Recommended: Strangers In Their Own Land

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a leading sociologist, author of a number of books about class and social structure, and her latest book is Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.  A liberal academic who teaches at Berkeley, she set out to cross what she calls the "empathy wall" and try to understand how the world looks to the political right, to the conservative people who support groups like the Tea Party. And she did it by going to Louisiana and meeting and befriending and listening to (as opposed to lecturing) working people there, and really trying to understand how they got their their views, and how the world looks to them. And in fact she succeeds, and the view she uncovers - she calls it the "deep story", the emotionally powerful world view that shapes everyone's thinking - makes it clear why the right doesn't trust government and is in revolt.  And frankly, seen from their point of view, I don't blame them.

This is a terribly important book that a lot more liberals ought to be reading if they would like to better understand why Democrats have been losing elections at the local, state and federal level for the past decade - and may continue to lose - and why Trump could win the presidency.

Recommended: What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

There is an outstanding article by Franklin Foer in this month's Atlantic Monthly: What’s Wrong With the Democrats?  It is a long article, but quite good and I think spot on. It discusses what Democrats need to do to regain the votes of the white working class, a group that used to be a reliable base for them.

Of particular interest is his discussion, late in the article, of Senator Elizabeth Warren's views. Though she shows no interest in public, nor apparently even in private, of running for president in 2020, I think she does have a message the Democrats could profitably use. Warren, who indeed used to be a Republican and is a free market supporter, is according to this author not nearly as radical as the press makes her out to be, and in fact is very concerned with the concentration of power in ever fewer corporations, and the abuse of that power in politics by rent-seeking CEOs and the government officials they have purchased. That I think could very well be a message Democrats could build on successfully, if they could only drop their outdated identity-politics ideology.

Why the right distrusts government

I have been reading a number of books trying to understand the real underlying forces that are driving the current contentious, and highly destructive, split between the political left and the political right in this country. Certainly the obvious and public disdain and contempt the left holds for people on the political right, especially the religious right, is one of the key factors. But there are others – this is a complicated issue.

I am beginning to think I see one of those other forces that feeds the distrust of the right for big government.

In colonial India the British colonial administration had a saying, a wise saying, that “justice not only must be done, it must be SEEN to be done.”  I think that applies in today's’ America just as much as it did in Colonial India.

In 2016 a Navy machinist, Kristian Saucier, received a one year prison sentence for taking six selfies of himself for his personal use in the classified portion of a nuclear submarine.  In 2014 Stephen Kim began serving 13 months in prison for leaking a classified report on North Korea to Fox News. In 2016 Jeffrey Sterling was sentenced to 3½  years in prison for leaking a CIA report on Iran to a journalist. And there were others who also served prison sentences for mishandling classified information – seven cases in all during the Obama administration. Yet Hillary Clinton, whose personal unsecured mail server was found to hold over 100 classified emails, 22 of them “top secret”, received absolutely no punishment at all, not even removal of her security clearance.

Or take the 2008 financial crisis, which inflicted massive pain on most of the country and required a huge federal bailout to keep banks solvent. But nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, using bailout (ie-taxpayer) money. And to date not a single executive in the banking industry has even been charged, let alone convicted, for their part in this crisis. Nor have any of the government regulators or bureaucrats who were supposed to be overseeing the banks been disciplined or fired.

Or consider taxes, which all of us not in the 1% have to pay in full.  Yet big well-connected corporations like Apple and Google and GE and Coca-Cola pay very little in taxes.  In fact  PG&E, the California-based utility company, has paid zero net taxes since 2007. In fact, it has paid negative taxes, receiving tax breaks more valuable than its tax payments. And hedge fund managers, who have enough pull to get favorable legislation, manage to pay no tax at all on millions, sometimes even billions, in annual earnings using the carried interest tax deduction.

Even ex-president Obama, whom the left marketed as one of the “ordinary people” doesn’t look so “ordinary” now that he is cashing in with $400,000 speeches to Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald and getting a reported $65 million advance on his book, far more than the publisher expects to actually recoup in sales.

Do you see a pattern here? Government is supposed to be for all the people, but in fact too often it is really for the rich people and the big corporations, who can afford to hire clever lawyers to protect their interests and can afford to buy legislators with big campaign donations. The Koch brothers (on the right) and George Soros (on the left) are the face of big money in politics and government, and it is all too clear that they have outsized influence on elections and government.  

Too often in our government justice can be plainly seen NOT to be done, and that, I think, is one of the factors driving the right’s distrust of government.  I suppose any organization as big as the federal government, handling as much money as it does and with as much power as it has, is bound to foster abuses. But it amazes me, for example, that cozy federal civil service regulations made it impossible to fire or even discipline the VA managers who were found to have falsified patient waiting time reports so as to keep their bonuses. It was even impossible to take back the bonuses. No wonder lots of average people distrust the federal government. I don’t blame them.

Recommended: White Trash

One of the reasons so many government plans and programs to help the poor are ineffective and largely a waste of money is that most of the (mostly wealthy urban elite) politicians and the experts who advise them have little or no understanding of the cultures they are trying to help. I am well aware of this in my own understanding of these cultures, and have been trying to remedy that failing. One extremely useful book I have recently read is White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg.

Yes, America has classes, despite what we were taught in school.  And class matters, as anyone who is not of "the right class" already knows.   But the nature of class in America is a complicated history, tracing right back to the attitudes of the English toward class in the colonial period, and coming right up to today's successful "white trash" TV programs like Duck Dynasty. This book is long and detailed, and requires persistence to get through, but it is worth the effort.

An issue that needs discussion

Watching the Republicans try to figure out what to do about health care makes it clear that we as a nation haven’t come to terms with a basic question: just how much should government (ie- taxpayers) do for a citizen, especially one who is poor.

Clearly we don’t expect the government to provide every citizen with a car or a TV set or Rolex watch or a paid vacation if they can’t afford to buy it themselves.

But as a nation we have already decided we will provide a minimal senior safety net in Social Security, BUT only to people who put into the system for at least 10 years (40 quarters), and only roughly in proportion to how much they put in.  And as a nation we have already decided the nation owes each young person the opportunity for a free education up through high school, though the quality of that education in fact varies widely.

We have also agreed as a nation to supplement the wages of low wage people with the earned income tax credit, BUT this in only available to people who are working – who are at least trying to make a living wage. And the same with jobless benefits – in theory only available to people for a limited time, and only so long as they are – or at least appear to be – looking for work.

So where does health insurance fit in to this? Do we, the taxpayers, owe everyone a subsidized health insurance plan, whether they can pay for it or not? For that matter, do we the taxpayers owe everyone health care, no matter their circumstances? Even expensive health care for people who have chosen voluntarily to ruin their health with smoking or drugs or junk food?

This is a fundamental question, and much of the emotional turmoil around ObamaCare and its replacement is because we as a nation haven’t really come to terms with this question. Liberals think in theory that the government (ie, the taxpayers) owes everyone health care, whether they can afford it or not, though they are far less eager to raise taxes enough to actually pay for it. California is about to propose universal health care for its citizens, but the cost is astronomical (estimated at $400 billion per year, for a state already running an estimate $1.6 billion budget deficit this year!).

Conservatives in contrast believe in individual responsibility, and feel that people who are feckless enough to be poor and/or out of work have only themselves to blame if they can’t afford health care or health insurance. But of course not all the poor are feckless or jobless by choice.

Neither of these positions is really reasonable. Liberals live in a never-never land where “someone else“ (usually ”the rich”) are going to pay for their expensive social programs.  Conservatives are blind to the realities of poverty and joblessness in our culture. And then there is the question of the young – tomorrow’s citizens and workers and leaders. Those living in poverty are not doing so because of their own faults or career choices, and the nation as a whole will suffer if they are poorly educated and poorly prepared to contribute to the economy when they reach adulthood.

I don’t have an answer or a position on this issue, but clearly neither does either political party, which is why the current highly emotional debate about the Republican health care proposal is essentially meaningless – it won’t become meaningful until we resolve the underlying issue of just how much, as a nation, we think we owe the poor and people who can’t afford the basics of life, and how much we the taxpayers are willing to pay to provide that support.

And that is a complicated subject, because there are lots of reasons people are poor – some are poor through their own their own fault and some are poor because of circumstances outside their control. Do we treat both groups the same? How do we differentiate the groups? Is our responsibility as a nation different for these two groups?

This is where the national debate ought to be centered, not on the meaningless political one-upsmanship going on in Washington today.

Democrats still don't get it

Once again Democrats were sure they could win elections by just being "against Trump". Once again, in both Georgia and South Carolina, they lost despite pouring vast amounts of money and star power into the races.  Once again the liberal media pundits are trying their best to spin the losses as somehow at least a moral victory (they didn't lose by as much as might be expected) , and once again they simply look foolish and partisan and out of touch trying to do that.

Democrats still don't get it. Tons of outside money alone doesn't win elections. Appearances by Hollywood stars doesn't win elections.  Identity politics doesn't win elections. Just being against Trump won't win elections. It takes a positive message that resonates with voters, and Democrats have yet to fashion such a message.  Their old message - promising the government will do everything for us - no longer works. They badly need a new message.

There is plenty of opportunity for fashioning a new message. There are plenty of big issues - like the impact of automation on jobs or the growing national debt or the growing influence of corporations in politics - that would give them material to fashion a message that could appeal to voters. But they have to get real and realize that what they have been doing and the message they have been selling just doesn't work for enough voters, and they need to rethink their approach.

Unfortunately what I have seen to date from Democrats is just ineffectual and rather childish  thrashing about and venting of emotions.  I have yet to see any serious tactical or strategic thinking or planning. Democrats seem to think that if they can just unseat Trump by impeachment on one charge or another, they will be back in power. Of course if they actually succeed in that - in unseating a legally elected president with partisan attacks - they will have set a precedent and truly poisoned American politics and any president they manage to elect in the future will be subject to the same destructive attacks.

I've said before that US politics works best when there are two healthy parties keeping each other in line and acting as a check on each other. We badly need a viable, sensible, opposition party to the current Republican party in power, and the Democratic party, riven by conflict between the center and the populist extreme left, led by aging and out-of-touch leaders, driven by the most extreme members of its base, still wedded to an out-of-date ideology, is simply not the effective opposition party we need.

Recommended: Rage Is All the Rage, and It’s Dangerous

Peggy Noonam has a good piece in today's Wall Street Journal: Rage Is All the Rage, and It’s Dangerous.  She is right - the media has abdicated its social responsibility and is having a wonderful time chasing readership by fanning the flames of our current political divides, making the problem worse. But then perhaps we ought to realize that the media isn't about informing people anyway - it's about making money for the owners and boosting the reporter's and writer's salaries and reputations, and what better way to do that then feed the public sensationalized news, whether or not it is fair and balanced (or even true).

Breaking news

Passed on to me by a friend, though I think it is going around the blogosphere:

-------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENT from the BBC, by John Cleese

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved".

Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross". The English have not been " A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorist have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance". The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's Get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.'

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The US, of course, uses colors to indicate threat levels. We are now at chartreuse, but may soon move up to puce or even fuchsia or cerise.

Recommended: The Four American Narratives

David Brooks had an excellent piece in the May 26 New York Times, The Four American Narratives.  It is well worth reading, as is the Summer 2017 American Affairs article by Michael Lind, The New Class War, that inspired it.

It is certainly clear that neither the traditional conservative nor the traditional liberal ideology is working in current politics, and that something new and different has to emerge. Brooks and Lind suggest what that new political ideology might be.

Attending to what really matters

 Once away from the daily news and blogosphere frenzy, what becomes clear is that we as a nation are running without adult supervision. Trump is certainly a loose cannon, but those who want to unseat him have nothing better to offer. Indeed, in retrospect it seems to me Hillary and her inner circle, with their elitist contempt for much of the nation and obvious incompetence, would have been just as much a disaster, though in different ways. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem to have any idea of what is really important to the nation and the world, and politicians in both parties are so engrossed in bitter trench warfare over trivial issues and trying to score points against each other that they are largely oblivious to the serious issues the nation faces.

What are these serious issues?  Well, the outsized and still growing national debt is one, as I outlined in a series of posts some weeks ago. Not only can we not afford new programs like single-payer healthcare or free college tuition for everyone, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren propose, we can’t even afford the programs and the government services we have now. There is no way we can keep adding another half-trillion dollars every year to the national debt; there will be an accounting someday, and it won’t be pleasant for us.

The disruption of the American work force by ever-encroaching automation is another serious issue that is largely being ignored. Trump may manage to bring some manufacturing back to the US, but such factories these days will employ only a few very highly trained people to tend and program the robots – they certainly won’t provide the mass of well-paying middle-skill assembly line jobs that factories used to provide, nor even very many of the white collar managerial jobs that used to exist. A political class that was paying attention would understand that this is a serious issue that could completely destabilize the nation – indeed, has already begun to destabilize politics - if not attended to.

And a related issue is the increasing income inequality in the nation, as the top 5% get richer and richer while the rest of the nation loses ground economically. This is not sustainable in the long run – the resentment is already obvious and it will get far worse if the issue isn’t addressed.

Yet another related issue is that of education – especially the quality of K-12 education across the nation. We have an outmoded educational system, still geared toward producing 19^th century  factory workers. In today’s more technological, decentralized, automated world that produces a woefully inadequately prepared work force. So far neither party has the vaguest idea how to approach this problem beyond impractical ideas like free college for everyone (including all those people who never learned basic reading, math and study skills in grade school and high school?). And what few innovating ideas exist are being steadfastly opposed by politically powerful teacher’s unions.

There are more – a few minutes thought and the reader can probably add another dozen such serious issues to the list.  Meanwhile Congress spends its time investigating whether there was Russian hacking (duh!) and politicians argue about where transgender people can or can’t go to pee! Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic……..

Recommended: Thank You for Being Late

Thomas Friedman's new (2016) book Thank You for Being Late is well worth reading. It is a wide-ranging discussion of how the world is changing, of how human cultures adapt in a linear fashion, but suddenly the world is changing in an exponential fashion, and cultures - including our own American culture - are having trouble adapting fast enough.

Recommended: Why Elites Hate

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article this morning: Why Elites Hate:The liberal contempt for middle America is baked into the idea of identity politics. It is worth reading. Liberals are not going to start winning again until they learn - if they can - to drop their contempt for the very voters they need.

Recommended: The coming Democratic civil war

Another good article worth reading is The coming Democratic civil war, from the June 5 Orange County Register. In short, the Democratic party is split between the socialist populists, represented by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the wealthy coastal liberal "gentry" who are not so keen on being taxed heavily to support the populist programs.

Kathy Gifford

Kathy Gifford, a comedian and TV host and a fairly rabid liberal, lost her job on the Anderson-Cooper show after being photographed proudly holding what looked like Donald Trump’s severed head, and after the blogosphere and Twitter world was awash with outrage. Yesterday, mimicking Hillary Clinton’s refusal take any responsibility, she claimed it was all unfair, and that she blamed her firing on Donald Trump – it couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with her own insensitivity or terrible taste.

I do wonder what her reaction would have been if sometime during the Obama years a Fox News personality had gotten himself or herself photographed proudly holding a severed head of President Barak Obama. The screams of racism from liberals would have been deafening.

Withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate agreement

President Trump’s action yesterday in withdrawing from the 2015 Paris agreement on limiting climate change is probably unfortunate but not the disaster that the media is claiming it is. The 2015 climate agreement had two main parts. First, each country set itself voluntary limits on greenhouse gas production, and most countries set themselves limits that would be easy to reach. There is no enforcement process in the agreement, so it was all voluntary and subject to being ignored, as most countries did with the previous agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. And in fact the consensus in the scientific community is that the voluntary goals actually set in the Paris agreement wouldn’t be enough to prevent a long-term global increase of over 2° C, which was the goal of the Paris agreement.

The major contributors to greenhouse gases, the US and China, who together account for about 45% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere (29.4% from China, 14.3% from the US), are already in the process of beating the goals they set themselves for economic reasons completely divorced from the Paris Agreement. China is trying to control their air pollution problem. 62% of China’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants, but they have recently suspended or canceled construction on over 100 more new coal-fired plants in an attempt to address the pollution problem.  In the US cheap oil and gas from fracking has in recent years largely displaced coal as an energy source, reducing our production of greenhouse gases.  In addition, wind and solar power are providing an increasing proportion of the energy on the grid.  So withdrawing from the climate agreement, while probably politically unfortunate, probably won’t really make much difference in the long run.

Second, the Paris agreement aimed for first world pledges of $100 billion annually to address impacts of climate change in poorer countries..  The US pledge was $5.9 billion, but we have actually contributed only $500 million thus far. The total pledges as of Feb 2016, the latest data I can find, were only $10.2 billion, meaning that in fact the US pledge was over half of the total pledge. So Trump is right that the US is, thus far, bearing a disproportionate part of the financial load.  The 1997 Kyoto Protocol also aimed for substantial pledges for green projects, but in fact little was actually pledged.

So the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement is probably poor statesmanship, but I don’t think it is really going to make that much difference in global warming in the long run. No nation is going to seriously impact its economic growth or displace large numbers of workers to meet these goals, and if their governments tried they would probably be voted out of office.  But in the long run the advent of cheap solar and wind power and the resurgence of nuclear power will probably accomplish what these sorts of unenforceable international agreements can’t accomplish.  Economic self-interest is always more reliable than bureaucratic agreements.

Recommended: The Democrats’ ‘Working-Class Problem’

Stanley Greenberg in today's American Prospect website has a very good article: The Democrats’ ‘Working-Class Problem’.  Working with polling and focus group data, he has looked at how Hillary Clinton, and before her President Obama, did with working class people over the Obama administration and then the 2016 election.  The message is (a) the Democrats got so caught up with the elites that they forgot the working class base (a point I have made repeatedly in previous posts), and (b) it isn't just the non-college-educated white working class males (the "deplorables") they have been losing - despite wishful thinking to the contrary they have been losing African-Americans, immigrants, Hispanics and Asians, unmarried women, and Millennials. 

This will not be a comfortable article for liberals to read, especially if they are Obama fans, but I think he is on to something, and it is painful but frank analysis like this that will be needed to reconstitute a viable liberal party, whether it carries the Democratic name or not.

This article is part of a 13-part series, and there is a link at the bottom of the article to the rest of the series.  The whole series is worth reading.