The Times They are A’Changing

Last weekend, my husband and I attended the wedding of City-County Counselor Zach Adamson to his longtime partner Christian Mosberg.

The couple had been married legally the week before, in Washington, D.C., since Indiana does not recognize same-sex marriages, but a second celebration was conducted back home in Indiana. There was a religious ceremony, involving clergy from several faith traditions, and a reception at Talbott Street that doubled as a fundraiser for Freedom, Indiana–the organization formed to fight HJR6.

Indiana culture warriors Micah Clark and Eric Miller would have been in despair; indicators of social and cultural change were everywhere, and it went well beyond the enthusiastic participation of clergy.

The ceremony wasn’t just attended by friends and families, although there were lots of both. The sanctuary was crowded with local politicians from both political parties. The Republican Mayor was there, as were several Democratic and Republican members of the City-County Council. A number of them also came to the reception, where they mingled with the kind of large and diverse group of friends that is one of the great benefits of urban living.

I couldn’t help thinking about the first time I’d been to Talbott Street, back when it was a truly transgressive venue featuring female impersonators and frequented by patrons who were mostly still closeted. My husband and I were both in City Hall at the time, part of the Hudnut Administration, and we’d come to see a friend perform. We were enjoying the show, when I was approached by a young man I recognized as a city employee. He was absolutely ashen-faced. “Please, please,” he said, “don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

That was approximately 35 years ago–a long time in my life (although the years certainly seem to have sped by) but a ridiculously brief period as social movements go.

It’s no wonder the pronouncements from the “Christian” Right have taken on a shrill and frantic quality. In what seems like the blink of an eye, GLBT folks have gone from a frightened, despised minority to a group of friends and neighbors with whom we are happy to celebrate life’s rites of passage.

Think I’m exaggerating the degree to which attitudes have changed? Yesterday, notoriously timid Indiana University announced it was joining Freedom Indiana.

Indiana’s legislators may be the last to get the memo, but homophobia is so last century!

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When “Best and Brightest” is Too Elitist

I listened–very briefly–to the Congressional hearings on the unfortunate, embarrassing roll-out of the federal Affordable Care site. The problems with that site have been amply documented, and I certainly don’t want to minimize what they tell us about the current level of bureaucratic competency–in this case, the ability of federal officials to adequately supervise and manage private-sector contractors.

What I heard of the proceedings didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about the website’s problems, but they did provide an epiphany of sorts: when you elect as your Representatives people who are undistinguished by reason of either intellect or character,  you get a legislature that is unequal to the challenges of the 21st–or any–Century.

There is nothing wrong with members of Congress not knowing much about the technical aspects of the Internet. But there is something very wrong when those same Congressmen  posture and grandstand as if they were experts.

The hearings were yet another dreary reminder of an all-too-common experience: a Senator–or more often, a Representative–pontificating about matters he or she clearly knows little or nothing about, citing “evidence” that is erroneous, non-existent or fabricated, in support of nonsensical positions increasingly divorced from the reality of a complex world. (During the recent government shutdown, this was a more-than-daily occurrence.)

What I want to know is, why? Why have we elected so many empty suits–self-important ciphers who are dismissive of science, slavishly attentive to the uninformed passions of their most extreme constituents, unschooled in basic economics, and contemptuous of education and expertise?

When did intellectual achievement become “elitist”? When did degrees from highly ranked schools become a source of ridicule from the right? When did rightwing pundits start dismissing those we used to call “the best and brightest” as “snobs” and “pointy-headed intellectuals”?

What prompted this latest eruption of American anti-intellectualism?

I can’t answer my own question with any assurance, but I can’t help thinking this sad phenomenon began in the early 1980s with the constant denigration of government as a mechanism for collective action–government as problem rather than solution. When government is seen as an inept enterprise–when “public service” becomes an oxymoron–how can we expect it to attract our most talented and public-spirited citizens?

The low esteem with which we view our governing institutions has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After all, why would the moderately competent, let alone “the best and brightest,” want to work with the likes of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Michelle Bachmann or Louis Gohmert?

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California–Yes, California!– Shows Us That Government Can Function

Something very strange is wafting in from the Left Coast. I think it is called sanity.

Long derided as the “land of fruits and nuts” and the poster child for official disfunction, California has turned itself into a model for diminished partisanship and adult legislative behavior.

The state has turned a gigantic deficit into a surplus and renounced the toxic partisanship that had regularly led to budgetary gridlock–not to mention the recall of a governor not so many years ago. As the New York Times recently noted,

 But in the past month, California has been the stage for a series of celebrations of unlikely legislative success — a parade of bill signings that offered a contrast between the shutdown in Washington and an acrimony-free California Legislature that enacted laws dealing with subjects including school financing, immigration, gun control and abortion.

The turnaround from just 10 years ago — striking in tone, productivity and, at least on fiscal issues, moderation — is certainly a lesson in the power of one-party rule. Democrats hold an overwhelming majority in the Assembly and Senate and the governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat. The Republican Party, which just three years ago held the governor’s seat and a feisty minority in both houses, has diminished to the point of near irrelevance.

Political scientists in the state credit several recent reforms for the turnaround–especially the abandonment of gerrymandering in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. As a result, Representatives are no longer beholden to rabid base voters in deep red or deep blue districts, and thus fearful of “getting primaried.”

Unlike candidates in carefully drawn partisan districts, Republicans running for office in California are no longer  insulated from demographic shifts. That’s particularly important in states like California, where growing Latino and Asian populations tend to vote for progressives. One Republican quoted in the Times article acknowledged that the redistricting–along with changes to a nonpartisan primary system– were “freeing lawmakers from obedience to their party bases.”

Majority rule should reflect the will of real majorities. Gerrymandering has given minority factions a veto over majority preferences–it has enabled a sort of legislative “ju jitsu,” the results of which we have recently seen all too clearly.

Here in Indiana, we can choose to be Texas or we can choose to be California.

We should emulate California, but the signs aren’t auspicious.

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Governing Isn’t a Game!

I wouldn’t know Glenda Ritz if I fell over her. I have no idea whether she is doing a competent job as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, or–more accurately, whether she would be doing a competent job if the Governor and his cronies allowed her to do that job.

Here’s what I do know: she was elected with a lot more votes than Governor Pence received. And I am not the only person increasingly pissed by the games the Governor and legislature have been playing to keep her from doing the job she was elected to do–all in order to strip her office of its usual authority and make it incredibly difficult for her to do her job.

That doesn’t mean I approve of everything Ritz has done in return, but it is certainly clear who started this “tit for tat” that is consuming public resources and diverting time and energy from performance of the tasks We the People have a right to expect our elected officials to perform.

This unseemly effort to “cheat” when the “game” isn’t going your way is one more bit of evidence that our current crop of political actors are uninterested in actually governing. They run for office not because they want to do something, but because they want to be something.

Here’s the deal, Governor: you ran for office. Glenda Ritz ran for office. You were both elected. You don’t get to change the rules in order to ensure that she can’t do her job. She gets to fulfill the duties of her office, and if she doesn’t do that satisfactorily–something We the People will decide–we get to vote her out.

That works for you, too.

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Just Think How Happy They’d Be if the Weather Were Better….

Or maybe not. I had a Canadian colleague who insisted that cold weather encourages development of social cooperation and interdependence, and that’s why places like Canada develop better social safety nets.

Recently, Denmark–a cold country with high taxes and one of those “socialist, nanny-state” governments– was ranked the happiest nation on earth.

Of course, being prosperous (not to mention healthy and virtuous) didn’t hurt.

The six factors for a happy nation split evenly between concerns on a government- and on a human-scale. The happiest countries have in common a large GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy at birth and a lack of corruption in leadership. But also essential were three things over which individual citizens have a bit more control: A sense of social support, freedom to make life choices and a culture of generosity.

There’s a fair amount of evidence that strong social safety nets correlate with socially healthier societies–less gun violence, lower divorce rates, less discord, etc. (In all fairness, there’s also evidence suggesting that feelings of mutual obligation/collective responsibility also correlate with high levels of homogeneity. It’s easier to care about the elderly when they all look like grandma…)

The report notes that Danes have “a sense of stewardship” and are massively engaged in political and civil life. During the last election, in 2011,  87.7 % voted. Over 40% volunteer in NGOs, social and political organizations, etc.

Denmark may not be everyone’s idea of the ideal society, but life there sure beats the “vision” espoused by Paul Ryan and the Tea Party–a dog eat dog society in which the privileged deny any obligation to the less fortunate, where basic health care is a consumer good available to those who can afford it, and social security is “charity.”

And if we’re talking about happiness, folks in states like Mississippi and Texas–where Tea Party principles are the order of the day and efforts to create a “culture of generosity” would bring catcalls and derision– don’t look all that happy to me.

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