What It Means To Recognize Complexity

I could have written the introduction to a recent New York Times column by Frank Bruni. In fact, I’ve written some posts that sound eerily familiar! Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while will recognize the similarity; here’s his lede:

I warn my students. At the start of every semester, on the first day of every course, I confess to certain passions and quirks and tell them to be ready: I’m a stickler for correct grammar, spelling and the like, so if they don’t have it in them to care about and patrol for such errors, they probably won’t end up with the grade they’re after. I want to hear everyone’s voice — I tell them that, too — but I don’t want to hear anybody’s voice so often and so loudly that the other voices don’t have a chance.

And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.

When I was still teaching, I echoed every bit of that message–adding to the repeated admonition about complexity a lawyer’s reminder that issues are inevitably fact-sensitive. In other words, “it depends.”

Bruni’s essay goes on to address something my previous posts did not–why the recognition of complexity matters. It’s about humility. As Bruni says, recognizing that “it’s complicated” is a bulwark against arrogance, absolutism, purity and zeal.

As eminent jurist Learned Hand famously put it, “The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not so sure it’s right.”

Arrogance, absolutism, purity and zeal…could there be a more succinct, more accurate description of the crazies in the Senate and especially the zealots in the House of Representatives who are currently preventing thoughtful governance? (We should have a t-shirt with those words printed on it sent to Indiana’s own version of Marjorie Taylor Green, Jim Banks…)

Bruni asserts–I think properly–that humility is the antidote to grievance, and that grievance is the overwhelming political motivator these days.

We live in an era defined and overwhelmed by grievance — by too many Americans’ obsession with how they’ve been wronged and their insistence on wallowing in ire. This anger reflects a pessimism that previous generations didn’t feel. The ascent of identity politics and the influence of social media, it turned out, were better at inflaming us than uniting us. They promote a self-obsession at odds with community, civility, comity and compromise. It’s a problem of humility.

 The Jan. 6 insurrectionists were delusional, frenzied, savage. But above all, they were unhumble. They decided that they held the truth, no matter all the evidence to the contrary. They couldn’t accept that their preference for one presidential candidate over another could possibly put them in the minority — or perhaps a few of them just reasoned that if it did, then everybody else was too misguided to matter. They elevated how they viewed the world and what they wanted over tradition, institutional stability, law, order.

Bruni reminds readers that successful government requires teamwork, and that any significant progress requires consensus. “Governing, as opposed to demagoguery, is about earning others’ trust and cooperation. Exhibiting a willingness to listen to and to hear them goes a long way toward that.”

The entire linked essay is worth reading. Its message is especially pertinent to Hoosiers as Indiana winds down to the May 7th primary election. The vicious, nasty, dishonest ads being aired ad nauseam by Republicans running for Governor and for Congress are reminiscent more of monkeys throwing poo than messages from serious individuals willing to act upon their understanding of the common good. These contending political accusations display no hint of humility, no recognition of complexity, not even a nod toward civility. (Research suggests that voters’ response to such negative campaigning isn’t a vote for the particular monkey throwing the poo, but rather a decision to stay home on election day. That’s an unfortunate, but understandable, reaction.)

America faces complicated, pressing issues. We really need to stop electing purists and zealots who are ill-equipped to understand the complexity of those issues and too arrogant and absolutist to engage in the democratic negotiation and compromise necessary to solve them.

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The Policy Dilemma

Ever since the Internet displaced slick magazines and daily printed newspapers, wise readers have heeded the warning to avoid the comments.  Something about the anonymity of online responses evidently unleashes some truly hateful impulses. Consequently, except for comments on this blog, I tend not to read the opinions posted by readers of various articles and op-ed pieces. But I do read the “Letters to the Editor” published in the printed magazines I still receive, and I recently read one that deserves wider distribution.

It was printed in the New Yorker, and in a few brief sentences, the writer outlined a central conundrum of policymaking in democratic systems. The letter was a response to an article by Sam Knight about the “uneven performance” of Conservative rule in the United Kingdom. The letter-writer wrote:

But Knight overlooked one force that has shaped the country’s trajectory: the extent to which its government has, since the seventies, transformed from a representative democracy, in which major decisions were made solely by elected officials with support from the civil service, to a popular democracy, in which some of the biggest questions are decided by popular vote rather than by Parliament.

This transformation has created a truly irrational system, which takes important questions influenced by many complicated variables and boils them down to simple binary decisions to be made by people who may not be thoroughly informed. Democracy should remain an ultimate value in the U.K., but, if it is to persist, it must produce positive results for its citizens—something the Brexit referendum clearly has not done. Alas, the supporters of referendums lose track of the ultimate justification for a democracy—namely, that our elected representatives know that we, the voters, can throw them out if we think they are managing the country badly. It is simply wrong to equate this truth with an unproven assumption that voters also have the collective wisdom to regularly make wiser choices about complex issues than our representatives do.

Conservatives in the U.S. have historically insisted–correctly–that this country was not intended to be a pure democracy, but a democratic republic. (I’m not sure everyone making that assertion could have explained the difference, but that’s another issue…) The Founders created a system in which we citizens (granted, then only citizens who were property-owning White guys) democratically elected members of the polity to represent us. The idea was that we would vote for thoughtful, educated, hopefully wise individuals, who would have the time, disposition and mental equipment to analyze complicated issues, deliberate with other, equally-thoughtful Representatives, and negotiate a policy thought likely to address that particular problem.

Direct democracy would put such questions to a popular vote, and complicated issues would be decided based upon the “passions of the majority” that so worried the men who crafted our Constitution.

The Founders’ system makes eminent sense–but it only works when two elements of our electoral system work.

First of all, it absolutely depends upon the qualities of the Senators and Representatives we elect. And second, it depends upon the ability of the voting public to oust lawmakers with whose priorities and decisions they disagree– lawmakers who are not doing what their constituents want.

Those two elements currently do not work, and those electoral dysfunctions explain the inability of our federal legislature (and several state legislatures) to function properly–i.e., to govern, rather than posture. Gerrymandering is at the root of both of these failures, and the reason for the vastly increased resort to popular referenda and initiatives.

Thanks to partisan redistricting, far too many of the people elected to the House of Representatives (Senate elections are statewide and cannot be gerrymandered) are simply embarrassing–ideologues and outright lunatics performing for the base voters of their artificially-constructed districts. People like Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Green, or Indiana’s version of MTG, Jim Banks, all of whom endangered America’s international interests by holding up and then voting against critical aid to Ukraine, among many other things–are examples of the intellectually and emotionally unfit and unserious “look at me” wrecking-ball caucus.

Gerrymandering also limits voters’ ability to rid ourselves of these impediments to rational governance.

There are other aspects of our electoral system that desperately need revision or elimination: the Electoral College comes immediately to mind. But the elimination of gerrymandering–partisan redistricting–would go a very long way to re-centering the system and encouraging thoughtful, reasonable people on both the Left and Right to run for office.

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And Then There’s The Court…

Equal Justice Under Law. That motto is both aspirational and descriptive; in four words, it summarizes the whole point of the rule of law–the founding premise of America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights. Well-paid lobbyists may influence legislation to give Group A an advantage over Group B, elected officials may listen more carefully to people who wrote big checks to their campaigns, but citizens are supposed to be able to appeal for justice to the nation’s courts, and those courts are supposed to  administer equal justice under the law.

Granted, it has never worked that seamlessly. Judges are human, with human biases and foibles. Laws are often opaque. Access to the nation’s courts requires resources–either substantial funds or representation by one of the country’s public interest law firms, like the ACLU or Lambda Legal. But for a long time, America’s courts–especially its federal courts–have been there to redress inequality and corruption and instances of fundamental unfairness.

Now, thanks in large part to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, the Supreme Court itself has been corrupted. Any doubts on that score were laid to rest during the Court’s eye-opening and frequently chilling hearing on Trump’s ridiculous “immunity” claims. Those claims had been summarily and properly dismissed by the lower courts, and I fully expected the Supreme Court to follow suit. After all, the Court’s unnecessary delay in addressing the claim had given Trump what most observers knew he really wanted: a delay. The appeal was a transparent effort to postpone Jack Smith’s case until after the election, and most of us who were following the case expected the Court–having given him that delay– would rule on the merits by affirming that no one is above the law.

I will leave further discussion and analysis of that oral argument to the multitude of observers who found it appalling, because I want to address other aspects of the high court’s corruption that are relevant to the widespread loss of respect for that body and to the growing calls to expand its membership.

Over the past few years, Americans have learned about the truly gob-smacking conflicts of interest, money-grubbing and pious dishonesty of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The head of the Alliance for Justice pulled no punches:

Today, our republic is buckling under the weight of those misdeeds, as Americans no longer trust their Supreme Court to be a citadel of democracy and justice. Quite the opposite — they have come to expect the worst from our pay-for-performance judiciary. Are we really going to stand idly by and do nothing about this corruption?”

A recent article from The Intercept pointed to a lesser-known but no less troubling influence of money on the Court. The article focused on a case challenging two states’ efforts to limit social media moderation of user-posted content (which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton equated to “censorship) then turned to the broader issue of influence.

After the Supreme Court wraps up arguments for the current term next week, it will turn to finalizing decisions in dozens of pending matters, including these social media cases plus high-stakes cases about abortion, guns, the limits of presidential immunity, and how the federal regulatory apparatus itself functions. In doing so, the justices will have a chance to review hundreds of amicus briefs.

Like the money spent on elections, the money spent on the deluge of amicus briefs each term is incredibly difficult to track. The Supreme Court’s disclosure rule for amicus briefs is quite narrow, requiring only a footnote that indicates whether there were any outside monetary contributions “intended to fund the preparation or submission” of that specific brief.

The article quoted Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court,

“It’s no secret that the many of the rich benefactors cozying up to the conservative justices are the same people who fund right-wing organizations with business before the court. But too often, stories about the Supreme Court don’t connect these dots — and as a result, they leave us with an incomplete picture.”

A reform bill authored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse–described in the Intercept article– would be a good first step, but it is past time to consider enlarging the Court and imposing 18-year term limits on Justices, among other measures that are being considered. (When lifetime tenure was established, people didn’t live as long as they do today. Eighteen years is sufficient to accomplish the goal of lifetime terms, which was to insulate the Justices from political pressure.)

The Court has never been the unblemished guardian of liberty that we like to think, but its current, shameful partisanship and outright corruption are a new low. It’s time for a change.

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In Indiana, There’s a Reason For Low Turnout

Indiana’s Civic Health is poor. A number of studies and media reports confirm that–among other “civic deficits,” Hoosier election turnout is among the lowest of any of the states. As the linked article notes,

Indiana ranks among the lowest states in the country in civic participation. Groups from across the state met at the Indiana Civics Summit this week and hope to work together to boost civic engagement and increase voter turnout.

Much of the discussion at the summit was framed around the results of this year’s 2023 Indiana Civic Health Index. The report measures civic health by analyzing data about voting and voter registration, social and community connectedness, and civic awareness and action.

Indiana ranks close to last in the country in several categories measured by the report, especially those related to voting. Bill Moreau of the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation said these data points are a big problem.

“The civic health of Indiana is really pretty poor. Let’s just say it,” he said.

Moreau added that the report most recently listed Indiana as one of the states with the lowest voter turnout during midterm election years. The report compared Indiana to the other 49 states and the District of Columbia.

“This report, which is based upon 2022 election returns, has us ranked 50th for turnout,” Moreau said. “But we’re not last. Thank goodness for West Virginia, or we would be.”

Count me among the voices that have routinely echoed into the wilderness of civic indifference, begging students and readers to “do their duty” and cast their votes. But deep down, I’ve understood the truth of what the editor of the Indiana Capital Chronicle recently wrote–the reason so many Hoosiers don’t bother to go to the polls is because their votes really don’t count.
 
I’ve previously posted about an unsettling exchange some years back with a graduate student in my Law and Policy class. He was one of my best students, and he’d displayed a civic temperament and real interest in policy. I’d been exhorting students in the class to vote in an upcoming election, and he raised his hand. When I called on him, he explained that he’d recently moved to a bedroom community, had gone online to check his polling place, then looked at the ballot. There were zero competitive races–he’d confronted a Soviet-like ballot showing a single candidate for each position. He asked “Professor, why should I bother to vote?”
 
I had no answer.
 
As Oseye Boyd wrote in the Capital Chronicle, 

The cold, hard truth is sometimes your vote doesn’t matter — or that’s how it feels.

It’s not just voter suppression efforts such as gerrymandering where cracking and packing diminish voices and feed apathy, but it’s also gatekeeping by political parties that creates few choices, making it harder for voters to see why they should care.

Boyd referenced–among other elements of Hoosier undemocratic processes–“the change in state law that raises the bar to prove party affiliation has made it more difficult for newcomers such as Graves to break into politics and challenge the incumbent.”

Before 2022, you only had to vote in one recent primary to prove your party affiliation. Now, a potential candidates’ two most recent primary votes have to match the party they wish to represent. If you don’t meet this requirement, county party chairs can allow you to run by issuing a waiver. “Can” being the operative word. Without clear guidelines on waiver issuance, the decision is left to the whims of party chairs in each county, creating a hodgepodge of reasons for approving or denying waivers….

Now, only five of the 23 Marion County legislative races in the upcoming primary are competitive. That’s it. Five. The incumbents in the other 18 districts will win no matter what. Let’s be real, races without competition are boring and uninspiring. Candidates bring out their A game when there’s competition. Our political system should encourage public service not discourage it by creating arbitrary obstacles…

We can’t keep chastising those who don’t vote without acknowledging there’s a system that seems to only want a few people participating.

Don’t believe me? Look at the number of people who voted in Marion County’s last two primaries; it’s quite sad. In 2023, 12.74% or 79,156 people out of 621,384 registered voters cast a ballot. In 2022, 10.78% or 73,086 people voted in that primary. The number of registered voters was 678,067.

It’s impossible to dispute her contention that the way to get more people to vote is to give them something to vote for. 
 
 
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The Direction Of The Wind…

It is certainly possible that I am engaging in the confirmation bias I constantly warn others about, but I recently read an essay recommended by Robert Hubbell, whose Substack newsletter I get, and I found it persuasive. It was titled “The Wind Has Changed,” and–assuming the accuracy of its observations–ought to give aid and comfort to citizens terrified of  MAGA victories this November.

Here are a few of those observations, written just after the House agreed to vote on the much-delayed assistance to Ukraine. The essay charted changes that–as Hubbell often cautions–should make us hopeful but not complacent.

The MAGA movement got splintered last night, and I for one don’t think they have the skill to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. (How’s that for mixed metaphors? Good?)

For one thing, J.D. Vance, Moscow Marge, and the rest of the Space Laser Putin Caucus, got thrown under the bus by Fearless Leader last night – who may not be able to do much, but he can read polls. He knows the wind has shifted, that the wind is filling the sails and we are beginning to move out of The Doldrums. He knows he’s losing control.

After last night, Ukraine aid will pass. Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell braved the FART (Floor Action Response Team) of the Space Laser Putin Caucus and Did The Right Thing.

Trump gave Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell the green light, while at the same time casting J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and the rest of the Russia Traitors over the side.

The essential line of Trump’s “Truthing” post last night is this: “As everyone agrees, Ukraine Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!”

He’s not doing this because he cares about Ukraine; he’s doing this because the polls are shifting; he needs fewer hassles. The wind is changing.

As the essay notes, Trumpism – “particularly its J.D. Vance-led German-American Bund Putinism” – is pessimistic. Trump and what the writer aptly dubs the “Space Laser Caucus” constantly tell supporters “We need to retreat, withdraw, hide, and let regional warlords like Putin reign over as much territory as they can seize.”

But constant pessimism has a sell-by date.

MAGA broke something in the House. Retirements are up. Swing seats are in danger. The endless infighting has soured many “normie” Republicans on the Space Laser Caucus and their strategy of screaming, throwing feces like a rabid monkey in a zoo, and all the performative lying. Even in the right-wing media bubble, the act has gotten old.

Fox has had enough of Marjorie Traitor Goon’s tantrums, her unearned sense of entitlement, and her political terrorism.

The perverse incentives of MAGA rewarded the Space Laser Caucus while leaving the rest – or at least those not representing the most ruby-red districts – fearing electoral survival this fall.

It turns out that shitting in the punchbowl is unwelcome over time. The tell is that Fox has slowly stopped booking the MAGA clowns while Rupert and Lachlan try to find and anoint the Next Star after their major fakakte with DeSantis.

The author points to the likely defeats of crazy caucus members Gaetz and Boebert, and asserts that the House GOP is staring down the barrel of a political gun.

Happy warriors like Jamie Raskin, Jared Moskowitz, Eric Swalwell, Jasmine Crockett and others know who is in charge in the House now.

Chuck Schumer managed to keep his caucus together, pulling in some GOP support, as the Senate schooled the Space Laser Caucus about their impeachment clown show of the House. No high drama; just procedural murder

What has been going on at 100 Centre Street in New York City, where Trump is finally facing the prospect of justice for his crimes in a case that now is seen as far more important than it was originally, is also a good sign the tide and wind are changing.

Here in Indiana, the disarray of the GOP is seen daily by those of us bombarded by the increasingly nasty, unhinged accusations being leveled by Republicans running for Governor. Anyone who thinks that these candidates  will smile and play nice after the primary is smoking something. Meanwhile, Senate candidate Jim Banks may no longer have a primary opponent, but his membership in the Space Laser Caucus and his constant support of unpopular bills–ranging from a national ban on abortion with no exceptions to his recent bill to defund NPR–suggest that he is far, far to the Right of most Hoosier Republicans. In contrast, for once, Indiana Democrats are working together and fielding a first-rate statewide ticket.

Even in Indiana, the wind is shifting.

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