Saturday, April 26, 2025

#116 / Inflection Point




A story in the February 7, 2025, edition of The New York Times reported that a "Top Documentarian" had teamed up with "A Billionaire." The "documentarian" featured in the story is Alex Gibney, the owner of Jigsaw Productions. Gibney's new "billionaire backer" is Wendy Schmidt, who has now acquired a majority stake in Gibney's company.

Why does a billionaire want to make documentary movies? Well, according to the story in The Times, Schmidt wants Jigsaw to "broaden its editorial focus to include more stories on climate change and ocean health." 

"Human society, in my view," says Schmidt, "is at an inflection point. We are existentially threatened by the technology we've created as well as by the failure of systems on this planet to support us becuse they've become so compromised."

I have no doubt that we are at an "inflection point," as Schmidt says - politically, socially, economically, and environmentally. The way Schmidt phrases it, though, it almost seems as though she is blaming those "systems on this planet" for failing to "support us." 

Just to be clear, the failures begin with us, not "the planet." I am not speaking to Wendy Schmidt in particular, since I don't know anything about her, personally, but a lot of the systems that Schmidt says are failing "us" are doing so because we have failed "them." 

You could check my blog posting from yesterday for an example. It references an article in the February 7, 2025, edition of The Wall Street Journal that comments on the real estate activities of the "billionire class," in and around Palm Springs. 


Friday, April 25, 2025

#115 / Mansion




The Wall Street Journal runs a section, each week, that it calls, "Mansion." On Friday, February 7, 2025,  the headline story in the "Mansion" section was dedicted to "Smoke Tree Ranch," which is located in Palm Springs. The Journal identified Smoke Tree Ranch as "Real Estate's Secret Society." 

Pictured above is an image that ran in The Journal, in connection with that headline story. The picture depicts "the circa-1930s home of former Marvel Enterprises CEO Eric Ellenbogen and his husband Dominic Ramos-Ruiz ... the oldest house in Smoke Tree Ranch."

According to the article, "Smoke Tree Ranch [is] an under-the-radar community ... a far cry from the flashy, celebrity-studded enclaves Palm Springs is known for."

For those who are not billionaires themselves, I believe that it's fair to say that this rather downbeat description of the pictured home is what passes for billionaire modesty in Palm Springs. My own personal reaction is that the picture is plenty "flashy" enough, and I am pretty clear that this is not a home I could afford. In fact, in the newpaper, it is revealed that this home sold for $3.95 million in 2021. Admittedly, that is a lot less than some of the real estate featued in The Journal's "Mansion" section, but I don't buy the suggestion that Smoke Tree Ranch is a community of "just regular folks." Clearly, it's a community of, by and for the billionaires and near-billionaires who want to come across with a more "democratic" vibe!

Let's not be fooled! Here is what is happening in our society today - at least the way many see it. There is an ongoing and concerted effort by what Bernie Sanders has long called the "billionaire class" to consolidate its ownership and control over the United States of America, and particularly over its politics. 

Don't be misled. "We, the people" and "they, the billionaires," are two very different and distinct groups, and the political question now presented to us all is quite clear - and quite important, too. "Who's going to get to run the place?" 

Elon Musk (and our elected president) are playing for the billionaires. Unless we're willing to let those with the gold make the rules for all of us, we've got to suit up ourselves, and stake our claim to political, economic, and social leadership of the country. 

And we're not going to be able to do that "under the radar," either!



Thursday, April 24, 2025

#114 / The Temper Of The Times

 


I have previously mentioned a book given to me by a friend, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789. Click the following link to read that earlier blog posting, published on Halloween, last year. In that earlier blog posting, I called the book "scary." 

Robert Darnton, who wrote The Revolutionary Temper, ends his book, really, just as the actual French Revolution begins. The last chapter of Darnton's book is on the storming of the Bastille. A lot happened after that, and most people think of the Revolution as following, not preceding, the storming of the Bastille. If you'd like to read a book that considers a more complete trajectory of the French Revolution, you can click right here. That link will take you to my blog post discussing A New World Begins, by Jeremy D. Popkin. 

Darnton has a specific point in mind, as he ends his book just when others who have written about the French Revolution think that the Revolution was just beginning. Here is Darnton's point. What counts most, when revolutionary changes occur in history, is the changed "minds" of the people. The "actions" that accomplish what we come to call a "revolution" are only possible once the minds of the people have been changed. This review in The Guardian can give you a pretty good idea of Darnton's argument.

Let me also draw to your attention what Darnton says on Page 451 of his book, as he sums up his arguments in an afterword:

Most of us accept the world as it is and assume that it holds together firmly enough to constitute reality. 

This is, I think, an accurate statement. Revolutions (and the actions that cause them to occur) happen when what "exists" is no longer taken to define the limits of "reality," and when what "exists" is no longer taken to be "inevitable." Revolutions happen when people begin to understand that "reality" (in the "Human World" that we create) is not something that we need to accept, just because that is the way things are. Getting our minds around that thought, the idea that we can actually build a world that reflects things the way they are "spozed to be," is what actually makes revolutionary changes possible.

Or, as some protesters put it: 



Wednesday, April 23, 2025

#113 / "A.I." As "I.A." - And That Means What?




Those familiar with Facebook know that this online social media and social networking service will often provide users with various items that a mysterious Facebook algorithm has deduced will be of interest to the recipient. Sometimes, these items really are of interest, too!

As an example, here is an item that appeared on my Facebook profile page a few months ago: 


That Facebook posting really was of interest to me. As most who are reading this blog posting will already know, and as as the online Encyclopedia Britannica tells us, ChatGPT is:

Software that allows a user to ask it questions using conversational, or natural, language. It was released on November 30, 2022, by the American company OpenAI and almost immediately disturbed academics, journalists, and others because of concern that it was impossible to distinguish human- from ChatGPT-generated writing.

ChatGPT, and similar software products, are commonly referred to as "A.I." That abbreviation stands for "Artificial Intelligence," and A.I. is quite controversial. It can allow students to "cheat" on writing (and other) assignments, and some believe that there is a real danger that A.I. will seek, at some early date, to supplant human beings entirely. "Artificial" intelligence, in this view, is "better" than human intelligence. Because of this, A.I. certainly poses a big labor issue, since A.I. promises to be able to eliminate the need for human workers, in many situations. 

As I looked at the Facebook post I received, and which is reproduced above, I suddenly realized that the abbreviation, "A.I." is not, actually, accurate. "A.I." should really be modified, and should be called "I.A." What these "A.I." software products do, in fact, is "Intelligence Amalgamation." The "Intelligence" involved is not actually "Artificial" at all. The "Intelligence" involved is human intelligence. The so-called "A.I." products being deployed are simply high quality and efficient search engines, which are "trained" to find what facts and opinions about any designated topic have been generated, in the past, by various human beings, then presenting what has been discovered in an easily readable form.

In the example above, the "wisdom" being provided through Artificial Intelligence is nothing other than a listing of the ideas of various wise men (and women) who, in the past, have been thinking about the topic of how human beings might best reach their full potential. 

If you follow me that far, then think about this. If we start confining our human search for wisdom to be nothing more than a search of past ideas, well-articulated and colorfully presented, won't we be missing "new" wisdom?

If you do follow me in that thought, it can be seen that the "danger" of A.I. is that it will, increasingly, foreclose new ideas, new thoughts, new efforts, new initiatives that were never ever dreamed of before, but that we can dream about now. 

What a real loss!

I am going to stick with "real" intelligence. Mine. And Yours!


Image Credits:

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

#112 / Tech That Connects?



 
Brian X. Chen, who is the lead consumer technology writer for The New York Times, authored an article that appeared in the November 11, 2024 edition of the newspaper. In the hard copy version of the paper, Chen's article was titled as follows: "How the Tech That Connects Us Has Set the Stage for Isolation." If you click the link to read the article online (The Times' paywall policies permitting, of course), you will find a completely different headline: "How Tech Created a ‘Recipe for Loneliness.’"

A very small amount of linguistic analysis indicates that something is just a bit "off" in those headline descriptions of Chen's article. A tip that this is so can be found in the incongruity of the two different claims apparently being made in the dueling headlines. If Chen's article is first asserting that there is a "Tech That Connects" (hard copy headline), the second version of the headline is apparently making a completely contrary claim, with "Tech" being identified as creating a "Recipe for Loneliness." 

Well, which is it? It has to be one thing or the other, right? Or is this another variety of the Schrödinger's Cat conundrum?

I think the answer is pretty simple. "Tech" does not, in fact, "Connect." 

"Tech" may provide us the illusion of a connection between us, but "we," human beings, exist in "real life," in a "real world." Person-to person connections, made within the physical world, is the only thing that truly "connects" us. "Connection," in other words, is different from "communication." A posting to a social media website, or an email blast, may well communicate very effectively to lots of different people, simultaneously. But that communication, no matter how many people may be involved, from two to two million, does not, in fact, "connect" those who are involved in the communication.

This understanding of the difference between "communication" and "connection" has an important lesson to teach us about our politics. Any real and effective political effort must be initiated and sustained in the "real world," with real world, physical connections an absolute requirement. People need to be in the same (physical) place at the same time, in order to "connect." Online won't do it. 

Let me (one more time) cite to Margaret Mead and to Octavia Butler as those who truly understand the nature of genuine connection - and how political, social, and economic change can be accomplished. 

As I often put it, tying my advice to some powerful fiction from Octavia Butler: "Find Some Friends." 


Monday, April 21, 2025

#111 / The Latest Bitcoin Bump

 


I am, most emphatically, not a "bitcoin bro." Click right here for links to some of my past commentaries. If you click this link, you will be able to hear  from Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, the Chief Investment Officer of Wealth Management & Head of the Investment Strategy Group at Goldman Sachs. She is definitely part of the financial/investment world, and here is what she has to say: 

Crypto is nothing more than a means of speculation

Given that The Wall Street Journal has reported that our recently-elected president promises "to regulate in favor of crypto, eject the anti-crypto head of the SEC, and prevent any sales of bitcoin seized by law enforcers," I am suggesting that all of us should be quite concerned. 

In fact, if I am getting it right, I think The Wall Street Journal is concerned. At least, that is how I read a "Streetwise" column by James Mackintosh, which I have linked in the paragraph immediately above this one. 

Would our president actually invest our Social Security Trust Fund (to pick a high-stakes example) in the unstable and unpredicatable Bitcoin market? See why I think we (and Congress) should be paying attention?

Mackintosh and The Wall Street Journal question whether Trump is really so great for bitcoin - that's the main message in the article I have linked above. 

Here's what I think, though: I think it's pretty obvious that bitcoin would not be great for us!


Sunday, April 20, 2025

#110 / When You Can't See The Wood

 

 
There is a well-known expression that you might even have used yourself, when you wanted to provide a judgment on someone's failure to get the "big picture." It can happen that someone (all of us qualify) becomes so enmeshed in all the details of something - something they are studying, or that they are trying to tell someone about - that they fail to grasp the actual meaning and significance of the topic at hand.

I am betting that you have heard the following expression, and may even have used it yourself: "Can't see the wood for the trees."

Sister Penelope, CSMV, who is pictured above, wrote a book called The Wood:


This being Easter, perhaps the most important "Christian" holiday, it seems like a good day to introduce you to Sister Penelope's book, originally published in 1935. The book appears to be out of print, currently, but Amazon is willing to sell you a used copy, and so is AbeBooks - at least that's true as of the time I am writing out this blog posting. Good libraries may well have a copy, too.

Having quite recently read the book, I must say that if you would like a "big picture" statement about the Bible (both Old and New Testaments), Sister Penelope does a great job helping you to see "The Wood," and to avoid the potential bafflement that the Bible may engender, when read straight through on its own, with all of those Kings, Prophets, and other characters, both divine and all-too-human!

I went to theological seminary (just for a year, I confess, but nonetheless), and I don't remember coming across a better explication of Christianity and the Bible.

Anyone "Rounding Third," and many of my friends and I are doing just that, might like to give at least one last look at the Bible, trying to see "the wood," and not get too distracted by "the trees." 

Recommended!


Saturday, April 19, 2025

#109 / My Complaint About Chris



Chris Hedges, pictured, is a Presbyterian minister. Among other things! More notably, I would say, Hedges is properly appreciated for his past (and present) work as a journalist and political commentator. Here is an excerpt from what Wikipedia has to say about Hedges

In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and Dallas Morning News. Hedges reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005, and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism.

Hedges came to Santa Cruz County, once, to speak in person. I was in the audience, and I was impressed. He is an accomplished observer of what's going on in the world, and I think people should be paying very close attention to what he says. For instance, I think Hedges' January 18, 2025, posting to Scheerpost is very much worth your time. It was titled, "Chris Hedges: How Fascism Came." Click the link to read it. I don't think there is any paywall.

In the commentary I have just linked, Hedges calls out a number of problems. MAJOR problems. As I have just said, I think people should be taking Hedges' critiques seriously. However, here is my complaint about Chris. 

Let's start with the title of the piece I linked. The title, "How Fascism Came," uses the past tense. In other words, the way Chris Hedges lays it out, Fascism has already come. Its domination of our social, economic, and political life has already been accomplished. That's what the use of the past tense means. Whatever is spoken of in the past tense has already taken place. It's over. Done. If you think that Hedges knows what he is talking about, then you will deduce that the United States is now a fascist country. Is it? I don't think so, myself.

The rest of Hedges' commentary is similar, in that it describes the "loss of basic democratic norms." It states that American democracy "cratered years ago." There isn't any remedy, the way Hedges puts it: "It is not going to get better." Describing present problems as though they occurred in the past, and are now existing realities, suggests that there is nothing we can do now. Is that true? I don't think so, myself.

Here is a link to a February 18, 2025, follow-up. And here is a quote from Hedges' posting on that date: 

The Trump administration’s war with the deep state is not a purgative. It is not about freeing us from the tyranny of intelligence agencies, militarized police, the largest prison system in the world, predatory corporations or the end of mass surveillance. It will not restore the rule of law to hold the powerful and the wealthy accountable. It will not slash the bloated and unaccountable spending — some $1 trillion dollars — by the Pentagon....

We are repeating the steps that led to the consolidation of power by past dictatorships, albeit with our own idiom and idiosyncrasies. Those naively lauding Trump’s hostility towards the deep state — which I concede did tremendous damage to democratic institutions, eviscerated our most cherished liberties, is an unaccountable state within a state and orchestrated a series of disastrous global interventions, including the recent military fiascos in the Middle East and Ukraine— should look closely at what is being proposed to take its place.

The ultimate target for the Trump administration is not the deep state. The target is the laws, regulations, protocols and rules, and the government civil servants who enforce them, which hinder dictatorial control. Compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability are slated to be abolished. Those who believe that the government is designed to serve the common good, rather than the dictates of the ruler, will be forced out. The deep state will be reconstituted to serve the leadership cult. Laws and the rights enshrined in the Constitution will be irrelevant (emphasis added).

Here, my complaint about Chris should center on his use of the future tense, not the past tense. The critiques Hedges lodges against what has happened, and is happening in the United States, are largely correct, in my view, but "will" states a "certainty," not a "possibility." Chris Hedges does not issue a warning, which would come with the conditional tense. Chris says what WILL happen. That's wrong. "Might" (the conditional tense) is as far as anyone can go, or should go.  

Grammar does make a difference, and Hedges fails to understand the most basic thing about the realities in which we live. Whatever is happening, or has happened, can be changed. Whatever now exists can be changed. Whatever "may" happen can be prevented from happening.

That's my complaint about Chris. After diagnosing what is wrong, and all the past and continuing mistakes he calls out, he acts as if human freedom doesn't exist; he acts as if what now exists is "inevitable." The swinging door of history only goes one way, as Hedges presents his analysis. Hedges documents his past books and other publications, which provided good advice, and notes that this good advice was ignored. Who is to blame for that? Not Hedges (of course). The blame falls on everyone else - all those who made the mistakes he warned them about. 

Let me provide an antidote to a defeatism spun out of past and continuing mistakes. Despite everything, despite all that has gone wrong, and is still going wrong, we continue to have the ability to do something different. We always have the ability to change the world.

Let's try. 

Let's not believe that a future prediction, using the future tense, is a statement of inevitability. And let's not buy into the argument that the past tense rules and that "it's all over." 

It's not all over. 

Not until we give up.

 

Friday, April 18, 2025

#108 / Because I Say So

      


Here we go again! Once more with feeling! 

I think I could write a blog posting on this topic every day. Every day, it seems, there is another example of how our current president has profoundly failed to understand what presidents are supposed to do - or, in the alternative, has decided to try to get away with things that he knows are wrong, and that are fundamental violations of what the United States Constitution provides. 

Presidents, by virtue of their election to our nation's highest office, are given significant power and responsibility. They are not, though, elected to "be" the nation, as a "king," for instance, incorporates in himself the entirety of the nation over which he "reigns."

Presidents, under the Constitution, do not "reign." They "execute." They "faithfully execute" the laws enacted by the Congress. That is their main responsibility, and the powers that presidents are given are limited to the powers necessary to do that. If you read many of my blog postings, you will remember that this is not the first time I have made this point.

An article in April 10, 2025, edition of The New York Times has sent me to my computer once again, to type out another mesage on this beloved topic. The news story was titled (hard-copy edition), "Trump Deploys Shortcuts As He Moves to Eliminate Many Federal Regulations." If you click the following link, to read the article online (and if no paywall defeats your efforts), you will find another headline: "Trump’s New Way to Kill Regulations: Because I Say So." Here is an excerpt from the article (emphasis added):

President Trump this week directed 10 federal agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — to implement a novel procedure to scrap a wide array of longstanding energy and environmental regulations. 
He told agencies that oversee everything from gas pipelines to power plants to insert “sunset” provisions that would cause regulations to automatically expire by October 2026. If the agencies wanted to keep a rule, it could only be extended for a maximum of five years at a time. 
Experts say the directive faces enormous legal hurdles. But it was one of three executive orders from Mr. Trump on Wednesday in which he declared that he was pursuing new shortcuts to weaken or eliminate regulations. 
In another order, he directed a rollback of federal rules that limit the water flow in shower heads with a highly unusual legal justification: Because I say so. “Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal,” Mr. Trump’s order said.

Another article, in the same edition of The Times, provided information on books that were removed from the library at the United States Naval Academy, based on a directive from the Secretary of Defense. This article also listed some books that were allowed to remain on the shelves. The books being eliminated reflected, presumably, our current president's operating principle ("because I say so"). Not to keep you in suspense, 381 books were removed from the library, including, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, and Memorializing The Holocaust by Janet Jacobs. Multiple copies of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler are still available for checkout (which, of course, I strongly believe should be available).

These two news items from a week ago have led me to this reiteration of my point about presidential power. The president is asserting powers that he does not, actually, have - but, of course, if we don't stop his abuse of his office, and the assertion of the non-legitimate powers he claims, we are actually giving away our own. 

Foundation of Freedom

Thursday, April 17, 2025

#107 / Where's Franklin?


  

Anyone with kids, and a lot of people without kids, I am betting, have heard that urgent question, many times repeated: "Where's Waldo?"

When I read an April 6, 2025, column in the San Francisco Chronicle, my question was right along those lines, but a little bit different. My question was: "Where's Franklin?" The Chronicle column, by Sara Dant, was titled, "There’s nothing ‘unprecedented’ about Trump’s policies. They gave us the Great Depression a century ago." You may well have to be a Chronicle subscriber actually to read Dant's column, using the link that I have just provided, but you probably get the idea, just from the title of her column, alone. 

Dr. Dant is Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History at Weber State University, located in Ogden, Utah. Dant's work focuses on environmental politics in the United States, "with a particular emphasis on the creation and development of consensus and bipartisanism." As Bob Dylan observed, in a somewhat different context, "I just said, 'good luck.'" The statement I have quoted about Dr. Dant's academic work, which was taken from the Weber State University website, antedated the 2020 election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency. As you can tell from the title on her column, she is not sanguine about what's coming for the United States, as our current president pursues his, "I, alone, can fix it" approach to public policy, which is the antithesis of an approach based on the development of "consensus" and "bipartisanism." 

Jill Lepore, another historian, wrote a column that appeared in The New York Times on April 6th, so I read what both Lepore and Dant had to say on the very same day. Lepore's column was titled, "The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk." Her column suggests that we really do need to find another Roosevelt-like figure, someone who believes in liberal democracy. 

The opposite of that kind of liberal democracy, according to Lepore, is "technocracy," which is not a "new" idea, but a failed past strategy. Let me introduce you to what Lepore has to say, below. by way of an extensive excerpt from her April 6th column in The Times. I think she is persuasive. 

After you read what Lepore says, I bet you'll be looking around, with me, raising this plaintive cry yourself: 

Where's Franklin?

oooOOOooo

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk 
Jill Lepore - Dr. Lepore is a professor of history and law at Harvard and the host of the BBC podcast “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story.” 

Mr. Musk has long presented himself to the world as a futurist. Yet, notwithstanding the gadgets — the rockets and the robots and the Department of Government Efficiency Musketeers, carrying backpacks crammed with laptops, dreaming of replacing federal employees with large language models — few figures in public life are more shackled to the past. 
On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Musk told a roaring, jubilant crowd that the election marked “a fork in the road of human civilization.” He promised to “take DOGE to Mars” and pledged to give Americans reasons to look “forward to the future.” 
In 1932, when civilization stood at another fork in the road, the United States chose liberal democracy, and Franklin Roosevelt, who promised “a new deal for the American people.” In his first 100 days, Mr. Roosevelt. signed 99 executive orders, and Congress passed more than 75 laws, beginning the work of rebuilding the country by establishing a series of government agencies to regulate the economy, provide jobs, aid the poor and construct public works. 
Mr. Musk is attempting to go back to that fork and choose a different path. Much of what he has sought to dismantle, from antipoverty programs to national parks, have their origins in the New Deal. Mr. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration provided 8.5 million Americans with jobs; Mr. Musk has measured his achievement by the number of jobs he has eliminated. 
Four years ago, I made a series for the BBC in which I located the origins of Mr. Musk’s strange sense of destiny in science fiction, some of it a century old. This year, revising the series, I was again struck by how little of what Mr. Musk proposes is new and by how many of his ideas about politics, governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy. 
Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants — indeed, all of government — with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy’s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members. 
Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1. 
Technocracy first gained worldwide attention in 1932 but soon splintered into rival factions. Technocracy Incorporated was founded and led by a former New Yorker named Howard Scott. Across the continent, rival groups of technocrats issued a flurry of tracts, periodicals and pamphlets explaining, for instance, how “life in a technocracy” would be utterly different from life in a democracy: “Popular voting can be largely dispensed with.” 
Technocrats argued that liberal democracy had failed. One Technocracy Incorporated pamphlet explained how the movement “does not subscribe to the basic tenet of the democratic ideal, namely that all men are created free and equal.” In the modern world, only scientists and engineers have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of the economy. Mr. Scott’s army of technocrats would eliminate most government services: “Even our postal system, our highways, our Coast Guard could be made much more efficient.” Overlapping agencies could be shuttered, and “90 percent of the courts could be abolished.” 
Decades ago, in the desperate, darkest moment of the Depression, technocracy seemed, briefly, poised to prevail against democracy. “For a moment in time, it was possible for thoughtful people to believe that America would consciously choose to become a technocracy,” writes William E. Akin, the author of the definitive historical study of the movement, “Technocracy and the American Dream.” In the four months from November 1932 to March 1933, The New York Times published more than 100 stories about the movement. And then the bubble appeared to burst. By summer, Technocrats Magazine and The Technocracy Review had gone out of print. 
There are a few reasons for technocracy’s implosion. Its tenets could not bear scrutiny. Then, too, because technocrats generally did not believe in parties, elections or politics of any kind — “Technocracy has no theory for the assumption of power,” as Mr. Scott put it — they had little means by which to achieve their ends. 
But the chief reason for technocracy’s failure was democracy’s success. Mr. Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4 and immediately began putting the New Deal in place while calming the nation with a series of fireside chats. By May, E.B. White in The New Yorker could write technocracy’s epitaph: “Technocracy had its day this year, and it was characteristic of Americans that they gave it a whirl and then dropped it as they had dropped miniature golf. 
Nevertheless, technocracy endured. Its spectacles grew alarming: Technocrats wore identical gray suits and drove identical gray cars in parades that evoked for concerned observers nothing so much as Italian Fascists. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was a technocracy stalwart. In 1940, when Canada banned Technocracy Incorporated — out of fear that its members were plotting to undermine the government or the war effort — Mr. Haldeman took out an ad in a newspaper, proclaiming technocracy a “national patriotic movement.” 
Weeks later, when he tried to enter the United States for a technocracy speaking tour, he was denied entry at the border, possibly because of a new passport regulation that barred travel into the United States to “an alien whose entry would be contrary to the public safety” (something of an irony, given the current administration’s border policies). In Vancouver, British Columbia, he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to a fine or two months in jail. He later joined the antisemitic Social Credit Party, becoming its national chairman. 
Mr. Haldeman retired from politics in 1949 and soon began thinking about moving to South Africa, which in 1948 announced the policy of apartheid. In 1950 he moved to Pretoria, where he wrote and distributed typewritten conspiratorial tracts. (Most have disappeared, but in 2023 I discovered several in university and private collections.) In May 1960, for instance, he wrote a pamphlet called “The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and Its Menace to South Africa,” a response to the unrest after the Sharpeville massacre. During those protests, Nelson Mandela was among 11,000 people arrested and jailed. Mr. Haldeman suggested the uprising had been staged. 
He furthermore believed the West had been the subject of an “intensive mass mind conditioning” experiment, in which ideas he considered ludicrous, like the equality of races and the immorality of apartheid, were being spread by newspapers, magazines, radio, television and especially university professors. Convinced that the government was riddled with waste, he also proposed a finance committee to combat inefficiency, writing in all caps, “A watchdog financial agency is needed.” 
That Mr. Musk has come to hold so many of the same beliefs about social engineering and economic planning as his grandfather is a testament to his profound lack of political imagination, to the tenacity of technocracy and to the hubris of Silicon Valley (emphasis added).

Do we have any hope of finding an answer to that, "Where's Franklin?" question?

If we want any kind of a helpful answer, I think we are all going to have to take a good look in the mirror. After reading Lepore on the kind of answer that Musk and Trump seem to be prescribing, which Lepore persuasively argues is a "failed" approach, it's pretty clear that those titularly "in charge" of our society and economy don't have the remotest clue about an approach that might actually work. 


Foundation of Freedom

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

#106 / Rule Or Be Ruled



I am not sure exactly what the image above is meant to convey. It headed up an article in The Atlantic titled, "Why Everyone Thinks Their Government Has Failed." To be clear, the article is discussing a phenomenon that is worldwide and general. The "everyone" named is not just "everyone in the United States." We are, though, included!

The subtitle on the article, which is by Moisés Naím, reads this way: "People all over the world—with all kinds of leaders—seem to think their incumbent is the problem." Naím's thesis is that "political instability is inevitable when people’s expectations rise beyond their government’s capacity to meet them." This is not a new idea, he notes, but he then suggests that the fact that most people are now getting their information about government through "social media" makes it particularly difficult for governments to retain the faith and allegiance of the citizens.

I don't really disagree with what Naím is saying, but my own thought is a little bit different. 

Most people, I think (in every country, all around the world), are usually content to be "ruled." By this I mean that most people, most of the time, focus on their own, individual existence, and really only start focusing in on "the government" when their individual circumstances start deteriorating (from their point of view). Most people, in other words, just take whatever exists "for granted." Whatever exists is simply assumed to be "the way it is," and so not too many people are thinking, at least not very much, about how to change the overall realities with which "governments" typically deal. 

Most people are focused on their own lives, and problems, and dreams and hopes. The "collective" reality that exists is something to be "accepted" and "recognized" for whatever it may be. Most people aren't thinking about changing it, or about whether it could or should be changed. This makes most people among the "ruled." 

I am just being what I think is "realistic." Most people don't spend very much time (or any time) thinking about how the collective realities in which they are living can, or should, or must be changed. If they do, even fewer then try to do something about those collective realities.

Of course, that's not true for everyone. Rich people, for instance, tend to think that the realities they confront can be changed, because if you have money, you can, in fact, change your reality a lot easier than those who don't (the vast majority). If your car is a clunker, and you're rich, you can buy a new one. If you come up with the idea that your children should have a better life than you have had, you will make sure they get to college (and a good college, too). Of course, it is not only the "rich" who have such thoughts and ambitions, but it is easier to realize those ambitions when you're rich. The more personal resources you have, the more likely it is that you will not be satisfied to accept whatever exists. You'll want to be among the "rulers," not the "ruled." Even so, even "the rich" generally focus their attention on their individual lives, and don't spend much time thinking about how to change overall conditions - i.e., to be among the "rulers." 

The United States, as a nation, has attempted, since its beginning, to inspire the idea that ordinary citizens can and should expect the government to promote the general health, safety, and well-being of everyone. "Self-government," which most people call "democracy," has inspired the idea that the government should be working for the general advancement of all. Still, even in a nation devoted to "self-government," most people have, traditionally, seen the government as something that is basically to be "accepted," not something that each one of us, individually, ought to be working on, on an ongoing basis. 

The reason that social media may have somewhat changed the "normal" situation, worldwide, is that social media puts individuals in contact with others who are vastly dissatisfied with the state of our collective existence, and have an easy way to let others (whom they don't even know, personally) understand just why they, too, should be outraged and dissatisfied, and therefore why "the government" should be reviled and despised. I am suggesting that the spread of what is sometimes called the "MAGA mentality," through online media, reflects what that Atlantic article is talking about - and I am further suggesting that online media are one of the main reasons that "MAGA" has been such an apparent success.

Of course, IF people are dissatisfied - and there is a lot to be dissatisfied about - the only real response should be for those who are dissatisfied to get involved in "government" themselves, to be among the "rulers," rather than the "ruled." But.... given that most people don't have any experience at all in the actual process of "self-government," which requires a lot of effort and work, the recourse of those who are dissatisfied is to find some person who will promise to make things a whole lot better. In our country, we have a living, breathing, example, our current president, DONALD J. TRUMP. 

I am using that all-caps style in recognition of the political style embodied by Mr. Trump, who assures all of the dissatisfied persons who have been "ruled" (and ruled poorly) that they don't, themselves, have to become "rulers" in the form of any personal engagement in the process of "self-government." You know what our current president says: "I, alone, can fix it," and "I am your RETRIBUTION." 

I think that's where we are today, in a nutshell. If that rings a bell with you (dear reader), then let me tell you this: It is true now, and has always been true, that you will either "rule or be ruled." 

If social media, or your personal circumstances, now convince you that you are being badly ruled, there is no other satisfactory and effective way to deal with the problem than to do what I am always recommending. If you want to be among the "rulers," in our system of "self-government," you will need to get involved in government yourself. 

No one else can do it for you - specifically including the president of the United States. If you don't have any clue on what it might mean for you to become one of the "rulers," instead of one of the "ruled," you might try to hook up with a local "Indivisible" group (one group that is working on the issue; there are many others). Click right here and get engaged!

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

#105 / The Politics Of Sleepwalking

 
  

Above, I have presented you with a picture of United States Senator Chris Murphy. I captured this image from an online interview of Murphy by David Remnick, the Editor of The New Yorker. The interview was titled, "We Are Sleepwalking Into Autocracy." 

If you are a subscriber to The New Yorker, that link, right above, should take you to the interview. If you are not a subscriber, you may well face a paywall problem. It is a good interview, and I hope you can find a way to read it. 

Murphy tells Remnick that he is genuinely afraid that we may not have a fair election in 2026. We shouldn't count on "politics as normal," in other words. Nothing is normal right now. 

I, personally, think that Murphy is right to worry, and I think we need to take very seriously this statement, made by Murphy right near the end of The New Yorker interview: 

I think we are at risk of sleepwalking through this transition. We desperately want to believe that we can play politics as normal because it’s uncomfortable—really uncomfortable—to play politics as not normal. It involves taking really big risks. And, of course, you just want to wake up and believe that you live in a country where people wouldn’t make a conscious choice to move away from democratic norms. But while some people are being hoodwinked into being along for that ride, others are making the conscious choice because our democracy has been so broken for so long.

So, yes, I believe that there is a chance that we miss this moment. We just wake up one day and we are no longer in a democracy, which is why I think we have to start acting more urgently right now.

According to Murphy, it is a time to "wake up," and to take extraordinary action. Again, I agree. 

I doubt, though, that enough people are going to get mobilized because of their generalized support for "democracy." I think more specific demands may be more motivating. We can, of course (and must), agitate and demonstrate, and show ourselves opposed to the kind of outrageous actions that the president and his acolytes are taking. Cutting off humanitarian aid, on the president's whim, with no debate or Congressional action, is a good example. Letting unelected people (like Elon Musk and his "muskrats") get access to our sensitive amd private information, is another. But maybe we need to start organizing around positive demands. Maybe that would be more powerful. 

How about a simple, easily-understood demand that the minimum wage be raised, immediately, by no less than $10.00/hour? How about a demand that that we significantly raise taxes for all those earning over $300,000/year, and particularly for the billionaires? How about a demand that we have Medi-Care for all?

Murphy suggested the first of those suggestions. I have added on. You (and others) can certainly add onto a list of demands that make sense and that would benefit almost every American. What "self-government" really means (what most people call "democracy") is that the government does what the majority of the people want, and what will benefit them, with the government taking action because "we, the people," make it take such action. 

If we are "sleepwalking" our politics (and I think too many of us are), we may well wake up to find out, as Murphy warns us, that we don't have any real politics, anymore!

Foundation of Freedom

Monday, April 14, 2025

#104 / More Important Than Winning?

 


In 2022, Brendan Buck was a Resident Fellow in the Harvard Kennedy School's "Institute of Politics." That's Buck, above. If you click the link to his name, you will be presented with a writeup about Buck on the Kennedy School's website.

In essence, Buck is a political consultant with longterm ties to the Republican Party, and with lots of experience in Congress. On March 20, 2025, Buck authored an opinion column that ran in The New York Times. His column was titled, "Democrats Are Playing With Tea Party Fire." That is the hardcopy version. Online, Buck's column had a different headline: "There’s a Price for Promising What Isn’t Possible in Congress." 

Buck's commentary reflected on the very controversial decision by Senate Democrats to forego a fight in the Senate on the House-adopted "Continuing Resolution" that is allowing the federal government to keep functioning for the rest of the current fiscal year. "Fighting," in this context, would have meant that a minority of Democrats in the Senate would have shut down the federal government. As NBC News described the situation: "Democratic Party hits new polling low, while its voters want to fight Trump harder." Here is another link, taking you to a column on the Democratic Party response to the Continuing Resolution that was published in The Guardian. That column is absolutely in agreement with  the NBC News report. The Guardian column says that the the Democratic Party is "old and out of touch." The Party should have "fought," not "folded." That's what The Guardian column suggests.

Buck's advice is that "fighting" the Republican agenda by shutting down the government would NOT have been a wise move. Reflecting on the experience of the Republicans, when they were in a Congressional minority, Buck provides this short summary:

Too often, for the base and our members, the achievable was unacceptable and the acceptable was unachievable. Fighting became more important than winning (emphasis added).

I was a member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors for twenty-five years. For most of those years, I was part of a three-person "majority" that prioritized environmental protection, growth management, the production of price-restricted affordable housing, and strong support for community-based social service efforts, as delivered by locally-controlled nonprofits. Usually, the things that the majority of which I was a part found "acceptable" were quite "achievable." No problem, in other words!

However, that was not always the case. Sometimes, I found that I didn't have the three votes necessary to accomplish something that I cared about (and that the people who had elected me cared about). What did I do then? 

Here's what I did (or at least tried to do): I "made a deal." At least, I explored whether that was possible. I would make a deal that I did think "acceptable," though it was not what I really wanted. In other words, when what was achievable was not what I thought best, I tried to make the most progress I could, given the political realities, and given the votes that were actually available. However, please do note this, I would always vote "NO" on anything that I found truly "unacceptable." 

In politics (particularly, I think, on the national level), some people (in both parties) believe that "fighting" is a virtue in and of itself. It shows "what side you're on," and what you really care about, and that is seen as the most important thing. There is a lot of truth in that perspective. The people who put an elected official in office, and who care about specific issues, want their representative to "fight for them." And that is what should happen, too! 

However, "fighting" is not an end in itself. "Fighting" for something that you can't get (when you know you can't get it) can be a kind of "virtue signaling." In other words, it can be a kind of search for "cheap grace," politically speaking. The way to differentiate your position from the position of those who are on a "different side," is to state what you would find acceptable, and try to get the votes for that. If you can't get the votes for what you actually want, and you can't get the votes for something that you would find "acceptable," then you need to vote "NO" on what is unacceptable. 

If something is truly "unacceptable," it is absolutely and vitally important to do that - to vote "NO."

Both "sides" of our ever-deepening political divide sometimes act as though politics should be an activity in which each side shows what it wants, and denounces what the other "side" wants, and essentially acts like political decision-making is always an "all or nothing" proposition. "Fighting" for what is right - for what your "side' thinks is right - is the actual object. 

That's not the way to do it - at least not the way I see it. There are a lot of different opinions about what is important, and "acceptable," and "unacceptable," and our current political situation dramatizes the differences. It dramatizes the differences between us. It "polarizes" us, to use an ever more servicable description of how we are practicing politics and self-government today. 

Because there is such a range of opinion in our country, both "sides" need to be clear about what they want to accomplish, and what they find "acceptable." They need to be clear about what they find "unacceptable," too. Both sides need to give up on "winning," if that word is taken to mean, "I get what I want, and you get nothing." The focus should be on what can we agree on, with the understanding that we'll come back some other day to try to decide what to do in the areas in which there is no agreement. 

Is there something more important than "winning"? Yes!

What is more important than "winning" is the kind of politics I just described. That's a lot more important than "fighting," as a way to demonstrate your virtue, and to make clear the lack of virtue of those with whom you disagree. 

Foundation of Freedom