#300 / I Was There

As revealed in my blog posting on October 20, 2017, I attended a conference held on October 12th and 13th, at Bard College, in upstate New York. The conference was titled, "Crises of Democracy: Thinking in Dark Times," and was sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, which is located at Bard. If you click the link, you will find online video of the entire conference.

I have kept my notes handy, thinking that I might want to comment on the conference in one of these blog postings, and I still may do that. Today, though, I want to focus on an attack launched against the Hannah Arendt Center for having invited a member of a right-wing political party in Germany to speak at the conference. 

Click the following link to read an "Open Letter" directed to Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, and to Leon Botstein, President of Bard College. The letter was signed by fifty-six academics, from around the United States and from other countries. It denounced the decision of Berkowitz to invite Marc Jongen to speak at the conference. Jongen is pictured below, as are Berkowitz and Botstein. 

Marc Jongen

The basic objection voiced in the letter from the academics is that "Jongen’s participation in the conference ... enabled him to leverage Hannah Arendt’s legacy to legitimize and normalize the AfD’s far-right ideology." 

"The question," said the academics, "is not whether Jongen has a right to freely express his beliefs but whether he should be granted the privilege and power to use the Hannah Arendt Center to advance his agenda. Having granted Jongen that privilege and power, the center and Bard College cannot evade their responsibilities, especially those that arise from the normalization and legitimation of the AfD. We strongly urge the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College to recognize these responsibilities and consider how best to live up to Arendt’s intellectual and political legacy."

Roger Berkowitz

Berkowitz' response was simple: "Listening to a speaker at an academic conference does not legitimize their ideas; on the contrary, it opens a space for critical engagement with those ideas. The AfD is a real-world example of the crisis facing wobbling liberal democracies. The only way to respond to this crisis is to listen to, engage, and reject these arguments. That is precisely what happened at the conference."

Leon Botstein

Botstein's response was similar: "The invitation by an academic center on a college campus, even one named for a distinguished individual, does not constitute either legitimation or endorsement. Right-wing and neo-fascist parties are a reality of modern political life. We cannot pretend they do not exist. We need to hear what their representatives claim directly so that they can be properly challenged. In this case, the speech was followed by a response from Ian Buruma, a preeminent intellectual and scholar, a longtime member of the Bard faculty, and now editor of The New York Review of Books. The event was part of a two-day conference featuring over 25 esteemed speakers on the crisis facing liberal democracies. The speaker was not presented in any context of endorsement or legitimation.

"Neither Bard nor Roger Berkowitz, director of the Arendt center, needs to apologize or issue a denunciation. The accusation of an implied endorsement is actually an insult, given the public record of the college, the Arendt center, and the published public record of both Roger Berkowitz and myself. The self-righteous stance of the signatories and the moral condemnation in the letter do, sadly, bear a family resemblance to the public denouncements of the Soviet era by party committees in the arts that put terror in the hearts of young musicians and writers, and deterred them from speaking and acting against a group consensus.

"The issues here are the survival of open debate and of academic censorship. I do not need to be reminded by this open letter of the horrors of fascism and right-wing xenophobia, any more than would Hannah Arendt. I was a child immigrant to the United States in a Polish-Russian, stateless family. My father was the only survivor on his side, and two uncles perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. The lesson I learned growing up, which was reinforced by Arendt in her role as a teacher, is that freedom is a political category and that it is incumbent on colleges to protect it. Allowing the expression, in a public discussion forum, of views and positions that we find reprehensible is a necessary part of the exercise of freedom in the public realm. This is particularly true in the academy."

It is nice, when reading about such controversies, to be able to say, "I was there." In this case, I was. See if you can pick me out of the crowd, in the photo, below. 

My thoughts about the "Open Letter?" I am with Botstein and Berkowitz. Jongen and his views were not either promoted or endorsed. The audience, while polite, was both critical and questioning. 

In a column in the October 25, 2017, edition of The Wall Street Journal, Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, discussed what happened on September 27th at the College of William and Mary. Claire Gastañaga, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, was supposed to give a talk on "freedom of speech." As it turned out, according to Olson's report, Gastañaga never got the chance to talk, because "members of Black Lives Matter W&M stormed the stage and shouted her down, in protest of the ACLU chapter’s defense of free-speech rights—including those of white supremacists who’d gathered the previous month in Charlottesville."

As I said, I am with Berkowitz and Botstein, and I particularly endorse what Botstein says in the last sentence of his response to the "Open Letter."

Allowing the expression, in a public discussion forum, of views and positions that we find reprehensible is a necessary part of the exercise of freedom in the public realm.

I was happy to be at the "Crises of Democracy" conference at Bard, and to watch this kind of debate in person.

Image Credits:

(1) - http://hac.bard.edu/con2017

(2) - http://www.chronicle.com/article/An-Open-Letter-to-the-Hannah/241526?cid=rclink

(3) - http://www.chronicle.com/article/Against-the-Tyranny-of/241541?cid=rclink

(4)- http://www.chronicle.com/article/Bard-President-Responds-to/241538?cid=rclink

(5) - http://hac.bard.edu/news/

#299 / I Like To Make Speeches

I was an elected official in Santa Cruz County from 1975 to 1995, and I ended up making a lot of speeches. I kept track of them, too! 

Starting in 1978, when I spoke to the California Association of LAFCOs, or CALAFCO, I made hundreds of presentations all over the state, and even in some other states. Just in case you are interested, and for those not deeply dyed in the parlance of California local government, LAFCO is an acronym standing for "Local Agency Formation Commission." Every California County has a LAFCO, and this rather unknown and under-appreciated public agency has a major impact on land use planning. 

As I say, and I certainly wouldn't have predicted it before being elected to the Board of Supervisors, it turns out that I do like to make speeches. I am submitting my 18-page list of past speeches as the proof.

In recent times, I don't get to make as many speeches as I'd like to, and these blog postings are a kind of substitute. I am happy to say, though, that I have been asked to make a speech this evening at the Save Santa Cruz event advertised in the flyer that is pictured above.

If you care about the future shape and character of the City of Santa Cruz - and about traffic congestion, parking problems, water supplies, local government finance, and housing for average and below-average income people - I encourage you to come out for this evening's meeting. 

There will be a lot more going on than my speech, I can assure you of that!

Image Credit:
https://www.facebook.com/livableSC/

#298 / The First Rule Of Propaganda

The Washington Post puts out a daily PowerPost news bulletin, which is available for free. On October 23rd, the focus of the PowerPost was propaganda, and on what appears to be President Trump's concerted attack on our public commitment to a free press. You can read the PowerPost article by clicking the link. 

Among other things, the Post said that, "The first rule of propaganda is that if you repeat something enough times people will start to believe it, no matter how false." 

I translate that observation as "Rinse, Lather, Rinse, Repeat."

The President's campaign against what he calls "fake news" is apparently convincing many that what they read in the newspaper, or online, cannot be trusted. Even more disturbingly, there seems to be significant public support for the idea that the government should "shut down" news outlets if they publish what someone decides is a falsehood. 

If America is in any way "extraordinary," and that claim is commonly made, our adherence to the commands of the First Amendment is surely one of the most important reasons that this is true: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As we work to survive a presidency that puts everything most dear to us at risk, let's keep those extraordinary First Amendment commitments well in mind!

Image Credits:

(1) - http://www.positivelite.com/index.php/item/rinse-lather-rinse-repeat

(2) - https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=Z2FwYXR0b25Ac3RhbmZvcmRhbHVtbmkub3Jn&s=59ede423fe1ff6159ed3cd67

#297 / Politicization: Bad Or Good?

As Jennifer Szalai noted in an article published last Sunday in The New York Times Magazine (the article was titled "Cheap Trick" in the hard copy version), politicization is not held in high repute:

Politicization is the last refuge of the scoundrel. To “politicize” something — hurricanes, intelligence, science, football, gun violence — is to render it political in a way that distorts its true meaning. That, at least, seems to be the reasoning of those who use the term as an insult: We adhere to pristine, unadulterated facts and call for unity; they politicize those facts for partisan gain and divide us even more.

As I read those introductory words, I immediately began writing (mentally) my opposing Op-Ed. In fact, since we do "live in a political world," meaning that the social, economic, and cultural aspects of our civilization depend on the political choices we make, "politicization" is hardly negative. In fact, "politicization" means that we are collectively debating, and ultimately deciding, what we are going to do about something. We need more, not less, of that. 

By the time I reached the end of Szalai's essay, I had calmed right down. Szalai finished her discussion by citing to Hanna Arendt, who always deserves the last word:

According to popular lore, part of what made totalitarianism so dangerous was its “politicization of everything,” but Hannah Arendt, who should know, insisted in a 1958 essay that the opposite was true. It is “depoliticization,” she wrote, that “destroys the element of political freedom in all activities”; depoliticization is what makes political action seem futile and moot. To strip an issue of its political dimension is to assume it’s settled or to try to make it so — not by argument, which would be to politicize it, but by blithe dismissal or brute force.

Image Credit:

https://researchleap.com/politicization-bureaucracy-implementation-regional-chief-election/

#296 / Indivisible

Sam Karp, Leah Greenberg, Ezra Levin, and Janie Tyre

Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin are pictured above. They are located in the middle of the pictured group, and are flanked by Sam Karp and Janie Tyre, formerly residents of Bonny Doon, in Santa Cruz County. Sam and Janie are now living in Menlo Park. The picture was taken on October 19, 2017, last Thursday, at an event to let people know about one of the most exciting developments in our current political life. 

Greenberg and Levin, who hail from Arkansas, and who now live in Washington, D.C., helped write the "Indivisible Guide," and are the Co-Executive Directors of Indivisible the organization. For those not familiar with Indivisible, let me encourage you to click this link, to find out more. 

Indivisible was formed after the presidential election last November, and its mission is to "fuel a progressive grassroots network of local groups to resist the Trump Agenda." There are 6,000 Indivisible groups around the country, which means that there is at least one, and maybe more than one, within your own Congressional District, no matter where you live. That's right; Indivisible groups exist even in the "reddest" and most conservative areas of the country. Here is a link to a website that will allow you to access a list of the Indivisible groups that have been established in your own community. Santa Cruz has an extremely active group!

In yesterday's posting, I noted that our system of democratic politics has been transformed, by money, into something quite different from what the authors of our Constitution had planned. Among other things, we are largely governed, now, by a plutocracy, not by democracy. In addition, our politics has become "national," which is where money is most important, and the most impactful.

My pitch, yesterday, was that our politics must not seek to smooth over or dismiss genuine differences or divisions within the body politic, but that politics is precisely the technique we use to resolve and decide contested questions. It is politics, in fact, that allows us to achieve the political goal we express in the slogan, "E pluribus unum." We become "one nation...indivisible" because  we don't try to suppress our political conflicts and controversies, but seek, instead, to resolve them through political action. 

Our system of representative government, in which we resolve our political differences, is supposed to be based on "local," not national, organization and action, with national decision making coming from the "bottom up," rather than being delivered from the "top down." One of the reasons that I am enthusiastic about the Indivisible movement is that it suggests that a decent national politics will be achieved only insofar as we make the Congress work the way it's supposed to, by holding our local Congressional representatives accountable to their local constituents. 

Our local members of Congress are now responsive to monied interests that operate on a national level. Indivisible seeks to support the efforts of concerned citizen groups, working at the local (Congressional District) level, that will give local voters a determinative voice in what their Congressional representatives do. In other words, Indivisible is seeking to restore the kind of representative democracy that Hannah Arendt has called the "lost treasure" of the American Revolution. 

Giving three cheers for that prospect isn't nearly enough!

Image Credit:

Gary Patton personal photo

#295 / Our Politics Must Be Based On Division

Friends Divided, a new book by historian Gordon S.Wood, charts the lives of two of our early presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It is Adams who is pictured above. In many ways, Adams and Jefferson can be taken as exemplars of two different and persistent tendencies in American politics, which have prevailed from the time of the Constitution till now. 

The purpose of this blog posting is mainly to highlight the following statement, contained in a review of the book by Alan Taylor. The review appeared in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, October 21, 2017, and I found Taylor's concluding words to be of significant interest: 

We should not be so quick to dismiss Adams as “irrelevant.” Indeed, contemporary politics render him alarmingly prescient. He astutely predicted, “Our Government must forever be a kind of War of about one half the People against the other.” He warned Americans that they could never eliminate the voracious political power of wealth in an unequal society. Therefore, American constitutions needed to isolate that power in one branch of the legislature lest it, instead, seep into and take over every political institution while wearing the façade of democracy. He imagined the day when the pose of populism would empower a plutocracy. Never has John Adams been more relevant than today.

The idea that our politics is best described as a "War" within the Republic is probably distasteful to many, who would like to think that we should be able, as Rodney King put it, to "just get along." In fact, however, debate and discussion, controversy and conflict, must necessarily be at the very heart of our political life, because we are both individuals and part of a greater whole, and we have different individual ideas, and interests. The aim of our "politics," as we indicate on the basic unit of our currency, is that we must seek to forge our many and divergent ideas and interests into "one" course of action: "E pluribus unum." The task is a continuing obligation and enterprise, and the "battle" brings the kind of joy that Hannah Arendt calls "the public happiness." 

If we are divided, and we are, "money" and "wealth" are not the least important evidences of that division. In the quote above, Adams is suggesting that the Senate, and that body alone, should be where "money talks." The House of Representatives is to be the place where "the people" prevail. As we know, money has overwhelmed everything, today, which means that our political institutions no longer function as they should. We do, indeed, find ourselves in the situation where "populism" has empowered a "plutocracy." 

How will we recover the "lost treasure" of our democratic system? More on that tomorrow!

Image Credit:

http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/john-adams

#294 / The Inevitable Nature Of American Force

David Ignatius, one of those pundits who provide me with a reliable and almost daily dose of outraged irritation, does his business in The Washington Post. Why am I so irritated by our pundits and their punditry? Generally, it's because of their smug self-satisfaction, and their routine willingness to celebrate the "greatness of America," without a shred of empathy for any non-Americans involved. Ignatius is only one of many. The name Thomas Friedman also comes to mind. 

In a column I read in my local newspaper on Friday, October 20th, Ignatius celebrates what the United States has done in Raqqa, the capital of the ISIS Caliphate. Please see the pictures above, which I find appalling. Here is Ignatius' take:

The heaps of rubble in Raqqa that once housed terrorists and torturers convey a bedrock lesson, as valid now as in 1945: It’s a mistake to provoke the United States. It may take the country a while to respond to a threat, but once the machine of U.S. power is engaged, it’s relentless — so long as the political will exists to sustain it.

The "heaps of rubble" in Raqqa, as shown in the picture, are not, really, properly described as the remains of buildings that "once housed terrorists and torturers." In fact, the buildings now destroyed mainly housed men, women, and children who had nothing at all to do with terrorism. American violence has turned an historic city into a ruin, and has displaced almost all who lived there. The New York Times carried an article in its October 19, 2017, edition that properly notes that the fall of the ISIS capital will mean the dispersement of its jihadist membership elsewhere. In other words, here is a real life demonstration of the truth of that "morcellator metaphor."

Ignatius suggests that former president Obama and our current President, Donald J. Trump, should get together at the White House in a joint appearance, to celebrate and dramatize just how steadfast and solid is the American determination to reduce to rubble any city that houses people that the president decides should be destroyed. This, says Ignatius, is the "inevitable nature of American force." Raqqa is only one of many cities that have received the treatment depicted above. 

Allow me to suggest that what is pictured here is not a "victory." No celebratory words or actions are appropriate.

The kind of commitment and determination that Ignatius trumpets (to destroy the cities that house persons whom the president of the United States has decided should be extirpated), is a prime example of that "eye for an eye" philosophy that leaves the whole world blind. 

If you don't want refugees, don't destroy the cities where the people live.

Image Credit:

http://www.icnnational.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/libi998.jpg

#293 / She Lives

Last weekend, I attended the annual conference sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. The conference topic was "Crises of Democracy: Thinking In Dark Times." As always, the conference was provocative and extremely worthwhile. This time, I visited the grave of Hannah Arendt, who, with her husband, is buried on the Bard College campus. 

Though Hannah Arendt is dead, her thinking most definitely lives on. Make no mistake, these are "dark times," and Arendt calls us, always, to both think and act. If you were to join the Hannah Arendt Center as a member, you could then participate in a "Virtual Reading Group," lead by Roger Berkowitz, the Founder and Academic Director of the Center. 

Consider, for instance, this discussion on the "Pursuit of Happiness," about which Hannah Arendt had a lot to say!

Image Credit:

Gary Patton personal photo.

#292 / Next Best

The best time to have planted a tree was twenty years ago. The next best time is today.

You can call this saying a Chinese proverb. You can dispute that attribution. You can remember how President Kennedy conveyed the same thought in a slightly different way. 

Whatever the origin of the thought expressed here, and however phrased, I think it's hard to dispute the truth of this observation.

We are always operating in a "next best" environment, and the only time we have is "now."

Image Credit:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39492977

#291 / Culture Eats It

According to Aaron Levie, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." In fact, says Levie, "Culture eats everything.”

Levie is the CEO of Box, a cloud storage business based in the San Francsico Bay Area, but with offices throughout the world. I ran across Levie's comment in a business-focused article that ran in The Los Angeles Times on September 22, 2017.

I am not much informed about the internal dynamics of internet-based businesses, but the main point of Levie's article, that a company's "culture" is the most important determinant of how well the business will do, seems right to me.

It's true in politics and government, as well.

"Culture eats everything." Which is why the state of our government today is so distressing to so many. It looks like an "uncultured" president is on his way to swallowing (and eliminating) the political "culture" that has sustained our society and democracy for more than 200 years.

Image Credit:

https://open.spotify.com/album/2AvupjUeMnSffKEV05x222

#290 / Working My Brand

David Brooks, the New York Times' columnist, says that this picture, to the left, is "What Sincerity Looks Like." The picture is of Chance the Rapper,  a hip-hop artist, performing in Santa Monica, California in September. 

Brooks was greatly impressed with Chance the Rapper's appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” If you click this link, you can see what Brooks was talking about, and listen to an unreleased and untitled track that deals with the impacts and perils of stardom.

Brooks contrasts "sincerity" with "authenticity." Pictured below, in her recently-released video, "Look What You Made Me Do," is the person Brooks says is seeking the latter (authenticity) rather than exemplifying the former (sincerity). Yes, he does mean Taylor Swift:

Here's what I liked best about Brooks' column. He says bad things about people who are "working their brand." That phrase irritates me, too. Here's how Brooks looks at it:

The first thing you notice in comparing the Chance and Swift songs is the difference between a person and a brand. A lot of young people I know talk about “working on their brand,” and sometimes I wish that word had never been invented.

A person has a soul, which is what Chance is worrying about. A brand has a reputation, which is the title of Swift’s next album. A person has private dignity. A brand is a creation for an audience. “I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams,” is how Swift puts it.

For those who still remember the Bible, there is a verse in Matthew (16:26) that sums it all up: 

What will it profit you to gain the whole world, if you forfeit your soul?

I think I'll skip the bathtub filled with diamonds. I'm sticking with sincerity!

Image Credit

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/what-sincerity-looks-like.html

#289 / Prophecies And Predictions

Chris Hedges (pictured above) authored the essay mentioned in my blog posting yesterday. He conveys a rather daunting message: 

The American empire is coming to an end. The U.S. economy is being drained by wars in the Middle East and vast military expansion around the globe. It is burdened by growing deficits, along with the devastating effects of deindustrialization and global trade agreements. Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity from prosecution for massive acts of financial fraud, all the while looting trillions from the U.S. treasury in the form of bailouts. The nation has lost the power and respect needed to induce allies in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa to do its bidding. Add to this the mounting destruction caused by climate change and you have a recipe for an emerging dystopia. Overseeing this descent at the highest levels of the federal and state governments is a motley collection of imbeciles, con artists, thieves, opportunists and warmongering generals. And to be clear, I am speaking about Democrats, too.

I can't say I disagree with Hedges' analysis. How about you? Is the American Empire "coming to an end?" If it is, and I have already said that I personally think that Hedges' analysis is on target, here is question number two: Would that actually be a bad thing? 

The cartoon that headed up my blog posting yesterday has Uncle Sam, in the guise of a homeless person, holding up a sign that says, "Will Destroy The World For Money." To the extent that this is what the American Empire does (and there are some pretty good arguments that this is an accurate description), it would be hard to mourn that "End of Empire."

So, here is question number three: Is Hedges offering a "prediction" or a "prophecy?" In other words, is Hedges claiming to outline what must and will happen - as "predictions" do - or is he providing us a warning about what could happen? If the latter, that would make Hedges' essay a "prophecy," at least in the way I draw a distinction between these two different words that both relate to a forecast of the future. 

It is probably relevant that Hedges is a Presbyterian minister. He must certainly know about those prophets in the Bible. Those Biblical prophets typically forecasted doom, unless the people repented. Generally, as I'm recalling the Bible stories, the people didn't repent, and the projected doom arrived,  in spades!

After the listing reproduced above, here is what Hedges says about the coming of the End of Empire: 

Short of a sudden and widespread popular revolt, which does not seem likely, the death spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the United States as we know it will no longer exist within a decade or, at most, two. The global vacuum we leave behind will be filled by China, already establishing itself as an economic and military juggernaut, or perhaps there will be a multipolar world carved up among Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and a few other states. Or maybe the void will be filled, as the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power,” by “a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral military forces like NATO, and an international financial leadership self-selected at Davos and Bilderberg” that will “forge a supranational nexus to supersede any nation or empire.”

That introductory phrase ("short of...."), which is in the nature of a call to repent, tells me that Hedges  is speaking in the prophetic tradition. Bad things will happen, and our doom will come, unless we do something now. 

Hedges calls that "something" that we might do a "popular revolt." I call it a "revolution." 

The changes we need don't have to be violent. In fact, to be truly an avenue to change, they can't be, because violence has permeated everything we do, today, and it will be "the revolution" when we eschew violence for a nonviolent future.

Is that possible? You bet it is!

It's not "inevitable," though. 

The future is never "inevitable," because human beings are possessed of the gift of freedom, and can always inaugurate something completely new, and create a "New Order In The World," a Novus Ordo Seclorum.

Hey, we did that once before, remember?

Image Credits:

(1) - https://charlierose.com/guests/3011

(2) - https://www.freeart.com/artwork/art-print/dollar-bill-pyramid_fa1008413.html

#288 / Cartoon

There is no use adding words to an effective political cartoon. 

You can read the essay that went along with this cartoon on truthdig. The essay was written by Chris Hedges, and is titled, "The End of Empire."

Image Credit:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-end-of-empire/

#287 / One Nation After Trump

Here's a book that looks good! As is often the case, though, I can't really comment on the book itself, only on what I have learned from a review of the book. Sometimes, I think, reading a review may be enough to make an intelligent remark.

According to Ari Berman, whose review of One Nation After Trump appeared in The New York Times on September 26, 2017, the authors "were once known as the wise men of Washington." They all "worked at the city’s pre-eminent think tanks (American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution) and wrote for The Washington Post." 

Berman further characterizes these pundits as persons with "center-left views," close with politicians of both parties, and "rigorously committed to upholding Washington’s bipartisan governing norms ... If there was such a thing as an intellectual establishment in Washington, they were it."

It is not completely clear whether Berman deplores or celebrates the fact that this description of "the wise men" must now be placed in the past tense. At any rate, Berman's review highlights the fact that upholding "the bipartisan governing norms" of past times is no longer the way these wise men roll. According to Berman, they have, in fact, used their considerable persuasive powers to help make that change in perspective prevail:

During the Obama era, their carefully cultivated bipartisanship gave way to a withering critique of the Republican Party. Instead of blaming both sides for gridlock in Washington and extremism in American politics, as so many commentators did, they squarely held Republicans responsible.

Speaking of how we ended up with our current president, the "wise men" have said that his rise to power "reflects the longer-term trends that have shaped the modern Republican Party." Specifically listed are a four-decade war on the “liberal media,” the delegitimization of political opponents, appeals to racism and xenophobia, and hostility to democratic norms. According to the wise men, Trump is less of an outsider than he seems, and this actually explains "why so many Republican leaders are reluctant to call out Trump’s excesses and to acknowledge the risks he poses to our political system.”

I am pretty certain that this analysis is on target. In other words, the Republicans in Congress, and elsewhere in our social, political, and economic life, don't challenge Trump and his excesses, both personal and political,  because Trump well represents the last forty years or so of the Republican Party's approach to politics. 

The key to what we should do about it all, in my mind, is found in one of the elements that the "wise men" list: the "delegitimization of political opponents."

There is a kind of Gresham's Law of politics, because the principles that Gresham uncovered apply beyond the world of economics. Yes, bad money drives out good, but bad practice in almost any context drives out good practice. Once the athletes start doping, it gets to be a trend! Once one political party starts deligitimizing its opponents, the opponents will want to start delegitimizing right back. 

I think we all need to be careful not to let the example of the Republican Party prevail, and we must strongly resist acting as if our political opponents are not "legitimate." That even includes the president. 

In politics, we "all have something to say," and our politics will only be healthy if we all speak out freely, and if we give legitimacy to those with whom we disagree. 

Accord your opponents legitimacy. Disagree. Go out and persuade the majority that you're right and that the other side is wrong. Beat 'em at the polls!

That is how we have to do it. The other alternatives don't spell out as "democracy."

Image Credit:

https://www.inverse.com/article/36746-2050-population-shift-to-cities-politics

#286 / Better Living ... Without Chemistry

Shmuel Thaler

When I was growing up, the DuPont Corporation told us we could achieve "Better Living...Through Chemistry." That was sort of like the statement in The Graduate, advising that "plastics" was the "one word" that would open up a positive future for all aspiring young people, and for the nation at large. Chemistry and "plastics" definitely do go together.

As time went on, I became deeply skeptical about "plastics," and chemistry, and about all "synthetics," as the way forward to a better living or a better future.

A few weeks ago, in an article in my local paper, I learned that strawberry growers have discovered a "natural fumigation" technique, eliminating the need for methyl bromide and other synthetic chemicals dangerous to all life. The article is worth reading.

Isn't it time that we abandon our quest to build a "synthetic" world, and realize that our lives will be better without chemistry?

I'm pleased to find that this is what local strawberry farmers are starting to understand.

Image Credit:

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20170831/NEWS/170839934

#285 / I Am Sick

Why is this woman sick? That's a good question! As it turns out, the person expressing distress isn't actually a woman, and the malady being complained of isn't physical, but is political in nature.

I retrieved the image above from a posting on the Medium website, which captured, and republished, an online essay from Civic Skunk Works. The article that Medium republished was written by Nick Cassella, and was titled, "I am Sick of Having to Contact My Representatives."

I bet we all sympathize!

On the other hand (if I may permit myself a critical comment), Cassella makes the following observation at the top of his essay: "Contributor to Civic Skunk Works. I write about politics and economics—sometimes successfully." 

Unfortunately (and here comes the critical comment), I don't think that this was one of Cassella's more "successful" writings.

Here is how Cassella starts off his article:

I am so sick of having to constantly contact my representatives. There are people who will tell you that this opinion reeks of privilege—and anyway, don’t you know that direct participation is the bread and butter of democracy? They’ll say that when you live in a democracy your rights come along with civic duties. If anything, they’ll smugly remind you direct contact with representatives shows the system is working. 

I think it shows that something is rotten in the United States. 

Call me lazy, but you shouldn’t have to call your representatives every week to remind them not to vote for a bill that the vast majority of their constituents disagree with. 

In a functioning democracy, you shouldn’t have to check your inbox and Twitter feed daily in order to see whether or not some basic rights are about to be ripped away. And you certainly shouldn’t have to worry about your representative actually voting for such an abomination. In a democracy, you should conceivably be able to vote a representative into office and broadly trust that he or she would not require a barrage of emails and calls to vote in line with their constituents’ values ...

Today our politicians are in no way blind to our preferences. They are focus-grouped up to their eyeballs. And they have pollsters constantly working the field for them. They know what you think and why you think it. 

The fact is our politicians largely don’t care. 

As I said earlier, I bet we all sympathize - and I bet most of us suspect, as Cassella says, that our politicians don't really care what we think! Do we join with Cassella in feeling that something is "rotten" in the United States? I bet a lot of us do. 

Nevertheless, what various unnamed "people" have told Cassella is actually true: "Direct participation [by us] is the bread and butter of democracy." 

There are three basic ways that government can work, presuming that we all agree that we probably do need "government," though I understand the thought that maybe we don't.

If we do think we need "government," then the governing function can be performed by some person, or by some party or group, that asserts its own right to decide what happens, and how the governing will be done. In this sort of system, be it a monarchy, oligarchy, or full on dictatorship, the citizens are the "governed," not the "governing." That kind of system relieves the citizenry of any obligation to contact anyone, but this system of government is NOT associated with "democracy." In democracy, the "governed" are supposed to be personally involved in doing the "governing" themselves. Cassella's actual complaint, it seems to me, is that we are currently governed by an oligarchy, and the people doing the governing don't really think they have to respond to what the majority wants. Therefore, they don't. If that is true, then we have to do something about it, or just give in, and give up on "democracy." 

If we don't like the non-democratic forms of government, and want to opt for a "democratic" form of government (and that has been our historical choice, here in the United States), then there are two ways to set up the system. 

First, we can have "direct" democracy. That kind of democracy, very local in almost every case, requires citizens directly to govern themselves. Lots of meetings, and lots of governmentally-related work by citizens, are necessarily required in this kind of a direct democracy system. I bet Nick Cassella would get tired of that, too.

The system we have actually set up is the second way to have a "democratic" government. We call it "representative" democracy. In other words, the citizens don't do the actual work of governing themselves. Instead, they elect the people, who hire the people, who run their lives for them. That's the way I used to phrase it when I was serving as one of those representatives at the local level of government. 

The "problem" with representative democracy is that sometimes (maybe even most of the time - and certainly right now in the United States) the "representatives" don't actually do a good job of representing the people they are supposed to represent. One way of dealing with this problem is for offended and outraged people to "contact their representatives," as a first step in a program to force the people's elected representatives to do what "the vast majority" want (though I think Cassella may underestimate the actual differences of opinion that exist within the society on almost all fundamental issues). I think it is fair to say that the recent failure of the Congress to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act happened ONLY because millions of people "contacted their representatives." It was a lot of work, admittedly, but I think that the "vast majority" of the public didn't want what the majority of the elected representatives were preparing to do, and the people's willingness to "contact" those representatives, and to get all over them, made a huge difference.

I am sorry to say it, but there really isn't any way around this requirement that citizens get involved themselves - and spend a lot of effort on that, too - in times when their elected representatives don't really seem to care what the majority thinks, or wants. 

If enough of the public gets "sick" of trying to make representative democracy work, the upshot will be no more democracy. That is actually what I see as the greatest of our current political dangers. I think there are many people like Nick Cassella who are "sick of calling their representatives," and just want some person who is "above" typical, rotten politics to come in and run the government the way the "majority" wants it run. A lot of people who feel that way voted for our current president, and for his claim to near-dictatorial powers, because they didn't think that our elected representatives in Congress were truly representing us. The upshot of an election based on anger at the failure of our elected representatives to do what we want might well be an executive dictatorship. And then there are people who think we should, perhaps, call in the military, to control our "crazy" president. I have heard that idea from some of my "liberal" friends.

Here is my advice to Nick Cassella, and to all of us who tend to feel the way he does about how our representative democracy is working right now: (1) Take an aspirin; (2) Call your representatives; (3) Form or join a political group and work to make it powerful; (4) Demand that your representatives actually do what the majority of their constituents want them to do; (5) Get some new representatives, if they don't!

Democracy is a definite bitch! Unless you are willing to let other people run your life, then keep reminding yourself about what those "people" told Cassella. It's true.

If you want self-government, you have to get involved yourself!

Image Credit:

https://civicskunk.works/i-am-sick-of-having-to-contact-my-representatives-460f31f799a9

#284 / Out Of Balance

John Malkin reviewed Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance in the September 28, 2017, edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Malkin's review called the film both haunting and prophetic, and said that it now "makes more sense than ever."

I saw Koyaanisqatsi when it first came out, in 1983, and Malkin's review made me want to refresh my recollection. The film is composed of images by Godfrey Reggio, with music by Philip Glass - and nothing more. The video below is a powerful excerpt, the ending scene. Watch it to remember, or to get a taste of how Koyaanisqatsi presents itself, if you are not familiar with the film.

I recommend both Malkin's review, and the film itself, which is available not only individually, but as part of a DVD boxed set, with extras, called the Qatsi Trilogy. The image at the top of this blog posting is from the cover of the Trilogy, which includes the following films:

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982)

Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation (1988)

Naqoyqatsi: Life as War (2002)

Prophecies are not "predictions." They state no inevitabilities. They are provided as a warning. Sometimes we find (and perhaps all too often we find), that when prophecies are ignored, the future comes upon us as we have been advised it might. Prophecy becomes prediction. A failure to heed the words of the prophets is a prediction of our doom.

So it is recorded in the Bible. And so we find it true today. Thirty-five years after Koyaanisqatsi, and fifteen years after Naqoyqatsi, don't we, in fact, find ourselves caught up in "Life as War?"

Perhaps (and we are advised to believe this, and to act accordingly), there is still time to avert the full and final advent of the prophecy found at the very end of Koyaanisqatsi. The Byrds, too, have provided a prophecy in music. There is:

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late

Image Credit:

http://cinemasentries.com/review/the-qatsi-trilogy-koyaanisqatsi-powaqqatsi-naqoyqatsi-criterion-collection-dvd-review-fans-should-be-very-pleased/

#283 / Biblical Exegesis And The Weather Report

Charles Schulz, creator of the fabulous "Peanuts" comic strip, is pictured above. Schulz slipped Biblical references into his cartoons, from time to time, and several books have explored this dimension of his work. Two of the best known are: The Gospel According to Peanuts, and The Bible According to Peanuts.

The following cartoon, which appeared in my Sunday newspaper on October 8, 2017, has Lucy citing to Isaiah 6, as she (once again) pulls away that football that Charlie Brown is (once again) trying to kick. 

I am giving you the text of Isaiah 6, below, so you can form your own opinion on whether or not the prophet is really "protesting" the judgment that God has had him articulate. The prophet's plaintive question, "How Long, O Lord?" can, I suppose, be read as an implicit objection to God's plan, as Schulz has Lucy suggest:

A Vision of God in the Temple

6 In the year that King Uzzi′ah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

‘Hear and hear, but do not understand;
see and see, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people fat,
and their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”

And he said:

“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without men,
and the land is utterly desolate,
12 and the Lord removes men far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13 And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains standing
when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.

My own reading of Isaiah 6 has always focused more on the penalties to be imposed on a recalcitrant humanity than on any protest of those penalties by the prophet, if such a protest is, in fact, actually being made.

Schulz' cartoon has the person afflicted by the prophesied penalties (Charlie Brown) raise the protest cry, "How Long?" In the Bible, though, it is the prophet who asks the question. That would be Lucy in the cartoon rendering, and she gives the same answer to Charlie Brown's question that God gives to Isaiah: We will suffer these penalties and scourges our entire lives, until we repent and change our behavior. (Charlie Brown has to give up his idea of human triumph and dominance, and he just has to stop trying to kick that ball).

Assuming that the World of Nature is sacred, a world that we did not create ourselves, and that demands our allegiance and our worship, then Isaiah 6 suggests that God is trying to tell us that all our human works within that world will be laid to waste, until we change our ways. 

To me, Isaiah 6 looks a lot like a weather report, in our era of global warming.

Consider the Atlantic hurricanes we have experienced this year. They are laying to waste all our human constructions: Katia, Harvey, Emily, Cindy, Irma, Franklin, Bren, Don, Arlene, Lee, Gert, Jose, Maria...

There will be more on the way. Nate, in fact, is already here.

And then.... fires, too!

Image Credits:

(1) - http://brothers-ink.com/2015/11/little-known-facts-about-charles-m-schultz-and-the-peanuts-1950-comedy/

(2) - http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2017/10/08
(3) - http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/10/09/california-wine-country-wildfires-kill-at-least-10-force-tens-thousands-to-evacuate.html

#282 / When It Starts

The Sun magazine, which I have recently discovered, and which I find remarkable, has printed "The Low Road," by Marge Piercy, in its October 2017 edition. 

The following is almost the whole poem, but I am ending where I have often said, in this blog, we must all begin. 

Marge Piercy says it more powerfully She says it better than I ever could:

The Low Road

What can they do 

to you? Whatever they want. 

They can set you up, they can 

bust you, they can break 

your fingers, they can 

burn your brain with electricity, 

blur you with drugs till you 

can’t walk, can’t remember, they can 

take your child, wall up 

your lover. They can do anything 

you can’t stop them 

from doing. How can you stop 

them? Alone, you can fight, 

you can refuse, you can 

take what revenge you can 

but they roll over you. 

But two people fighting 

back to back can cut through 

a mob, a snake-dancing file 

can break a cordon, an army 

can meet an army. 

Two people can keep each other 

sane, can give support, conviction, 

love, massage, hope, sex. 

Three people are a delegation, 

a committee, a wedge. With four 

you can play bridge and start 

an organization. With six 

you can rent a whole house, 

eat pie for dinner with no 

seconds, and hold a fund-raising party. 

A dozen make a demonstration. 

A hundred fill a hall. 

A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; 

ten thousand, power and your own paper; 

a hundred thousand, your own media; 

ten million, your own country. 

It goes on one at a time, 

it starts when you care 

to act, it starts when you do 

it again after they said no, 

it starts when you say We ...

Image Credit:

https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/502/the-low-road

#281 / Our Constitution

Ganesh Sitaraman (pictured) is a Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. From 2011 to 2013, he served as Policy Director to Elizabeth Warren during her successful Senate campaign, and then as her Senior Counsel in the United States Senate. You can click here for links to Sitaraman's books, academic articles, and popular articles. 

On September 16, 2017, The New York Times published Sitaraman's Op-Ed, titled "Our Constitution Wasn't Built For This." In this article, Sitaraman advances the view that the United States Constitution was not designed to operate in a situation, like our own, in which society is characterized by extensive economic inequality. 

I think Sitaraman is undoubtedly correct that within the political community as then defined (Native Americans, African-Americans, and women being categorically excluded), there was a great deal more economic equality in 1787, the year of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, than there is today. However, I don't think I agree that the Constitution is not able to function properly in today's society, even thought it wasn't "built for" our current conditions of economic inequality. 

While it is not easy to do it, our political system does allow all those qualified to vote (and that currently does include Native Americans, African-Americans, and women) to allocate the economic resources of the nation to support the purposes and projects upon which we, collectively, decide to embark. The conditions of our current economic inequality, in other words, can be changed. We live in a "political world," and our problems and challenges are "political," and not "constitutional."

That, at least, is my view. The most wonderful thing about the Constitution is that it does not contemplate any specific economic, social, racial, religious, or other order. It works for all of us. It is, truly, "our" Constitution. Professor Sitaraman's ancestors were not on the Mayflower (that would be my bet). We are, in fact, a "nation of immigrants," and "Our Constitution," while not "built for" the society we have become, is fully functional and capable of responding to the needs of "We, the People," as we look around today, and discover who "we" are.

Image Credit:

https://ganeshsitaraman.com/about-ganesh/