What Now?

By way of creating a record, here are some comments I have made in email exchanges and so forth since 8 November:

1.      Trump is obviously ignorant, and, I suspect, not particularly intelligent. But he identified something in the electorate that most people in high places had ignored, and that is the long-simmering resentment of many ordinary citizens over how their concerns are dismissed by those who spend their time worrying about the market, the Israel-Palestinian question, international politics generally, and the mechanics of governance (or, in the case of Repubs, non-governance). Those people came out and voted, and because so many of them live in small places, they were under-counted in the polls. Hillary’s voters, on the other hand, weren’t so passionate about her (who could be?), and many of them didn’t bother to vote, having been assured that she would win anyway. Close to 9 million more people voted in 2012 than in 2016; Trump got fewer votes overall, in his victory, than Romney did in losing badly in 2012.

2.      The supporters of Hillary took Trump literally, but not seriously; Trump’s own supporters took him seriously, but not literally. This, which I heard tonight on the News Hour (public TV), is evidently a formulation by a writer for the Atlantic, and it rings true to me. Hillary-people heard the outrageous comments about Mexicans, Muslims, and so forth, and believed that he was serious, and so dismissed him as a clown. Trump’s voters heard the same things and laughed: in interviews over the past few days many of them actually laughed when confronted with the crazy statements, saying, in effect, that they never believed any of that. What they were responding to was his basic, gut message: the system is rigged –not the votes, but the whole system: the economy, the culture; and it needs to be torn down and rebuilt. That is a powerful message, one I myself believed, forty and fifty years ago.

3.      Trump has an enormous problem: he really thinks he can fix things by common-sense, tough-business-guy type negotiations or sword rattling. He can’t; the world is much more complicated than a contract over an apartment building. The good news is, there are a few things he can do, and so he will probably try those first: rebuilding the infrastructure (he said this immediately upon being elected): bridges, airports, highways, inner cities. A huge public-works project would be a very good thing, both because our infrastructure is really in bad, and deteriorating, shape; but also because it will spend a lot of money and put a lot of workers into decent-paying jobs who are now not working at all, or are flipping burgers and greeting people at Wal-Mart. People on the Left have been arguing for this for years; but the Repubs have refused to consider it, arguing disingenuously that it would increase the deficit and the debt. No one believes they actually care about the deficit or the debt; and now that they are in control they can forget about that. They will give him the money; unless the wacko far-rights in the House gum up the works. I predict they won’t do this; their constituents are largely Trump people.

4.      The Wall won’t be built. He’ll pretend to start that project, and events will quickly push it off the front page. It will languish and eventually die, with Trump saying it turned out to be unnecessary because he was so brilliant he stopped illegal immigration without it (More Mexicans returned to Mexico in the past year than entered the U.S. illegally, so he has a ready-made fact that he can use as proof that he stopped illegal immigration).

5.      Trump is clueless in foreign policy, or in foreign anything; and this is our biggest risk. He is thin-skinned and egotistical, and it’s hard to imagine how he will react when thwarted by international events. He may try to “bomb the hell” out of ISIS, for example, and that could well lead to a disaster. Putin is a clever man, though, and may be able to convince Trump that he (Trump) is controlling events even as they go Putin’s way. Trouble is, that would also probably be a disaster.

6.      A Trump administration may still be a very bad time: the people he appears to be considering for his cabinet and other top positions are second-and third-raters (Gingrich, Christie, Ben Carson) when they are not crazies (John Bolton, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin). He will have a hard time finding experienced people for many positions, notably national security posts, because virtually all of the senior Repub people in these areas signed an open letter refusing to support him –he may have to rely on less-experienced junior people. Mike Pence is now the head of his transition team because he couldn’t staff it with experienced people. Pence only took the VP job because he was going to lose in a re-election bid in Indiana, and he is a far-right ideologue; Christie, besides being badly damaged by Bridgegate, backed off when the “grab her by the xxxxx” tape came out; and Trump requires absolute loyalty.

But Trump will probably be able to fill 2 or more Supreme Court seats, and republicans have a history of poor appointments there when it comes to tense situations: Nixon on Carswell and Haynesworth; Clarence Thomas; Bush II on Harriet Myers. Trump may well appoint a third-rater; and he may get away with it if only because he is feared by many Repubs. So the Court is likely to go farther right –which in this case means, the side with the most money (usually Business) will prevail in important cases. This may not sit well with Trump’s “base,” who, remember, are not really passionate Trump supporters, in many cases.

7.      Things that may go very badly:

a.      Tariffs that Trump has promised to impose on China. Could cause a trade war, higher prices here in the U.S., especially for cheap goods that Trump people buy at Wal-Mart, and loss of jobs in export industries in this country.

b.      Military adventures, if Trump persists in believing that he can kill off ISIS quickly and easily, or that he really understands ISIS better than the generals. Also, trying to blackmail allies over payments to NATO, for example, and encouraging small countries to build their own nuclear arsenals, while creating deteriorating relations with China, could have the effect of making North Korea think it really ought to try some experiments in dropping nukes on a few countries.

c.      Foreign relations, if Trump tries to cancel the Iran deal. He can take the US out of that agreement, but our allies won’t go along with him, resulting in isolation of the US and, incidentally, a loss of a lot of foreign business for companies like Boeing.

d.      Obamacare, if he really tries to repeal it. It was all good fun for the Repubs in the House to vote for repeal 50-some times; but actually repealing it would cause chaos in a huge industry. He is already backing off that, though.

e.      The economy, if he actually cuts taxes as he proposes, retains Social Security and Medicare at present levels as he has promised, “rebuilds” the armed forces, and embarks on a big infrastructure project. This is why, although stocks have hit new highs since Tuesday, bonds have come crashing down: inflation and interest rates could very well go up a lot.

So, I worry. Not as much as my kids do –I don’t think Daniel and his friends will be “rounded up and shipped out,” as he said; he lives in Massachusetts, not Alabama--, but quite a bit. The swastikas showing up in various places and the fact that the real crazies of the alt-Right are now seen as legitimate where they were formerly regarded as trolls who creep around in the dark places –those features of the new climate will debase us all.

But what underlies the Trump phenomenon? Where did we go wrong?

First, we have the tendency, almost exclusively among Republican politicians, to deny the legitimacy of a president, and to openly advocate opposing that president regardless of the positions he advocates. This happened to Clinton, and of course to Obama. A famous example is the filibuster, on January 26, 2010, by the Republicans in the Senate to defeat a resolution to create a deficit-reduction task force. This bipartisan resolution had been supported by Mitch McConnell and John McCain; but these two senators, as well as six cosponsors of the resolution, voted against it. Why? Because, between the time of the original crafting of the bill and the vote, President Obama had gone on record as supporting it. Being a Democrat has, itself, become illegitimate, if not (see Ann Coulter) treasonous.

Then there is, accompanying this, or following from it, is the increasing demonization of people who disagree with oneself. The only time you hear "I disagree with ..." from the mouths of an increasing number of people, both public figures and ordinary citizens, is when someone they support goes very far out of bounds. Thus, Republican politicians, confronted with Trump's comments on Mexicans, or his proposal to ban Muslims from the U.S., "disagreed" with him. As for political or cultural opponents, one doesn't "disagree" with such people, one abhors their beliefs, or is outraged by their statements. This is prevalent on the Left as well as on the Right. Just look at the headlines on the widely-followed news/political websites.

This demonization has been accompanied by, and facilitated by, our increasing tendency to segregate ourselves politically: as a nation, we've gradually sorted ourselves, so that most people don't encounter those unlike themselves (socially, politically, or economically) in the normal course of going about their days. This began with the super-rich, who are too precious to risk encountering, say, a homeless person or a tradesman other than at one's back door; but it has spread widely. Just as most black kids attend schools that are (a guess) more than 90% black, most of the states in the country are reliably "blue" or "red." Although I personally appreciate the lack of political advertising I am faced with here in Illinois (and when a local candidate advertises, you can instantly identify if he or she is a Republican, because the ad doesn't mention the party), this facilitates seeing the Other as fearsome and alien. Japan is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world. Jewish population in Japan: zilch.

Our population is increasingly ignorant, indeed functionally illiterate (this ignores areas where illiteracy rates results from a high proportion of immigrants). Newton Minnow, who famously declared, in the 1960s, that television was a “vast wasteland,” would today consider it an oasis of enlightenment compared to the Internet. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said that the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot. Such people get their information from self-selected oral sources, and the tendency is to select sources that provide views comfortingly like ones own. Those sources rely on that, to tailor, indeed distort, their product to reinforce the political views they want to advance. Of course, when a steady consumer of such views hears a contrary piece of information, his response is that it is simply untrue.

Trump advances this tendency: when a person of national stature states as a fact things that are untrue, he legitimizes those ideas. Last year a survey found that regular viewers of Fox News were actually less well-informed than those who consumed no regular source of news at all. And when a national political party nominates such a person, it lends credibility to those views.  Routine surveys show that most Americans have no conception about basic facts regarding our government's performance, and often believe things that are actually directly opposite the truth. And ignorance doesn't just mean unaware of the facts: it means unable to connect things intellectually, to parse statement, to reason clearly.

contrary to the facts pr

Beliefs that are contrary to the facts produce justifications for draconian social policies. If one believes that most homicides are committed by blacks, and that most blacks are willfully unemployed, violent, unpredictable, and irresponsible, we shouldn't be surprised that a cop (who is most likely under-educated and under-trained, and subject to the prejudices of his class), shoots a big black guy who is standing by his car and makes a sudden, ill-advised move. And it is a short step from that to a presidential candidate who urges the adoption of national "stop-and-frisk" policies and national "concealed carry" legislation.

Because they don't!

In view of the fact that even PBS seems to be approaching an all-Trump-all-the-time approach to its political programming here on the weekend before the Republican convention, perhaps it was not all that surprising to hear an earnest interviewer discussing Donald Trump with an equally earnest academic even on "This American Life."

Donald Trump is a twice-divorced New Yorker who freely curses during speeches, has no perceptible religious impulse, and in general displays none of the behavioral decorum or personal characteristics otherwise generally associated with the kind of person belonging to the religious Right, the interviewer said. Why, then, does he appear to command such significant support among America's evangelicals?

The interviewee began a well-rehearsed description of Evangelical issues and how important these are to their world-view. "They are very upset about same-sex marriage, for instance," he said. He went on to parse some of Trump's innumerable comments on pretty much everything --you can find almost any position you like in Trump's recorded logorrhea-- to show that Trump, such people believe, somehow shares their values.

I have a different, much simpler answer.

These Trump-supporting evangelicals can reconcile the man with their principles because they don't really care about the principles they publicly espouse. 

It's kind of like the deficit: the Republicans in Congress abhor the deficit, until a Republican sits in the Oval Office, or until they see a chance to spend on something they really want. In a similar fashion, the religiosity is just a pious (as it were) front; what they really like about the Right is the racism, the xenophobia. It's the intolerance that motivates these people. The mega-church is just where they can find it. It is decorously layered over with sincerity, with I-love-Jesus sentiment; and anyway, the music is pretty good and the whole spectacle is free, every Sunday. And you don't find many of those people there, just enough to sort of flavor the experience with a bit of spice while convincing you that you are actually a very tolerant, diverse sort of guy. And you can make some decent contacts there, too.

These people would have taken Ted Cruz, even though his pleading, on the stump, for the body of Christ to awaken was a bit unseemly, even for them. But Trump will do.

"Evangelical" is a nice label, gives you a feeling of belonging to a movement, and doesn't require you to think very much about what you believe in. And it will certainly never expose the wishes you have, deep down.

And now, they have Trump to say for them what they are too proper to say themselves. And they can say, with some plausibility, that he doesn't really believe it.

But they know different.

Netanyahu Against The Generals

(an email to Brett Stephens, WSJ op-ed columnist, concerning his piece of May 24, 2016)

Mr. Stephens:

I find your interesting piece concerning the killing of the Palestinian kid and the resulting brouhaha very informative. I have three quarrels (I assume few people write you who have no quarrel!) –to wit:

1)      A security establishment –rather, one or more individuals within that establishment—who feel no compunction about publicly telling off its masters could be construed to be doing the duty of an informed citizen, as long as those individuals are willing to accept the consequences. Far from moving to become a law unto itself, such a military could be seen as resisting illegal orders (of the type that the defendants at Nuremburg so famously failed to sustain as justification for their illegal actions). Perhaps you would prefer to have such officers simply resign in silence, and thereafter hold their tongues out of –what? Some sense of loyalty to what they believe is an illegitimate cause?

2)      I find it remarkable that you assert “religious, ideological, and electoral considerations” to be the “stuff” of democracy. I would have thought that these things are the risk factors, parochial or partisan, that, in a democracy, stand as hurdles to a dispassionate consideration of what is in the nation’s best interests.

3)      Your closing comment about “those who believe themselves to be virtuous” versus “those who merely wish to be free” is intriguing: who are those who do not “believe themselves to be virtuous?” Are you among them? Aha! I thought not, because nobody is. We all believe we are good, within our own terms; and that includes the Palestinians who stab Israelis no less than the Israelis who destroy the olive trees of Palestinian farmers. But my real point is this: you say, “In the West, the virtuous are secular elites imposing … ‘the vision of the anointed’ on the benighted masses.” Please:

a.       By the inclusion of “secular,” I presume you do not mean those who refuse to follow the law, and so deny marriage licenses to gay couples;

b.      I assume you do not mean those who defy the Supreme Court so that a monument to the Ten Commandments can be placed in public space;

c.       I assume you do not mean those who murder abortion doctors, or shoot up public spaces in pursuit of religious virtue.

No, by “secular” you evidently mean those who try to affect public policy by changing laws and how they are applied (no matter how upsetting to those who cherish the status quo ante in all things).

And, I assume that “those who merely wish to be free” include those who want all the benefits, and none of the constraints, of operating businesses and personal lives in the public sphere. As an example, I would remind you that to say that a clergyman can be compelled to perform a homosexual wedding ceremony is simply false: but I believe that, if he wants to act as an officer of the state, he should be so compelled. I attended a gay wedding in Illinois in 2005, in a church. How so? The minister simply did not exercise the right (which he possessed, for other purposes) to certify a legal union. Let all the preachers with objections simply stop holding themselves out as authorized by the government to sign marriage certificates, and they should be okay marrying only those who belong to acceptable categories. The happy couples could then make a fifteen-minute stop at the courthouse on a convenient day and get their civil paperwork.

Because I raise controversial matters, (and on the perhaps remote assumption that you actually read all the stuff you undoubtedly get) I should declare myself, to some extent: I am a US citizen, a Jew, and inclined to socialistic beliefs. I have voted for Republicans, Democrats, Greens, and Socialists in my time. I am concerned about our democracy only to the extent that I find it threatened by Know-Nothingism and the willing forfeiture, by some candidates, of their cognitive capacities in favor of preening to masses who they prefer to be “benighted” because it is less work to cater to them than to lead them.

I expend this energy on your columns, occasionally, because I find your statement of facts coherent and balanced. But you must admit that your adjectives sometimes give away the game, when it comes to your conclusions.

Who, Us?

Ross Douthat again today insists on portraying Donald Trump as a product, not of the party which produced him, but of an angry outcry against both parties. This equivalence in the press, always attempting to portray the two parties as equally unbalanced, has been commented on before, notably by Paul Krugman. Today, Douthat says, “The core of (Trump’s) support is a white working class that the Democratic Party has half-abandoned and the Republican Party has poorly served … stuck with a liberal party offering condescension and open borders and a conservative

 party offering foreign quagmires and capital gains tax cuts.”

Now, when did the “half-abandonment” occur? Could it possibly have begun with the election of 1968, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when the Democrats abandoned five southern states to George Wallace, and also abandoned enough voters in several other states to Wallace to place their electoral votes in Richard Nixon’s column and insure Nixon’s victory?

Did the Democratic Party abandon voters in 1980, so that Ronald Reagan could use “welfare queen” and “strapping young buck” slurs to energize his thoughtful, conservative base?

Or might it have been in 2000, when Democrats unaccountably abandoned their own majority of votes, in Florida and the country at large, in order to assure George W. Bush’s victory?

Well, how about Douthat’s assertion that what “liberals” offer white working class voters is “condescension?” Could we have a few examples? Remember, Mitt Romney was a Republican, and a “conservative,” when he said that 47% of the populace consists of “takers.”

And, I forget: where did the Democrats offer “open borders?” Was it in the law from the 1960s that allows Cuban migrants to the U.S. a much easier path to both admission and permanent residency?

Douthat feels that he cannot condemn Trumpism without assigning blame for it equally to both parties. So he invents formulations such as “But there are still basic norms that both parties and every major politician claim to honor and respect.” Is this sort of “respect” in evidence when the Senate Majority Leader and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee each announce their intention to deny, not only hearings but even face-to-face interviews, of any Supreme Court nominee that the President could designate?

This is just one in a long list of examples of conduct that does not respect “basic norms” (if the Constitution can be so designated), to which we are so used that we are almost inured, over the past several years.

Trump is a creature of the Republican abandonment of politics in favor of the totalitarian outlook: no compromise is permissible, and our adversaries are unworthy of common courtesy, let alone respect or the entertaining, however fleetingly, that their ideas and goals have any legitimacy at all.

The decline of the Republican Party has been in evidence for a long time. Sensible Americans have lamented this, in the knowledge that our system requires competing interests to engage in order to craft solutions, however partial, to the problems confronting us. There is no longer any such engagement, as the direct result of Republican opposition to an elected president and the party’s slavish adoption of the prejudices of its most extreme, potentially violent, and backward elements.

That this state of affairs threatens the future of the Republican Party is bad enough. What is worse is the attempt of an apologist such as Douthat to place an equal share of blame elsewhere.

A Better Explanation

Even as I posted my comments on Ross Douthat, Walliam Saletan, at Slate, was taking issue with the same Douthat column. And he did a much more forceful job of it. Here's what Saletan says.

Explanations

Today's entry in the "Trump-splainer" sweepstakes comes from Ross Douthat, the conservative op-ed columnist at the New York Times.

There have, of course, been many 'think pieces' that present an analysis of why Donald Trump, why now. Generally they focus on "soft" issues --that is, not what our policy should be with regards to Syria or gay marriage or even immigration. No, they tend to talk about the disillusionment of voters, generally the "white working class" voters who feel that history, as it were, is passing them by. This they attribute, essentially, to the duplicity, incompetence, and greed of the Washington "elite." Trump seized on these themes early, and has pressed them relentlessly. He doesn't really bother with policy: just leave it to him, and we'll be great, he says.

Many people are mildly (or not so mildly) disgusted by Trump; by his xenophobia, his arrogant self-promotion which goes beyond even that expected of politicians, his bullying of anyone who questions him. He's crude. All these characteristics are apparently strengths, in the eyes of Trump supporters.

The Washington elite are aghast, especially those in the Republican Party. They are, rather halfheartedly, attempting to mount a "stop Trump" movement. But there is a somewhat different dimension to the anti-Trump campaign. The big shots on the Republican side don't like his bombast; sure. But their real antipathy to him stems from the fact that he's just not conservative enough. Liberals may be outraged at the calls to deport 11 million Mexicans, or to bar entry by any Muslim into the U.S. and construct a national registry of Muslim citizens. But most of his Republican primary opponents have tried to outdo Trump in the extremity of his opinions: there is near-unanimity about Mexicans and Muslims; and they are, if anything, farther out than Trump when it comes to ISIS, Guantanamo, the incompetence of Obama and much of Congress, the question of whether the Senate should deign to even consider an Obama nominee to the Supreme Court.

Oh, sure, they wish he was more "civil;" but that word is used mainly to characterize the way he says what he says, and his penchant for rudeness and the politically incorrect phrasing of what are, in general, commonly-held opinions.

Indeed, so strict has become the Republican orthodoxy that Trump is criticized for his assertions that Planned Parenthood does a lot of good, or that we shouldn't let people die in the streets for lack of health care. These statements earn him the label "not a true conservative."

All this is in the Republican catechism. Mr. Douthat, in today's Times, takes a different approach. Trump's rise has been made possible in significant part by Barack Obama and how he has conducted his presidency --indeed, even his campaigns.

It is worth looking at a few of Douthat's claims in some detail:

• "First, the reality TV element in Trump's campaign is a kind of fun-house-mirror version of the celebrity-saturated Obama effort in 2008... The quasi-religious imagery and rhetoric, the Great Man iconography and pillared sets, the Oprah endorsement and Will.i.am music video and the Hollywood stars pledging allegiance --it was presidential politics as one part Aaron Sorkin-scripted liturgy, one part prestige movie's Oscar campaign."

• "[Trump is] ... proving, in his bullying, over-promising style, that voters are increasingly habituated to the idea of an ever more imperial presidency --which is also a trend that Obama's choices have accelerated... the current president has expanded executive authority along almost every dimension: launching wars without congressional approval, claiming the power to assassinate American citizens, and using every available end-around to make domestic policy without any support from Congress."

• "... white working-class voters ... have been drifting away from the Democratic Party since the 1970s, but Obama has made moves that effectively slam the door on them: His energy policies, his immigration gambits, his gun control push, his shift to offense on same-sex marriage and abortion. ...liberalism still needs to reckon with the consequences. As in Europe, when the left gives up on nationalism and lets part of its old working class base float away, the result is a hard-pressed constituency unmoored from either party, and nursing well-grounded feelings of betrayal.

I think it can safely be said, after the spectacle of "W" landing in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier --turned at anchor in San Diego Harbor so that the downtown buildings wouldn't be visible in the photo-op--, an effort to cast Obama as the purveyor of some newly sensational reality TV approach to politics is, well, strained. Let's leave out the ridiculous reference to "quasi-religious imagery and rhetoric," on which the Republican Party has a virtual patent. 

In fact, any objection to the imagery of Obama's 2008 campaign should be viewed in light of his 2008 opponent's casting (I use the word advisedly, and with prejudice) of perhaps the least qualified nominee for vice-president in the past hundred years. It is worth noting that this nominee, in her acceptance speech, contrasted Obama, a former community organizer, with herself, a sitting governor, who, as she said, "has actual responsibilities." She then, after losing the election, resigned her governorship halfway through her term, in order to take a high-paying commentator job with Fox News.

The notion of an Imperial Presidency has been around for much of my adult life. Certainly, Richard Nixon (who was the inspiration for Arthur Schlesinger's book with that title) and Ronald Reagan's actions in Central America, Chile, and with Iran Contra all fall comfortably within such a description. Moreover, when Obama did seek a Congressional resolution for military action in Syria, it was denied him; and those who refused to provide the authorization then roundly criticized Obama for failing to go to war in Syria. Indeed, Newt Gingrich, who at the time was a Republican spokesman of some importance, criticized Obama for threatening to act, and then for failing to act, in the same month.

It is of course true that the white working class began leaving the Democratic Party in the 1970s, or, more properly, immediately upon the signing of the Civil Rights Act by Lyndon Johnson. This "drifting away" was facilitated by Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and by the code-word racism of Ronald Reagan, such as in his "welfare queen" speech, his "strapping young buck" characterization of a black man receiving food stamps, and his announcement of his campaign, with a "states' rights" speech, at the site of one of the most notorious murders of civil rights workers in the 1960s South. Now Douthat finds Obama culpable for losing the fascist, xenophobic, and racist elements of the electorate to the Republicans. And in doing so, he manages to blame Obama for, in effect (he only implies this) the unwillingness of the Republicans to match their deeds to their rhetoric, resulting in the disillusion of this constituency and its consequent flocking to Trump.

It is hard to know what to make of this. Douthat is an intelligent person. But I would remind him that:

• Obama won two elections by comfortable margins. 
• Even as he took office, he received a barrage of political and personal insults from the Republican Party, which continue to the present time in that Party's announcement that it will not consider any nominee he may offer to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court --this from a Party that glories in its fidelity to the Constitution. 
• The years of assertions by Republicans at the margins (notably, by Donald Trump) that Obama was ineligible to be president because he was born in Kenya, and the demand that he prove otherwise even after, in exasperation, he did so, were never contradicted by a single Republican in Congress. 
• Obama has the distinction of being the only president whose State of the Union address was interrupted by a member of Congress, a Republican, yelling "You lie!" 
• It is surely remarkable that a bill sponsored by eight Republican Senators, after Obama was quoted as saying that the substance of the bill was a good idea, was defeated, with all the Republican sponsors voting against it. 
• The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives announced that his primary legislative goal would be to insure that Obama would be a one-term president. 

This list could be extended indefinitely. But what is new, and ludicrous, in Douthat's argument, is the assertion that the shortcomings in our polity are attributable to Obama. It does not require an endorsement of Obama's policies --I certainly take issue with some of them-- to object that Douthat is, ultimately, blaming Obama for the successes of the Republican Party in pursuing calculated objectives which created the conditions that now threaten that Party, and the country. And Douthat uses "weasel words" to excuse himself on this count: Obama's actions and policies "accelerated" this process that produced Trump.

This attitude on Douthat's part is reminiscent of the Republican response to the gradually increasing complaints about income inequality, over the past year or so. After trying to deny that it existed, then that it posed a problem for the USA, the Republicans acknowledged income inequality in a sloganeering fashion by stating that "under Obama, the middle class has lost ground," ignoring the fact that this problem has been 30 years in the making, and, to the extent it is attributable at all to presidential action, most of the blame should be placed on Reagan and G. W. Bush. 

Douthat's piece does not help the cause of the Republican Party, or that of conservatism in general. To suggest that their current problems arose with the current Democratic president is to ignore the history of the Republican Party since 1980. The conservative project has been set aside for the entire time of the Obama presidency in favor of a sort of tantrum, in which the Republicans, outraged at losing two elections to a black guy from Chicago, have busied themselves with minutiae when they have not been attempting to damage the country as a means of damaging Obama.

The U. S. Government has a desperate need for a competent, responsible, opposition party if its democratic traditions are to endure. It has, over the past decade, lost such a party. There is a reasonable possibility that the Republicans are fatally damaged; but that should be no comfort to Democrats, or to any Americans. 

This was concisely described by William Falk, Editor of The Week. 

the “social norms” that once kept a divided government functioning are disintegrating; for the first time in history, the Senate is refusing to consider anyone the president might nominate to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat. Elections sometimes end stalemates like this one—but after November, the crisis could get much worse. 

It's Complicated, See?

TV Reporter: "Do you want the government to relinquish control over all federal land?"

Oregon Wingnut: "I want the government to follow the Constitution."


Well, of course you do. And apparently only you know what the Constitution says, and it's way too much to ask, to suggest that you maybe oughta be specific. "The Constitution" has become the catch-all for people who probably haven't read it but are mad as hell and aren't gonna take it any more. Funny how their view of the Constitution never seems to allow for the right of the government to enact, and enforce, laws. Laws are infringements on various "fundamental" rights. Like the "fundamental" right to own a howitzer.

Washington Post reporter Janelle Ross had a point when she asked, "Why Aren't We Calling the Oregon Occupiers 'Terrorists?' "

The answer, of course, is that these are white guys who drive pickups and carry guns on their hips. They take over federal buildings with impunity, and are handled with kid gloves by the press: Don't expect Wolf Blitzer, any time soon, to be poised in front of the Malheur National Wildlife Headquarters building in Nowhere, Oregon, breathlessly asking a 90-word yes-or-no question to a local about the goings-on inside the building. These guys call themselves "militiamen,' and the press calls them 'occupiers.' If they were black and had no weapons and stayed on the sidewalk, they'd be called 'activists;' add signs, and they are 'insurgents;' and if one of them pushed a cop they'd be 'terrorists.'

I guess black people are scary, and white people, even white people who torture white children, are not. We're just supposed to, well, let them be. although that may disappoint some would-be Patriots who are itching for a fight.

The question is: at what point does all this despising of government become, well, insurrection, as Ms. Ross says, or treason, which is what an attempt, using violence, to overthrow the government is? We've had lots of threats, from elected representatives darkly suggesting "Second Amendment solutions" to Obamacare or some similar outrage on the part of the federal government, to a Texas governor threatening to take his state and leave the Union.* We have, it would appear, a sizable minority of the population asserting their "Second Amendment Rights" because of a conviction that they will need all their guns in order to fight their own government (You didn't think all those 330 million guns were in the hands of dedicated "sportsmen," didja?).

Where all this ends up? Unless we're lucky, maybe like, say, Mexico? And if unlucky, Afghanistan?


*Oh, would that it were so! Texans, anyway, are a treasonous bunch, having twice in one generation committed armed rebellion against their government (in 1845 and again in 1861).

"In Defense of the Corporation"

In Defense of the Corporation

[NOTE: This piece was written in 2008 (I believe), discussing Robert Hessen's 1978 In Defense of the Corporation.]

There is a charming moment in Robert Hessen’s thin treatise, when he says, “The entity idea and its corollary—that a corporation cannot derive rights from its members—is false and should be discarded.” Hessen goes on to explain that any organization is only a collection of individuals, and therefore is only a useful construct. From this he derives one of his central tenets: “…when rights are imputed to a corporation, what we really are referring to are the individual rights of its members—the shareholders, directors, and officers.”

Charming, in an “if only it were true” sense. Skip the obvious rights of individuals that cannot, apparently, be transferred to a corporation: the right to vote, to bear arms, to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. There are also burdens on individuals that cannot be transferred to their corporate surrogates, most notably, of course, the inevitability of death within a (so far) inelastic period of time after the attainment of majority, say, 80 years. Following from that, of course, are all the evils to which men are subject: the need to eat, and breathe, and rest. Corporations experience none of these burdens, so it is perhaps more accurate to say that individuals, rather than transferring their own rights to corporations, seek to create privileges and indemnities, by creating corporations, that they do not themselves possess.

Hessen’s book was written at the end of the 1970s, when scholars at the Hoover Institution, its publisher, could perhaps be forgiven their worry concerning the onward march of Socialism (a Democrat was in the White House). The book’s intention is to defend the American corporation against the attacks of Ralph Nader, who in those days had mounted a spirited attack against corporate structure. It is instructive to read Hessen’s characterization of Nader’s arguments, if only to see how distant some of Nader’s prescriptions now appear. Nader’s notion (as described by Hessen) that the solution to the evil excesses of corporate America is federal chartering seems today not only questionable. It seems hopelessly naïve to believe that the federal government can be a force for restraint against rampant capitalism, in an age when taxation itself is viewed by a substantial portion of the electorate as unpatriotic, and the notion of graduated tax rates as “socialism.”

So Hessen’s book is, largely, a curiosity. He does have some interesting things to say, however irrelevant to our current problems they may be. His book breaks down roughly into two partially overlapping sections. He begins with an explication of the origins of corporations, with a grade-school sort of step-by-step (“Now imagine that the original group of general partners is growing old …”) description of how inevitable is the progress from sole proprietor to international corporate behemoth.

In his first four chapters Hessen is at some pains to explain how medieval guilds and boroughs and the like are not the legal or logical precursors to the modern corporation. This presentation is interesting because of its reminder that, in Western society, all rights, no matter to whom belonging, were at one point considered to derive solely from the dispensation of an absolute monarch. But the right of individuals to contract with one another for private purposes, rather than any state-granted status, is the source of corporate existence.

The last half, roughly, of Hessen’s book addresses the questions of corporate democracy, shareholder rights, and state statutes relating to corporate governance. It is here that he parries the Nader attack; and he does so rather easily, both by citing some apparent procedural errors in different versions of Nader’s Taming the Giant Corporation and by examining some of Nader’s substantive claims and proposed remedies. The former approach would seem to have been hardly necessary, except that it is testimony, read now in Nader’s dotage, to the respect he once enjoyed: showing that the great man was capable of slipshod work was deemed important to an academic such as Hessen in attacking Nader’s arguments.

And what arguments they are! According to Hessen, Nader advocates a series of complex devices aimed at ensuring, for example, that all shareholders vote on virtually all significant operating decisions of a corporation. This, of course, is a non-starter; were it to be somehow enacted it would simply end corporate activity as we experience it today; and Hessen’s presentation leads one to the suspicion that Nader, if he is being represented accurately, simply wanted to force the dissolution of these large organizations.

Indeed, in his chapter “Dismantling Big Business,” Hessen presents Nader’s arguments that size itself, in business, is evidence of malfeasance, or at least, ill intent. Size offends the competitive spirit; it leads to foreclosing consumer choice; it produces unused industrial capacity and resulting unemployment and suppression of wages; it allows companies to manipulate consumer demand. Hessen counters most of these assertions with common-sense defenses, but his most effective answer to Nader is this: assuming you are correct, why is your proposed solution an improvement?

It is a difficult question. The truth is, American corporations have indeed produced great societal benefits, as well as important ills. But the interest of this subject, not to say Hessen’s text, is provided by the environment in which we find ourselves. It used to be possible to say that there was a feeling of resentment, in some quarters, against the real or imagined depredations of large corporations against the average consumer. In 2008, it is possible to sense the rage of, perhaps, a majority of Americans against the greed of what has begun to be seen as a plutocracy. The government, moreover, is seen as the source of a solution only by a minority of people, and often, by them, only reluctantly. Hessen, in this book, has nothing to say about this; he is defending the picnic against the ants: “…we are told that the evil of capitalism is prosperity and that giant corporations must be destroyed because they depend on and are committed to economic growth…”

We face a different scene today. Dissatisfaction with American business, as well as government, has seldom been greater. Government and business are seen as having gone, hand-in-hand, into enterprises aimed at creating a privileged class. Business writes the rules by which it consents to be governed, and government, through collusion or bribery, consents; the will, and the interest, of the people is everywhere given lip service, and nowhere respected.

We are at war with ourselves, as in the cell-phone commercial where the corner-office executive mutters with satisfaction, “it’s my way of stickin’ it to The Man.” When the office boy reminds him that he is The Man, he muses, “…maybe.” No one really believes, however, that this man waits interminably on hold for customer service, or fills out infuriating forms and cuts off product-code labels to get his fifty-dollar mail-in rebate, or takes off his belt and shoes for the edification of a three-hundred pound mouth-breather with a government emblem on the pocket of his straining white shirt in the line at the airport. Government and business, by moving closer towards one another in the regulation of the citizen and the consumer, have managed to become conflated in the minds of many.

This has not worked to the advantage of business. Pharmaceutical and insurance giants are seen as the new malefactors of the economy, now joined by “Wall Street” and the financial services industry generally. The question that Hessen, were he writing now, would ask is, “What has gone wrong with the American corporation?” It cannot do what it was not designed to do, of course: improve the culture, create general prosperity, right our social or political wrongs. But is it making these problems worse, through its pursuit of profits, heedless of external costs it may be imposing? Is unfettered capitalism a reasonable way to organize one of the pillars of any society, its economy? And, in the end, what, if anything, should be the role of government in business?

Hessen’s ultimate argument is that, as the rights of corporations are simply the rights of individuals, any attempt to restrain corporations is an attack on individual liberty. It is tempting to say that he would be unlikely to have a helpful prescription for what ails us. Certainly American business, which has always been characterized by pragmatism and practicality, does not today show itself eager for reform; adjustments are necessary, to deal, for example, with what critics call socializing losses while leaving profits strictly private. But there is no groundswell, among its defenders, of sentiment that American business has gone too far. Indeed, blame for the financial crisis is generally directed at a few imprudent egomaniacs in sensitive positions, and an army of irresponsible individuals who had the temerity to think that they should be deserving of the temptations that were being waved under their noses.

Other examples exist, however. European capitalism, which has had all the sharp corners knocked off by 140 years of state welfare policies, has nevertheless been able to produce some of the benefits of modern corporate achievement. European society, many observers agree, has produced a better way of life for the average citizen than has American society. Infant mortality in America, to cite one statistic, is behind that of most of Europe, including Greece and Portugal, as well as Cuba and some Asian countries. Clearly, if huge corporate enterprise is necessary for societal well-being, it is certainly not sufficient. Could the missing element be government-applied restraint?

To go back to Hessen’s argument, he spends most of his time showing that, because interactions between corporations and third parties are invariably voluntary, no one should be harmed by the corporation’s existence, at least, not repeatedly (George Bush: “Fool me twice … you can’t be fooled again”), because consumers, like shareholders, have choices. And it is certainly true that if you don’t like Cellular One, you can try Verizon.

But in a sense, the attack against Nader is against a straw man. To say that nationalizing all significant corporate activity won’t solve any problems is not to say that there aren't problems. And it would seem that modern American business has succeeded reasonably well (with government nudges) in preserving competition, in encouraging innovation, and in producing a steadily increasing Gross Domestic Product, not to mention its first purpose, which is to make profits for its owners. The issues are elsewhere. Here are a couple of them.

First, there is the issue of Hobbesian or Darwinian struggle. If life, like Donald Rumsfeld, is nasty, brutish, and short, should there be, in an advanced society, no mitigation of the worst life has to offer in a state of nature? There is a tension between allowing failure, it would seem, and protecting individuals against the worst consequences of failure. The most unreconstructed laissez faire capitalist would presumably rather not see people starving in the streets of American business districts. In this century, I mean.

No one, presumably, would argue that the secretaries at WorldCom or Lehman Brothers got what they deserved. Hessen’s assertion that a corporation is just a collection of individuals notwithstanding, it seems a signal characteristic of American business that, while the profits go disproportionately to the executives (much more than to the owners, by the way), when ruin comes it is the employees least able to recover who suffer the most.  This is particularly true during a wholesale collapse like the one we seem to be witnessing now.

Corporations, like all of us, enjoy enormous benefits provided by government and the society at large, some of which they help pay for: streets and sewers; a more or less peaceful society governed by a generally accepted social contract; reliable enforcement of commercial contracts; predictability, within a wide margin, when it comes to economic, social, political, and legal norms. It was, for most of the 20^th century, more or less accepted that some minimum of social welfare system is a reasonable price to pay for those benefits; that some minimum redistributive efforts are appropriate to promote social stability in an environment that encourages rapid and drastic economic adjustments. The question always in play is, what minimum, at what price?

Second, it is also true that consumers have choices, sort of. But, just as the nature of competition is to encourage innovation in order to satisfy perceived needs of consumers, competition allows, sometimes, for the degradation of standards or, at least, their suppression. To put it another way: if my competitor is not doing something, then doing it may help me at the margin; but not doing it will also, at the margin, not hurt me. If no one has live human beings answering the phone, no one is at a competitive disadvantage who follows suit. If no provider of cell phone service, or manufacturer of personal digital assistants, standardizes the charger interface, then no one else must do so to remain competitive, with the result that every upgrade or model change requires a new plug-in device that costs an extra $20. Those of us who remember the introduction of cable television can recall the promise that, because we would be paying for the programs, there would be no commercials, as, once upon a time, there were none in movie theaters.

These trivial examples point to one way in which the drive for profits overrides considerations of efficiency and the avoidance of waste, and results in consumer dissatisfaction. To say that the consumer has a choice, in other words, is the type of truth that can obscure a larger, countervailing truth. We can all still get a hamburger the way we like it; but does anyone believe this would be true if McDonald’s and Burger King (having it my way notwithstanding) could create barriers to entry on the scale of those enjoyed by Toyota and Ford?

The point is, while some products naturally require commercial enterprises of large scope to produce, that very fact encourages some (and only some) behaviors that are not in the interest of the society at large. The anticompetitive practices of the commercial dairy industry in attempting to suppress certain organic milk producers is another example of the corporate use of economic power to deny consumer choice. In other words, the invisible hand does not everywhere function optimally.

Corporations are both the heroes and the villains of the piece. The challenge is to take advantage of their strengths while hampering their ability to do harm by the over-enthusiastic exploitation of those strengths. Recognizing that corporations (and limited partnerships, etc.) possess advantages that individuals do not serves only to highlight the need for serious consideration of public policy initiatives.

This is not an argument for a command economy; but it does point out that “free-market capitalism,” in the phrase of the immortal Larry “I’m for keeping America strong!” Kudlow, is not without its shortcomings. Hessen’s Defense is successful in countering Nader’s arguments; but as those arguments were never a threat to American capitalism, his effort might have been better spent in identifying and addressing the societal dislocations that corporations and their milieu help exacerbate. It is only prudent, when evaluating any construct, to assess both its strengths and its weaknesses. Hessen, at most, gets us halfway there.

A Response to Ross Douthat

Dear Mr Douthat:

Your column today focuses on the ‘betrayal” of President Obama, and you cite the departure of his (expected) action on immigration from “precedent or proportion or political normality.” You acknowledge the “precedent” of President Bush’s signing statements, which were methods of simultaneously making law while asserting his unwillingness to enforce the same law. You might have added the “non-precedential” ruling of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, in which one branch of the government overrode both precedent and the Constitution, not for some putatively greater good, but explicitly to benefit one party and one individual.

How about the “proportion” involved where one house of Congress votes over 50 times to repeal a law that the same house passed less than 5 years earlier? Or, to take that example, the “proportion” involved in one party refusing to engage at all in crafting a piece of legislation that both candidates in the then-recent presidential election had espoused and made a centerpiece of the campaign, because that party’s guy lost? That refusal to participate is then compounded by incessant attempts to sabotage the same law.

“Political normality?” Are you referring to the political climate in which several Republican senators, including the majority leader, voted against the bill they had sponsored, after hearing the President say that he thought it was a good idea? Or perhaps the “political normality” of the majority leader announcing that his primary objective for the new Congress would be to make sure that the President serves only one term?

Well, surely, having captured the Senate earlier this month, Mr. McConnell will make his first order of business the restoration of the previous Senate rules concerning the filibuster –anti-democratic in the extreme, by the way—that the treacherous Democrats had done away with? Well, not exactly: overturning Obamacare appears to be the first, futile matter for business in the Senate.

The Right warns Obama that any action he takes on immigration will “poison the well” for any subsequent “politically normal” compromise legislation. That is, the threat is that, having failed to negotiate with the President on virtually anything for the past 5 years, the Republicans really mean it, this time.

The popular will was enunciated in this election; sure. Fifty-one percent of thirty-six percent of the voting public, after years of actions aimed by the Republicans at depriving people of the right to vote, expressed the overwhelming popular will. How about the popular will on gun control? Environmental regulation? I could go on, but never mind.

The “political normality” you long for is one in which it has become an article of faith for members of one party to refer to a Democratic congressman as a “Democrat” congressman, a coinage developed specifically as an attempt to belittle by Bob Dole, who is what passes for an elder statesman in the Republican Party. You should acknowledge that, for much of the Right, any Democratic President –heck, any Democrat at all-- is, essentially (and, in the case of some celebrated Right spokespersons, explicitly) a traitor. If the Democrat is also black … well, that speaks for itself.

You invite the President to avoid the immigration “power grab,” ignoring the fact that, no matter what this President does, he will be vilified for having done it, or for not having done it; and this demonization will include simple lying –about him personally (his origins, religion, and the notion that he “hates America,” all endorsed implicitly and in some cases explicitly by members of Congress), or his policies (he’s a socialist who refused to nationalize the banks when a lot of non-socialists were recommending it), or his actions (he bailed out the banks, although this took place during the Bush Administration) as well as dire threats and hollow predictions. Faced with the unrelenting hostility of the Republican Party, why should he care about some additional, theoretical “disgrace?” 

Read what the Europeans are saying: Obama is popular, but America is exceptional –exceptionally dysfunctional, with corrupt politics--, and so cannot be relied upon to do even what is in its own interests.

The democracy is poisoned, all right. It is poisoned by animus, by money, and by the rage of those whose way of life seems threatened. But most of all it is poisoned by the attitudes of those in power, whose goal is not the betterment of the country, but the possession of the power itself. You are right about the “will to power.” The only question is, power to be used for whose benefit? In this regard, I think the score is 99 to 1, and the Republican “1” is the 1 percent.

Black Peter and Chief Thunderthud

When I was a boy, in the early years of national television, my favorite shows were "The Howdy Doody Show" and "The Lone Ranger." Howdy Doody was a marionette with an eclectic group of friends, among whom were a serious-acting Indian --uh, Native American-- known as Chief Thunderthud. Also, there was an Indian princess, Princess Summerfall Winterspring. The Lone Ranger, of course, had his "faithful" Indian companion, Tonto.

These were the conventions of my childhood: the Indians were faintly ridiculous, as Chief Thunderthud's name was meant to suggest, or exotic go-fers, like Tonto ("There's some medicine in my saddlebag Tonto --get it"). There were no Negroes, of course: they were beneath notice, even for comic relief, at least until Jack Benny came along with his --valet?-- Rochester. The joke among fifth graders one year had the Indian asserting superiority over the Negro because, "Nobody ever played cowboys and niggers." Funny, huh?

There were other ridiculous characters, of course, who were ordinary white people: Jingles P. Jones, played by Andy Divine as the high-pitched, warbly-voiced (Divine had been gassed in the trenches of WWI), faintly incompetent sidekick and comic foil of the earnest, straight-shooting Wild Bill Hickock. But the Indians were the ones who were invariably not to be taken seriously. When they were not villains, they were sort of silly.

That was racist, of course; and yet some of those old stereotypes are intrinsic to some of my fondest memories of childhood. We've pretty much discarded those old images, haven't we? Certainly, we don't take them seriously; they were the furniture of our innocence, perhaps, but we do not cherish them.

Nowadays, the Washington Redskins and certain other professional sports teams face mounting criticism of their nicknames and their mascots; and some of those teams, professional sports being what it is, look likely to hang on for a while to their monikers which are derided as outdated by non-partisans. An early casualty of what is derided as "political correctness" was the nickname of the Pekin, Illinois high school football team: they were the Chinks.

And this month, in the Netherlands, a blackfaced, red-lipsticked, Afro-haired critter known as Black Peter is getting lots of attention from those who find his character insulting to the growing diversity of that country. As in other such cases, fans of Black Peter have rushed to the defense of this helper (one anti-Peter commentator said, "slave") of Santa. Black Peter is a fond childhood memory, his defenders say. Some of them threaten violence against those who call the figure a racist relic. "He makes the little children happy," one journalist in Rotterdam said on NPR tonight, "he hands out candies."

Now, little children could as easily be made happy by a Blue Peter; they have no memories to overwrite. But the Black Peter stalwarts accuse those who object to him of racism themselves, which is a bit hard to fathom. They say that Black Peter is a cultural emblem, and they are threatened by what they perceive as the steady erosion of their "culture" by outsiders. I wonder if the original inhabitants of New Amsterdam may have felt the same way. The Dutch did a pretty good job of eliminating the culture of the natives of Manhattan Island.

I believe that, no matter how innocently intended, such unconscious racial and cultural stereotypes have to go. Sure, you didn't personally mean anything against black people when you laughed with joy at the appearance of Black Peter; how could you? You were six years old. But unconscious racism is still racism, in that it is a cultural milieu, affecting the dominant and the subservient alike, and poisoning any possibility of honest accommodation between them. As to the threats against a cultural symbol, I recall no outcry in Cincinnati when, in 1954, the baseball team that had been known as the "Reds" for fifty years suddenly became the "Redlegs" for a few seasons. The old name was just too uncomfortable in its association with the targets of Senator McCarthy; the "culture" adapted readily enough to permit the new name to appear on baseball cards and news stories.

So, thanks, Tonto, for all those enjoyable half-hours, when I didn't know any better. I will always remember you. But, Johnny Depp notwithstanding, you are properly relegated to history, a victim and a beneficiary of the gradual progress of humanity, which moves, ever to slowly, in the direction of recognizing your own.

And the Dutch will just have to adjust.

Hobby-ism

I must be missing something obvious, here.

The Supremes have granted certiorari to the Hobby Lobby case, in which the owners of that corporation, devout Christians who believe that the government should leave them alone so that they can patrol the bedrooms of their employees, insist that a requirement of Obamacare would force them to act in a fashion that is inimical to their free exercise of religion.

The Hobby Lobbyists are opposed to contraception , on religious grounds. Obamacare (aka the ACA) requires that insurance policies cover contraception. Thus, a federal mandate contravenes the religious conviction of the Green family, which owns the company, and so of the company itself.

First, a few riffs:

• Could the Hobby Lobby convert to, say, Islam? I mean, is it possible?
• Has the Hobby Lobby been baptised? If not, is it destined to burn in Hell?
• How does David Green, paterfamilias of the Green clan (which includes his wife and their three         --hmmmm-- children), know what the religion of the company is?
• In what fashion does the company, as opposed to Mr. Green himself, exercise its religion? I mean, other than by denying a valuable benefit to those whom it employs?

As to this last question, the company's stores are closed on Sundays. It's not Sunday, so I can't try to buy something on the website; but I bet I could do so. The company won't let its website observe the Sabbath, even though it does so itself?

Arguments that have surfaced, so far, deal with the Establishment Clause, with the distinction between speech and religious observance, with the lack of precedent --although the ACA itself unhelpfully exempts religious organizations and companies with fewer than 50 employees, among others, from the contraception mandate.

But I see (or, I think I see) another issue entirely. The fact that I don't find it anywhere being advanced makes me think I've missed a critical point. But here it is:

If the Hobby Lobby can be exempted from observing a law because of its religious convictions, can an Amish Hobby Lobby be exempted from withholding and paying Social Security Tax? (I guess my riff about converting to Islam wasn't such a silly lark, after all.) I mean, independent contractors who are Amish are so exempted; what's the distinction? Size? Does size really matter (sorry; just had to say that)?

We could conjure up even crazier cases. My religion requires that I sacrifice my first-born when he reaches age nine. I've been careful to raise him in isolation, promising him 47 virgins as a prize, etc, so that he is entirely willing to be sacrificed. Can I do it? 

My religion proscribes the education of women, and mandates that they be beaten daily, and that my daughters be married to octogenarians once they reach the age of six. All Okay?

I am a pacifist, and my company is a Quaker. Can my company refuse to pay half its income tax, because that portion of the federal budget is used for the Department of Defense?

I thought these are well-settled issues. I thought that, just because I live in Wyoming, I cannot legally avoid supporting the Coast Guard, which I don't need. But I hear daily someone complain that he shouldn't have to buy an insurance policy that includes coverage (maternity care, etc) that he can't possibly use. Well, I have no use for the NSA; and Texas Governor Rick Perry has no use for the Deparetment of Commerce, and the Department of Education, and ... what was that other one? Oops! So can he just refuse to let his taxes be used to support those functions?

All these arguments for exception are of a piece: I am not responsible for anything other than my own requirements, and those of whoever I choose to support. There's no such thing as societal, or community, responsibility or interdependence. those who say otherwise are socialists. And I shouldn't have to pay to maintain anything to which I am opposed.

Well, so be it. But what the Hobby Lobbys of the world, and their numerous offshoots and avatars, are really saying is that they believe in liberty only for themselves. Worse, they are willing to step on someone else's rights, and deny to the needy what they could easily provide them, in order to sustain their own privilege, their own conceit. These people do not participate in the American social and political covenant, except when they are forced to do so. The rules, they believe, are not for them.

"Thought" Leaders

Maybe it means that someone thought this person was a leader:

... monetary authorities' chatter about a "little inflation" guarantees that younger Americans will have to pay 1980s-level interest rates on their first homes."

So from Amity Shlaes in Forbes (10/7/13), surely the silliest and least substantive "business" publication in wide circulation. Ms. Shlaes wants "hard money" --paradoxically, so that interest rates can rise. In this, she is in the company of the rentier class, those who believe that, having amassed significant wealth, they should now be paid for having it. Note that the above quote, like pretty much all of what Ms. Shlaes says, is unaccompanied by an argument --it's just an assertion.

There are two things about this column that strike me: First, that Shlaes is worried about inflation; and second, that she is offended that a consensus is emerging in favor of "easier money no matter what direction interest rates take or what history's record suggests we do".

As for inflation; those with whom Shlaes agrees have been warning about hyper-inflation for 5 years. How long must we wait for this dire prediction to come true? Her concern for "history's record" is odd, given her resolute unwillingness to ignore the history of the past half-decade (or, in Japan, the past 2 decades). In much of the developed world, deflation is a greater worry than inflation.

And second, one of the reasons, of course, that a consensus is emerging (to the extent that this is the case) is that the many of those in the Shlaes cohort have slowly recognized that stimulus, including the Fed's Quantitative Easing policy, has not produced inflation.

As for the "1980s-level interest rates" she thinks is facing the next generation, she forgets that few of them appear to be inclined, or able, to purchase a first home. You have to be employed in order to do that.

 

Outrage Hits New Heights!

The Republicans made some tentative moves to reach an accommodation with the Democrats and President Obama today. At day's end, they announced an "encouraging" meeting with the President.

Perhaps the government shutdown, and the prospect of a default, will soon be resolved.

Of course, the fierce fighters of the Right aren't going to give up unconditionally; they're tough, dedicated, take-no-prisoners guys. There will be a hard price for Obama to pay. The Repubs have focused on the one issue that is, above all, raising howls of outrage from the American People, and they won't agree to anything until it is addressed.

They're still working on the slogan. Something along the lines of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!"

But no matter what, they demand, absolutely demand, alongside the millions who are marching in the streets, an end to the universally hated 2% tax on medical devices.

The Root of the Problem

Paul Krugman, in yesterday's column, points to the basic problem with the Republican Party: it's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes the relationship between incompetence and self-confidence. We've all experienced it: the guy at the next table, or on the bus, who loudly proclaims how something works, or what something means, when we know with certainty that he is far off base. Usually, it's someone, a "lay" person, who is spouting off about, say, a key aspect of our own professional life. 

I have gotten this from an employee who, hearing that the top marginal tax rate is about to increase, demands that his salary be held at one dollar below the threshold at which the top rate begins to apply. He'll show 'em! Of course, he's making the mistake of assuming that the top rate applies to all the earnings of a person who hits that threshold; either he doesn't know that we have a graduated income tax, or he doesn't know what that means.

In the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the less a person knows, the more he is likely to overestimate his own competence or sophistication. In contrast, the more someone knows, the more he is likely to be uncertain. It's why some very smart people appear unable to give simple, straightforward answers to questions about which they are highly knowledgeable: they are too aware of nuances.

The Republicans, and especially the Tea Party, have seriously emphasized doctrinal rigidity. No surprise, their candidates tend to toe the line on issues. When that happens, someone who thinks deeply is at a disadvantage against someone who does not: the latter guy can confidently and boldly assert the truth. And the "truth" is by definition not nuanced at all: it's obvious, there for anyone to see.

So Republicans elect more and more "true believers" who do not admit to doubt or complexity. And governing the country involves hugely complex matters involving a lot of uncertainty. Their solution? Find someone who can be labeled an "expert, and who says that which you want to hear. There is then no need to delve deeply into any issue. And, by the way, the average person is often attracted to bold assertions of opinion (especially when labeled "fact") from political leaders, because it gives them comfort: these guys must know what they're talking about. This completes the circle, if you will, of incompetence.

Now, if we have the Truth, the other guys must be wrong; and, if they're evidently smart, they must also be devious because they know what they're saying is wrong. It's a short step from that to the notion that they are liars who Hate America. If they are also very different from Us --they are dark-skinned, or have odd names--, well, QED: of course they hate America: they're not even American.

So we come to the notion that the debt default won't really be a problem, because we'll still have enough revenue to pay the basic bills. After all, most of what the government spends is wasted, right? So we'll just get Paul Ryan's budget cuts, all at once. Next stop: prosperity!

So do not expect that the Republicans will limply give in, when confronted with the Disaster: they are cognitively incapable of appreciating that it could possibly be a disaster.

Flash!! Repubs Hate Obamacare!

Or anything else that contains the word "Obama." They voted, in the House today, to impose a delay on the individual mandate. The President ordered a one-year delay in the employer coverage requirement, right? So it's only fair to delay the individual mandate. Stands to reason.

Hearing a Republican appeal to Reason is richly comic, of course. There's not even a need to list the GOP's positions that defy science, facts, the best interests of the USA, fairness, compassion, even their favorite "common sense." So why not make a mockery of reasonableness?

The fact is, Obamacare (aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) is the law; and though the House may vote 40 more times, to go with the 40 previous attempts, to repeal it, the law won't be repealed. It is becoming clear that Obamacare may be the worst nightmare of the Republican Party: a federal program that works, and that involves more regulation, and that helps millions of people --and that was a Democratic initiative.

The insurance rates for various companies serving New York, released today, make it clear how far some premiums are likely to fall. Each new piece of evidence that the PPACA may be onto something, that it may actually achieve greater coverage at lower prices, must feel like a stake in the heart of the Tea Party. So it's understandable that the GOP just can't let go of the illusion that, somehow, they can eliminate it, ar, better yet, make it fail miserably. They have tried starving it of funds for implementation, They've held hostage virtually every Obama Administration appointment. They've spread misinformation far and wide, including the canard that Obamacare will bankrupt the government, that the deficit, already huge, will soar ...

... what's that? the deficit has fallen by half, and looks to continue heading down? In June the government actually ran a surplus?

Ignore the man behind the curtain! the facts, to paraphrase a famous Alan Greenspan lament, are misbehaving; and that tends to make people disregard what I am telling them.

That seems to be a particular affliction on the Right, these days. Better go over to the House floor and vote against something; it feels so good.