Thoughts on dysfunction

A question worth pondering: Can the Republican Party be salvaged? Yes, the Democrats have their own dysfunctions these days, but it is the Republicans who appear to be in complete disarray and incapable of governing, as the current deadlock for House speaker unfortunately demonstrates. And it is the Republicans who appear to be on track to overwhelmingly select as their presidential candidate an individual indicted on 91 federal counts in four criminal cases, not to mention a series of state criminal cases and civil trials. How did we get to such an impasse, and how can Republicans get out of it?

I should say in passing that it seems to me vital to have two healthy political parties, because usually each keeps the other from straying too far from the center. In the absence of this balance the political system can get seriously out of whack, which seems to me the case right now. 

I have seen three arguments in recent years that bear on this question. Two are examples of the road to hell being paved with the best of intentions, or perhaps examples the Law of Unintended Consequences.

An article I read some years ago noted that legislative bargaining in Congress used to take place behind closed doors, where opponents could horse-trade in private to reach bipartisan agreements that gave both sides some of what they wanted. Then came the well-intentioned movement to make such bargaining more public. The result was that as soon as one side made a concession, visible on TV coverage, they were promptly swamped with threatening emails, orchestrated by online activists. The result was to make it much harder, even impossible, to do the kind of horse-trading that effective bipartisan legislation requires. 

A related argument focuses on the effect that modern air travel has had on Congress. In the “olden days”, when travel to Washington was slow from much of the country, members of Congress tended to live in Washington, and as a consequence to socialize with each other and develop close friendships, even across the aisle. When Sam Rayburn was Speaker of the House (for 17 years in three separate terms), leaders of both parties would adjourn to his office after a day of battling on the floor of the House and drink Bourbon together. With the advent of cheap air travel, many (most?) members of Congress now go back to their districts on weekends, and don’t build social bonds with their opponents across the aisle, or even with fellow party members on their side of the aisle.  In fact there is clearly a lot of animosity among members in today’s Congress, especially in the House.

Then there is the change, again well-intentioned, in selecting candidates. Political parties used to select their candidates in smoke-filled rooms by powerful political pros who attended primarily to whether their candidates were electable or not. It was certainly a system abused at times, so well-intentioned activists pressed for open primaries instead, where the voting public would select the candidates. It certainly sounds like a good idea, but it turns out to have problems. Primary elections aren’t the “real” election, so turnouts tend to be much smaller than in actual elections. And who, then, turns out – mostly people with a burr under their saddle about some issue or other, often those with the most extreme views. As a consequence, in recent years parties have been picking candidates with views more extreme than their voting bases. That is no doubt why we have some many extremists in Congress these days, and in state legislatures as well.

Finally, there is the effect of corporate and private money on Congress, though that isn’t particularly new, and the effect of social media, which is new. Political campaigns have gotten wildly expensive these days, while rulings like the Citizens’ United ruling have magnified the effects of “dark money” (ie – unaccountable money) in campaigns. In particular, a few very wealthy individuals ( George Soros, Richard Uihleon. Kenneth Griffin, Michael Bloomberg, etc) seem to have an outsized effect.

And social media, with its ability to spread information and misinformation widely and quickly, and even target selected voters with selected messages, has clearly changed the nature of campaigning. But then, there must have been fundamental changes in the voting base as well, apparently driven, or at least magnified, by social media.

So if these are important, or even the primary, reasons the Republican Party is off the rails these days, can any of it be reversed? Is there any force that can bring back a substantial moderate wing of the party to hold the extremists at bay? I don’t have an answer, but it is worth thinking about.

Of course The Democratic Party is subject to the same forces, though their hot-button issues are different. Nevertheless, while there is certainly an extremist group on the left as well, Democrats seem marginally less dysfunctional at the moment. Is it perhaps because they are a larger and more diverse coalition than the Republicans, with more internal stresses and hence more need to find compromises and accommodations? That is another question worth pondering.

 

The Israel-Hamas battle

 

I see with the current crisis in Israel we are once again into the predictable cycle: (1) terrorists attack Israel, (2) the world expresses outrage against the terrorists for a few days, (3) Israel tries to figure out how to stop the next attack, and (4) the world expresses outrage against Israel for whatever effort they come up with. Rinse and repeat.

It is remarkable how many commentators seem to be completely ignorant of history, and this certainly seems to include the student and academic circles these days. Yes, it was unfair of Israel (or actually, the British) to displace so many Palestinians in the first place when Israel was first established, but remember that Israel was established because Europe and Russia threw out the Jews and persecuted them with pogroms and finally the German Holocaust. And America wasn’t blameless in this either, since at the time we turned away boatloads of dispossessed Jews. In fact, it wasn’t fair that the Israelites conquered the land in the first place from the Canaanites, nor that the Romans then drove the Jews out of Israel 2000 years ago, nor that the Muslims later overrun the area and built a mosque right on top of the most sacred site for the Jews, the site of the second temple in Jerusalem. One can imagine how the Muslim world would feel if the Jews built a Jewish temple on top of the Kaaba in Mecca. Fairness is simply a useless concept in a history as tangled as that of the land of Israel, conquered repeatedly by one wave of invaders after another over the centuries.

Then there is the argument that Israel’s response is disproportionate. What is the proportionate response to a mass terrorist attack killing hundreds or thousands of civilians? The 9/11 attacks against America took down two buildings in New York. In response, we took down two whole nations (Afghanistan and Iraq). Was that “proportional” enough? If Mexico started firing rockets into LA, what do you suppose the American “proportional” response would be?

Yes, it is true that the Palestinians in Gaza seemed to be incapable of governing themselves, at least to the extent of preventing Hamas from doing something stupid that got them bombed every few years. Looking at the clown show in the American Congress these days, from politicians that we the voters elected, I don’t think we are in a position to be judgmental. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians in Gaza are in the hands of a ruthless group like Hamas. But while the world feels for them (or at least claims it does), it certainly doesn’t seem to feel the need to help Gaza to throw off the yoke of Hamas. It is worth remembering that Israel tried to govern Gaza, but under (probably unwise) world pressure withdrew from Gaza in 2005 to let them govern themselves, after which Gaza promptly fell under the harsh rule of extremists. Hamas, remember, when in 2006 they took over from Fatah in Gaza, threw many of the Fatah leaders off high buildings.

And yes, Israel is in the hands of a hard-right government at the moment, with some really fairly nutty parties in the coalition. Again, given the nuttiness of some of our own far-right- and far-left political extremists these days, and given that we may well unwisely elect a convicted felon as president in our next election, are we in any position to judge them?

Yes, the Israeli government has made some questionable choices, especially about expanding settlements into Palestinian areas. Again, looking at our own American history, are we in any position to call the kettle black? Governments are fallible, and government leaders sometimes are foolishly mislead by their own ideologies (Putin, I’m looking at you). That is nothing new in history.

Yes, Israel’s response will no doubt cause some inadvertent civilian deaths, perhaps even many of them. If anyone has figured out how to wage war in urban areas without civilian casualties, especially if the opponent is using civilians as shields and hostages, they certainly haven’t advertised it. The American military certainly hasn’t figured out how to wage war without civilian casualties, so it seems pretty unfair to criticize Israel on this account. And notice that Israel does try its best to warn civilians before striking, something the terrorists certainly don’t do.

Israel is in an impossible position, with mortal enemies embedded in territory right in the midst of its lands, and Arab enemies on all its borders. Enemies sworn to wipe Israel off the map entirely. Imagine if, say, the Midwest of America was inhabited by mortal enemies who constantly sent terrorists across the border and fired rocket into adjoining American cities, and that Canada and Mexico were also mortal enemies. That is roughly what Israel faces.

And then there is the fact that the Palestinian cause is such a handy issue for everyone from Arab and Persian (Iran, I’m looking at you!) governments to American activists and politicians to use cynically as a tool to advance their own interests and agendas, (and incidentally, often to give cover to their own obvious antisemitism) when in fact most of them really don’t give a hoot about the Palestinians themselves, and will happily ignore them or throw them under the bus as soon as they are no longer useful.

The level of hypocrisy, and of ignorance, displayed in so many of the media and political commentaries on this unfortunate affair boggles the mind. But then, antisemitism is so firmly embedded in so many cultures, including unfortunately our own, that I suppose nothing Israel does will escape criticism.

There is no good response to this terrorist attack. Wiping out Hamas for good, if they can actually manage it, is probably the best of a series of bad choices, despite the massive casualties on both sides that will probably result. The next time Hamas might have a bootleg nuclear weapon, and they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to use it, so any government worth its salt (in Israel or anywhere else) owes it to its people to do the best that it can to prevent a repeat of this kind of terrorism, despite the costs.