vets today: https://www.defendamericandemocracy.org