Random Blogging – Page 141

The Good News

There isn’t much good news right now, nationally or globally. But there are indications of a worldwide swing toward sanity–if we can hang on long enough to allow a younger generation to take charge.

One clear trend that is immensely hopeful is the decline in religious fervor and declining trust in religious leaders, both here and abroad (although in the Arab world, increasing secularization is accompanied by increasing anger at the U.S.)

My characterization of growing secularization as “good news” will undoubtedly offend some readers, so let me be clear about the nature of the “religion” to which I’m referring.

I like my youngest son’s distinction: A “good” religion helps you ask–and wrestle with–the questions; a “bad” religion provides you with The Answers.

Folks who are certain they know what their god wants, and who want to use the power of the state to make the rest of us live in accordance with that certainty, make social peace impossible. We need more Reverend William Barbers, and fewer Mike Pences, more moral courage and less pious hypocrisy.

One reason young people are increasingly rejecting religion is the Evangelical embrace of Donald Trump. A recent article in The Atlantic explored the extent to which that embrace has triggered a crisis of faith.

Last week, Ralph Reed, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s founder and chairman, told the group, “There has never been anyone who has defended us and who has fought for us, who we have loved more than Donald J. Trump. No one!”

Reed is partially right; for many evangelical Christians, there is no political figure whom they have loved more than Donald Trump.

Trump’s approval rating among white evangelical Protestants is 25 points higher than the national average. Pew Research reports that, during the period from July 2018 to January 2019, 70 percent of white evangelicals who attended church at least once a week approved of Trump. (That raises the question: what on earth are they hearing from the pulpits of those churches?)

Evangelicals’ rabid support for a man who embodies everything they have long claimed to abhor has operated to de-legitimize Evangelical Protestantism in the eyes of non-adherents. For genuinely religious Christians, this has been hurtful. Peter Wehner, who authored the Atlantic article, writes

What is most personally painful to me as a person of the Christian faith is the cost to the Christian witness. Nonchalantly jettisoning the ethic of Jesus in favor of a political leader who embraces the ethic of Thrasymachus and Nietzsche—might makes right, the strong should rule over the weak, justice has no intrinsic worth, moral values are socially constructed and subjective—is troubling enough.

But there is also the undeniable hypocrisy of people who once made moral character, and especially sexual fidelity, central to their political calculus and who are now embracing a man of boundless corruptions.

Americans have traditionally purported to respect “religion.” We’ve been unwilling (at least in public) to suggest that some theologies undercut social cohesion and undermine the common good, that some “believers” support white Christian dominance more devoutly than spiritual growth, and that many have created a God in their own image.

A recent article in Forbes, of all places, illustrates the point.The author writes that it wasn’t Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” that turned the racist south Republican; it was pastors.

Southern churches, warped by generations of theological evolution necessary to accommodate slavery and segregation, were all too willing to offer their political assistance to a white nationalist program. Southern religious institutions would lead a wave of political activism that helped keep white nationalism alive inside an increasingly unfriendly national climate. Forget about Goldwater, Nixon or Reagan. No one played as much of a role in turning the South red as the leaders of the Southern Baptist Church.

Are there religious people exhibiting humility and loving-kindness, who define morality as an imperative to treat others as they would be treated? Certainly.

A group of 17 Christan church leaders under the banner of ‘Christians Against Christian Nationalism’ have issued an official statement. It condemns the Christian Right’s constant attacks on other faiths and their efforts to bring about a Christian fundamentalist theocracy in the United States.

Their warning is clear: “Christian nationalism provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.” Adding that it goes hand in hand with white nationalism.

The group points out that the Constitution — the foundation of American law (the only one that counts) — makes it clear that: “Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution.”

Equality under the Constitution, of course, does not translate into “equally meritorious.”

Before pundits decry the accelerating “loss of religion,” it would behoove us to determine just which versions of “religion” we’re losing.

Some versions need to be lost.

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A Shameless Plug

If you are a reader who likes this blog, have I got a deal for you!

I have done something I never thought I would do– I have “self-published” a book with Amazon.The paperback is available now, and the ebook (cheaper still) will be available in a couple of days.

Every other book I’ve written–and there have been nine of them–has been issued by either an academic press or a trade publisher. It can be an onerous process; with academic presses, especially, there are usually lengthy times for peer review, changes demanded, etc. This time, for what I’m pretty sure will be my last book, I decided to short-circuit the process–and not so incidentally, keep the book affordable, something few publishers seem to care about.

The book is titled “Living Together: Mending a Fractured America,” and I’m sharing the introduction below. I hope some of you will be motivated to buy it, and–if you like it–tell your friends.

We’ll see how this experiment in self-promotion pans out…..

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We—by which I mean humanity, and especially citizens of the United States—find ourselves in the middle of a paradigm shift, a fundamental reconfiguring of the basic assumptions through which we view the world we inhabit. Such shifts are not unprecedented (the dislocations of the Industrial Revolution are arguably an example), but while they are occurring, people on either side of the shift find it difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with each other; they occupy different realities.

As humanity negotiates and reacts to accelerating change, individuals are faced with a rapidly morphing information environment, a reversion to overt and troubling tribalism, deepening economic inequities, and growing recognition of the inadequacies and corruption of America’s current legal and political structures. All of these elements of contemporary reality pose a challenge to previously-held worldviews.

Making this time in human history even more daunting is the fact that, while individuals are trying to make sense of the economic and social challenges they are experiencing, they are also facing the very real possibility that climate change will cause large portions of the planet to become uninhabitable—with consequences that are, for most Americans, unimaginable.

In the United States, the 2016 election and its aftermath have exposed the persistence of significant fault-lines in American society and forced recognition of the extent to which a longtime, steady erosion of the country’s democratic norms has hollowed out and corrupted this country’s governing institutions.

That erosion is one of a number of unprecedented social and economic challenges made more daunting by a splintered and constantly changing media landscape. Changes to journalism driven by the Internet have dramatically exacerbated the problems inherent in democratic decision-making. Actual news based upon verifiable fact is still available but diminishing, especially at the local level. Cable news and the Internet’s “information” environment enable and encourage confirmation bias, and are rife with spin, “fake news” and outright propaganda. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United increased public recognition of—and cynicism about– the disproportionate power wielded by corporate America through lobbying, political contributions and influence-peddling. Together with the enormous and widening gap between the rich and the rest, recognition of the outsized influence of money in America’s political system feeds suspicion of all government decision-making.

In order for democracy to function, there must be widespread trust in the integrity of electoral contests. The fundamental democratic idea is a fair fight, a contest of competing ideas, with the winners legitimized and authorized to carry out their agendas. Increasingly, however, those democratic contests have been marred by disinformation, as well as by bare-knuckled power plays and numerous mechanisms—including gerrymandering and vote suppression—through which partisans game the system. As a result, citizens’ trust in government and other social institutions has dangerously diminished. Without that trust—without a widespread belief in an American “we,” an overarching polity to which all citizens belong and in which all citizens are valued—tribalism thrives. Especially in times of rapid social change, racial resentments grow. The divide between urban and rural Americans widens, as does the gap between various “elites” and others. Economic insecurity and social dysfunction are exacerbated by the absence of an adequate social safety net, adding to resentment of both government and the “Other.”

Making matters worse, in the midst of these wrenching changes, Americans (accidentally, to be sure) elected a President incapable of recognizing, understanding or dealing with them.

Citizens in 21st Century America are facing a globalized, technocratic, increasingly complex world that poses unprecedented challenges to the goal of e pluribus unum (not to mention human understanding and survival). The existential question we face is: Can government policies create a genuine “us” out of so many different/diverse “I’s” and “we’s”? Can policymakers use law and legislative processes to create a supportive, nourishing culture that remains true to the Enlightenment’s essential insights, while modifying or discarding those that are no longer so essential? If so, how? How does this nation overcome the escalating assaults on science, reality and the rule of law and create a functioning, trustworthy democratic system?

This book was written to suggest that we can answer those questions in the affirmative, if we can muster the political will, and to suggest policies that would allow that to be accomplished.

The challenges America faces tend to fall into three (interrelated and sometimes overlapping) categories: Ignorance (defined as lack of essential information, not stupidity); Inequality (poverty, civic inequality, power and informational asymmetries among others) and Tribalism (“us versus them”—racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bigotry, the urban/rural divide, and political identity.)

An old lawyer once told me that there is really only one legal or political question: “what do we do?” How do we fashion concrete and politically tenable answers to the multitude of questions raised by social and technological change? How do we live together in what should be our brave new world?

That is the fundamental question explored in this book.

As Part I will set out in much more detail, our cultural assumptions and social institutions are in the process of being upended, and issues we’ve dealt with more or less adequately (or swept under various rugs) have suddenly become much more salient and disruptive. We face anew the age-old question: how should humans govern themselves? What institutional arrangements are most likely to be perceived as fair and just by most people, even when those people have very different desires, abilities, beliefs and needs? What sorts of governance and institutional arrangements are most likely to promote what Aristotle called “human flourishing?”

In the 18thCentury, Enlightenment philosophers answered that question by proposing a social contract based upon the issues and understandings of their times. Those philosophers and scientists challenged longtime assumptions about how a society should be constructed, how it should be governed and what it should value. In the United States, the nation’s Founders built a legal and constitutional system based upon Enlightenment insights and values and the belief that human flourishing could best be facilitated by a limited-authority government that allowed individuals to exercise personal autonomy to the greatest extent compatible with an overarching order.

That original vision and approach to governance has never been uncontested or fully realized, but it has provided the framework—the paradigm—that shaped subsequent policy argumentation. That liberal democratic framework, as it has evolved to the present, rests upon a (necessarily limited) respect for self-determination-the ability of individuals, cultures and states to determine and pursue their own ends, their own telos. Respect for the right of individuals or groups to determine their own life choices requires rejection of many legally-imposed uniformities and recognition of the fact that human diversity is both inevitable and socially desirable.

The principles that emerged from the Enlightenment and were embraced by America’s founders are not now and never have been universally held. Furthermore, even among people who do accept the general framework and stated values that undergird America’s Constitution, there are significant differences of opinion about what individual liberty should mean and when government authority may be properly exercised. Ongoing tensions between the majoritarian “popular passions” that so worried the architects of America’s constitution and Enlightenment ideas about the importance of individual autonomy have spawned a long line of academic studies and a significant body of constitutional jurisprudence.

In the 21st Century, the increasingly frenetic pace of technological, economic and cultural change has dramatically intensified the conflict between the individual’s right to self-determination and societies’ need for social cohesion and has tested the country’s purported commitments to equality and respect for human difference. Previously marginalized populations have entered both the workforce and the political arena, contending for equal social and civic status. Demographic change threatens previously entrenched social privilege, and feeds the white nationalist movement that has emerged with such ferocity in parts of Europe and the United States. That movement, together with certain strains of populism, appeals especially to people disdainful of diversity and the claims of previously marginalized groups—and for that matter, Enlightenment values—finding them not simply offensive, but existentially threatening.

The dramatic rise of economic inequality has not only exacerbated group tensions, but—as Part One will describe in much more detail–has challenged what is essentially our 18th Century understanding of the nature of both liberty and equality.

To belabor the obvious, contemporary Americans live in a rapidly changing social and economic environment. We find ourselves in a very different, and infinitely more complex and interrelated country and world than the one most of us were born into. As a result, the potential for a wide variety of conflicts has increased. Regulatory activity, both national and supra-national, has grown, due to recognition that many of today’s issues are national or global in scope and aren’t amenable to state or local remedies. National and international authorities will continue to be established, and to grow, in order to deal with environmental threats, trade issues, immigration, humanitarian crises and power conflicts; their effectiveness in mediating conflict will depend upon whether they are perceived as legitimate and fair by those over whom they assert jurisdiction.

As this is being written, fundamental and acrimonious disputes about immigration, racial equity, women’s rights, global alliances and the rule of law are being further inflamed by the daily tweets of an authoritarian President who is widely seen as corrupt, incompetent and mentally unstable. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court has been compromised by its growing politicization, and most recently by legislative tactics that allowed the unprecedented “theft” of a seat that President Obama should have filled. People are increasingly taking to the streets in protest, convinced that their grievances will not be addressed by a system they see as fatally flawed. It is not possible to predict the duration, severity or consequences of the widespread and growing civil unrest that seems likely to get much worse before it gets better.

Assuming—as hopeful people must—that a reformed democratic order will eventually emerge from the chaos and hostility we are experiencing, we urgently need to revisit our basic assumptions about governance and the social contract. We need to critically assess what has gone wrong, move to safeguard those elements that have proved their ongoing utility, and revise others. We need to learn from the country’s mistakes if we are to facilitate the building of a better, fairer and more durable society.

The questions are eternal: What do humans owe each other? What is the nature of liberty? Of equality? What is the proper role of government? What should the rules be, who should make those rules, and how should they be enforced?

The questions may be eternal, but the answers are not.

In the pages that follow, I will describe what seem to me to be among the most daunting challenges we face as a country. I will refer to and build upon current research that identifies and describes those challenges, and I will argue that they are interrelated in multiple and often convoluted ways. Indeed, those inextricable inter-relationships pose one of the thorniest of the challenges we face– how to recognize the ways in which policies interact, in order to avoid the negative, unintended consequences that so often follow well-meaning policy change.

Part One of this book will detail the threat posed by contemporary manifestations of tribalism and civic polarization; by the dramatic, accelerating changes in the economy and the nature of work; by the “brokenness” and corruption of a current American government that cronyism while rejecting science, evidence and longstanding understandings of what constitutes fair play. Chapters will also address the dangers posed by attacks on public education, by propaganda that has become ubiquitous in the age of the Internet, and by refusal to recognize the extent to which all of these challenges are likely to be dwarfed by the effects of climate change.

In Part Two, I will propose policy changes prompted by these analyses—policy changes that, taken together, would amount to the creation of a new, more expansive social contract appropriate to the age in which we live; a set of policies that would address our growing inequality and operate to moderate the hostilities that characterize current debates among America’s quarrelsome tribes. Policy changes that would facilitate our ability to live together peacefully and productively.

I am not naïve enough to expect current policymakers to embrace these proposals; certainly, a sizable number of the people serving in Congress as I write this have demonstrated neither an interest in advancing the common good nor the capacity to understand the problems America currently faces. However, if (as I hope) the increase in civic awareness and participation that followed the 2016 election and the various public demonstrations and political movements generated by the so-called “resistance” result in the election of a more thoughtful, responsive and ethical set of policymakers, perhaps some of the arguments that follow will provide grist for discussion, debate and corrective action.

If America is, as I think, on the cusp of a broad upheaval triggered by dramatic social, economic and technological changes aggravated by the broken-ness of our current governing institutions, this country’s “best and brightest” will need to explore a variety of potential changes to our governmental, economic and social systems.

This book is my contribution to those explorations, and I hope it will be useful.

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The New Censorship

One of the many causes of increased tribalism and chaos worldwide is the unprecedented nature of the information environment we inhabit. A quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus is instructive–

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.

We are only dimly beginning to understand the nature of the threat posed by the mountains of “information” with which we are inundated. Various organizations are mounting efforts to fight that threat–to increase news literacy and control disinformation– with results that are thus far imperceptible.

The Brookings Institution has engaged in one of those efforts; it has a series on Cybersecurity and Election Interference, and in a recent report, offered four steps to “stop the spread of disinformation.” The linked report begins by making an important point about the actual targets of such disinformation.

The public discussion of disinformation often focuses on targeted candidates, without recognizing that disinformation actually targets voters. In the case of elections, actors both foreign and domestic are trying to influence whether or not you as an individual vote, and for whom to cast your ballot. The effort goes farther than elections: it is about the information on whether to vaccinate children or boycott the NFL. What started with foreign adversaries now includes domestic groups, all fighting for control over what you believe to be true.

The report also recognizes that the preservation of democratic and economic institutions in the digital era will ultimately depend on efforts to control disinformation by government and the various platforms on which it is disseminated. Since the nature of the necessary action is not yet clear–so far as I can tell, we don’t have a clue how to accomplish this– Brookings says that the general public needs to make itself less susceptible, and its report offers four ways to accomplish that.

You’ll forgive me if I am skeptical of the ability/desire of most Americans to follow their advice, but for what it is worth, here are the steps they advocate:

Know your algorithm
Get to know your own social media feed and algorithm, because disinformation targets us based on our online behavior and our biases. Platforms cater information to you based on what you stop to read, engage with, and send to friends. This information is then accessible to advertisers and can be manipulated by those who know how to do so, in order to target you based on your past behavior. The result is we are only seeing information that an algorithm thinks we want to consume, which could be biased and distorted.

Retrain your newsfeed
Once you have gotten to know your algorithm, you can change it to start seeing other points of view. Repeatedly seek out reputable sources of information that typically cater to viewpoints different than your own, and begin to see that information occur in your newsfeed organically.

Scrutinize your news sources
Start consuming information from social media critically. Social media is more than a news digest—it is social, and it is media. We often scroll through passively, absorbing a combination of personal updates from friends and family—and if you are among the two-thirds of Americans who report consuming news on social media—you are passively scrolling through news stories as well. A more critical eye to the information in your feed and being able to look for key indicators of whether or not news is timely and accurate, such as the source and the publication date, is incredibly important.

Consider not sharing
Finally, think before you share. If you think that a “news” article seems too sensational or extreme to be true, it probably is. By not sharing, you are stopping the flow of disinformation and falsehoods from getting across to your friends and network. While the general public cannot be relied upon to solve this problem alone, it is imperative that we start doing our part to stop this phenomenon. It is time to stop waiting for someone to save us from disinformation, and to start saving ourselves.

All good advice. Why do I think the people who most need to follow it, won’t?

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Hooray For The Resistance!

Immediately following the 2016 election, voters across the country organized into units of what they called “the Resistance.” It wasn’t entirely clear just how the members of those groups planned to resist. It still isn’t.

Obviously, most are making efforts to register voters, to encourage turnout, and to spread information about the damage being done by this administration. Naysayers–some of whom post comments to this blog–criticize these efforts as inadequate, although it isn’t always clear what other steps they are proposing.

I have friends who have traveled to the border to assist the humanitarian organizations working there, and I applaud them, but most of us have job and family obligations that prevent us from joining g those efforts. Consequently, there are significant numbers of frustrated citizens who would like to do more to resist this racist and destructive administration, but aren’t sure what actions are available and effective.

Folks in Nashville, Tennessee, have now provided us with one example.

In a Nashville suburb, an ICE agent’a attempt to take a man into custody on Monday morning proved unsuccessful when the man’s neighbors formed a human chain.

An agent for the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Nashville’s WVTF Channel 5 (a CBS affiliate), attempted to detain the man in Hermitage, Tennessee, which is about ten miles from Downtown Nashville.

The man had entered his van with his son when the agent blocked them in, and neighbors responded by bringing them water and wet rags. After the neighbors formed a human chain, the man and his son were able to escape and enter their home — which the ICE agent was not authorized to enter.

The agent had an administrative warrant, which allows an ICE agent to detain someone but not to remove them from a home or vehicle by force. Unable to detain the man, the ICE agent left.

The incident was broadcast online by the man’s neighbors on Facebook Live.

Time has additional information about the incident.

After a four-hour attempted arrest — during which time the undocumented man and his young son barricaded themselves inside a van parked in front of their home — ICE agents left, and neighbors and activists on the scene created a human chain to allow the family to get indoors.

“At that point it was being extra cautious and letting the family know, look, we got your back, we’re between you and the unknown, and here’s a safe pathway back to your front door,” Tristan Call, a volunteer at Movements Including X(MIX), a collective of young activists who organize for social causes, tells TIME. Call was a part of the human chain.

By the time the attempted arrest was over, dozens of people had showed up to support the undocumented man, including two city councilmen from Nashville. The volunteers showed up as part of a network called ICE Rapid Response to protect undocumented immigrants, just one example of communities throughout the country who have responded to increasing threats of ICE arrests.

Evidently, neighbors who witnessed the attempted arrest sounded the alarm, reaching out to local activist groups, who then informed their networks.

Civil disobedience has a long history in the United States, mostly–albeit not always–for the good.

Episodes like this one–in which neighbors and good people gather to frustrate illegitimate efforts undertaken by their government–give me hope.

The Republicans in the House and Senate who are in thrall to the GOP’s white nationalist base may have been neutered, but the resistance of ordinary Americans, like this episode in (Red) Tennessee, give hope and encouragement to those of us who believe in a very different America than the one to which Trump and his base appeal.

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Can We Define “Great”?

One of the consequences of the fragmented media environment fostered by the Internet has been the development of alternate realities. Americans increasingly get our “news” from sources carefully chosen to confirm our pre-existing biases.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the divisions over Donald Trump and his slogan “Make America Great Again.”

It’s true, as many historians have pointed out, that the people with whom this slogan resonates tend to have a somewhat selective understanding of America’s history–one that omits the nation’s frequent deviation from its cherished principles. But inaccurate/incomplete history isn’t really the problem. The problem is with their definition of “greatness,” which tends to correspond with straight white male Christian dominance.

My own bias is for the vision of American greatness described by soccer star Megan Rapinoe in a recent article in the Guardian.

The US women’s soccer co-captain Megan Rapinoe has delivered an uncompromising message to Donald Trump, amid ongoing controversy over a possible visit to the White House by the World Cup champions.

Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper what she would like to say to the American leader, Rapinoe said: “Your message is excluding people. You’re excluding me, you’re excluding people that look like me, you’re excluding people of colour, you’re excluding Americans that maybe support you.”

Rapinoe has been outspoken about LGBT rights as well as racial and gender equality. After the US won the World Cup for a record fourth time on Sunday, Rapinoe called for progress on equal pay for the male and female teams.

In a previous interview with CNN, Rapinoe had said that, should the U.S. team win, they would not go to the “fucking” White House. In the Guardian, she expressed regret for her language, but not for her sentiment.

“I would not go, and every teammate that I’ve talked to explicitly about it would not go,” she said.

“I don’t think anyone on the team has any interest in lending the platform that we’ve worked so hard to build, and the things that we fight for, and the way that we live our life … I don’t think that we want that to be co-opted or corrupted by this administration,” Rapinoe told Cooper.

She added that allowing the White House to “put us on display” didn’t “make sense for us at all”, adding: “There are so many other people that I would rather talk to and have meaningful conversations that could really affect change in Washington than going to the White House.”

The sports star added the US needed to have a “reckoning” with the implications of Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “You’re harking back to an era that was not great for everyone – it might have been great for a few people, and maybe America is great for a few people right now, but it’s not great for enough Americans in this world.”

Rapinoe’s definition of greatness–a definition with which I concur–is inclusion.

A great society is one that values all its citizens, a society that rewards people based upon their behavior rather than their identity–a society that encourages and celebrates everyone’s participation and contribution.

Unfortunately, a growing segment of the Internet is fostering a fear of “replacement” in insecure whites.That fear is based upon a definition of “greatness” that frantically opposes inclusion; “greatness” is a country where “people who look like me” are in control. As the linked article reports,

The far right has set off a vicious circle of disinformation by filling the information and communication gap on topics such as demographic change with emotive, speculative and hysterical content instead of facts.

The next election will be a choice between those who define American greatness as inclusion and civic equality and those who believe that “great” means an America that privileges straight white Christians.

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