Troubling Parallels

When Tuesday’s primary results led to speculation about a brokered GOP convention, Donald Trump predicted (threatened?) that an effort to deny him the nomination would be met with riots.

It is harder and harder to avoid the parallels between the improbable emergence of Donald Trump and the social and political conditions that enabled Hitler’s rise.

I’ve always appreciated Godwin’s Law. Facile or offhand comparisons of contemporary bad behavior to the holocaust–a period in human history that remains inexplicable to civilized beings–is profoundly insulting; the effect is to trivialize atrocities.

But as Godwin himself recently noted, admonitions to be careful with analogies to Hitler and the Nazis should not be taken to mean that those comparisons are never apt.

I have always wondered how Hitler gained power. Where were the good people? How did a civilized, cultured population breed a movement of vicious, violent racial “overlords”?

Like many other Jews, my antennae are especially sensitive to intolerance and bigotry–but I’m also aware that I am at risk of overreacting to thoughtless comments or to the existence of hate groups composed only of a few damaged individuals who don’t represent a broader threat.

Back in December, CNN ran a very thoughtful article asking the question: is Trump a fascist? The author, Peter Bergen, goes through the precursors to and characteristics of fascism: a sense that the nation faces a crisis beyond the reach of traditional political solutions; the asserted superiority of the leader’s gut instincts over abstract and universal reason; the belief of one group (here, working-class white men) that they are victims, and that their victimization justifies extreme actions; the need for authority to be exercised by “natural leaders” (always male), culminating in a national ruler who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.

Bergen finds the Trump phenomenon squarely meeting those criteria. But he points to one characteristic that Trump does not share– “the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will when they are devoted to the group’s success.”

There is no hint that Trump wishes to engage in or to foment violence against the enemies, such as immigrants, he has identified as undermining the American way of life.

That may have been true when it was written, but it is clearly not true now.No one who has watched Trump deliberately fomenting violence at his rallies can have any doubt.

When he urges supporters to punch protestors in the face, when he promises to pay the legal bills of those who rough up hecklers, when the violence becomes so threatening that at least one rally has to be called off, when he speaks longingly of the days when “political correctness” didn’t prevent silencing dissent by beating up the dissenters or worse–the parallels are too close, too obvious to ignore.

And those calls for violence have been escalating.

A few years ago, one of Trump’s ex-wives reportedly said that he kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand. At the time, I dismissed the accusation as the product of divorce bitterness, but I believe it now.

I keep reminding myself that the United States is not Germany, and the year 2016 is not 1933. The differences matter. But the question we all face is: what can people of good will do to prevent a contemporary replay of one of history’s most horrendous periods?

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Um…About Those “Laboratories of Democracy”….

Federalism is one of the most important elements of America’s constitutional architecture (although my students’ lack of acquaintance with that term might suggest otherwise).

Federalism refers to the division of authority between federal, state and local levels of government; it rests on the premise (sometimes called subsidiarity) that problems are best addressed by the smallest unit of government able to deal with them. Americans have long had a strong bias toward “local control.”

In a phrase that has resonated, former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as “laboratories of democracy.” The idea is that states would initiate experiments with new programs, new ways of doing things, and if those new ideas were successful, other states would replicate those “pilot programs.”

It’s a nice theory, and it works in some contexts. But it assumes the ability of other states to learn from the successes and especially from the failures of others. And that hasn’t been happening.

I’ve written before about the very different policies being applied in Wisconsin and Minnesota–but more states are following Wisconsin, which is in a world of hurt, than are following Minnesota, which is thriving. Kansas and Louisiana are economic disasters, yet Republican governors (including, of course, Indiana’s Mike Pence) are blindly following the policies that led them down that road.

Speaking of Mike Pence, his photograph recently “graced” a blistering article detailing the growth of right-wing radicalism at the state level. The article asserts that while Americans are transfixed by a federal presidential campaign that sometimes seems to have been copied from a grade B movie, state-level lawmakers are busily rolling back hard-won advances in equality and freedom of choice.

While the nation’s eyes are riveted to the national stage, Republicans continue the multi-decade project of turning our nation into a right-wing wasteland by focusing their efforts where they can have the most impact with the least attention: state legislatures.

The article lists–among other travesties–bills in Indiana and Florida intended to cut off access to abortion and even birth control; Oklahoma’s efforts to strip any doctor who performs an abortion of his license to practice medicine, and an Iowa state senator’s proposal to make abortion a hate crime.

A whole raft of GOP-led states–including “moderate” John Kasich’s Ohio– is busily defunding Planned Parenthood.

But it isn’t just the war on women. Wisconsin (!) is proposing to fine so-called “sanctuary cities.” Iowa wants to authorize handgun possession and use for children under 14, while Arizona is moving a bill that would forbid state and local officials from enforcing federal firearms laws. Arizona is also loosening the already-weak regulation of “dark money” in politics.

Several states are prohibiting the use of “sharia law.” (It’s a safe bet that none of the wackos pushing this particular bit of nonsense have the faintest idea what sharia law is. They just don’t like Muslims.)

And of course, the frantic effort to push LGBT citizens back into the closet–and thus mollify the homophobes and theocrats who form such a prominent part of their base–is going full-steam ahead.

Thanks to gerrymandering, voting out these state-level legislative embarrassments ranges from difficult to virtually impossible. But you can’t gerrymandering a statewide office, and here in Indiana, getting rid of Mike Pence would be a very good place to start.

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None of the Explanations are Pretty

Implicit bias, anyone?

Two profoundly depressing examples of implicit bias–not to mention the deficits of today’s media–were on display in Indianapolis last week.

The first–and arguably most embarrassing–occured when Ben Carson endorsed Donald Trump; Fox 59 showed a picture of Trump with a photograph of Indianapolis Democratic African-American Representative Andre Carson superimposed.

Because all of “them” look alike?

And how oblivious to the political environment they cover did the newsroom have to be in order to confuse a black Democrat who happens to be one of two Muslims serving in the U.S. House with a sycophantic joke of a presidential candidate? Did they really think Andre Carson would have endorsed a xenophobe who wants to bar Muslims from the country?

Equally discouraging, if not as inexplicable, was the early reporting about a shooting involving an IFD officer. According to later, corrected reports, Michael “Kevin” Gill, a veteran of the Indianapolis Fire Department, was shot outside a house and ran into a nearby mosque seeking help.

Earlier, “breaking news” had reported that Gill was shot inside the mosque. (The definition of prejudice is to “pre-judge”…).

Tribalism–and its exploitation by demagogues seeking political power– is creating a meaner, more dangerous America.

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It’s Complicated, and We’re Scientifically Illiterate

The Washington Post recently reported on correspondence raising an issue that members of the U.S. Senate should respect, but probably won’t.

A letter was sent by ecologists and climate scientists and was endorsed by 65 other researchers, including a number of leaders of forest science, and by several scientific societies, and pointed out that pending bipartisan (!) energy legislation includes claims that burning trees for energy is carbon neutral–a claim that is scientifically incorrect.

“Legislating scientific facts is never a good idea, but is especially bad when the ‘facts’ are incorrect,” say the researchers, led by Phil Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center. “We urge you and other members of the Senate to reconsider this well-intentioned legislation and eliminate the misrepresentation that forest bioenergy is carbon-neutral.”

The amendment in question was introduced by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine; it has seven cosponsors and urges leaders of the federal government to act in ways that “reflect the carbon neutrality of forest bioenergy and recognize biomass as a renewable energy source.”

Shortly after its passage, a press release by Collins hailed the amendment, which, she said, would “help ensure that federal policies for the use of renewable biomass are clear, simple, and reflect the importance of biomass for our energy future.” The release noted the support of groups including the American Forest and Paper Association and the American Wood Council.

The argument for carbon neutrality–which sounds reasonable–is that, although burning trees emit carbon, trees grow back and when they do, they sequester carbon, making the process neutral.

A key problem, say the scientists, is that it takes a long time for trees to grow back after they’re cut down — and a lot can happen in that span of time.

Here’s the real issue: We elect lawmakers to make policy determinations—determinations that inevitably involve tradeoffs. Those tradeoffs may prove to have been unwise, or based upon faulty information, but that’s the nature of the job.

We don’t, however, elect people to legislate scientific fact. (Indiana’s legislature is still the butt of jokes from a century-old effort to change the value of pi.) It may seem like a picky quibble when Congress is doing so much other damage (Yuuge damage), but when lawmakers triumphantly “demonstrate” the falsity of climate change by throwing  snowballs in the Senate chambers, it’s important.

There is a difference between language claiming that a policy choice is being made based upon scientific consensus, or upon careful consideration of contending scientific opinions, and language that characterizes a conclusion as scientific “fact” And it’s an important difference.

In an era where presidential candidates routinely make colossally untrue statements, when Indiana’s governor can tamper with an “independent” report in order to reflect more desirable “factual” findings, when Michigan’s governor can tell Flint’s citizens that he can assess water quality, you might argue that the mere existence of a bipartisan bill recognizing the importance of cutting carbon emissions should be considered a huge win. I get that.

But I think the real lesson is that respecting the distinction between fact and opinion is for that very reason more important than ever.

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Economic Despair

More and more, I am reminded of that old adage that “it ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you know that just ain’t so.”

A recent research paper from the Brookings Institution investigated one of those “things we know,” and came to some disquieting conclusions.

When it comes to staying in school, many economists talk about the “aspirational effects” of income inequality. When students look around them and see a better life, they are incentivized to invest in their own human capital—such as investing in their own education.

But what if that conventional thinking is wrong? What if inequality doesn’t incentivize students at the bottom of the income ladder to work harder, but rather disincentivizes them? This is one of the questions Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine sought to answer in a new paper published as part of the Spring 2016 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.

Among other things, Kearney and Levine found that low-income children growing up in states that have greater income inequality are dropping out of high school at higher rates than are children living in states with less income inequality.

The authors point to a concept they call “economic despair,” or a feeling that economic success is unlikely because the distance from the bottom to the middle of the ladder is too far to climb. If a student perceives a lower benefit to remaining in school, then he or she will choose to drop out—even if they aren’t struggling academically.

What is particularly interesting about this study is that it focused upon the perceived distance between the bottom and the middle of the income distribution—not the distance between the bottom and the top. The idea is that what they call “lower tail” inequality is a more relevant measure, because—although the top may realistically seem to be out of reach—making it to the middle would seem to be a more manageable goal.

The authors suggest interventions: mentoring programs that connect youth with successful adults, programs focused on establishing high expectations and pathways to graduation, or early-childhood parenting programs to build self-esteem and engender positive behaviors. Although such interventions might help ameliorate the problem, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the effects would be modest, at best.

In fact, this study is one more “data point” in a picture that increasingly points to an inescapable conclusion: the level of inequality in America today is unsustainable and extremely detrimental, not just to the prospects of poor children, but to the nation as a whole.

We are in the midst of an election season that has unleashed a furious and troubling display of social dysfunction, in-your-face bigotry and populist anger. It’s hard not to attribute a significant part of that to economic realities that pit low-wage workers against each other and against a perceived plutocracy that has “rigged the system.”

Social scientists tell us that stable democracies are characterized by distributional equity, and the existence of a large and relatively secure middle class. Economists tell us that economic growth requires robust demand, generated by consumers with discretionary dollars to spend in the market, and a well-educated workforce.

When large numbers of people working 40 hours a week cannot earn enough to cover basic living expenses, when children don’t believe education offers them a path out of subsistence, democracy and the economy both suffer.

It’s past time to revisit some of the economic “facts” we think we know.

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