Revisiting…Everything

Random thoughts for a Sunday morning….

The Sunday morning interview shows are focused on the GOP’s “identity crisis.” The New York Times has an article by the Public Editor about a not-dissimilar debate occurring within journalism over the meaning and possibility of “objectivity.” An academic listserv I participate in has a recurring discussion about the advisability of holding a new Constitutional Convention, or at least seriously considering significant constitutional changes. Various religious denominations are grappling with challenges to settled theological positions, including their beliefs about the role of women, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Educators are struggling to redefine both ends and means. Technology is changing everything from how we live to how we define friendship.

I could go on, but you get the picture. We live in an era when–as the poet put it– “the center will not hold.”

The existential question, of course, is: what will emerge from all this confusion and change? Will we take this opportunity to think about the “big” questions–what kind of society do we want to inhabit? What would a more just system look like? Aristotle was among the first to suggest that an ideal society would facilitate human flourishing; what would such a society look like?

Unfortunately, there’s not much evidence that these “big” questions are being asked. Instead, we seem to be surrounded by quarrelsome adolescents, desperately trying to game the system and retain–or obtain–relative advantage.

I wonder what it would take to change the conversation?

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Sometimes You Have to Eat a *** Sandwich

Pat McCarthy is a very thoughtful commenter to this blog, and he made an important point yesterday about compromise–a point that deserves consideration. What, exactly, do we mean by these repeated calls for political compromise? Should progressives “compromise” our insistence that GLBT citizens are entitled to the same civil rights as the rest of us? Can we really expect–or demand–that conservatives “compromise” deeply-held religious beliefs?

I think there are two different, albeit compatible, answers to that question.

The easy answer–the facile answer–is that honorable people don’t compromise on matters of moral behavior; we don’t sell out our gay citizens, act in ways that violate our consciences. The caveat here is that few political battles really involve such choices. Votes on tax rates, minimum wage, health care, the social safety net and the like may have moral underpinnings, may implicate our beliefs about social justice, but rarely present us with stark decisions about Good and Evil. (Note caps.) You’d have to be morally obtuse to characterize the recent, shameful mud-wrestling over the fiscal cliff negotiations as a fight for first principles.

Which brings us to the more honest–and arguably more difficult–definition of political compromise:  prudence, a recognition that few votes are “all or nothing” and a willingness to accept less than everything in order to get something, in order to move, however incrementally, toward one’s goal.

One of the more memorable quotes in the wake of the fiscal cliff vote was Senator Bob Corker’s glum conclusion that sometimes, it is necessary to “Eat a *** sandwich.” The difference between a passionate advocate and a zealot is that the advocate will be willing to “suck it up” on occasion in order to achieve broader goals, willing to do what is necessary in order to advance his cause over the long term. The zealot is the “all or nothing” guy, and generally, what zealots get is nothing. As someone once said, politics ain’t beanbag. Or as Kenny Rogers might put it, people who actually get things done know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.

There aren’t bright lines when principles are at stake. We’ve all seen people selling out their principles and justifying that transaction on prudential grounds. But when zealots insist that every s**t sandwich is a betrayal, we all lose.

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Two Different Worlds?

It has become commonplace to complain that Americans are living in different realities–to respond to statements or opinions that seem particularly bizarre with some version of Barney Frank’s famous line, “on what planet do you spend most of your time?” But what if that isn’t hyperbole? What if Red and Blue Americans really are occupying different worlds?

What if America is actually going through some sort of “virtual” replay of the civil war?

My husband and I eat breakfast at a local coffee shop most mornings with a friend who shares our political obsessions.  Yesterday, during a breakfast discussion about the embarrassing series of congressional fiascos that finally led to last minute legislation avoiding–or at least postponing–the fiscal cliff, my husband shook his head in wonder: as he noted, Congress had set this scenario up and thus seen it coming for at least 18 months during which it had done absolutely nothing. Why? It seemed incomprehensible.

Our friend offered his theory: The Republicans swept into office in 2010, convinced they would retake both the Senate and the White House in 2012. During the campaign, they continued to believe that Romney would win the election, and that they would then have the opportunity and power to fashion their own “fix” of the impending sequester, probably along the lines of the Ryan budget. When Romney lost, and the Senate became even more firmly Democratic, they were stunned. They hadn’t prepared for that eventuality, and they’re still trying to find their bearings.

In the aftermath, the party’s internal fissures have also become more pronounced. At this point, the GOP is like a fish out of water, flopping frantically this way and that on the floor.

I would dismiss my friend’s explanation as utterly fanciful if there were not so many emerging reports that support it. Somehow, despite all of the data and polling and anecdotal evidence to the contrary, despite Nate Silver, a significant number of Republican political figures managed to convince themselves that up was down, blue was red, and America would never re-elect that black guy, especially in a sour economy. When Obama won, they were genuinely shocked–and unprepared to participate in divided government.

I was still mulling over this increasingly plausible explanation when I got to the gym, climbed on the treadmill, and turned on the television. There was Chuck Todd in front of a chart showing the massive increase in the number of single-party states–states where one party or the other controls both houses of the legislature and the Governor’s mansion. (Indiana, as we know, is one of those states.) There are exceptions, but most of the Republican-dominated states are in the old South (i.e., the Confederacy); most of the Democratic-dominated states are in the Northeast and on the west coast.

Representatives elected from lopsidedly one-party states don’t worry about challenges from the opposing party; they worry about primaries. So the Republicans pander to the rabid rightwing base of their party, and the Democrats play to the intransigent left of theirs. As the number of “safe states” multiplies, so does the number of unyielding, uncompromising ideologues.

Even in the absence of that political calculus, however, when people come from an environment that is dominated by a particular political philosophy, it takes effort to seek out and understand competing points of view. Such environments reinforce those “bubbles” we create by our media habits and friendship choices. Pretty soon, other perspectives seem fanciful and/or deluded, and we lose our ability to function within them.

The question is, how do we engage in anything remotely like self-government under these circumstances?

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Why I Hate AT&T

AT&T is trying to drive me crazy. And they’re succeeding.

I know a lot of people have problems with AT&T’s service, or their arguably evil politics. That’s not our complaint. (Yes, it probably should be, but I have limited amounts of political spleen to vent, and what I’ve got doesn’t extend to my phone service.)

No, my problem is with their billing. Not only are the statements themselves incomprehensible–I made it through law school, I teach graduate students at a major university, I don’t think I’m unusually stupid, and I don’t begin to understand them–but their record-keeping is screwed up and their website has clearly been designed by the liquor industry in order to drive users to drink.

We’ve had an account with AT&T for years. A credit card on file with the company was routinely charged as bills came due. And then, for reasons that will forever be beyond me, it wasn’t.

We were out of town, and I picked up my phone to make a call. I got a message telling me that service was being cut off for lack of payment. We couldn’t figure out why, and we weren’t at home where we could look at our records, so we called the billing office (that call is allowed!), made a payment from our bank account, and then pretty much forgot about it.

Then today–barely ten days after we’d made the late payment–we got a text message telling us that we still owed money. Confused, my husband called. In the two or so hours he was on the phone, he was told that the credit card on file had been rejected. When he asked for the account number of that card, it was a number totally unfamiliar to us. I don’t know whose account it was or is, but it was a number and an account we don’t currently have, and have never had previously.

The “service representative” (!) was unable to explain why they showed a number utterly foreign to us, but insisted that AT&T would not take a substitute–indeed, that the company could no longer accept any credit card from such dubious customers. (We’ve been paying AT&T regularly and without incident for well over 25 years, but evidently that wasn’t enough to earn us the benefit of the doubt.)

Long-suffering husband paid–again–through bank transfer. Per instructions from “customer service” (note quotation marks),  he then went online to correct the credit card information.  There he encountered a form clearly devised by Kafka: upon filling out the profile, with name, account number, etc., and clicking “submit,” a message comes up asking that the type of credit/debit card be entered. But there is no place to enter that information. NONE.

Another call. Another “service” representative unable to explain the rather glaring omission on the online form. A lengthy effort to convey the information verbally.

I hope we’ve finally gotten our account straightened out, although god knows I wouldn’t bet on it.

Bottom line? The two of us have spent a significant part of our day talking to people who were unable to answer reasonable questions like “why do you show a credit card that isn’t ours” and “when did you start seeing rejections from this card?” and “where on your profoundly fucked-up online form can we insert the information you are asking for?”

The next time someone tells me how unresponsive “big government” is, I’m going to suggest they try dealing with big telecom. For now, I’m heading for the liquor cabinet…

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