Category Archives: Random Blogging

Birthday Wishes…

Today is our nation’s birthday, and birthdays are a time to take stock.

If the 4th is a day to focus on America and its government “of the people,” it may also be a day for considering the sources of our various dysfunctions.

Like gerrymandering. (Yes, I know I talk about that a lot. But it’s more important than most of us realize.)

While I was on vacation, I read a book with a title that cannot be fully shared: “Ratf***cked” tells how operatives of the Republican party raised money, gathered experts and manipulated the redistricting process across the nation after the last census–totally outsmarting Democrats. (Democrats emerge from this story as disorganized and feckless, at best.)

The book is worth reading; it was written by a political reporter who interviewed most of the central “players” and followed the process in the most gerrymandered states (including Indiana). The obvious moral of the story is that in politics, attention to process matters hugely–and that the disinterest of most citizens in our democratic processes enables the sorts of chicanery that the book documents.

But there is a rosier side to this story, at least for those of us who are into irony, and it falls under the heading of be careful what you wish for.

The Congressional representatives elected from the large numbers of “safe forever” seats have made it impossible for their enablers to govern. They have no party loyalty; they are not team players in the appropriate sense of that term. They know that the only threat to their continued electoral success comes from their right flank back home–not from the party, not from the Speaker, not even from the party’s big donors.

If you don’t believe me, ask John Boehner. Or Paul Ryan. Or closer to home, Brian Bosma. Those oh-so-safe districts created by mapmaking whiz kids have given each of them a group of wholly intransigent lunatics to deal with, officeholders accountable to no one but the most rabid members of the party base in their home districts. Those zealots have made it nearly impossible to pursue the party’s legislative goals.

The success of the GOP’s “ratf**cking” (otherwise known as redistricting) is why most political observers do not think the Democrats can retake the House in 2016, even if they win the Presidency resoundingly. As one of the effort’s technicians put it, it would take a Democratic sweep of 5 or 6 points to reclaim the House, and victories of that scope are highly unlikely.

Of course, the party operative making that observation didn’t anticipate Donald Trump…

Happy birthday, America! Maybe your citizens can get you a reformed redistricting system for your next one…

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Brexit, Texit, Indiana

In the wake of the British vote to exit the EU, several of Texas’ more “colorful” politicians have renewed their call for Texas to exit the United States.

In my snarkier moments, I’d love to see Texas leave; for one thing, the federal government sends more of our tax dollars back to the Lone Star State than its taxpayers remit to Uncle Sam, and the rest of the U.S. certainly doesn’t benefit from most of the state’s forays into public policy, or from the wisdom of the people it sends to Congress. (Just losing Louie Gohmert would make “Texit” worthwhile.)

In my more measured moments, however, I recognize that Brexit and the subsequent efforts not just of Texan separatists but of far-right movements elsewhere represent a reaction to—and rejection of—modernity. We see that rejection everywhere, from the Taliban and ISIS trying to “purify” the Muslim Middle East, to the French members of Marie Le Pen’s National Front, to homegrown nativists wanting to “Make America Great Again.”

Elections have become a choice between accepting modernity with all its maddening complexities and frantic and futile efforts to “return” to a time that never was. That is just as true of local contests as it is for national referenda; Hoosier voters will face that choice in November.

Governor Mike Pence hasn’t just strongly endorsed Donald Trump, disqualifying as that endorsement is; well before Trump became the GOP nominee, Pence was advocating measures to keep Indiana from engaging with the 21st Century. (There’s a reason for the Facebook meme advising Hoosiers to turn their clocks back to 1800.)

Just a few of the more obvious examples: RFRA was focused on turning back the clock to a time when “God fearing” Hoosiers could discriminate against LGBT citizens with impunity. Signing the demeaning and punitive anti-choice bill (the most drastic in the country) was part and parcel of the old-time belief that women are not competent to make our own decisions about reproduction. His refusal to accept Syrian refugees (until a court reminded him that immigration comes under federal jurisdiction) was entirely in keeping with a worldview that looks askance at immigration, diversity and globalization.

In all fairness, Pence had plenty of help from Indiana’s GOP super-majority.

It’s easy to understand why so many people find modern life threatening. Change is constant; technology is confounding. Foreign people with different cultures and ideas can make us uncomfortable and unsure of our most foundational beliefs. The economic ground beneath our feet keeps shifting.

As disorienting as modernity is, however, the choice is not between a discomfiting now and a mythical then. If we find going forward too demanding, too frightening—if we vote for people firmly planted in an imagined past—we will simply be throwing in the towel, refusing to meet the challenges of our time.

What we won’t be doing is reinstating a world that never was.

A lot of people—including a number who read this blog—are unhappy with the candidates proposing to lead us forward. I understand that. But the choices this November are pretty stark: we can inch forward with people who are less than perfect, or we can go backward with people who live in never-never land.

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Is It Him, or Us?

One thing about Donald Trump’s candidacy–his obvious psychological problems have triggered all sorts of armchair diagnoses, most centering on “classical narcissism.” I recently came across a different theory, one that will be familiar to those of us who remember male teenage classmates who constantly boasted about their “conquests.”

According to Steven Marche, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times,

The most popular candidate among white American men is a parody of American manhood. By now, we have become used to the frat-boy performance that defines Donald Trump’s candidacy: the sexual boasting, the condescending or outright insulting treatment of women, the open discussion about the size of his penis. As we approach the general election, it becomes ever more clear that Trump’s flagrant and empty machismo is not a distraction from his campaign but its substance…

The theory of masculine overcompensation has been well-established for decades, going back to Sigmund Freud’s notions of “reaction formation” and “defense mechanisms:” When men think their masculinity is in doubt, they respond by emphasizing traditional masculine traits.

This new parlor game of “Guess Trump’s diagnosis” may be fun (or in the case of James Patterson’s analysis, both persuasive and terrifying) but what this man-child’s primary success suggests for our democracy is anything but entertaining. That issue was more soberly–and insightfully–analyzed by David Frum in a recent article for the Atlantic. Frum, as you will recall, was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, but he has refused to be a “team player” more loyal to his party than to his country. The article is long, but well worth reading. One paragraph:

The television networks that promoted Trump; the primary voters who elevated him; the politicians who eventually surrendered to him; the intellectuals who argued for him, and the donors who, however grudgingly, wrote checks to him—all of them knew, by the time they made their decisions, that Trump lied all the time, about everything. They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They knew he habitually sympathized with dictators and kleptocrats—and that his instinct when confronted with criticism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress. They knew his disrespect for women, the disabled, and ethnic and religious minorities. They knew that he wished to unravel NATO and other U.S.-led alliances, and that he speculated aloud about partial default on American financial obligations. None of that dissuaded or deterred them.

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times takes on the false equivalence of those who insist that Hillary and The Donald are equally distasteful/dangerous:

All lying in politics is not created equal…. What is grating about Hillary is that her prevarications seem so unnecessary and often insult our intelligence. But they are not about existential issues. As for Trump, his lies are industrial size and often contradict each other. But there is no theory behind his lies, except what will advance him, which is why Trump is only scary if he wins. Otherwise, his candidacy will leave no ideas behind. It will just be a reality TV show that got canceled.

Trump without power is easily dismissed; there is no “there” there.

What isn’t so easily dismissed, as Frum writes in his essay, is the fact that he won the Republican primary. What should give every thinking American pause is the existence of voters willing to support a blustering and cartoonish empty suit.

That is the condition that requires a diagnosis.

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The Culture of Inequality

This month, we have had two reminders of the ways in which culture and cultural assumptions shape notions of equality.

For the first time ever in the United States, a woman was nominated for the Presidency by a major political party. And in much of the country, Pride Week was celebrated in June—a time for public celebrations of the LGBT community’s movement toward civic and legal equality.

When Americans talk about the social marginalization of a group of people based upon their identity, we tend to think in terms of individual rights and fundamental fairness. Those of us supporting civic inclusion and legal equality point—justifiably—to the importance of treating people as the individuals they are, judging people on their personal merits and not dismissing (or elevating) them on the basis of their group identity.

Those opposed to equal treatment for members of minority populations often justify disparate treatment on religious grounds (“the bible says”), or—like a certain deceased Supreme Court Justice—on the stabilizing effect and social importance of tradition. (These tend to be white heterosexual men who have been socialized to see women, blacks, gays, Jews, Muslims, etc. as “other;” as members of a class enjoying more privileged status, they see no reason to disturb a status quo that benefits them.)

What sometimes gets lost in these discussions are the very practical, very tangible economic consequences of membership in a disfavored minority.

The economic gap between whites and blacks has been too pronounced to ignore, of course; the legacy of slavery, the oppression of Jim Crow and the more subtle but no less devastating results of the “new Jim Crow”—the drug war—are vivid examples of what happens to people when you make it difficult or impossible for them to compete on a level playing field. Only people determined to ignore reality refuse to recognize the economic consequences of that degree of systematic oppression.

That economic inequality is also a consequence of the marginalization of women and LGBT citizens, however, is less widely appreciated.

When women point out that they make 78 cents for each dollar a man earns, those defending the status quo point to the fact that women disproportionately “choose” lower-paying professions, or take time out of the workforce to raise families. The conversation rarely considers the role culture plays in constraining women’s “choices” or shaping employers’ expectations. Occasionally, an academic study will compare women’s status in countries where the cultural assumptions facilitate government provision of day care and other safety-net supports for working women. (Not so coincidentally, several of those countries elected women to high office years ago.)

Because LGBT employees are not immediately recognizable, there is an assumption that they do not face the same sorts of employment discrimination as women or African-Americans. That, of course, is true only for those who remain in the closet. In many states, including my own Indiana, LGBT people are not protected by civil rights laws, so the decision to come out can be risky. When your continued employment and/or promotion depends upon the goodwill of your boss rather than your legal entitlements, your economic situation is precarious. As American cultural norms have changed, and bias against LGBT people has diminished, more companies have instituted anti-discrimination policies, and more states have expanded their civil rights protections, but it is still a work in progress.

Bottom line: social inequality is almost never only social. It translates into fewer job opportunities, a reduced likelihood of promotion, less access to credit and the kinds of networks that work to the benefit of privileged populations—all of which means greater economic insecurity.

In a society where some are more equal than others, some will be more economically secure than others. A culture that treats individuals equally, no matter what their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, is a society that is more likely to offer employment security and equal pay for equal work.

Of course, a culture that values all of its citizens is also unlikely to countenance a huge disparity between the rich and the rest. But that’s a post for another day.

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A New Age of Activism?

A number of recent columns have “post-mortemed” (if that’s a word) the Presidential primaries. One such, in the New York Times, considered the ongoing influence of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Sanders has yet to fully concede, although he has said he intends to vote for Clinton, and he is likely to remain a force in American politics for the foreseeable future.

Sanders’ ability to engage young voters was surprising, at least to me; a crusty 74-year-old self-described “Democratic Socialist” would seem to be an unlikely hero to twenty-somethings. Yet he clearly evoked a passionate response from young people.

In conversations I had with more than a dozen Sanders supporters, many of them told me they were either disillusioned with or apathetic toward politics before this campaign. Mr. Sanders, a 74-year-old democratic socialist from Vermont, energized them unlike any candidate before. Now, they’ll either resign themselves to voting for Hillary Clinton, redirect their efforts to local campaigns or drop out again.

The article includes a number of comments from young Sanders supporters, and describes the issues that resonated with them. Perhaps the most perceptive observations, however, came from an activist named Winnie Wong.

This month, after the primaries are all over, some Sanders supporters will try to answer the question of what’s next at an event called the People’s Summit in Chicago. The mission of this gathering: to figure out how to turn Mr. Sanders’s momentum into lasting change. One of the attendees will be a digital strategist named Winnie Wong. After working with the Occupy Wall Street movement, she helped start the grass-roots group People for Bernie, and has been credited with coining the hashtag #FeelTheBern. She said she saw a connection between the Occupy movement and the Sanders campaign.

“This is a movement,” she said. “It is not about Bernie Sanders. He’s a part of this movement.” And, according to Mr. Sanders’s most ardent supporters, that movement isn’t going anywhere.

After teaching public affairs for nearly twenty years, and consistently bemoaning the anemic participation of college students in the political process, I get really hopeful when I read about the increased youth engagement described in this and many other articles.

Wong is correct that the increase isn’t limited to the Bernie phenomenon. A number of social indicators suggest America may be at one of those “turning points,” one of the cyclical swings in political/cultural opinion that have characterized our nation’s history. If I am reading those indicators correctly (and I know I may just be engaging in wishful thinking), Sanders great contribution is that he helped focus a relatively amorphous and simmering discontent on the need to engage with and reform the political process.

You don’t have to embrace the specifics of Sanders’ proposals to recognize the importance of that achievement.

The fact that the movement Sanders sparked is progressive is especially important at a time when nostalgia and reactionary impulses have given us Brexit and Trump and their hollow promises to take the world back to a time that never was.

Virtually everyone agrees that it’s time for a change in American politics. We can argue about the nature and pace of that change, but if Bernie has sparked a new youth movement with “legs,” a movement with staying power, he will have won something that is arguably more important than the Presidency.

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