Random Blogging – Page 303

Who Are We?

With the exception of gay rights, America doesn’t seem to be moving in an inclusive direction.

Quite the contrary.

As I write this, I’ve just looked at a lengthy strand of twitter comments about the new Miss America. She’s of Indian ancestry, and that fact unleashed some truly despicable comments about what it means to be both beautiful and a “real” American.

In the wake of President Obama’s election, overt racism has mushroomed; the sort of sentiments that simply weren’t made in polite company have become commonplace. Blatantly racist emails circulate among the like-minded and (occasionally) other appalled recipients , and racist blogs and Facebook posts are daily occurrences.

It’s not just race. The past few years have seen us take giant steps backward with respect to women’s rights. Bigotry against people who appear to be from the Middle East has hardened, and “Muslim” has become an insult, rather than a description of someone’s religious identity. Immigration reform? Forget it. Anti-immigrant sentiment has stalled even modest Congressional action.

And of course, legal and social progress notwithstanding, gay slurs continue to be thrown around with abandon.

So what are we to make of this ugly time we are going through? Are we just going through a particularly pissy phase, made worse by economic insecurity and rapid social change? Or is the nastiness a permanent part of the American landscape—one that has always been here, but (thanks to the Internet) is suddenly “in our face” in a way it never was before?

Over fifty years ago, a social scientist named Gordon Allport wrote a seminal book, The Nature of Prejudice. The book was written right after President Truman integrated the Armed Forces, while Americans were coming to terms with the presence of “colored” soldiers bunking down with the white ones. Then as now, other social shifts were intruding on “the way things have always been.”

Allport’s great contribution was to distinguish between prejudices that were simply an outgrowth of widely held social attitudes and those that were central to an individual’s identity. He found that most people who expressed bigotry against blacks or Jews (then the most frequent targets) were not invested in their negative opinions –they had simply accepted common stereotypes about “others,” and they could be educated to change what were essentially casual beliefs they had never really examined.

The other category was much smaller, but also much more troubling. These were the individuals that Allport—who founded the discipline of social psychology—described as invested in their bigotries. For whatever reason—bad toilet training, lack of parental affection, abuse—their belief in the inferiority of designated “others” had become absolutely central to their personalities. Education would have no effect at all on their attitudes.

The question we face today, of course, is: into which group do today’s haters fall? And which category will define America going forward?

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The Purpose of Language

Perhaps Tallyrand was right when he (purportedly) said that language was given to man to conceal his thoughts; we sure aren’t using it in order to communicate with each other these days.

In order to use language to exchange ideas, rather than to evade the chore of thinking, we’d have to stop the increasing tendency to substitute labeling for communicating. There are two major problems with that substitution: it allows us to avoid responding to the merits of an argument, and the labels themselves are all too often devoid of any meaningful content.

As many of you know, I alternate columns in the IBJ with Peter Rusthoven–I write one week, he the next. Generally, we do not take issue with each other, but a few weeks ago, I wrote a column that criticized the GOPs repeated efforts to derail “Obamacare,” including the House of Representatives’ forty (meaningless/posturing) votes. Rusthoven disagreed with that column, as he has a perfect right to do. But opened his “response” by pointing out that I am (in his lexicon, at least) a liberal. The implication was clear: we need not spend any time on the merits of her arguments, because we’ve placed her in this particular box and we have all made up our minds about the content of that box.

It may not be fair to pick on Peter for this behavior, because he is far from the only person who engages in it–on either side of the political spectrum. Furthermore, we all classify others to some extent; it’s human and it’s often efficient. The problem is, if we are going to affix a label that actually assists us in understanding where another person is coming from, we need to agree on the meaning of that label. And these days, we don’t.

Labels have lost their descriptive utility–they’ve become insults. Epithets. This is especially true of political labels.

A couple of years back, I proposed a quiz:

What highly placed political figure took each of the following actions?

Established the Environmental Protection Agency
Pardoned a powerful person who had committed a felony
Changed the rules governing welfare to restrict benefits and add work requirements
Defended the right of gays to serve in the military
Imposed wage and price controls during an inflationary spiral

The answers are: Richard Nixon established the EPA and imposed wage and price controls during his presidency; Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon after his resignation; Bill Clinton proposed and signed legislation “reforming welfare as we know it;” and Barry Goldwater vigorously defended the right of gays to serve openly in the military.

Which of these actions–and political figures– would we label “liberal” and which “conservative”?

Since Obama’s election, the problem has only worsened. The people who insist that the President is a “socialist” clearly don’t have the faintest idea what a socialist is. (And as I have pointed out elsewhere, he can’t be both a socialist and a Nazi at the same time; “National Socialism” is not the same thing as the political philosophy known as socialism.)

Actually, when I read “The Audacity of Hope,” it reminded me of my own platform when I ran for Congress in 1980–and at the time, I was labeled a conservative Republican.

When I encounter one of these accusatory critics, I want to shout “Agree with the President or disagree with him on the merits of his performance or positions. The substitution of (highly inaccurate) labels simply lets people know that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

What reasonable people hear when a label is used in lieu of an argument is: I don’t like person X or position Y. I have no clear reason for my animus, and no persuasive counter to his position, so I’ll just call up a handy label.

That’s not communication, and it doesn’t advance any debate. Tallyrand to the contrary, it doesn’t even conceal the speaker’s thoughts.

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A Perfect Analogy

Don Knebel is one of the lawyer/scholars who contributes to the Center for Civic Literacy’s new blog, and he can be counted on to have wise words for all of us. I particularly loved this one, because–as he notes–people constantly compare the national budget to those of everyday Americans.

Politicians often say that the federal government should emulate families in budget matters. They are right, but not for the reasons most of them think. Until the government distinguishes among types of expenditures as families (and businesses) do, we will not be able make sound financial decisions. Perhaps more important, we will not be able to evaluate the claims of our politicians about the size of our annual deficits.

I particularly loved his analogy to those real families.

The reported deficit simply compares the amount of cash going out with the amount coming in. So, whether the money is spent for a dam capable of producing electricity for 50 years or a toothpick, the money is all counted toward the deficit in the year in which it was spent.

No family looks at its budget that way. When a couple earning $50,000 a year spends $100,000 for a new house, borrowing $80,000, they don’t believe they are $30,000 in the red for the year. They recognize the debt is offset by the value of the house and spread the cost over the expected life of the house or at least over the length of their mortgage. On the other hand, they know they could be in serious financial trouble if they borrowed the same $80,000 to take their family on an around the world cruise generating no offsetting asset. Understanding the difference, prudent families borrow for homes but not for cruises.

The average American family understands and acts upon the difference between capital investments and everyday expenses. We should expect our politicians and pundits to understand that difference as well, and those who don’t–and those who pretend not to understand it–should be sent to a remedial classroom where Don Knebel can explain it to them.

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And Now For Something Completely Different….

I tend to use this blog to blow off steam…to rant/pontificate/lecture about politics and policies that set me off. And generally, or so I would argue, the topics addressed raise important policy questions.

In the scheme of things, today’s rant is about something that is pretty trivial–at least in the overall scheme of things. Unless you agree with me that esthetics and the built environment are important elements of our common life, and American consumerism has gotten out of hand.

Yesterday, my husband and I packed, threw our stuff in my car, and left for a long weekend near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Our granddaughter is visiting from England, where she has lived for several years, and cousins and other family are getting together with her in a large cabin–excuse me, chalet–that our daughter rented outside Gatlinburg.

The closure of I65 through most of downtown (in order to fix problems that were inexplicably not fixed during the last shutdown) was a minor irritant, but no biggie. The mysterious six-mile slowdown on I75 south of Lexington was more annoying–we inched along at 4-5 mph, surrounded by trucks and SUVs, with no sign of the cause of the slowdown. Suddenly, we were moving again, but there was still absolutely no sign of the impediment that caused the problem. Okay, these things happen.

But then. Then we entered Pigeon Forge.

If you have never been to Pigeon Forge, you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you. Las Vegas is tacky and ugly, but next to Pigeon Forge, it’s a model of urban charm.

We were in a line of incredibly slow-moving traffic on the main drag, so we had ample opportunity to see it all: the signs inviting us to a fun dinner and show featuring the Hatfields and McCoys, and others promoting the wonders of the mind-reading pig; the huge upside down house (purpose unknown) open for touring; the replica of the Titanic, also open; and a truly indiscribable construction representing several New York buildings, with a gigantic King Kong hanging from the apex and holding a biplane. Or something.

It evidently housed a Cracker Barrel.

In between these unnatural wonders were strip centers of every variety. Tattoo parlors competed with drug stores and discount warehouses–Manny’s of the Mountain, anyone? There were waterparks. Dollywood. And of course, motels. Everywhere. There were cutesy inns, there were massive, cheap-looking ‘lodgings’–all vying for the tourists for whom this entire embarrassing landscape was created.

Then there were the signs. Neon lights, LEDs, and huge billboards. Everywhere.

If you don’t believe that scale is important, you should come to Pigeon Forge–then contrast it to Gatlinburg, where many equally tacky buildings are rendered inoffensive because they are densely packed into a walkable, urban-scale village. In Pigeon Forge, nothing is walkable–hence the four-lane, treeless main street and the widely-spaced insults to architecture.

The effect of all this was profoundly depressing, and not just because there was no evidence anywhere that the place had ever been visited by anyone having the slightest bit of taste (good or bad). It wasn’t even because the layout and traffic were designed–if that’s the word– to create gridlock. It was depressing because this ‘business model’ evidently works. People come here–lots of them, from the looks of it. They get their tattoos, go to dinner to gape at the Hatfields and McCoys, visit Dollywood and for all I know, have their fortunes told by the mind-reading pig.

I’m not sure what the existence of Pigeon Forge tells us about America, but it can’t be good.

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Politics, Budgets and Taxes

The other day, an advocate for the homeless asked me why the needs of the most vulnerable citizens always seem to take a back seat to the demands of sports teams, developers, and bright shiny objects like cricket fields. He attributed this state of affairs to animus against the needy, but–as I told him–I don’t think that’s it. It’s just that politicians respond to pressure from people who show up–people who contact them, who vote and especially people who donate.

The problem we face when allocating public resources is that very few of us who benefit from inequities that unfairly burden others are willing to graciously concede those advantages. It’s too easy to convince ourselves that we are entitled to them.

When the Indiana Supreme Court ruled a few years ago that the system that had yielded grossly unequal property tax assessments for years had to be fixed, the homeowners who had benefitted from artificially low assessments–and whose taxes had accordingly been lower than those of folks with far less valuable properties–screamed bloody murder. Rather than sheepishly acknowledging that they’d made out like bandits for years, and that perhaps it was time to pay their fair shares, they saw themselves as victims of a rapacious government and took their revenge by ousting a hapless Mayor who’d had nothing to do with that particular decision.

Fast forward to Mayor Ballard’s proposed budget.

I’ve not been a fan of this Mayor, but his proposed equalization of the tax rate for IMPD is both fair and overdue. For decades, center city folks were taxed to support both the sheriff’s department (which has county-wide jurisdiction) and IPD (which patrolled only the old city limits). When the two departments were combined into IMPD, apparently the tax rates were not adjusted accordingly. As a result, those residing within the old city limits continued to pay more for police protection than those living outside those limits. As I understand it, Ballard’s proposal would equalize the tax and end what has effectively been an unfair subsidy of some citizens by others–and those who’ve benefitted are (predictably) whining about having to pay their fair share.

Since this post is likely to make me even more unpopular than I already am, I will add that I also support the Mayor’s proposal to eliminate the homestead credit in order to pay for the addition of desperately needed police.

Would I prefer that we shift funds from cricket fields and sports teams and too-generous subsidies to the Mayor’s developer buddies instead? Of course. Is that likely to happen? Not in my lifetime. Let’s recognize that politics is the art of the possible, and address our public safety deficit before crime rates that approach Detroit’s undermine every other thing we are trying to do in our city.

Speaking of homestead credits, we really should invest in efforts to ameliorate the plight of the people who don’t have a homestead. There are steps we could take now that would actually save tax dollars in the long run.

But we probably won’t because they don’t scream and vote, and they aren’t in a position to make campaign contributions. And because, to our politicians, the “long run” is the next election.

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