Picturing Change

I know this blog can often be a downer. Especially during the Trump years, there has just been so much damage, so much polarization, so much hate–it’s sometimes hard to focus on areas of actual improvement.

Today, however, I want to do just that.

Social and cultural changes are almost always slow, but I am not the only observer who looked at the people protesting after George Floyd’s murder and saw multi-racial, multi-ethnic crowds who weren’t there during previous era protests. And much as I worry about disinformation in today’s fragmented media landscape, I firmly believe that certain of the changes in that media have prompted social change for the better.

Pictures matter.

Until he retired, I team-taught a course–Media and Public Affairs–with Jim Brown, then Dean of the Journalism School. We created the course, which was offered to both journalism and public affairs students. Thanks to Jim, I learned a lot–probably a good deal  more than the students.

Jim was a photojournalist, and thanks to his insights, I learned to appreciate the impact of pictures on social attitudes, and to see how photojournalism practices of the country’s newspapers had fed and supported racism. For years, the old media truism–if it bleeds, it leads–led to the publication of (often dark and grainy) photographs of people accused of crimes.  Those photographs tended to be disproportionately of Black offenders. Worse, in the early days of television and in rural areas of the country, those were often the only portrayals of African-Americans that white Americans saw.

There weren’t interviews with Black scientists or doctors, no “human interest” pieces about Black educators or successful businesspeople. Aside from sports, television didn’t feature talented Black performers. A recent “Sunday Morning” interview with Leslie Uggams included the story of her hiring by Mitch Miller; she was the first regular Black performer on a nationally-syndicated show, and a number of southern stations threatened to stop airing it if she remained. (Miller, to his credit, ignored the threat.)

Today, our televisions and newspapers, as well as our workplaces and other parts of our environments, are far more representative of American reality. There are African-American newscasters, entertainers, scientists…And that increased representation isn’t limited to Blacks. Women are now news anchors, weather-people and even sports commentators. Figures with Asian and Latino names are prominent.

For the past decade or so, the media has been delivering a far more accurate picture of America and American diversity.

If you look at the names on the list of credits accompanying a television drama or movie, you will see a wide range of ethnicities represented. Actors no longer feel the need to “Americanize” their names in order to be acceptable to folks who might be put off by anything stranger than Smith or Jones.

And then, of course, we had a Black President.

Granted, the response from the hard-core racists to all of this has been hysterical. When Obama was elected, the rocks lifted and the cockroaches crawled out in force. But for eight years, the rest of us saw a class act–a cultivated, brilliant lawyer with a great sense of humor, an impressive way with words, an equally accomplished wife and an impeccable family life–a vivid contrast with his crude, inarticulate and ignorant White successor.

This forced encounter with the reality of America’s diversity has been anything but smooth or easy. Those old White guys of a certain age (and plenty of younger ones) have looked at the pictures that are everywhere–uppity women executives, newscasters of all races and genders (many with Latino or Asian names), Black people famous for something other than sports (and uppity women who are famous for sports!)–and seen only their own loss of dominant status. They’ve resisted. Some violently.

But the pictures are there, not just in the traditional media, but in the viral testimonies captured by those ubiquitous cellphone cameras. The visual environment has changed, and with it, the broader culture. Americans are talking about privilege. We are talking about injustice. About representation. We’re seeing the world–and ourselves–far more accurately.

We aren’t nearly “there” yet. But we’re picturing it.

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White Supremacists, Islamic Terrorists, Trumpers

I know that sane Americans are all holding our breath until January 20th, when most of us are anticipating being able to breathe a sigh of relief.  We foresee a return to normal concerns– policy debates based at least partially on logic and evidence, an actual national response to the COVID pandemic, and an end to waking up each day to news of the President’s latest lunacy and/or his administration’s latest, ever-more-blatant corruption.

Apparently, however, we won’t be clear of existential threats when Trump and his mobsters depart.

The Washington Post recently carried a column on the results of a study done by Jigsaw, the research arm of Google.The research looked into violent white-supremacist groups, and found that they had formed a connected global movement even before Trump’s presidency gave them oxygen here in the U.S., and that movement will almost certainly continue long after he leaves office.

These white-supremacist groups have used the Internet to recruit and train followers, much as Islamist extremists did a decade ago, argues a major new study by Jigsaw, a research arm of Google. The study, described here for the first time, is being published Tuesday by Jigsaw’s digital journal, the Current.

The study shatters the image that many analysts have of white supremacist attackers as “lone wolf” extremists. Jared Cohen, the chief executive of Jigsaw, argues that “this myth obscures the vast underlying infrastructure of white supremacist online communities around the world.”

These groups “move fluidly between mainstream and fringe platforms,” Cohen warns. They recruit followers on Facebook or YouTube, among other venues, and then direct them to protected “alt-tech” sites where they can privately share propaganda and boast about operations.

The report describes a movement that is much larger, much more violent and much better organized than most of us have realized. Information from the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database  suggest the existence of a global network that has been steadily growing since 2010.

A chilling factoid: that network has expanded “in tandem with Islamist extremism, its twin in using online media to spread hate.”

Consider these comparisons: In 2009, white supremacists were responsible for six deaths in 19 incidents, while Islamist extremists were responsible for 14 deaths in 12 incidents. Those numbers kept climbing steadily through the decade. By 2019, white supremacists were linked to 165 deaths in 336 incidents, while Islamist extremists were tied to 193 deaths in 82 incidents.

In three “hot spots” for white supremacists — Germany, Britain and the United States — the number of incidents seemed to spike because of special factors: in Germany, the influx of Syrian migrants in 2015; in Britain, the angry debate over Brexit in 2016; in the United States, Trump’s presidency in 2017.

When we look at the evidence all around us–it is hard not to conclude that we live at a time when huge numbers of people are simply crazy. Not just wrong about this or that, not just uninformed or unpleasant (although most also fall into those categories), but off the charts deranged.

It isn’t just the “soldiers” of these horrifying, radicalized terrorist threats.

It’s also the huge numbers of Republicans who believe that Donald Trump was mentally and emotionally fit to occupy the Oval Office. It’s the millions who insist that an election that delivered victories to their party’s down-ballot candidates, was supervised in many states by their own party, and was lost by over seven million votes, was somehow “stolen.” It’s the huge numbers who believe in “QAnon” and its conspiratorial allegations that Democrats are trafficking and  killing children and drinking their blood. It’s the inconceivable numbers who continue to dismiss the pandemic as a “hoax” while their friends and relatives die.

I know rational folks are supposed to “reach out” to those on “the other side”–but how do you reach out to people who are on the other side of sanity?

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Unprecedented Lunacy

Wow. Just wow. Someone has opened the asylum door….

It’s hard to overstate the lunacy of Trump’s “legal” team defenders. Rudy has been making himself a pathetic figure for several years now, but he isn’t the only bizarre figure who once somehow managed to graduate from law school and pass the bar exam.

Politico reports on Sydney Powell, recently expelled from those designated as official Trump lawyers for being too wacko even for a group that often seems certifiable.

Sidney Powell released the Kraken. And it turns out the mythological sea beast can’t spell, is terrible at geography and keeps mislabeling plaintiffs in court.

A congressional candidate Powell claimed to represent in one lawsuit said that, in fact, he had nothing to do with Powell or her quixotic effort, which she dubbed “the Kraken,” arguing the election was stolen from President Donald Trump. An expert witness cited in another suit named a nonexistent county in Michigan. A Wisconsin lawsuit sought data on alleged irregularities at a voting center in Detroit, which is in Michigan. And a filing in federal district court signed by Powell misspelled “district” twice in the first few lines.

According to Politico, Powell has, “at least twice,” sued on behalf of a plaintiff who had not agreed to be a part of the case.

Judges reportedly have been flummoxed/bemused by the multiple errors committed by Powell, who has continued crusading to overturn the election results even after she was booted from Trump’s legal team.

Powell and another Trump-supporting lawyer, Lin Wood, are causing chaos in Georgia, in advance of the Senate runoffs there. They have been soliciting donations and urging Republicans not to vote for the GOP candidates in those runoffs, because they say those candidates have been insufficiently supportive of Trump.

Powell and Wood allege a vast conspiracy in which states’ electronic voting systems have been manipulated by a company with ties to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. What has set them apart from Trump’s official legal team, which has offered similarly unsupported claims of fraud, is their willingness to accuse sitting Republican officials of committing crimes to aid Biden’s election.

Pro-Trump crazy hasn’t been limited to lawyers. The Republicans with whom I used to work would be equally appalled by today’s GOP officeholders. Florida Governor DeSantis is a good example of just how detached from competence and reality these people are.

In addition to urging Trump to “fight on,” DeSantis has continued to be one of the President’s staunchest supporters. He has publicly urged Republican-controlled Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Michigan to overturn results in those states. He also has accused Chief Justice John Roberts of undefined “crazy stuff.” (Perhaps, in addition to being a Trump ally, he has taken vocabulary lessons from The Donald.)

DeSantis’ lack of competence has been most damaging, of course, in his refusal to follow medical advice with respect to the pandemic. In a recent speech, he criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its “ridiculous” studies on the Covid-19 outbreak, which he said were more about “affirming” the positions of “bureaucrats” than science.

I don’t think this guy can spell science. He has steadily resisted imposing state-level restrictions on gatherings or mandating–or even encouraging– mask-wearing, even as Florida has reported more than 1 million cases.

If DeSantis were the only Republican governor inhabiting an alternate reality, you might chalk up his election to the fact that Florida voters include lots of elderly folks with dementia, but there are several others. Just last week, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has refused to issue a mask mandate, declared a “day of prayer and fasting” for those affected by the pandemic. (I thought God helped those who helped themselves…)

And that, of course, leads me back to my recurring question: who believes these clowns? Who takes them seriously?

Evidently, thousands, perhaps even millions, of people do–they send money to the demented lawyers, vote for the science-and-expertise-rejecting politicians. They post comments to Facebook asserting that an election that was won by over seven million votes was somehow “rigged,” and that failure to acknowledge that “fraud” is to believe “fake news.”

If there’s a psychiatrist reading this blog, can you weigh in and explain the appeal of obvious lunacy? Because I really, truly do not get it.

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An Intriguing Theory

I’m clearly not the only person trying to make sense of Trump’s voters. Who are they? Why do they continue to support him? Why do they seem so susceptible to conspiracy theories and alternate realities?

The political science research has found a strong correlation between racist grievance and support for Trump, but as I have previously written, I am unwilling to conclude that the 70 million Americans who voted for him are all motivated by racism. (Granted, as my youngest son points out, they obviously didn’t consider Trump’s racism disqualifying…)

And where did the extra ten million votes–those over and above his support in 2016– come from?

The founder of  the liberal Daily Kos site has an intriguing theory. He began by noting that both times Trump has run, he’s turned out voters that haven’t shown up for any other election–and probably for that reason, didn’t show up in the polls.

Remember, polling was perfectly fine in 2018, and Democrats swept races in 2017, 2018, and 2019. They even won governorships in blood-red Kentucky and Louisiana!

Yet both 2016 and 2020 saw the emergence of a massive wave of white voters that polling totally missed. In fact, despite suffering some defections among suburban Republicans, Trump still managed to get 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016! So I came up with a theory: the Hidden Deplorables.

According to this theory, the “hidden deplorables” are neither Republican nor  conservative.

They’re apolitical, otherwise ignoring politics, because their lives legitimately suck. They live in meth country, with dim job prospects (in fact, those two factors are highly correlated). Institutions have failed them—corporations abandoned them for cheaper labor overseas, government feels distant, and it’s certainly not improving their lives. Cities feel like walled gardens—unattainable, unaffordable, yet that’s where all the jobs are, the culture, the action. These deplorables have been left behind. So their attitude? “Fuck them all.”

In other words, these are people who have lost everything and simply want to burn everything to the ground.

Kos concedes that he has no hard evidence for his theory–that it is simply his best explanation of the fact that these Trump voters only show up when Trump is on the ballot, and why pollsters are unable to capture them. He notes research on the 2016 election conducted by David Shor, a Democratic pollster. Shor’s research echoed the findings of surveys by Daily Kos leading up to the 2020 election. Trump support was highest among white voters who had low levels of social trust — a group that researchers have found is also less likely to participate in telephone surveys.

A Daily Kos pre-election survey to measure the strength of Americans’ social networks found that nearly one in five Americans (17 percent) reported having no one they were close with, marking a 9 percentage point increase from 2013.

Think about that.

What’s more, we found that these socially disconnected voters were far more likely to view Trump positively and support his reelection than those with more robust personal networks. Biden was heavily favored by registered voters with larger social networks (53 percent to 37 percent), but it was Trump who had the edge among voters without any close social contacts (45 percent to 39 percent).

And this was especially true among white voters even after accounting for differences in income, education level, and racial attitudes. Sixty percent of white voters without anyone in their immediate social network favored Trump, compared to less than half (46 percent) of white voters with more robust social ties.

If this analysis is correct–and it certainly rings true–it would explain so much: why urban whites are so heavily Democratic (they are surrounded by community). Why suburban whites–especially women– are turning blue as well. (It could also explain why suburban men, who are less likely to engage in social activities, remain more Republican.)  Why seniors–the age group most likely to be isolated–remain more heavily Republican. It even explains part of the education gap—college is a community building experience.

Kos is interested in the political consequences of this phenomenon. He posits that It is “Trump the destroyer of norms, traditions, and liberals” that motivates their votes– that they’re attracted to his specific brand of destructive chaos. If he’s right, they don’t and won’t vote unless he’s on the ticket.

If this theory is right, however, it affects far more than political strategy.

Those of us who worry about the future of the nation need to figure out how to bring these people back into the American community. Many of them, as Kos suggests, are irredeemably damaged–the incels, the QAnon followers, militia members and the like are probably lost causes. But if he’s right, there are a lot of hurting, lonely, angry people “out there.”

Ignoring them, their isolation and their pain shouldn’t be an option.

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Different Roads To Worker Wellbeing

As my children have grown and traveled and lived in other countries, I’ve come to realize how truly unfortunate American hubris is–how our belief in “American exceptionalism” and assumed superiority prevents us from learning from the experiences and experiments of other nations.

In several previous posts, I have mentioned that my “techie” son currently lives and works in Amsterdam. Thanks to contemporary technologies like FaceTime, which have replaced those expensive “long distance” phone calls, we talk often. And because we’re a pretty political (okay, nerdy) family, those talks often turn to matters of political philosophy or public policy. I don’t recall what triggered our recent particular discussion of workers’ rights, but my son shared with me information about Netherlands’ work councils.

Any company that employs at least 50 workers is required to establish a Worker Council.
Companies employing between ten and fifty individuals must do so if a majority of  employees request it. (If those employees don’t request establishment of such a council, there are requirements for holding staff meetings at which employees are entitled to “prior consultation” about proposed changes.) Companies with fewer than ten employees aren’t subject to these requirements.

Work Councils aren’t unions. They are a legal requirement for businesses in the country,  charged with promoting and protecting employee interests. Such councils must be consulted before the owners or managers of a company can implement major decisions affecting workers. Councils are empowered to consent–or withhold consent–to changes that affect workers’ “terms of employment.”

Company managers must meet with their Works Council at least twice a year, and there are requirements for worker representation on those councils.

Evidently, work councils aren’t simply a feature of Netherlands’ governance– multinational enterprises operating in at least 2 countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) come under the jurisdiction of something called “the European Works Council Directive (EWC).”

Companies required to establish these councils are further required to give members of those councils time off to do work required by that membership, and are legally required to provide those individuals with leave for the necessary training. Employers are also required to pay all the costs of such training.

The law requires that works councils be informed and consulted about economic issues, but gives the councils the right to approve or disapprove changes on social issues. I’m not clear on how “social issues” are defined. And I’m definitely not clear on the relationship of the councils to labor unions: in the regulations my son shared with me, it says:

Works councils are not directly trade union bodies although most have a majority of trade union members. It is, however, very common to find that some of the works council members are not in a union and in some cases trade unionists are in a minority, or even not present at all.

I asked for links to the information because–during our conversation–my son had explained that his company had proposed some fairly significant changes to vacation time and other elements of employment, but the Worker Council had required changes to the changes. Evidently, after some back and forth, agreement was reached–and presumably, all parties were satisfied.

I was fascinated.

Here in the U.S., diminished union membership has translated into much diminished worker power. Rather than labor and management bargaining from roughly equivalent positions, economic change and loss of worker power has given management a highly disproportionate ability to “call the shots.” The existence of these Worker Councils suggests that, in the Netherlands and in the European Union, there is genuine concern for the well-being of employees, and for the maintenance of a reasonable balance of power between labor and management.

I certainly don’t know enough about Europe’s experience with these councils to have an informed opinion about their performance, but I wouldn’t even have known of their existence but for a conversation with someone–in this case, my son–who benefited from their operation.

I wonder how many other potentially good ideas we Americans miss because we are so convinced that “we’re number one,” and others have nothing to teach us….

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