Competition

Balancing collaboration and competition for a healthy society.

The ongoing discussions about race and caste in America are plumbing the depths of who we want to be as a society, and of the human psychology of hierarchy and competition. As Darwin taught, competition is inherent to life. Winners don't just feel good, they live to fight another day and reproduce another generation. Competition is naturally at the core of human psychology and development as well. We only learn to know our selves against a backdrop of challenges overcome, and people to compare ourselves with. We celebrate the winners in art, music, politics, sports, business. Excellence only exists in comparison.

America was conceived from the first as a winners versus losers project. White Europeans, already sailing all parts of the known world in search of treasure and plunder in competition with each other and the other great Asian cultures, found a virgin land. At least virgin in that it hardly offered any competition, with peoples who were summarily exterminated or enslaved. That this domination was transferred to Africa as a convenient source of losers to be utterly dominated, and ultimately branded as an inferior caste in perpetuity, is at once spiritually shameful and also a natural consequence of the competive drive that inheres in all people.

Idealists then came up with a competing dream of socialism and communism, which was to be a sweeping antidote to all these racial, economic, and social injustices. But competition inexorably reared its ugly head, moving the field of play from its traditional moorings to the political and existential levels, even to the very nature of reality and truth, as seen in the Stalinist systems, and the numerous appalling dictatorial systems that copied it. There was no getting around the need to prove that some are more equal than others.

However we run our formal systems of government and economics, we live in countless competitive settings- socially, economically, sexually, in families and outside. No one loves unconditionally, or serves without reward. So the genius of civilization has been to tame and channel competitive structures and impulses to positive ends. Fairly rewarding work, or setting a standard of one sexual partner in marriage, are examples of rough attempts to forge stable, just, and positive social outcomes out of competitive instincts that if given freer license would destroy us. 

Slavery was a system that, while mostly stable and marginally productive, was also profoundly unjust. One tribe simply declared itself dominant, and used every insidious tool of indoctrination, oppression, and violence to maintain that position. Over time, the original source of the competitive superiority, (whether that was just or not), became irrelevant, and the disparity became as unearned by the oppressors as it was undeserved by the oppressed. It served in no way to expose the natural talents of either in a fair environment of self-expression and actualization through competitive effort. 

So over the history of our country, we have fitfully been waking up to this injustice and expression of erstwhile competitive success, and fighting over how to forge a new social contract. That is perhaps the main reason our political system is so bitterly divided right now. "Freedom" rings from the mouths of both sides. But for one it is typically the freedom to continue enforcing their inherited inequities and privileges. For the other, it is the quest to escape exactly those inequities, which have reified, (as they have similarly in India's caste system, over centuries), into a vast network of debilities, social dysfunctions, ingrained or instinctive attitudes, artistic modes and motifs, economic and geographic patterns.

The new social contract is obviously modeled on modern meritocracy, where all are educated as far as possible, all participate freely in the many markets that pervade our lives, from mating to consuming to job-finding and politics, and all benefit in proportion to their contributions as regulated by those markets. Historical inequities would have little influence in this world, while individual talent and character count for all. This assumes that such a meritocracy is a fair ideal, which many dispute, as the fate of the losers remains uncertain, and in our current version, unbelievably harsh.

But there is no ridding ourselves of competition, however blessed we are with countervailing instincts of empathy and cooperation. It is a rock of human nature, and of our personal development. The best we can do is to regulate it to be fair and moderate. That is, expressing the competitive success of the individual, not her forebears or tribe. And allowing enough benefits to winning to provide motivation towards excellence and success, without destroying the portion of society that necessarily will be losers in various markets. This is the perennial conflict (and competition) between right and left, Republican vs Democrat.

• What happens when the poor are concentrated on one place- East Lake Meadows.
• How long Taiwan?
• Fond memories of the Trumpers.
• What will become of our empire?
• Ten days of quarantine is plenty. Even eight would be OK.
• FOX- another reason to cut the cable cord.

On the Transition to Godhood

Kicking and screaming, humanity is being dragged into a god-like state.

We thought that harnessing electricity would make us gods. Or perhaps the steam engine, or the first rocket ship, or the atomic bomb. But each of those powerful technological leaps left us wanting- wanting more, and wanting to clean up the messes each one left behind. Next are biotechnology, gene editing, and robotics. What to do?

The fact is that we have powers that traditionally were only given to gods. Vast raw physical powers, the ability to fly, and the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, instantly, and to know practically anything at a touch. But the greatest of all is our power to derange the entire biosphere- destroying habitats, exterminating species, filling our geologic layer with plastic and radioactive debris, and changing the composition and physics of the atmosphere. 

We have not come to terms with all this power. Indeed half of our political system can't stand the thought of it, and lives in the fantasy that nothing has changed, humanity is not trashing its home, and we can live as profligately as we wish, if only we don't look out the window. Even more disturbingly, this demographic generally holds to a fantasy god- some bearded male archetype- who will either make magically sure that everything comes out OK, or alternately will bring on the end times in flames of wrath and salvation for the select, making any rational worry for the environment we actually live in absurd.

Judgement day is coming!

This, at a moment when we need to grow into our awesome responsibilities, is naturally disheartening. Growing up out of an infantile mind set, where our parents made everything OK, is hard. Adulthood takes courage. It takes strength to let go of fantasy comforts. But the powers of adulthood are truly god-like, especially in this age. We make and remake our environments, look deep into space, into the past and the future, know and learn prodigiously. We make new people. 

Is is clear, however, that we are not taking these powers seriously enough. Overpopulation is one example. We simply can not go on having all the children we want, taking no responsibility for the load they are putting and will put on our home, the biosphere. As nascent gods, we need to survey our domain holistically and responsibly, looking to its future. And right now, that future is rather bleak, beset by irresponsible actors resistant to their higher calling.

• What to do about all the lies?
• Another view of god.
• Don't drive everywhere.
• General breakdown.
• How did South Korea do so well? Rigorous contact tracing and quarantine enforcement.
• Greed in shorts.
• Direct air capture of CO2.

Domineering Freeloader Decides Communism is the Answer

General, executioner, economic development czar, and head of the national bank of the Cuban revolution: the biography of Che Guevara, by John Lee Anderson.

Ernesto Guevara began life as a reckless, adventurous, and very intelligent kid. His first inspiration was medicine, indeed medical research on leprosy and other diseases common in South America, and he got a medical degree. But toiling away on small problems in the lab didn't fit his temperament, and he decided to bum around South America instead, living off the generosity of others, running up debts, fast-talking his way out of jams, and building up an implacable hatred of the US. A common thread through his travels from Argentina through Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and points north was the overwhelming influence of the US, usually corrupting the local political system for the benefit of mining interests in the south, and for the benefit of agricultural interests in Central America. Eventually he got caught up in the liberal quasi-socialist reforms of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, later fleeing to Mexico after a US-supported right wing coup.

It was there that he fell under the spell of Fidel Castro, eventually becoming, despite his evident non-Cuban origins, Castro's right-hand man at the head of the communist revolution in Cuba. Not that it started as communist. No, Fidel was a master politician, and started as an anti-communist, currying favor with the Cuban population and the US. But both his brother Raul and Che were dedicated communists by that point, in thrall to Stalin and Mao, and their influence, combined with the logic of perpetual, one-party / one-person power, brought Fidel around to a gradual process of revealing, after the revolution had already gained power and Che had executed resistent elements of the army and police, their new (red) colors. Then came feelers to Moscow and the rest of the eastern bloc, the Cuban missile crisis, and that is pretty much where things stand still today.

Che and Fidel, when times were good.

Anderson's biography is definitive- fully researched, well written, and judiciously argued. He portrays Che as a seeker- a youth on the prowl for good times, but also for a purpose, which he ultimately found in full-on socialism. He found himself most fully during the early fight in the hills of Cuba- a trial by privation, exhaustion, and blood- where he put revolutionary principles to work organizing his men, making alliances with the local peasants, and executing deserters and traitors. Che's socialism was a pan Latin-American Bolivaran ideal, where all the countries of Central and South America would band together- possibly even unite- under state socialism as inspired by the peasant revolutions of Russia and especially China. It was both austere and visionary- a whole continent escaping from under the yoke of the great oppressor- the US.

It is clearly a religious conversion- the epiphany of a wholly captivating ideal. Che became Castro's second in command by his great intellectual and leadership talents, but even more by his absolute dedication to the cause- the cause of liberation from oppression. Unfortunately, after cleansing the army and securing Fidel's rule, Che was assigned to make the economy run, and here he came up against the immovable obstacle- reality. Socialism is healthy in small doses, but communism has not, in Cuba as elsewhere, been able to run an economy. Motivation to work needs to be supplied somehow, and if it is not by the lash of money and its lack, then terror will have to do the job, and poorly at that. Che did what he could, but the system he had fought so hard to establish was impossible to operate, and his thoughts turned back to his first love- revolution.

It is here that we see mostly clearly the religious nature of Che's motivations and of communism generally. If he were a rational researcher in the template of medical or other research, he would have sat back and realized that communism was not working in economic and social terms, let alone in terms of personal individual liberation. And then he would have adapted intellectually and tried to figure out a middle way to preserve Cuba's independence while running a realistic economic system. Possibly even elections. Unfortunately, by this time, Cuba had settled into a dependent relationship with Russia, which bought its sugar and gave aid, preventing either economic or political independence. Cuba is today still relatively poor, in the middle to lower ranks of GDP. Not as poor as Haiti, however, (or North Korea), and therein lies a message, which is that the Cuban revolution remains relatively humane, despite its many debilities and lack of political, social, and economic freedom. The collapse of the Soviet Union shocked the communist government into slight openings for private business and a heavy dose of tourism from Europe, which sustain it today.

But instead of recognizing the errors and failures of his dream, Che fomented more revolutionary cells all over Latin America and Africa, paying special attention to one sent to infiltrate Argentina, one that he was to join himself and die serving in 1965. One can not fault his dedication or consistency, but one can question the intellect that took him and so many other idealistic freedom fighters over the twentieth century into communism only to author monumental disasters of political and economic mismanagement. To think that dictatorship would resolve the class struggle, and produce washing machines and military might ... it had to be a religious movement, which unfortunately, once in power, became incredibly difficult to dislodge.

The motive force obviously was the US. We, through our callous and greedy treatment of our backyard over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and our betrayal of the paternalistic impulse of the Monroe Doctrine, not to mention similar failures of principle in the Middle East and Vietnam, motivated the intense anti-Yankee hatred of idealistic men such as Che Guevara, and the peasant resistance that, at least in Cuba, gave him and Castro support. It is a fascinating history of what the US has wrought, and how our failure to hold to our own ideals has come back to haunt us over and over again.

• It has been abusive, unnecessary, toxic, and we will need some time to work it out of our system.

Fair and Balanced

Momentary virality is not the best way to construct and distribute news. Nor is fear-based button-pushing. But what can we do about it?

Our political system almost ran off the rails over the last few months, and the ultimate cause was the media, which on the right-wing side has shaped an alternate reality of breathtaking extremism and divergence from reality. Outlets like Rush Limbaugh, FOX news, NewsMax, and Sinclair Broadcasting have fundamentally reshaped our political discourse, from a place fifty years ago where facts and problems were generally agreed upon, and policy discussions founded on those facts conducted- if not in a civil manner, then in a functional manner in legislative bodies like the US Senate. Now Limbaugh is broaching secession.

Rush, in his lair.

Even the Reagan era, conservative as it was, hewed to basic democratic principles and a centrist media environment. But then came Bill Clinton, and in response, Newt Gingrich, blazing a scorched-earth trail through the House of Representatives, followed soon by the establishment of FOX news as a relentless and shameless propaganda organ for the right. Now, even FOX is reviled by true believers as not extreme enough, as the end of the Trumpian epoch comes shudderingly into view. Which is worse- the internet melee of Russian disinformation and viral Q-conspiracies, or the regimented lying brought to us by corporate right-wing media? It is hard to tell sometimes, and both have been disastrous, but I think the latter has been substantially worse, forming a long-running environment of cultivated lies, normalized idiocy, and emotional trauma. Why anyone watches it or listens to it is beyond me personally, but clearly many people like to have their buttons pushed and participate in a crudely plausible vision of a black, white, and bloviatingly Christian (or un-Christian, depending on your theological ethics) world. 

Government censorship is probably not going to happen in this case. Even if we changed our legal system to allow it, the right wing would manage to subborn those regulatory bodies, as they have the Supreme Court, Senate, and the White House. These media outlets don't breathe oxygen, however, they breathe money- money that comes from advertisers who appreciate their ability to reach a uniquely gullible demographic. But those advertisers are not political. They are fomenting our divisions and destroying our political system for purely transactional reasons. It is, we can note in passing, another classic and ironic breakdown of the free market. 

The rational response, then, is to boycott the sponsors in systematic fashion, publicizing who advertises with which outlets, for how much. Several of these sites and petitions are already happening. But it is clear that they have not gained enough traction to have much effect. Only when the most egregious and appalling violations of decency occur does any attention rain on the channels and scare away sponsors. The tracking, petition, and boycotting system needs to have better centralization. Perhaps like the eco-friendly food labels, we need truth-friendly labeling of companies at the point of consumption, marking those (MyPillow! SmileDirect! Nutrisystem! Geico!) who are pouring money into these cesspools of psychological manipulation and political destruction.

Sure, this kind of accountability would heighten political divisions, causing a polarization of the business world, which has (supposedly) tried to keep itself out of the fray, and invite counter-boycotts of, say, NPR or MSNBC. But business has not been unbiassed at all, rather, through every organ, from chambers of commerce to K-street lobbies and Ayn Randian talk shops, they have pushed the right wing agenda in tandem with the propaganda organs that broadcast relentless pro-business and anti-public interest messages. It is high time to hold the whole ecosystem to account for the state of our country, directly and financially.

• Should federal office holders be held to their oaths?
• The business of the kidney dialysis business.
• Apparently, Trump supporters put their money where their minds were.

Rise and Fall of the US

What happened to our 20th century solidarity?

A recent issue of The New Republic carried an article by its publisher that discussed Robert Putnam's diagnosis of the decline of American civic community and solidarity. In the generational arcs of US history, we have had high solidarity, and consequent productive and progressive political eras, only a few times- the colonial era, the Republican interlude while the South had seceded, the progressive era around the turn of the 20th century, and the post-WW2 boom. Perhaps much of the 20th century could be classified that way, up to the 1970s. At any rate, we are obviously not in such an era now. We are, in contrast, floundering in an era of incredible political and social divisiveness, of unproductive public institutions, and of social atomization.

"Just as Putman and Garrett identify an upswing, they also trace a decline beginning in the 1970s. For this, too, they offer an explanation that departs from the standard historical narrative, suggesting that it was not Ronald Reagan who brought the long period of liberal rule to an abrupt halt, but rather the baby boomer of the 1960s who, turning from the communitarian idealism of the early part of the decade toward a more self-oriented direction, set off a chain reaction that ended up blowing the whole Progressive-liberal order to smithereens."

But the article does not really articulate what happened, other than to cite the many dramas of that time, and propose that the US had a bit of a "nervous breakdown", in a transition from a conformist 50's, through the wide-open and tumultuous 60's, to the me-centered 70's. Perhaps this dates me, but I did live through some of those times, and I think can offer a more specific analysis. I'd suggest that the principal elements of the downturn arose from fundamental violations of trust by the state. The US had conducted WW2 with great moral and logistical authority. The grunts always grumbled, and there were plenty of fiascos along the way, but overall, there was a consensus that the elites and people in charge knew what they were doing. They not just won the war, but fostered unprecedented prosperity in its wake. 

All this turned around in the late 60's. I am also reading a history of the CIA, by Tim Weiner, "Legacy of Ashes". This is a deeply biased book, focusing on every failure of the CIA, pronouncing it as an institution utterly and irredeemably incompetent. What is noticeable, however, is that the CIA's successes are generally far more costly than its failures. The coups it sponsored in Iran and Guatemala, et al. came back to haunt us down to the present day. Eisenhower founded this pandora's box of disastrous meddling, (i.e. covert action) and Kennedy accelerated its use. One of its signature accomplishments was the slow process of getting us enmeshed in the Vietnam war. This was the single most influential disaster that discredited the US government to its own citizens. While in principle, we were doing a great thing- saving South Vietnam from communism and totalitarianism- in practice, we had no idea what we were doing, did not understand the nature of the civil war, or the impossible corruption of our allied government, and conducted the war in a fog of lies and delusions. The daily body counts were a visceral expression of revulsion against the state.

But this kind of incompetence became a pattern in major events like Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, and the Iran hostage crisis. Each one showed that our leaders did not know what they were doing- the best and brightest turned out unequal to the crises we faced. A succession of presidents fell victim to fundamental breaches of trust with the country. Inflation, for example, made us feel helpless- that the money itself was being eaten away by processes that were virtually occult in their mystery and darkness. Gerald Ford urged a kind of vodoo economics- that perhaps a public relations campaign urging personal savings and voluntary spending reductions could heal "the economy". But the solidarity he was counting on was evaporating, and the rationale was transparently absurd and unequal to the crisis, which had been brought on by the oil shock and by profligate government spending and interest policy through the Vietnam era. It would not be until the advent of Paul Volcker that we would get a public servant with the courage and intellect to slay this beast, through an extremely costly campaign of squelching private investment.

So it was not Ronald Reagan who started the process of me-ism over patriotic solidarity. He was only expressing the sad consequence of a long series of failures and breaches of faith when he claimed that government is not the solution, government is the problem. So what was the alternative? The other major institutions of common action were and remain the corporation, and this era saw the valorization of capitalism as the system that works. It had the Darwinian structure and motivations that enforced effectiveness, even excellence. It was the environment that unleashed entrepreneurial freedom, then harnessed it for the common good. We know now that all this was vastly oversold, and ignored all the reasons why we have states to start with. But the pendulum had swung decisively from the public sphere to the private.

An unfortunate consequence of such a swing is that the party and ideology of privatization has little interest in fostering effective governance. So the competence of the state erodes further with time, becoming increasingly unable to do basic functions, and becoming corrupt as private interests gain relative power. Our current administration, were it not in power, would be a parody of self-serving corruption and incompetence. It is the pinacle of the Reagan revolution, and it is degrading, day by day, our ability to govern ourselves. This seems to be why these generational shifts take so long to correct. It is not only that we need to recognize the hole we have fallen into on an intellectual and scholarly level, but that enough voters (and enough extra to overcome the entrenched powers of capital in propaganda, lobbying, campaign finance, and other forms of corruption) have to have felt this in their bones to give an alternative ideology a chance to retake charge of the state and rebuild its capacity for effective action. 

• Where are the vaccines? What are the vaccines?
• Not everyone likes Barrett.
• Make the Apocalypse great again.

Eugenics, the Catholic way

Woe betide any tampering with God's nature! However, destroying it with overpopulation is OK.

The current Supreme Court battle puts a spotlight on Catholicism in law and ethics. With the impending justice, six of the nine will be Catholic. The more rightward Catholic justices are coming from a culture that has some peculiar views on itself, on key ethical issues, and on the future of the world. First is its self-righteousness. Fundamentalist Catholics like Antonin Scalia and Attorney General Barr are confident that they come to government service steeped in the most exacting and time-honored moral code- that of the church which has been in existence going on two thousand years. It is a church that has weathered millennia of political turmoil and tectonic shifts of philosophy. But does all that history make it right? Does durability imply anything other than a canny grasp of human psychology, both in keeping its parishioners in the fold, and in keeping the wheels of its authoritarian structures turning? I don't think so. Far better moral systems have been imagined and enacted, and the Church has, time after time, grudgingly taken them up, typically a century after the rest of society. Today, a Catholic woman is nominated to the Supreme Court. Maybe in a hundred years, a female cardinal? 

But what is particularly galling is the prating about the sacredness of life. William Barr has restarted federal executions, to add to all his other lying and subversions of justice, giving one a curious impression of this "culture of life". What is obviously a simple policy of patriarchal power is dressed up in gilded rhetoric of concern for "life", which, maddeningly, is swallowed as gospel by the women who are its victims. For opposition to contraception and abortion are foremost attacks on the agency and full personhood of women, who are demoted to vessels for male procreation. But the Catholic church's policy is not just patriarchy of a demeaning and sexist kind, it also constitutes a eugenic policy. Ron Turcotte, one of the great horse jockeys, born in a family of twelve children in French Catholic New Brunswick, recalled in his autobiography that the priest would make the rounds of local families and berate every woman who did not have babies in diapers. The Catholic imperative is to fill up the world with Catholics, no matter the suffering of women, families, or communities. The entire biosphere groans under vast overpopulation. And what is the answer of the Catholic church? More Catholics, more oppression, more mental straightjackets. Care for creation apparently does not extend to continence on the part of men, basic personal rights or autonomy on the part of women, or to creation in general.

Just another day at the Supreme Court.

So when I hear "distinguished" lawyers, scholars and ethicists from Catholic institutions pontificate about the evils of genetic engineering, stem cell research, or use of embryos in research, (not to mention abortion or assisted suicide, among many other topics) I can not take them seriously as intellectuals- as anything other than mouthpieces of an antiquated system of oppressive, and now catastrophic, archetypes of political and social power. It is one thing to be a scholar of an artistic tradition full of glorious human expression and yearning quests for deeper connection with whatever power animates the world. But with the loss of humanism, then Protestantism, Catholicism retreated into an intellectual fortress of defense, nostalgia, and counter-reformation. The Federalist societies, the constitutional textualists, the Opus Dei fundamentalists... this ecosystem that has funded and nurtured a conservative assault on US legal institutions, apparently heavily Catholic, all are backward time machines fixated on dead controversies and traditional, frankly eugenic, policies of world domination. 

Nominee Barrett's textualism, following Scalia, seems to endanger the last century or two of constitutional interpretation. Whatever is not explicitly enumerated in the text is not, by this view, in the federal government's power. This could include women, (other than the 19th amendment; notably, the word "he" is used repetitively to refer to the president, representatives and other officers), federal regulatory authority in countless areas such as labor, antitrust, and finance, and the very meanings of concepts like cruel and unusual punishment, militias, privacy, due process, "needful rules", and "general welfare". The constitution and statutes are frequently vague, precisely so that society can construct its meanings according to the spirit of the document, not a cramped view of its letter, or a psychoanalytic plumbing of its mental conditions of origination.

Nor is Catholicism alone in this backwardness and revanchism. Islam shares its authoritarian, righteous, patriarchal, misogynistic, domineering mentality, even while lacking a pope. It goes the Catholics one better by approving of polygamy, another eugenic gambit. Consequently, Islam has even higher birth rates than Catholicism, immiserating its populations, stoking misplaced resentment, and imperiling the biosphere. However, Muslims in the US are not at this time constructing legal pipelines into US federal judgeships or dominating the Supreme Court, so their similarities in this regard are of global, but not federal, concern.

• Yes, religion is an issue here.
• Extended video of Barrett expressing her views, as also linked above.
• Abortion was perfectly fine in colonial America.
• Our feudal future, clarified by the GOP.
• Donald's hair is charged to the taxpayer. Also, Ivanka.
• Maybe the whole business deduction system should be scrapped.
• What happens if ACA dies?
• State of our politics- getting people to not vote.

An American Economic History, Through Farming

From plantations to free soil, and back to plantations.

Today, farming is a small part of our economy. But it remains existentially important, and politically and culturally significant far beyond its share of GDP. The family farm evokes the heartland, the honest toiler, the communal and salt-of-the-earth values of rural life. The United States was founded on the promise of land- ever more land taken from Native Americans for ever more white people to till. Land was the original job guarantee. Anyone disgruntled with their current condition could go West. Some created vast plantations or ranches, while most founded family farms. When some of the last arable land on the frontier became available in Oklahoma, it resulted in the notorious land rush of 1889, typified by "Sooners" who jumped the gun into this so-called unassigned territory. A generation or two on, they authored the dust bowl by their enthusiasm and negligence.

The late 1800's were a pivotal period. The frontier was closing, industrialization was changing the workforce and mechanizing farming. It was perhaps the high point of the family farm, as so movingly portrayed in its perils, pride, and community, in the film version of The Wizard of Oz. One underappreciated cause and purpose of the Civil War was to preserve free soil and free labor as the guiding principle in new territories and states. The plantation system of labor was the alternative, just as firmly rooted in American soil as the small family farm, and just as greedy for new frontiers. Plantations were the original corporate agriculture, driving an army of employees (i.e. slaves) over vast acreages of market-crop monocultures, typically cotton, tobacco, and, in the Carribean, sugar cane.

But, despite winning the Civil War for free labor, and adapting to progressively greater levels of mechanization, the family farm is dying, and has been dying for decades. A recent piece in the New Yorker describes the situation in Wisconsin, which has seen a steep decline in family dairy farms, driven out of business by the inexorable efficiencies and amorality of corporate farming. Capitalism is the remorseless agent, setting up new plantations on rebooted principles of cheap labor and enormous scale. Instead of slaves, the labor is now an unending flood of poor and undocumented hispanics, ready to work for less, and under poorer conditions, than "free" labor.

Is this the kind of capitalism we want more of? Is the kind of rural America we look forward to? It is more than a little ironic that rural America voted overwhelmingly for the Republicans, who offered nostalgic nostrums while being the foremost purveyors of capitalist fundamentalism, cheap oppressed labor, and rural decline. Thus some might say, they deserve what they are reaping. But that is merely spite speaking, not policy. It is clear that government policy has had a great deal to do with this evolution of farming, from lax labor policy to trade policy and growing regulatory and bureaucratic complexities, and explicit farm support systems that support corporate farms foremost.

So, we have been divided from the outset, between a corporate, plantation model of farming, and a small-holder, family model of farming. The memorialized plantations of Mount Vernon and Monticello are fascinating examples of the former, each originally worked by an army of slaves to create in this new land a rich, even refined existence for the lords of the manor. It was Jefferson's dream that America would be overspread by small family farms, even as he himself ran a brutalizing corporate operation. It was just one more of his romantic dreams, along with a discomfort with slavery that did not extend to emancipating his own slaves. But the US did indeed make his dream real across the Midwest by eradicating slavery and accepting floods of immigrants to run their own farms and found rural communities. 

The silo-inspired Emerald City. Was it a storage and processing cooperative?

It is clear that it will take deep changes in policy to preserve family farming, and humane and ecologically sound farming. Not just cash payments to farmers, as the current administration is attempting to save its political position, but a much more thorough rethinking of how rural America should operate. We need far stiffer rules for labor and ecological practices on large farms, so that the playing field is leveled. We need better support for cooperative processors, buyers, bankers, equipment supply, transporters, and extension systems so that small farms have the long-term support they need to survive. We need to edge away from stark capitalism towards a mixed model, for instance maintaining some price supports with intelligent government planning, so that farmers are not whipsawed by lethal market forces. And making those price supports graduated against farm size, to recognize the unique value, and unique challenges, of the small farm.

• "There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States."- from the inaugural address of James Garfield, 1881.
• The biosphere is going downhill.
• Everyone has hope.
• Toadies in the swamp.
• A lack of innovative thinking in the medical community.
• The Taliban will soon be running things.

Frederick Douglass

The autobiographies of Frederick Douglass are a milestone of US literary, political, and social history.  

To deepen my appreciation for our history and the ongoing crises, racial and otherwise, I have been enjoying the final autobiography of Frederick Douglass, of the three that he wrote. This is the longest and, for obvious reasons, most comprehensive, where he can provide details about his escape and controversial activities that had been too sensitive previously, and cover later parts of his career. It is a paragon of style, incisive analysis, and emotional impact. Not having a great deal to add myself, I give over this blog to a few selected quotes.

Douglass (then named Bailey, and in his late teens), was sent by his master to a Mr. Covey, who specialized in "breaking" unruly slaves, by supervising and working them relentlessly, and whipping them weekly. Finally, after an escape attempt, Douglass he has had enough and fights back, come what may. What comes is that Covey gives in completely, and is cowed for the rest of the year from laying a finger on Douglass.

This battle with Mr. Covey, undignified as it was and as I fear my narration of it is, was the turning point in my "life as a slave." It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty. It brought up my Baltimore dreams and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I was a man now. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect, and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man. A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. p. 591 in the American library edition of the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass took a long tour in Britain, where he marvels at the discrimination he is not experiencing. It remains a deep statement about the work that still now remains.

I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner in which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looks to me like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin, contrast so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement at the transition. In the southern part of the United States, I was a slave - thought of and spoken of as property; in the language of the law, "held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the and of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever". In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery- doomed, by an inveterate prejudice against color, to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the question)- denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the most humble means of conveyance- shut out from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable hotels,  caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one, no matter how black his heart, so he has a white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government. Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab- I am seated beside white people- I reach the hotel- I enter the same door- I am shown the same parlor- I dine at the same table- and no one is offended. No delicate nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or amusement, on equal terms with people as white as any I ever saw in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion. I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip, to tell me "We don't allow niggers in here." pp. 688-689, ibid.

 

Douglass looks at the pre-civil war politics of Southern resentment and entitlement, upon the growing spread and success of the abolition movement, which had been Douglass's work for the prior decade.

... Mr. Calhoun and other southern statesmen were more than ever alarmed at the rapid increase of anti-slavery feeling in the North, and devoted their energies more and more to the work of devising means to stay the torrents and tie up the storm. They were not ignorant of whereunto this sentiment would grow if unsubjected and unextinguished. Hence they became fierce and furious in debate, and more extravagant than ever in their demands for additional safeguards for their system of robbery and murder. Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their rights of property in their fellow men, they held it to be in open violation of the Constitution for any American citiazen in any part of the United States to speak, write, or act against this right. But this shallow logic they plainly saw could do them no good unless they could obtain further safeguards for slavery. In order to effect this the idea of so changing the Constitution was suggested that there should be two instead of one President of the United States- one from the North and the other from the South- and that no measure should become a law without the assent of both. But this device was so utterly impracticable that it soon dropped out of sight, and it is mentioned here only to show the desperation of the slaveholders to prop up their system of barbarism against which the sentiment of the North was being directed with destructive skill and effect. They clamored for more slave States, more power in the Senate and House of Representatives, and insisted upon the suppression of free speech. At the end of two years, in 1850, when Clay and Calhoun, two of the ablest leaders the South ever had, were still in the Senate, we had an attempt at a settlement of the differences between the North and South which our legislators meant to be final. What those measures were I need not here enumerate, except to say that chief among them was the Fugitive Slave Bill, frames by James M. Mason of Virginia and supported by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts- a bill undoubtedly more designed to involve the North in complicity with slavery and deaden its moral sentiment than to procure the return of fugatives to their so-called owners. For a time this design did not altogether fail. Letters, speeches, and pamphlets literally rained down upon the people of the North, reminding them of their constitutional duty to hunt down and return to bondage any runaway slaves. In this the preachers were not much behind the press and the politicians, especially that class of preachers known as Doctors of Divinity. A long list of these came forward with their Bibles to show that neither Christ nor his holy apostles objected to returning fugatives to slavery. Now that that evil day is past, a sight of those sermons would, I doubt not, bring the red blush of shame to the cheeks of many. pp. 722-723, ibid.

In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the North sought ways to avoid war ... does this attitude sound familiar?

While this humiliating reaction was going on at the North, various devices to bring about peace and reconciliation were suggested and pressed at Washington. Committees were appointed to listen to Southern grievances, and, if possible, devise means of redress for such as might be alleged. Some of these peace propositions would have been shocking to the last degree tot he moral sense of the North, had not fear for the safety of the Union overwhelmed all moral conviction. Such men as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Henry B. Anthony, Joshua R. Giddings, and others- men whose courage had been equal to all other emergencies- bent before this southern storm, and were ready to purchase peace at any price. ... Everything that could be demanded by insatiable pride and selfishness on the part of the slave-holding South, or could be surrendered by abject fear and servility on the part of the North, had able and eloquent advocates.

Happily for the cause of human freedom, and for the final unity of the American nation, the South was mad, and would listen to no concessions. It would neither accept the terms offered, nor offer others to be accepted. It had made up its mind that under a given contingency it would secede from the Union and thus dismember the Republic. pp.770-771, ibid.

 

Douglass's influence can be appreciated in small part by this piece in his honor by N. Clark Smith.

• Yes, collusion. Indeed, what on earth was Muller doing?
• The Taliban has not changed.
• We deserve even better.
• Bill Mitchell on work. Yes, somebody has to do it!
• All hail coal!
• All hail Facebook!
• Stutterers unite!
• Mourning for parts of California in flames, such as Big Basin state park.

A Crisis in Public Management

What is the common thread between the US SARS-Cov2 crisis and the Black Lives Matter movement? Dysfunctional public management.

It is curious how the George Floyd crisis came up during the Covid 19 pandemic. Were people a little stir-crazy? Perhaps. Were people fed up with the callous culture war being waged from the White House? Definitely. But I think there is more to connect these crises- deep problems in American public management. Our problem with the pandemic speaks for itself. While many other countries, large and small, have eradicated this virus and proceeded to re-open their economies, (Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, China, Taiwan, to name a few), we obviously have not, and continue to lead the world in new cases, day in and day out. What is wrong?

I think the main thing that is wrong is that our public health officials do not know what they are doing, and do not even conceive of the problem correctly. Their ambition has been to flatten the curve to reduce hospital congestion. This sentences us to, at best, a continous slow burn of viral cases, spiraling up when people get too careless, and quieting down after lockdown rules are re-instituted. It is clear that public officials completely lacked the ambition to fully contain and eradicate the virus. Doing that would require mobilizing an army of contact tracing and containment deputies, and enforcing quarantines on traced contacts, possibly with phone-based apps. We in Northern California had an ideal opportunity during the April-May time frame to fully control the virus. But did we? Not at all. The public officials contented themselves with testing and publicizing the daily trickle of cases, and having the police close public parks and other venues of congregation. Never was eradication even in the conversation, nor the appropriate powers and staff contemplated, as far as I can tell. Then, when the economic cost of even these half-hearted lockdown and distancing measures became too much, we re-opened, with the natural result of a rising tide of cases.

By not even conceiving that they should and could mount a total eradication campaign, our officials, from the local to the national levels, gave up before the game even began. And why was there this complete lack of ambition? First, we have not been used to this kind of disciplined, society-wide activity. Our social, not to mention political, system, is so atomized and uncohesive, dedicated to individualism, that an actually effective Chinese-style lockdown seems to have been inconceivable. But still, Canada has managed it at least partially- our closest neighbors, geographically and culturally.

Another obvious issue is the lack of a coherent health care system. The public health portion of it is an atrophied vestige, devoted more to bureaucratic stasis and policy quibbling than to actual intervention, uncertain whether it is a safety net for the poor, or a guardian for everyone. Higher officials should have realized that the given infrastructure would be and remains completely unable to mount the effort needed- which is thorough testing, contact tracing, and enforced isolation of contacts. A new organizational infrastructure needed to be built immediately, which was done in other countries, but not here. This is an obvious failure of public management, both in imagination and in execution.

In China, green means go.

Just as the pandemic shines a ghastly light on our public health organizations, the death of George Floyd, and the many prior cases of brutality and murder shines a similar light on another sector of public management- the police. Most police do great work in difficult conditions. Problems arise from a (large) sub-culture of callous disregard, inherited from Jim Crow and other authoritarian elements, combined with weak public management. One issue is unionization. Public employee unions have been toying with the electoral system for decades, running influential campaign ads and altering local elections and public policy to suit their interests. No wonder that we now have a public pensions crisis, absurdly early retirements, double dipping, secrecy for key records, and a litany of other abuses of the public purse and trust. Policies that make it virtually impossible to fire public employees are only one part of the problem, but one that is most central to the George Floyd case. Unlike the situation in public health, the rogue policemen are overzealous, rather than under-zealous. But the management issue is similar- who runs these organizations, do they have the full public interest in mind, whom do they serve, and do they have effective control over their employees? Answers to these questions are not pretty.

We are faced with two brands of corruption when it comes to public management. One is the Republican brand, which hardly cares about the public interest at all, only private interests. Anything they can do to drown the govm'nt in the bathtub, and allow natural feudalism to reign, giving social and economic power to the powerful, is OK with them. This means supporting white power and a traditional racial hierarchy, attracts sympathetic authoritarian types to police forces, and then winks at their indiscretions in enforcing the "natural" order.

The other is the Democratic brand, which cares so much about public service that it gladly ties itself up in knots of bureaucracy and procedure (and pensions, and consultants, and politically correct meetings, due process, and translators, and environmental review, and...) ending up incapable of accomplishing anything, or holding anyone to account. The Democratic brand is also pro-union, adding a whole other level of dysfunction and mismanagement to an already difficult situation. To bring in yet another example, the California high speed rail project is an object lesson in this style. Tens of billions of dollars have been poured down a bureaucracy dedicated to good pensions, due process, poor land acquisition practices, and continual underestimation of the fiasco they are participating in. The expected path of this train now looks more like an amusement park ride than a bullet train, and will only go from Los Angeles to somewhere in the central valley. As a citizen, it is incredibly frustrating to watch this waste and ineffectiveness.

The countries that have been most successful against Covid-19 have been the most cohesive societies, either by nature or by authoritarian force. Cohesiveness correlates with good public management, since it represents shared objectives and understandings about values and ways of doing things. Cohesiveness helps smooth the way between ideals and implementation. The US stands, clearly, as one of the least cohesive societies in the world, particularly after the trauma of the current administration. Is there strength in diversity? Up to a point. But there is more strength in unity.

• We are not good at collective action, at least these days.
• Public health.. what is that? Is it safety net care for the poor, or is it health for everyone?
• Thoughts on building better public institutions.
• Happy thoughts on the current administration.

Iran: Object Lesson of the Enlightenment

Review of Iran: A Modern History, by Abbas Amanat. Part 2- the contest between autocracy, democracy, and theocracy.

Has history ended? Did all countervailing ideologies give up and yield to democracy as the universal form of government and does peace now reign? Apparently not. Indeed, democracy is embattled in many areas as it has not been in decades- even in the US, whose institutions are under sustained attack by a renascent autocratic / plutocratic coalition. Iran has exemplified the contest between the ideals of democracy, human rights, state stability, authority, and religious sentiment in ideologies of government over many centuries. It has been positioned at some remove from, though in durable if not tragic contact with, the European cultures that fostered the Enlightenment in all its aspects. What has been their impact, and what are we to make of the current result?

Amanat provides a magisterial overview of Iran's recent history, (recent meaning since 1500, which leaves out a vast portion going back to antiquity and beyond), focusing on its political systems as they range between autocracy and revolution, growth and decline, consolidation and decadence. Iran was heavily influenced by Europeans starting in the mid-1800's, as the great game got underway. While Russia was unapologetically autocratic, making its menace clearly lineal with previous contests against other invaders, Britain, and later the US, brought a new level of hypocrisy as imperial powers founded on Enlightenment ideals and practices, which were, however, not for foreign consumption.

The Qajar monarchy in the 1800's managed a weak position relatively well, keeping Iran intact and largely sovereign, if also continually corrupt, indebted, and backward. But finally, the modernist winds were too strong, and a constitutional revolution established a constitutional monarchy and parliament in 1906, then again in 1909. This parliamentary system never fully found its footing, however, tussling with the Shah for power, and buffeted through disastrous invasions and occupations during world war 1. It was sort of a Weimar Republic, never attaining full power in military or political terms.

But it embodied the idea of a Western-style, constitutional, democratic system. The addition of an Islamic advisory council was an afterthought and never seriously implemented during this era, since the ulama, or community of clerics, was generally content with its long-standing role of loose collaboration with the secular power, tending to a narrow sector of jurisprudence over religious, business, and personal matters, on a somewhat freelance basis. While the Shi'i clergy had occasionally led protests and fostered limited political activism in the face of gross injustices and suffering from their base among the small merchant class and urban poor, the idea of becoming a full partner in government, or its comprehensive adversary, did not cross their minds, since government was fundamentally unclean and not worthy of theology, short of the return of the twelfth Imam. The clerics were also fully invested in the somewhat corrupt system, having gotten quite rich from their segment of the economy.

But the trauma of the Pahlavi era, broken in the interval between father and son by a hopeful but chaotic constitutional period under Mohammed Mosaddegh, set the clergy- at least some of it- on a more activist path. Both Shahs were dedicated modernizers, dismissive of religion and destructive to the livelihoods and institutions of the clergy. Along with other islamists in the Sunni world like Qutb, they (that is, the less quietist elements, spearheaded by Ruholla Khomeini) started generating a comprehensive critique of modernism, the Pahlavi apparatus, and the West as antithetical to Islam, which it quite obvoiusly was and remains. They found that they still had enormous political power and public sentiment on their side, not among the intelligentsia, but among the common people who had been coming to the mosques, and requesting judgements, and paying their dues all along. All this was seized by Khomeini, who in 1963 gave fiery sermons denouncing the Pahlavi regime, and was duly detained, almost executed, and then exiled to Iraq. The Shah ran an economically successful few decades, but also a brutal secret service and a grandiose view of himself and the dynasty so severely out of step both with native sentiment and with the democratizing / human rights trends in the West, suddenly put on the top of the table by Jimmy Carter.

Faithful Shi'ite Iranians were interested in more spiritual fare than what the Shah offered, and the clerics, through Khomeini, gave them visions of an ideal society, rectified through "dear Islam" to resolve all the injustices and degradations of the Pahlavi era. In return, Khomeini was first elevated to the unprecedented status of "Grand Ayatolla", and then ultimtely to "Imam" status, which had never been done before, the twelfth Imam having been the last of the set, now in occultation. So the revolution rolled on with inexorable power, but also with inexorable revolutionary logic, piling up bodies and hypocrisies as the imperatives of staying in power overwhelmed all other scruples. For example, Amanat mentions with some acidity that, while centuries of Shi'i jurisprudence may not have foreseen the problems of writing a constitution, running foreign policy, or operating a secret service, it had long dealt, and dealt with care and discretion, in contract and property law. But all that went right out the window as the new government "inherited" or expropriated countless businesses and personal properties, took over all major industries of the country, and distributed their management to family members, cronies and loyalists.

Diagram of the Iranian government, from the BBC.

It is through the lens of the constitution and the cobbled institutions that have arisen in Iran that we can see the dialectic between Enlightenment principles and Islamic principles. Khomeini promised a democracy, where power would no longer be monopolized by a somewhat mad Shah. But it also had to be an Islamic democracy, "guided" by the clerics to retain purity and justice. The logic of all this resulted in a thoroughly theocratic state, where there is an interlocking set of instutions all run by the clerics, from the Supreme Leader to the Guardian Council, Assembly of Experts, and Expediency Discernment Council. Each are supervisory, with various veto and appointment powers, leaving the popularly elected parliament with little real power or even representative complexion, since its candidates are routinely disqualified by the Guardian Council for not being conservative enough.

In practical terms, this means that the system maintains just enough democracy to foster some hope and buy-in from some of the populace, while keeping complete control in the hands of the clerics. Will this end in utter corruption of both religion and government? It is difficult to say, but Iran has more of a functional democracy and republican system than many other Muslim countries, which is sadly not saying much. Those who reflect on the very origins of Islam and Shi'ism can readily see that theory of government is not a strong suit of this tradition. I see Khomeini as a demagogue- a Trumpian figure who promised the stars, offered a telling and comprehensive critique of the Pahlavi system, and had a genius for turning a phrase. But he did not promise a coherent and democratic program of governance, rather a messianic dream and relentlessly divisive politics. In the revolutionary process, he always played to the base, favoring extreme positions. A base whose core, there as here, is a religious element of great patriarchial conservatism and dismissive of intellect and compassion. He was fully behind the hostage-taking students, for instance, which solidified support at home while making Iran a pariah abroad.  Hate, of course, was and continues to be central to the Iranian theocracy, from the Great Satan (us), to the little Satan (the Iraq of Saddam Hussein), to the communist Tudeh party, to the Baha'i religion, which they particularly revile and persecute.

At first, the clerics worked with liberals to fashion a written constitution (a significant concession to modernity and Western ideas) and a civilian government. But as time went on, the many contradictions of this approach became apparent, since if the people were given real power, the clerics would lose theirs- that was a lesson of the first constitutions of the early 1900's, and again during revolutionary process in the 1970's and 80's, which saw many contestants for power. The clerics only won due to their cohesion and their ability, time and again, to move the masses with demagogic and messianic appeals.

So the Iranian clerics ended up in unknown territory, creating a government that had no Persian or Koranic precedent, other than putting clerics in charge of everything (including at the top, the monarch-for-life Supreme Leader), and hoping that their own formation, training, and institutions will keep them uncorrupted. At one dire point in the revolution, a hanging mullah suggested that his rather under-supported decisions didn't matter that much, since God would sort it all out in the end, sending those who deserved it to heaven. But by that logic, he should have killed himself first. It is always curious how those who supposedly believe in religion and the glories of its afterlife turn out to have a strong regard for their own lives in the here and now. One would think that meeting one's maker would be a more positive goal, rather than being a mere scrim for power politics in this fallen world.

Iran gets ranked just above China in the democracy index.

Anyhow, Iran has ended up with more torture, more executions, more war, a bigger secret service, a more intrusive state, and less freedom, than the Pahlavi era. It turned out that Islam is not a guarantee of good, let alone moral, governance. Islamic countries generally occupy the lower rungs of the democracy index, and other indexes of development and happiness. This while Islam portrays itself as a religion of peace, of mercy, and of the most exacting jurisprudence and scholarship. The revolutionary government of Iran dabbled in liberalism, and wrote up a semi-democratic constitution, and faced a culture of great diversity and intellectual depth. But in the end, authoritarian logic won out over traditional Shi'i quietism and over most Western trends, creating a sort of Shi'i Vatican writ large, with opaque committees of old bearded men running everything, with additional torture chambers and gallows.

Iran offers an object lesson why the interlocking lessons of the enlightenment are so important- why withdrawing religious projections, drama, and righteousness from the state, in favor of civic secularism, yields a more rational and humane way of life. Why even the most long-standing and cherished religious traditions and "scholarship", while they may serve as selective institutions to weed out the stupid and socially unskilled, are not conducive to the search for objective truth or even a marker of moral superiority.

All that said, the French revolution began with enlightenment principles, which did not prevent a similar revolutionary logic from sending it to appalling depths of brutality, injustice, and authoritarianism. Yet it also spread more liberal, anti-monarchical values throughout Europe during the Napoleonic era, and ended up, after decades of historical development, with true democracy in France and Europe. The whole point of political theory in the Enlightenment was to allow such development via a fundamental humanism and humility in the civic sphere and the state. Its antithesis is messianism of various sorts, from communism to Shi'i theocracy, (even atheist enlightenment, when driven to extremes!), which drives polarization, extremism, and totalitarianism. Iran may yet develop in a softer direction, after what is now forty years of theocracy, but that would take a substantial change of heart on the part of the current ruling class, and perhaps a reduced allergy to Western ideas.

• Happy Quds Day!
• Changing conceptions of masculinity...
• Right wing legal community is going over the deep end.
• It is not clear that California is ready to re-open. Graph of the week:

Young Americans for Freedom

Is Bernie the next Ronald Reagan?

My father was an enthusiastic Reagan supporter, and contributor to many of the right wing organs of the day, one of which was Young Americans for Freedom, or YAF. As one can imagine, its idea of freedom was freedom from government regulation, freedom to found businesses, freedom to rise as high as one's talents allow. Freedom to use one's money to go to private schools, freedom to hire workers on any basis they are willing to work, freedom to discriminate, to contaminate the environment, among much else. Reagan led a long campaign in the wilderness of the Republican right, on these ideas which became and remain the foundation of the right, of FOX, and of our current government. The Reagan revolution was far more influential than observers at the time (and from the left) anticipated, viewing the aging actor and his gouche entourage with distain. Reagan repaid that distain in spades, doddering through the Iran-Contra scandal, and finally leaving office with imminent senility. But he also was on occasion remarkably articulate- in marked contrast to our current virtually illiterate executive- and even inspiring, and was decisive at key moments. The ideology that Reagan brought into the mainstream, which now seems so stale and self-serving, was at the time taken as a significant and intellectually advanced critique of a system that had over the preceding decades so carefully balanced the public and private interests.

YAF was a melding of libertarians and conservatives, hardly hip even in its own day, but with an intellectual case to make. Today, things have changed substantially, as we are living in the world that the YAF-ers grew up and built, notably as part of the Gingrich revolution, the Tea party revolution, and the advanced propaganda organs that have succeeded the paltry efforts of YAF and its ilk. It is a new gilded age, where Mitt Romney can run for president as a "job creator", where Trump can win on the backs of the dispossessed, then turn around and give the lion's share of the spoils to the rich, where billionaires  clog our political system, where employees are routinely underpaid and abused, climate heating is denied and ignored, and homelessness and despair are rampant.

The youth of today look at this world, and find a significant lack of freedom. Freedom is not a simple concept, and changes dramatically with one's situation and with the times. Is being homeless the epitome of freedom? In our world, money buys freedom, and poverty is a sentence of servitude and shame. With enough money, one can become president if one wishes, while without money, one can not even eat. This is the world that the Reagan revolution has sharpened, if not created- one of staggering and shameless inequality, where our communal humanity is being drowned in desperate competition and fealty to corporate overlords, and where we are presumed to be worshipful towards the blizzard of vanity foundations they sponsor in lieu of nuns and priests to chant their prayers.

The great task of society is to impose order and discipline, but also to inspire shared values and commitment, so that all members work towards the greater good, according to their respective abilities. There is a place for capitalism and hierarchy here, to supply the former. But the latter has been sorely lacking of late, systematically denigrated by the political right, in favor of an ideology of division, greed, and, frankly, hate. It is clear that the happiest societies strike a more compassionate balance, recognizing (and funding, with various public services) a baseline of common humanity and dignity (and freedom), while leaving plenty of room for ambitious achievement in the hierarchical, capitalist mode as well.

It is high time for the pendulum in the US to swing the other way, but how is that going to happen? I have been struck by the symmetries between Bernie Sanders and Reagan. Bernie is far from a lock on the nomination, but his accession would be a fitting bookend to the Reagan revolution. Both are outside politicians, who took over their party with a grassroots / insurgent campaign and pushed it away from the center, after decades of lonely ideological battle on the political fringe. Both have strong support among the youth of their parties, indeed a curiously militant sort of support, despite themselves being, by virtue of their long-march campaign, quite old.

But Reagan never had to face the kind of propaganda organs that the right marshals today. He benefitted from a much more decent, and unified, world. Today our fellow citizens are living in a starkly separate reality, which has bled strongly into the mainstream media. It is hard to fathom how Bernie's movement is going to make serious inroads other than over the dead bodies of FOX and its copycats. And the irony is that these outlets thrive even more in opposition than when their own party is in power, making it doubly difficult to imagine how our cultural conversation is going to change, no matter how momentous the Bernie movement is. Yet, all that said, hope springs eternal, and here we have to hope in Hegelian fashion that the forces of history, or of a timely leader, are able to break the witch's spell on the right, and bring our country back to a semblance of decency and rationality. And that that someone might just be the next Democratic nominee for president.

• Watergate all over.
• I'd move to a decent state.
• Wild-life extermination and trade at fault for new virus.
• Nuclear families are only for those who can afford to go it alone.
• Another perspective on Afghanistan. And then another. How many Afghans really have a role in determining Afghanistan's future?

Hyperdemocracy or Oligarchy?

What can China teach the US about governance? Does it point to more democracy or less? A double book/essay review.

We are at a low point in the US democracy, with the Senate having covered itself in shame over the last week, and sure to do so again next week, courtesy of one party that is in thrall to its president. But the whole world is headed in the same direction, as rightist, "strong" leaders pop up all over, from Brazil to China. The whole idea of democracy is under threat world-wide from the a new authoritarianism, which has evolved out of the old communism and more traditional feudal arrangements. And from the lust for power generally. The US misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying so blindly to implant democracy in societies woefully traumatized and unprepared for it, followed by the appalling handling and aftermath of the Arab spring, seem to have cancelled any hope of an end to history in the form of democracy triumphant across the globe.

Two decades ago, Hugh Helco wrote a prescient jeremiad titled "Hyperdemocracy" diagnosing the ills of a shallow and ill-educated democracy in the US, titillated with constant "news" (fake and otherwise) and oversharing, but lacking true deliberation and veering towards ungovernability. One ironic consequence of everyone, every corporation, and interest group having their say is that no one can be trusted. Eventually government is bereft of the basic civic faith and common narrative that the social contract relies on. His critique was acute, but his suggested treatments were afterthoughts and the problem has amplified dramatically in recent years, with foreign countries like Russia weaponizing so-called "free speech" against us.

"For the making of public policy, hyperdemocracy presents three general problems. Policy debate occurs without deliberation. Public mobilization occurs without a public. And the public tends to distrust everything that is said. " "... good policy argumentation is bad political management"

A book relevant to the question came out in 2013, from billionarie Nicolas Berggruen, who argues in Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century that some sort of convergence between the non-democratic methods of China and our rather chaotic and hyperdemocratic methods is called for, to merge China's effectiveness in public management with our respect (such as it still is) for individual rights and democratic legitimacy. Berggruen has set up a series of vanity foundations and Davos-like talk shops to solve the problems of Europe, the world, and California. The solutions focus on meritocracy- trying to insulate decision makers from the political winds by appointing Berggruen's friends to influential commissions and special bodies that would advise the politicians who may not benefit from proper think-tank training. For California, his solutions ended up recommending taxing the poor more and the rich less- which says alot about his version of meritocracy.

Nevertheless, these arguments raise interesting questions at this perilous time. Does being in a hyperdemocracy mean that we have too much democracy and deserve less? Or do we really live in a hyperdemocracy at all? And does China have some kind of secret sauce for public management and institutional far-sightedness and continuity that we could learn from, seeing as they are a rising power with confidence and in some cases, outstanding public services? I think hyperdemocracy is a bit of a misnomer, since it is hardly an acceleration of democracy to replace reasoned discourse with propaganda and corporate interests, and to give up our politicians to utter corruption. The lack of a civil and civic discourse formed around truth and mutual respect is an unmitigated disaster, not some hyper form of democracy. The fact that Facebook allows those with money and psychological skills of a nefarious or pathological nature to implant viral falsities into our body politic is not "democracy", or "free speech", but is abdication of the most basic role of publishing- that of standing behind what you publish and standing for a level of discourse that befits our culture.

The fact is the America is hardly even a democracy at this point. The public routinely stands behind significant public policy advances that are as routinely stymied by a minority that is funded by rich ideologues, both directly through political corruption and through myriad propaganda outlets. Far from a hyperdemocracy, we live in a oligarchy, one that is slowly morphing into an even more concentrated fascist regime before our eyes. The convergence is taking place, but not in a good or intended way.

A high-speed train to nowhere. California's rail plan is in crisis.

So the prescriptions that Berggruen touts, allowing that they were authored before our current administration, hardly meet the crisis of our times. Yes, we need more competent public administration. Just look at California's high speed train fiasco, and its public pensions crisis. Yes, we need longer-term strategic thinking. But the elites that have been serving us over the last couple of decades have not done such a good job, particularly from Republican administrations. Where have the truly momentous foreign policy disasters come from? Where has the denial of climate change come from? From one region in our political spectrum. And that is no accident, being the region that has antidemocratic tendencies, and seems dedicated to some sort of aristocracy of class and money. Replacing it with a slightly more centrist aristocracy of class and money, with an intellectual patina, is not likely to alter our course very much.

Berggruen proposes an ideal republic that is extremely indirect, such that a small community of a few thousand people elect ten representatives, and then those representatives elect a next level that represents about 100,000 people, and they elect another body, and so forth until the top layer of some kind of president or council is elected in a pyramid of representation that is four levels deep. This hearkens back to what the American founders were trying to accomplish with their indirect elections of Senators, and the electoral collage for the Presidential election. But then later in the book, he bemoans the out-of-touch-ness of the European administration in Brussels, which has so little democratic legitimacy. It is a curious conflict in a book full of them, and of airy ideas.

Nevertheless, the idea of a more vibrant local politics is a very important one. We are overly focused on national politics, about which the average person can do nothing but get upset. Voting is great, but participation is better, in face-to-face settings. One way to enable this is to mandate one day per month holiday for political functions. This could include voting, but also encompass neighborhood meetings, town council events, etc. The way our culture values work over civic obligations and participation is extremely unbalanced. Participation would not be manadatory, but all levels of government would obligated to open their doors, hold relevant meetings on these days, and foster public participation.

Secondly, the idea of some insulation from the political winds is also important, for many policy makers, particularly those oriented towards the long-term. Berggruen points to institutions like the Federal Reserve, the civil service, and many other regulatory bodies, which have purposefully been separated from the political fray in a way that balances accountability with the freedom to think calmly and for the long-term. We should have more such bodies, even perhaps modeled on the 5-year plan system of China, to think carefully about our future infrastructure, our future social policies, and our future politics. The state of California could certainly use a bit more organized foresight, which used to be provided by business leaders like Leland Stanford, but now is more likely to be corrupted by business than served by it.

Berggruen bemoans the state of the California referendum system, originally a gem of democracy, which has been captured by business interests which regularly compete against each other in offering rival propositions which are engineered to sound as anodyne and contrary to their actual intent as possible. Here there is an easy solution, which is to outlaw paying people to collect signatures. The currency of the referendum system is signatures, and collecting them is arduous. No one would do so unless they either cared a great deal about the issue or were well paid.

Lastly, there is the media (leaving out general corruption, which can be addressed by public financing of elections and prohibitions on corporate meddling in political affairs). Here we get to the to a truly difficult issue- how to re-establish a shared culture of truth and civic pride from our dispirited current state of Twitted discourse. Here we could learn a few lessons, not from China, but from Europe, which carefully, but legally, disables some extreme forms of speech to set guardrails on the society. We might consider making false claims grounds for suit and penalty, (proportionate to the audience), not only in commercial speech where this is already the case, but in political and policy speech. Propaganda outlets like FOX are a cancer on the Republic, that trade in lies as the foundation of their bizarre narratives. Block the lies, and the narratives are much more difficult to maintain. This is very fraught policy to propose, as our largely free speech standard has served the US quite well most of our history, (excepting several phases of extremely partisan presses), and any kind of censorship can be twisted to nafarious purposes. But this legal standard would not be enforced in some star chamber, rather in open court, presumably with evidence, experts, scholarly apparatus, etc. There is far more to do to re-establish a productive fourth estate, which is such a crucial participant in a functioning democracy, but the truth is one place to start.

Our problems cry out for reform, not revolution. Our democracy is under extreme pressure, but has not yet broken down completely. It is an index of our problems that Democrats need typically to find the perfect candidate, pristine in speech and spotless in record and demeanor, in order to have any hope of winning, while Republicans can put up virtually any grifter or mysogyinst with a fair chance of success. It is a reflection of the unfairness of our current system, ridden as it is with dark money in the service of extreme and retrograde ideologies. But there is hope, especially in demographic change, that California, dysfunctional though it may be in many ways, represents the imploded future of the Republican party, which would unleash enormous energies for national reform, towards a democratic, not an oligarchic, future.

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