Saturday, February 8, 2025

#39 / The Individualist Myth




Historian Heather Cox Richardson is one of my favorites. I read her Substack postings on a daily basis. 

On June 25, 2024, Richardson commented on "the mythological image of the American cowboy." As is often the case, I fastened my attention on one statement from her rather broad-ranging evaluation of "individualism" as a touchstone for understanding American history: 

Another part of the individualist myth that has met reality is that cutting taxes and slashing business regulation would boost the economy. Yesterday the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget compared the $8.4 trillion debt approved by Trump to the $4.3 trillion approved by Biden. It estimated Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations cost $4.8 trillion, which as Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote pointed out, is more than the $4.3 trillion cost of Biden’s “Infrastructure bill, Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan, CHIPs [and Science Act], PACT [expanding health benefits to veterans exposed to toxic substances and burn pits], student debt forgiveness, and funding the IRS COMBINED.” Under Trump, Congress also passed $3.6 trillion in COVID relief (emphasis added).

While we are all "individuals," and we shouldn't forget it, it is more important to remember that we are "all in this together." 

Thinking we can achieve "social" goals - things important to everyone - by policies that are aimed, primarily, at benefitting individuals - is nothing but a "myth." 

Read the whole column, but don't forget the main point: "We are in this together."


Image Credit:

Friday, February 7, 2025

#38 / Replay

 


I'm that old-time telegraph man
And I came here with a simple job to do
'Cause that news coming down the wire
Says that your world's on fire
And I'm trying to get a message through to you

I was extraordinarily pleased to learn the following from the UCSC News Center

UC Santa Cruz alumna Gillian Welch (Porter ’90, fine arts) alongside her musical partner David Rawlings, clinched the Best Folk Album award at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 2 for their album Woodland. The album showcases their signature blend of Appalachian folk, bluegrass, and Americana.

I didn't know Welch when she was at UCSC, and I only found out about her, and Rawlings, when I ran across an NPR "Tiny Desk Concert" some time ago. I have written about their song, "Ruby," in an earlier blog posting. The lyrics are compelling, and meet this moment. Here's a replay. Enjoy!



For an in-person experience, you might want to make arrangements to see Welch and Rawlings when they appear in Montrerey on March 10th!



Thursday, February 6, 2025

#37 / Is There Any "Truth" In Politics?

  


Pontius Pilate made the history books, and scored a big role in the Bible, partly because he asked an always pertinent question, "What Is Truth?"

I happen to believe that there is such a thing as "truth." In other words, I believe that it is possible to discern - and then "believe in" - something that is "real," that is (and that can be "proven" to be) "true." Things like that - "truths" - are what help us to define (and accept) "reality." As an example, a declaration that the Earth is round (spherical, really) is now generally accepted as the truth about Planet Earth. However, even this "truth," or what we sometimes call "the facts," is not something that is universally accepted. There are some people who believe that the Earth is flat.

What "authority" is there that can state "the truth" in a way that "everyone" accepts it? Really, there is no such authority. Again, consider, those people who believe that the Earth is flat. Actual pictures taken from space have not convinced everyone of something that I am personally willing to assert is indisputably "true"!

Acute readers will notice that the example I have just used (that the Earth is spherical) is a "truth" that pertains to the World of Nature. Scientific formulas, scientific experiments, and even mathematics are "authoritative" for almost everyone, and are accepted as "proof" that certain things are "true." 

Of course, I would like anyone reading this to know that the "Natural World" is only one of the "Two Worlds" that I believe we simultaneously inhabit, and the differences between which I believe we should acknowledge and understand. Scientific "laws" demonstrate, pretty authoritatively, what is "true" in the World of Nature. Example: the "Law of Gravity" prevails and defines certain truths about life on this planet. The laws of math and physics are authoritatively able to make statements that are demonstrably and provably "true." Experiments bear out the truths that math and physics claim.

We also have "human" laws, however (as a lawyer, I am familiar with those), and our human laws are the "laws" that define how things work (or are supposed to work) in the "Human World," a "world" that I generally call the "Political World." The "Political World" is created by human activity, and in the "Political World," there are no indubitable "truths." Human-created laws don't state what must and will happen. Human laws are statements about what we "want" to happen, not what will happen, without fail. In the "Human World," there are no absolutely provable "truths." Instead, there are "opinions." 

Is our current president a narcissistic, self-interested, intellectually inferior person; or, quite to the contrary, is he probably the greatest president our nation has ever had, intellectually brilliant, with the kind of personal courage you have to have to face down a government that has run amok, a president who can root out a "Deep State" that is imposing tryrannical and outrageous limitations on the freedoms to which we believe we are entitled and which our Constitution is supposed to guarantee? 

He can't be both, right? But who can "prove" what is right, so that everyone accepts it, as almost everyone accepts that the Earth is spherical? There is no "authority" that can definitively say that one of these things is "true," and the other one is "false." People will differ in what they think, and as we so painfully know, there is a deeply-divided split opinion on what kind of president we have. While those on each side cite to different "authority" to support the claim that their view is "true" and the other "false," it remains obvious that neither "side" is willing to accept the "authority" cited by the other. 

Our Constitution does not establish a methodology that will allow anyone to proclaim that their political views are the "truth." The "truth" is that there are differing "opinions," and that's it. 

The Constitution does, however, establish specific procedures that will allow one "side," or another, to use the powers of the government to implement that side's view of what is "true," and to act upon the basis of that side's "opinions." 

If we want to have a political system that recognizes the fundamental nature of our "Political World," we need - from all "sides" - to adhere to the procedures that the Constitution specifies. In other words, the "procedures" specified in the Constitution generate the "authority" that will be properly used to support one view or another. We have different "opinions." If we follow the "procedures" set out in the Constitution (and in the laws that implement it) the system will determine which opinion will prevail, and which "side" will be given the power to act as if its "opinions" were "the truth."

The procedures specified in the Constitution allow "power" to be given to one side or another, subject to periodic (two-year) reviews, but things can go wrong if those given certain "power" claim that they are entitled to more power than has actually been granted. Congress, basically, makes the "laws," and the president "executes" them. The president is an "executive" officer, and does not, properly, get to say what the laws are. If the president claims that his election as our chief executive entitles him to abolish entire governmental programs or departments that were established by the elected Members of Congress, he is claiming "authority" to which he is not entitled. 

When that happens - and it appears to have happened, already, in the first weeks of the new presidency of Donald J. Trump - the Members of Congress must require that the correct "procedures" be followed. Want to get rid of USAID - the Agency for International Development"? Get the Congress to change the law to do that. If we don't follow the "procedures," then it's pure power, all the way down, and it is "power" not "truth" that will determine which "opinions" will be used to build the "Political World," and to establish the "reality" of our life together. 

Considering what is happening - and there are differing opinions about what is happening - we need to insist that the "procedures" specified in the Constitution be followed. Congress makes the laws, the president "takes care that the laws are faithfully executed." 

That's how we decide what the government will do in our name. That is not what is happening now! 


Wednesday, February 5, 2025

#36 / Have We Lost Faith? Failed?

  


The above picture accompanied an opinion column that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday, February 2, 2025. The column was authored by Jeff Smith, who is described as "a lawyer and medical doctor." We are also informed that Smith retired in 2023, after serving for fourteen years as County Executive of Santa Clara County. 

The title on Smith's column was this: "Empire In Decline: Americans Have Lost Faith In United System Of Governance." That is a serious assertion. I have reproduced the entirety of the column at the bottom of this blog post, so those reading this blog posting can truly appreciate the implications of what Smith is claiming. 

Do let me say that Smith makes no assertion that the picture above should be seen as a group portrait of people who are gathered together in some governmental building to assert their loss of faith in our government. In fact, while the photo is not identified, it appears to me to be a picture of the United States House of Representatives - and maybe Senators are present, too.

I was, I must say, stunned by Smith's column in The Mercury News. It was Smith's use of the "past tense" that got me! While Smith holds out a "riduculously small" amount of "hope" for our nation, that smidgen of hope that Smith says we have is absolutely inconsistent with his use of the past tense. 

If we have "lost" faith (past tense) and if our system of government has truly "failed" (past tense), then our opportunity to have the kind of government that Smith wants us to have (and that we all want to have) is no longer an option. 

Smith either (1) doesn't really believe that the past tense is being correctly applied in his column (and is using the past tense, presumably, for rhetorical purposes); or (2) Smith is simply unable or unwilling to face the implications of his own analysis. If our system of government has truly "failed," as he asserts, then the efforts that began in 1776 are now complete. The final report is in, and we have definitively "failed" to establish and sustain a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," which is how President Abraham Lincoln described what our government was all about. Indeed, Smith claims that our nation "failed" a long time ago. 

Looking at the news reported in the same edition of the newspaper in which Smith's column ran, it is pretty clear to me that those who have taken control of the Executive Branch of our government, thanks to the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, are acting like the "we failed" analysis is the correct one. As I say, this is really a serious issue - and stipulating to the "we failed" analysis means it's "Game Over" for self-government in the United States of America.

Before saying more about our alleged "failure," let me move on to the "lost faith" assertion. Smith asserts that it is a "fact" that the American people, collectively, no longer have any faith that we have a government that is, to repeat Lincoln's wonderful phrasing, "of the people, by the people, and for the people." In fact, Smith claims that no one believes that such a government is even possible. 

You can check back to my recent blog posting featuring the music of Leonard Cohen, in which his lyrics proclaim that "everybody knows that the fight is fixed; the poor stay poor and the rich get rich." Smith absolutely agrees with these lyrics, and he doesn't suggest that we could ever sing a different song. "Everybody knows. That just how it goes."

Smith uses a strange phrase in making his argument that our government experiment has "failed," and that we have "lost faith" in the idea that democratic self-government is even possible. Smith claims that this "failure" and "loss of faith" diagnosis is correct because we do not have a "united system of governance." That's the strange phrase I am talking about. What does Smith mean by a "united system of governance"? As I read his column, he seems to mean that we don't have a situation in which everyone agrees that rich White males and other wealthy people should  relinquish some of their wealth, power and privilege to benefit society as a whole. "That is not going to happen," Smith states. 

Well, to use a technical term: DUH! 

Since when have we ever thought that our system of government was based on consensus, on the idea that everyone will be "united" in agreement? In fact, our politics and government is based on the opposite idea, and on the recognition that people profoundly disagree on just about everything. Our system is supposed to get those who disagree to make decisions that a majority can "accept." That happens only when those who are dissatisfied with the current situation build their political power. (Hint: you have to get personally engaged if you want that to happen). Given that Smith appears to think that we must have a "united" government, in which people would agree on what he says they will never agree on, it is hard to understand where Smith thinks that "ridiculously small" window of opportunity might come from. If Smith is right about needing a "united" system of governance, you can board over that window of opportunity right now.

Let's think about how radical Smith's claims actually are. Smith is basically saying that what most people call "democracy" has "failed" in the United States (not that it is "imperiled," or "in danger," but that it has "failed," and that we have, moreover, "lost faith" that it can ever be restored (although Smith does note that "revolution" may be an available option, which doesn't sound too attractive to me, if he means that I should find a gun and start killing those rich people with whom I am in disagreement). 

When impossibilty is the premise - which is exactly the case with Smith - nothing can be done. If Smith is speaking as a "spectator," then his predictions of failure may be correct, but when he opines that all of our possibilities are in "the past," and when he talks like "it's all over," then we know that he has missed the truth of our real situation. 

In reality, we are facing real, and dangerous, and daunting obstacles to creating the kind of society and government we'd like to make work for "we, the people." That's true. That's the "present tense." As for the future, our actions now will determine how the future turns out.

Would you like to sit around and feel defeated? Read Jeff Smith!

Would you like to do something about what you don't like, and what needs to be changed? That requires action - and there isn't going to be any action, or any "resistance," if we have truly "lost faith" and stipulate to the fact that we have "failed" in the never-ending challenge of self-government! 

Find a small group of friends to support you, people whom you can support, too, and then get to work! 

PS: You will have to reallocate how you use your time!

oooOOOooo

Jeff Smith: We have lost faith in our united system of governance 
Bay Area leader says the ‘great American experiment in government’ has failed, and we have been in denial for years
We Americans have a huge problem that we do not want to face directly.
We have lost faith in our united system of governance. Only 64% of eligible adults voted in the 2024 presidential election and far fewer vote in gubernatorial elections. A large group of Americans do not believe it matters who is in office or what happens in government.
Even those who vote often make decisions based upon scant or misleading information. In the modern era, “alternative facts” are a shield against reality. Denial is an enormously powerful tool that allows us to avoid any individual responsibility for our situation. The kernel of truth that we do not want to face is that the failure of our nation is our fault.
The “great American experiment in government” failed long ago, and we have been in denial about that for many years.
Why did we fail? Can it be fixed? Should we just start over? I believe the answers to these questions are simple and everyone knows the truth deep down.The answer to the “why” question starts with our founding documents. What the Founding Fathers meant by “all men are created equal” and “endowed … with certain unalienable Rights,” is not what it sounds like today. To them “all men” meant rich, White male property owners — not women, not people of color, not those without property, and certainly not poor people, slaves or Indigenous people.
From the start, our country has struggled to make sense of the inherent conflict between language, practice and intent. Racism, xenophobia, misogyny and unchecked avarice are built into our society and our laws. Indeed, the history of the United States is understood best as a series of conflicts about these very issues. We failed because we have never honestly resolved these conflicts.
Should we burn it down and start a new plutocracy? The answer is also obvious.
We are doing that right now! Many powerful empires/countries have come and gone. Very few lasted more than 350 years. Essentially all failed when the disparity of wealth and opportunity among the citizens became so massive that most felt that revolution was their only practical choice.
The United States is remarkably close to that point now. In fact, we may have already passed it. The nation’s 800 billionaires hold more wealth than half the nation. Those at the bottom have been starved of the opportunity to succeed, and many of them are women, people of color, and stuck in generational poverty created by the wealthy who control government. Remembering Lincoln’s famous quote, “a house divided cannot stand.”? We are there.
Can it be “fixed”? No! Not with the current structure. Fixing the current system would require that rich, White males and others relinquish some of their wealth, power and privilege. That is not going to happen since the system protects them. The only peaceful way to change the entire system requires the participation of all citizens. The privileged class must accept the fact that their behavior is bad for everyone, including themselves.
Is there hope? Yes, but the window of opportunity for change is ridiculously small. The entire world knows that the U in USA is a fantasy. Will we admit it to ourselves and take the action necessary to honestly call ourselves united? I do not know [emphasis added].


Tuesday, February 4, 2025

#35 / Collapse Of The Old Order



 
Peggy Noonan, who formerly wrote speeches for President Ronald Reagan, now writes columns for The Wall Street Journal. In my blog post yesterday, I commented on a column in the Saturday/Sunday, February 1-2, 2025, edition of the paper. That column was written by Barton Swaim. Noonan had a column in that edition of the paper, too, and her column was titled, "Trump and the Collapse of the Old Order."  

Noonan's observations are sobering. She doesn't explicitly say, with Curtis Yarvin, that "Democracy is Done," but that is one logical deduction from what Noonan does say. I think Noonan, generally, has a good sense of the "mood" of the nation, and she certainly understands that our politics is "consequential." In other words, while many - on all "sides" - tend to deprecate the "political," Noonan knows that our politics is, in fact, the engine of transformation. From my perspective, this is the power of "self-government." We can, acting together, create new realities. 

We can destroy old ones, too. 

This, obviously, is what the headline on Noonan's column suggests may be happening. Noonan doesn't describe the specifics of what she is suggesting may be coming, and she is frank in saying that it is her belief that "we're living through times we'll understand only in retrospect." 

Nonetheless, if Noonan's "sense" of what is going on is at all accurate, the times in which we find ourselves are very much like those described by William Butler Yeats in his powerful poem, "The Second Coming." As you may remember, the times Yeats wrote about were times in which "the worst" were full of passionate intensity, and in which "the best" lacked all conviction. 

Here's the poem. If we want to maintain, and revivify our system of representative "self-government," we must not let "passionate intensity" sweep away the accomplishments of that flawed history which, despite all its flaws, Martin Luther King, Jr. called us to acknowledge and accept - and then bend - bend with both conviction and passionate intensity - towards a "more perfect union." 

oooOOOooo

The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



Monday, February 3, 2025

#34 / Left And Right



 
Barton Swaim writes columns for The Wall Street Journal. That is a picture of him, above. Swaim's column in the Saturday/Sunday, February 1-2, 2025, edition of the paper was titled, "Where the Left Studies the Right." The column discussed Swaim's attendance at a class taught by Eitan Hersh at Tufts University, which Swaim identifies as a school where "Left" views predominate. In fact, Swaim believes that most universities present their students with a "Left" view of the world - as do most other institutions, at least according to Swaim:

Liberals dominate the places where the big decisions are made: news media, higher education, school boards and K-12 administrations, the entertainment industry, state and federal agencies, corporate boardrooms and so on. If you’re a liberal in any of these places, conservatism doesn’t require much attention, except as an annoyance. If you’re a conservative in any of these places, you must learn to swim in a pool chlorinated by liberalism.
Liberals may attribute this state of affairs to the triumph of their worldview (or they might have before the November election—more on that in a moment). The left won the culture war, they might justifiably think, and conservatives have lost. The only problem is, conservatives are still pretty good at winning elections, because most people outside the aforementioned institutions don’t hold liberal views on politics and policy.
The upshot: A great many liberal VIPs in America simply don’t know much about their adversaries. The belief that conservative views are an outcome of either stupidity or perfidy, ignorance or greed—or both—is consequently very common among the country’s cultural elite.
Plainly universities, by transforming themselves into compounds of conformity and homogeneity, bear some responsibility for this state of affairs. “I think what has happened on campuses like ours,” says Eitan Hersh, a professor of politics at Tufts University, “is that the communities here have convinced themselves that they are all on the same page, that you walk into a classroom and you can expect that everyone present is pro-choice, pro-LGBT rights, and everyone is fighting the good fight for social justice.” Many schools’ mission statements convey a similar kind of message: We’re all on the side of goodness and light, not like those people (emphasis added).

I don't know whether or not Swaim would say I qualify as one of the country's "cultural elite," but I was, for eleven years, an adjunct professor in the Politics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is a university that is at least as far "Left" as Tufts. I do think that most students, faculty, and staff at UCSC would endorse "pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and social justice efforts." I emphatically do NOT think, however, that those who hold such views believe that "conservative views are an outcome of either stupidity or perfidy, ignorance or greed - or both."

In short, I think Swaim (and Hersh, to the degree he would endorse Swaim's statement) is just "projecting." Swaim correctly believes that his opinions about key political issues are different from the opinions of those on the "Left," and he, located on the "Right," presumes that those on the "Left," with whom he disagrees, must have come to their positions because of their disdain for what the "Right" has been advocating. I believe that this is an unjustified conclusion.

My belief is that it is important, as we all consider what public policies should guide the nation, that we realize that "opinions" are not "facts." Opinion statements are not judgments about the "Truth." They are just opinions. Whichever "side" you happen to be on, personally, this is, in fact, our actual situation. We - all of us - have various "opinions," and they should rise or fall, be adopted or discarded, only insofar as they have been proven to "work," and as they have been proven (or not) accurately to describe the real world that is inhabited by all of us, "Left" and "Right" together. 

When Joyce Vance says, in her daily Substack postings on politics, that we "are all in this together" - a phrase of which I am fond, myself - she means that everyone is "in this together." 

I fully realize that there are those on the "Left," who do disdain the "Right," in the way Swaim states, and I hope that Swaim realizes that there are those on the "Right" who hold opinions of those on the "Left" that are just as unfounded and outrageous. 

What has happened in our politics, I am afraid to say, is that the kind of "polarization" that Swaim's comments exemplify has come to be accepted by almost everyone - those on both sides of the "Left" against "Right" divide - as a fair description of "reality." "Politics," as a consequence, has become an effort to "destroy" the side with which one disagrees. Again, this is a phenomenon seen on both "sides." It's a fundamental mistake, if we want our government to be effective in confronting and mastering the very real challenges before us - no matter which "side" we're on. 

Politics needs to be centered on a discussion or debate about what we (collectively) should "do." Opinions differ, but since it is actually true that we are "all in this together," we need to find a way to be reconciled, and to compromise and work together, as we decide how to take action in the face of the very daunting, and perilous, conditions we face in the common world that is shared by us all.


Sunday, February 2, 2025

#33 / The Devil's Best Trick




I read The Devil's Best Trick some time ago, and I liked it. Let me recommend it to you, now. The author of this book, Randall Sullivan, is not an "academic" writer. He is, in fact, a journalist, having written for Rolling Stone, Wired,  Esquire, The Guardian, and The Washington Post

Consistent with the author's journalistic vocation, The Devil's Best Trick is not just a book-based investigation; it's not just a cultural history of the Devil. In his research for the book, Sullivan travels to what might be called various "war zones," where Evil can be seen to be at work - and thus can be reported on. These are places where people tell of real experiences of the Devil - with the Devil being understood not as some abstract idea, but as a living being, as an all-too-real malign and destructive agent. 

The Bible references "Evil" by talking about the "principalities and the powers" that are dedicated to works of evil in our world. Sullivan's book suggests that we take seriously this idea, and it seems to me that two components of belief are required, if you want fully to relate to what Sullivan is writing about: (1) First, you would have to believe that there is, actually, such a thing as genuine "Evil," which is somethng different from and independent of those occurrences and events that we count as simply harmful, unfortunate, and distressing. (2) Second, you would have to contemplate the possibility that "Evil" might have its own human and non-human agents in our world, intentionally and affirmatively working to undermine all that is good, decent, honest, and true, and thus helping "Evil" to prevail.

If you don't really believe that what I have just described is true - that there is genuine "Evil" in our world, and that there are "agents" abroad in our world, trying to make "Evil" prevail over "Good," you are definitely not alone. In fact, I am betting that most people reading this blog posting do not believe that an actual "Devil" exists, actively working to make sure that evil prevails in the world. But if there is such a "Devil," despite the fact that you don't really buy into that, then you can properly appreciate Sullivan's title. 

Many, today, if not most, think of "Evil" as just the name we have given to the bad things that happen in the world. It's a word we use to characterize things we find distressing, or unfortunate, or "horrible" - as opposed to things that are the product of intentional actions by real beings that are opposed to, and that are intentionally taken to undermine, all that is good, and honest, and fair. 

Well..... I'd say we might want to consider this. IF there were an actual and independent agent of "Evil" abroad in the world, and if our understanding of "Evil," as just outlined makes us fail to see that this is true....

Well..... That would be a pretty impressive trick!



Saturday, February 1, 2025

#32 / Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done



Curtis Yarvin is pictured above. Yarvin has been interviewed by David Marchese of The New York Times, and a summary of the interview appeared in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, carrying the title that I have commandeered for the title of my blog posting today. If you can penetrate the paywall that is likely to face non-subscribers, you can read a summary of the interview by clicking the link that I have just provided. Alternatively, you can actually watch the interview on YouTube. Click that second link to watch.

Please be aware of this: Curtis Yarvin is, emphatically, NOT a "nice guy." That is, of course, my personal judgment call. Here's why I say that: Yarvin wants to eliminate democracy in the United States, and to substitute in a dictatorship. He is quite upfront about that. Yarvin says that moving to a "dictatorship" means that we need to get rid of our elected president (and other elected officials) and substitute in a CEO. The way Yarvin sees it, that is what a CEO is - a dictator.

I read The Times' interview with Yarvin last Sunday, and I was appalled. I almost wrote a blog posting about Yarvin's call for a dictatorship last Sunday morning. 

I didn't, though, but I was jolted back to my keyboard on Wednesday evening, when I was sent a link to the video below: 


The video is about eleven minutes long. I recommend you watch it in its entirety (and that you pay attention). Our recently-elected president does seem to want to act like a CEO, not an elected official who takes direction from the voters. His unilateral (and I am pretty sure illegal) effort to get almost every federal employee to resign, by offering them a payoff at the taxpayers' expense, is just the kind of thing that a CEO-dictator might do. In fact, it is exactly the sort of thing that our president's good friend Elon Musk did after taking over Twitter, and turning it into "X."

The president cannot abolish American democracy and institute a dictatorship unless everyone sits around and watches, instead of doing something about it. It appears, from what Joyce Vance says, that federal employees aren't going along with the "buyout" scheme advanced by our wanna-be dictator-CEO. Thank goodness for that. That's a good example of the kind of things we need to be doing.

Democracy is "done," according to Yarvin. Is he right? 

Yarvin will be proven right only if we act like democracy is a recently-released series on Netflix, and we sit back watch each new episode as it is put on the air.

I call "democracy" "self-government." Which means we have to get involved in government ourselves. 

"Government" is not a series on Netflix, and we aren't supposed to be sitting around watching it do its thing. Where "government" is at issue, it's our job to write the script! It's our job to remember that we are in charge!

 
Image Credit:

Friday, January 31, 2025

#31 / Here's A Warning (For Immediate Action)




Pictured is Russell Vought, who has been nominated by president Trump to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

As a supporter of Indivisible (you are cordially invited to sign up), I received the advisory I am republishing below, and which I am passing along here. The bulletin from Indivisible is "time sensitive," and when you see this posting, I hope you will immediately follow up on its recommendations. This particularly applies if you happen to live in a state other than California. I believe that California's two Senators will vote against Vought's appointment, but it never hurts to let your elected officials know your feelings!

Here is the Indivisible bulletin: 

Today, some of the most extreme, unqualified, and dangerous cabinet nominees in the history of the republic appear before the Senate for their confirmation hearings. 
Kash Patel, a MAGA-true believer who has salivated about prosecuting members of the media and helped produce a rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" sung by violent January 6 inmates (pre-pardon), will make the case for leading the FBI. 
Tulsi Gabbard, a Putin apologist with no real intelligence experience, a person who was denied sensitive information while in Congress because colleagues feared she’d leak it to her pal and deposed war criminal Bashar al-Assad, will explain why she should be trusted to be the next Director of National Intelligence. 
RFK Jr., a man who buys into some of the most bizarre conspiracy theories imaginable, backs a national abortion ban, faces sexual assault allegations, and whose healthcare experience includes (or is limited to) exacerbating a deadly measles outbreak with his vaccine denialism, will be back on the Hill as he seeks to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. 
But this email isn’t about any of them. Yes, you should absolutely call and email your senators to urge them to vote NO on all three. We’ve got tools to help you do it here
This email, however, is about another extremely dangerous nominee who has garnered far less attention -- and whose confirmation could be voted on by the full Senate as early as tomorrow. We’re talking, dear friends, about Project 2025 architect, mastermind behind Trump’s sweeping (and illegal) spending freeze, and nominee to lead the “nerve-center” of the federal government -- Russell Vought.  
Let’s back up. 
If you’ve been following our emails or checked the news this week, you’re aware that on Tuesday, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo freezing virtually all federal spending -- funds allocated by Congress for things like Medicaid, housing assistance, scientific research, food for hungry families, and a million other things. 
These were funds that the Constitution does not allow the president to withhold. So before the freeze was set to take effect (and after a tremendous amount of chaos and fear was unleashed), a federal judge blocked it. Then, amidst massive public backlash, and nonstop calls to House and Senate offices (thanks to all of you), the White House backpedaled and rescinded the memo. 
We wish that were the end of the story. But it is not. Quickly after the memo was rescinded, Trump’s press secretary volunteered that they were only rescinding the document, not the intent behind it. That statement was confusing, but clear enough about the administration’s illegal intentions that another judge felt the need to issue a second order blocking the funding freeze. 
Obviously, the administration bungled this. And clearly, they’re not done trying. That’s why Trump wants Russell Vought at the helm of OMB. 
What does Vought have to do with the funding freeze? Well, the entire concept is kind of his "Hot to Go" (or depending on your generation, perhaps his "Free Bird"). Read his academic writings, and he waxes on about the president remaking government by withholding funds from programs that don’t align with his ideological agenda. Watch his Senate hearings, and he croons about the president’s right to do it, Constitution and Supreme Court guidance be damned. 
In fact, while serving as OMB Director for a brief time during Trump’s first term, he tried it on a much smaller scale -- freezing funds allocated for Ukraine (an impeachment resulted). The move was later deemed blatantly illegal. 
The Office of Management and Budget is often called the "most important agency you’ve never heard of" because it really does hold a lot of power -- coordinating policy across all government, overseeing budgets, and more. 
Russell Vought has an even more expansive view of the agency’s power -- he views it the “nerve center” of the federal bureaucracy and believes that under the right leadership (his), it can totally bypass Congress and give Trump king-like powers. He wrote an entire chapter about it in Project 2025 -- the Heritage Foundation blueprint for an autocratic second Trump term. You may recall Trump disavowing the plan on the campaign trail. But surprise, now that he’s president, he’s seeking to install its authors in the highest positions of government. 
If Vought is confirmed, chaotic funding freezes like we saw this week will only be the beginning. Together, Trump and Vought will seek to transform the government into a tool of far-right ideology, Christian Nationalism, and political revenge against Trump’s enemies. 
We’ll be honest. Vought is not going to be the easiest of Trump’s nominees to block. His MAGA bona fides and extensive experience in Washington give him a lot of cred with Republican senators. 
But this week, senators also witnessed his plans put into action -- and the mayhem it caused in their states as millions who rely on government grants nearly had their lives, businesses, and education upended. All senators, especially Republican senators, need to understand that a yes for Vought is a yes for the exact funding freeze that was just rescinded. 
No amount of expert questioning during a senate hearing could have better illustrated the danger Vought poses. We all witnessed it. Now, it’s up to us to make sure senators don’t hear the end of it -- and to demand they vote no.  
In solidarity,
Indivisible Team
[January 30, 2025] 
 

Thursday, January 30, 2025

#30 / The Artificial State

 


I think that Jill Lepore, pictured above, is probably my favorite living historian (she is a lawyer, too). Lepore teaches at Harvard University, and at the Harvard Law School, and if you are not familiar with her work, I hope you will track down her books and get acquainted. Lepore's writings are well-researched, and deeply thought out, but they are not either "legalistic" or "academic" in their tone or presentation. I count that as a positive, myself!

Recently, Lepore published an article as a "Critic At Large" in the November 11, 2024, edition of The New Yorker. Her article was titled, "The Artificial State." Nonsubscribers may or may not be able to access the article by clicking that link. It is an important article, and I hope that those reading this blog posting will be able to read it in its entirety. Suspecting that this might not be possible for many, I have excerpted enough of the article, immediately below, to give you the main idea (emphasis added): 

Since the nineteen-sixties, much of American public life has become automated, driven by computers and predictive algorithms that can do the political work of rallying support, running campaigns, communicating with constituents, and even crafting policy. In that same stretch of time, the proportion of Americans who say that they trust the U.S. government to do what is right most of the time has fallen from nearly eighty per cent to about twenty per cent. Automated politics, it would seem, makes for very bad government, helping produce an electorate that is alienated, polarized, and mistrustful, and elected officials who are paralyzed by their ability to calculate, in advance, the likely consequences of their actions, down to the last lost primary or donated dollar. 
Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign was vastly influenced by the data-driven ad tester Future Forward, the biggest PAC in the United States. Donald Trump, for all his piffle about his indifference to data, is as much a creature of automated politics as anyone. The man doesn’t stay on message, but his campaign does. The 2016 Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica, which exploited the data of up to eighty-seven million Facebook users to create targeted messaging. “I pretty much used Facebook to get Trump elected in 2016,” a Trump campaign adviser, Brad Parscale, boasted. This year, the R.N.C. is working with Parscale’s A.I. company, Campaign Nucleus. And although the Trump campaign insists that it “does not engage in or utilize A.I.,” it does use “a set of proprietary algorithmic tools.” ... 
These days, Americans are worried not only about this election but about this democracy and its future. In September, the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, part of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, released “The Digitalist Papers: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy in America,” billed as the Federalist Papers for the twenty-first century. Most of the essays, chiefly written by tech executives and academics, advance the theory that the automation of politics through artificial intelligence could save American democracy. Critics take a rather different view. In the book “Algorithms and the End of Politics: How Technology Shapes 21st-Century American Life,” the political economist Scott Timcke, using Marxism to look at Muskism, argues that “datafication”—converting “human practices into computational artefacts”—promotes neoliberalism, automates inequality, and decreases freedom. 
The artificial state is not a shadow government. It’s not a conspiracy. There’s nothing secret about it. The artificial state is a digital-communications infrastructure used by political strategists and private corporations to organize and automate political discourse. It is the reduction of politics to the digital manipulation of attention-mining algorithms, the trussing of government by corporate-owned digital architecture, the diminishment of citizenship to minutely message-tested online engagement. An entire generation of Americans can no longer imagine any other system and, wisely, have very little faith in this one. (According to a Harvard poll from 2021, more than half of Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine believe that American democracy either is “in trouble” or has already “failed.”) Within the artificial state, nearly every element of American democratic life—civil society, representative government, a free press, free expression, and faith in elections—is vulnerable to subversion. In lieu of decision-making by democratic deliberation, the artificial state offers prediction by calculation, the capture of the public sphere by data-driven commerce, and the replacement of humans with machines—drones in the place of the demos.

In talking about "The Artificial State," Lepore is really telling us how normal, person-to-person conversations and discussions have been replaced by one-way, algorithmic communications that take place on platforms that are owned by and serve the interests of gigantic, private corporations. Tip O'Neill, long time Speaker of the House of Representatives, was famously known to say, "all politics is local." Not now, says Lepore. Not in the "Artificial State."

My diagram of how government works goes this way: 

"Politics > Law > Government." 

In other words, we are "a government of laws," but the laws that define and determine what the government does are not like the laws of physics. The laws that establish and implement our "government" are the product of our politics. 

If you agree with Lepore's analysis, and if you give credit to that diagram of mine, then it is clear why we all need to get much more personally involved in politics. We absolutely must insist upon our personal and direct participation. We need to practice politics in "real life," through contact with real people, and not by way of TikTok, or "X," or any other online media.

I don't think there is a shortcut. If we want a politics and government that works for us, instead for the giant corporations that own and operate those online platforms; if we want a politics that inspires confidence, rather than the opposite, and a politics that can pull us together effectively to address the incredibly difficult problems we face, then "artificial" substitutes won't work. Instead, we are going to have to get involved in politics ourselves. Of course, that is only a requirement long as we want "self government," not manipulation by hidden forces beyond our individual control. 

And... I do want that! I hope you do, too.



Wednesday, January 29, 2025

#29 / No One Can Afford To Sell Their Home

 


Carol Ryan is a "Heard On The Street" columnist for The Wall Street Journal. That is how she is identified in the newspaper. The "Street" to which this designation refers, I am pretty sure, is "Wall Street," not "Main Street." Still, Carol Ryan does seem to be speaking to us, too, we whose lives are not oriented to finance, investments, and making money (as opposed, simply, to doing worthwhile work that, we hope, will provide us with a "living"). 

The article which introduced me to Carol Ryan, published in the Saturday/Sunday, November 16-17, 2024 edition of The Wall Street Journal, was headlined, as is this blog posting, "No One Can Afford To Sell Their Home." I have just given you the hard copy version of Ryan's headling. Online, presuming you can beat the likely paywall, her article is titled, "America’s Homes Are Piggy Banks That Few People Can Afford to Raid."

The point of Ryan's article, well-described in the online headline, is an important point. More and more, "homes" are not really "dwelling places," but are "investment vehicles." In the world of "investment" - on "Wall Street" as opposed to "Main Street," in other words - human necessities are more and more seen as "investments." Actually, this fact is "a," or maybe "the," primary cause of our "housing crisis." Applying the "Golden Rule," as observed on "Wall Street," we know that those with the gold make the rules. Those with the gold get the goods. 

Here is a suggestion, pretty radical, of course. What it we were to reconfigure our laws to eliminate homes as an investment? How could we even do that, should we wish to? Well, if we applied the rule that prevails in Santa Cruz County's affordable housing program, we could provide, by law, that the selling price of a home could never exceed the purchase price of the home, with the addition of an increase in the selling price to reflect inflation since the time of purchase and to reflect any additional investment made in the home since the time of purchase. 

I am enough of an attorney to understand that this has Fifth Amendment consequences. There would have to be a tremenous collective investment by the American people to enact a law that would achieve this result I just outlined. It is not constitutional to deprive someone of their property without paying them "just compensation." If we put a legislative "price cap" on the sale of homes, we would probably be reducing the value of assets that were purchased under the earlier system.

Still, think about it. What if homes were priced by "Main Street," not "Wall Street"? Again, it could be done, and I think that we ought to start figuring out how to take the speculation out of home prices, so that everyone has a fair shot at owning a home, and so that "home ownership" is about providing an individual or family with a place to live, and isn't made into an arena for the Private Equity investors who are buying up the country. 


Tuesday, January 28, 2025

#28 / Think A Little Bit (Before Investing In Bitcoin)

 


Pictured is Michael Saylor. The picture comes from an article in The Wall Street Journal, which was titled as follows: "The Man Making Billions From the Wildest Bitcoin Bet."

In case you have missed my earlier pronouncements, my thought is that any investment in Bitcoin is wildly speculative. Bitcoin is a "thing" that has no inherent value. The value of a bitcoin is measured (and measured solely) by a prediction about what it will be worth later. 

This is very different from other types of investment. For example, if you invest in shares of stock of a company (of General Motors, say), the future value of the stock will depend on how the company does. In the case of an investment in General Motors stock, as an example, the future value of your purchase will depend on how good a job the company does in making and selling cars. There is some objective measure that will, in substantial part, determine the value of an asset like that.

The future value of Bitcoin will depend (and depend solely) on how much people in the future are willing to pay for it. Its value is totally speculative. I have made this point before (many times, in fact). Still, people keep investing in Bitcoin, because they are hoping for a windfall. Our recently-inaugurated president has talked about investing federal funds in Bitcoin. Click the link for an exploration of this idea, and to learn why it's not what we might call a "good" idea!

The Wall Street Journal article reports that the shares of company owned by Saylor, MicroStrategy, are up 650% in the last year. He is pretty jazzed about this, and held a big New Year's Eve party to celebrate: 

To celebrate bitcoin topping $100,000, Saylor hosted a New Year’s Eve party for several hundred members of the crypto community at his waterfront, Miami-area estate, near his luxury yacht. A half-dozen dancers dressed in gold performed. Celebrities mingled with investing luminaries, including Bill Miller, the former Legg Mason fund manager; Peter Briger, chairman of Fortress Investment Group; and Mark Casey, a key portfolio manager at Capital Group. The event was livestreamed on YouTube to tens of thousands of bitcoin fanatics as Saylor, in a black blazer and a bitcoin T-shirt, presided.

Enthusiasm for Saylor’s company is so rabid it has resulted in a head-scratching situation: MicroStrategy owns about $47 billion of bitcoin, but its shares are worth about $97 billion. It’s as if investors are paying $2 for a $1 bill. Just as surprising: Sophisticated investors have been among the biggest buyers, including mutual-fund power Capital Group, which owned about 8% of the company as of Sept. 30, and Norges Bank Investment Management, Norway’s $1.5 trillion sovereign fund, which owned nearly 1%.

Fans say the premium reflects confidence that Saylor can continue to produce profits betting on bitcoin. Only 21 million coins will be created, a scarcity that boosts its value, they argue. By issuing equity at lofty levels, and selling debt at friendly terms to the company, Saylor can create value for shareholders as he expands MicroStrategy’s bitcoin horde, says Richard Byworth, a partner at SYZ Capital, who personally owns MicroStrategy stock (emphasis added).

I am no billionaire, but I hope you will agree, if you think about it, that putting your money (or the nation's money) into Bitcoin is to fall prey to a con. The billionaires touting Bitcoin - the ones who got invited to that New Year's Eve party - are hoping that they'll get you to give them some of your money. If you do, don't count on getting it back!