#212 / Existence

I am now done with Existence (the sci-fi novel by David Brin, not the state of being alive, let me add). The book is mainly about what happens when Earth makes contact with representatives from other civilizations, and with other life forms. 

As the novel has it, life is, or has been, found virtually everywhere within the cosmos, though it is in danger everywhere. Other civilizations, from beyond our solar system, have been waiting for millions of years to communicate with humans. Near the end of the book, humans have discovered that other life forms are nearby, hiding out in the asteroid belt. One of the characters is trying to convince these life forms to "show themselves" and to communicate: 

If you've monitored our TV, radio, and Internet - and the reason you haven't answered is that you see us as competitors, please reconsider. 

In our long, slow struggle toward decent civilization, humans have slowly learned that competition and cooperation aren't inherent opposites, but twins, both in nature and advanced societies. 

Under terms that are fair, and with goodwill, even those who begin suspicious of each other can discover ways to interact toward mutual benefit. Use the Web to look up the "positive-sum game" where "win-win" solutions bring success to all sides.

Surely there are wqys that humanity - and other Earth species - can join the cosmos without injuring your legitimate aims. Remember, most stable species and cultures seem to benefit from a little competition, now and then! So please answer. Let's talk about it!

This is pretty good advice for those cosmic visitors, but why do I get the feeling that Brin is actually talking more to humans on Earth, right now, than to a gang of postulated visitors from outer space?

Because what is being said here is good advice for humans, too. If we are enjoying existence (not the novel, but the state of being alive on this wonderful planet), we had better pay attention.

Image Credit:

https://www.geekwire.com/2015/inspired-by-microsoft-research-projects-top-sci-fi-writers-share-future-visions-in-new-e-book/

#211 / Art Of The Deal

On July 4th, NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke with David Honig, who teaches negotiations at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law. The topic for their discussion? How President Trump's tendency to use a "distributive bargaining" negotiation technique could end up being counterproductive, as the United States seeks to advance its interests in the international arena. 

You can read a transcript of the discussion by clicking this link. Here is the essence of Honig's critique:

HONIG: Distributive bargaining is what some people will call win-lose bargaining, when the parties don't have any mutual interests at all. So what they're looking for is what we call in negotiations value taking. There's only one amount of pie. And once I get some, and the other side gets some, whoever gets the most wins.

CHANG: So let's talk about ... the international trade arena. What are the limits specifically that distributive bargaining bumps up against? 

HONIG: It bumps up against a few limits. The first has to do with ongoing relationships... The second and, I think, more important has to do with complexity and what we call value adding. So when you're value taking, there's a limited pie. You want as much as you can. When you're value adding, you're looking at how you can create value for the other side. The other side can create value for you. And, therefore, ultimately, you walk away with a deal that you both want.

CHANG: Yeah. You call this integrative bargaining. This is the other bargaining style.

The idea behind "integrative bargaining," of course, is that everyone should benefit when a deal is made. Honig suggests that the "distributive bargaining" approach to negotiation is particularly inapposite when applied to politics, and I agree. 

It is easy to demonize the "let's make a deal" approach to politics (Example: my district gets a new highway bridge, and yours gets a homeless shelter). This is particularly true if every question is seen as a question of principle! We actually live, of course, both domestically and internationally, in a political community of diverse, divided, and independent entities with different problems and ambitions. Doesn't this description ring true not only in the international context but also in the case of our fifty states, as they meet in Congress assembled?

The "integrative bargaining" system, not without its problems, has actually worked pretty well in Congress over the past 200+ years. It has been a better approach, it seems to me, than the "take no prisoners" approaches now prevalent, with Mr. Trump not being the only advocate or practitioner of that system. The president is not the only one who says, "if you win, I lose." 

Let's not demonize those who have different objectives and worldviews. Let's pursue that "integrative approach" at home and abroad.

Let's make a deal!

Image Credit:

Corran Addison, Facebook - July 13, 2018 / https://twitter.com/bubbagump324

#210 / The Young And Naive Go Door To Door

That is Rose Strauss in the picture above. She is an eighteen-year-old climate activist who is an environmental science major at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

On July 18, 2018, Strauss confronted Scott Wagner, a Republican candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania. Here is a link to a YouTube recording of the encounter. The actual video is available below. 

The video of Strauss confronting Wagner (very politely, let me say) quickly "went viral," nationally. If you watch, you will see Wagner calling Strauss "young and naive" for asking whether the $200,000 in campaign contributions that Wagner has received from fossil fuel companies has influenced his views on climate change. Wagner has said that he actually does believe that the Earth is warming, but that "body heat" is a major reason. Wagner lets the oil companies off the hook!

In the July 26, 2018, edition of The New York Times, Dan Levin interviewed Strauss. Levin is a foreign correspondent for The Times who reports on climate change issues. Levin was particularly interested in how Strauss might use her recently-acquired fame to advance the issue she cares about so deeply. 

Strauss' answer was that she (and lots of other motivated young people) would go "door to door" this summer, opening a dialogue. 

I was particularly happy about Strauss' answer to Levin's question, since "door to door" is where real people who care about a political issue will meet real people who may well never have thought about it. Viral video is great, but "real people" are the people who can make "real change."

Going door to door is also a good way to discover the truth of what I said in my blog posting yesterday: "good people do exist."

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/25/us/young-and-naive-rose-strauss.html

#209 / "GOOD PEOPLE DO EXIST!!"

On July 13, 2018, The Wall Street Journal published a community advisory titled as follows: "You Accidentally Sent $149 to a Stranger on Venmo? Good Luck Getting It Back." 

Venmo is a money transfer program, founded in 2009. It is part of the PayPal empire, and it is supposed to be quite convenient.

I have never used Venmo, nor have I ever used Zelle, another money transfer program that can help you buy cupcakes offered at a sidewalk stand presided over by an ethnically diverse set of extremely appealing young entrepreneurs (I am citing to a television advertisement, sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank). If you are out for a jog and don't have your wallet, don't worry!  Zelle can let you make that purchase. Naturally, Zelle assumes that you'll have your phone!

The Wall Street Journal article is pretty short, and it is to the point. If you have ever sent an email to the wrong person because "autocorrect" made you do it, or because you simply selected the wrong person in the first place, mistaking one "Denise," "Dennis," or "Jackie" for the one with whom you really meant to communicate, then you will sympathize with the Venmo user who, when making a similar mistake, manages to send $149 to someone that he or she doesn't know at all. 

In sum, as The Wall Street Journal advises, if you make this kind of a mistake with Venmo, good luck getting your money back.

I actually didn't need The Wall Street Journal to provide me with this advice. One reason I never use Venmo or Zelle is that I figured this out all by myself, without ever having had to experience this problem firsthand. My reason for mentioning the article is not that I think this advice is so important. Rather, I liked one of the stories discussed in the article, which had a happy ending. I think the reason for the happy ending is worth noting:

Emily Dunn, a student at San Jose State University in California sent about $45 to a friend named Riley along with a humorous message. He was confused when she later asked if he thought her message was funny. 

She had mixed up his last name, sending the money to the wrong Riley. 

Panicked, Ms. Dunn sent Riley-the-stranger a payment request. 

After several days brought no response, she figured it was hopeless. Finally, on day four, Ms. Dunn got a transfer notification. Stranger Riley had returned the money. 

“GOOD PEOPLE DO EXIST!!” Ms. Dunn gushed on Twitter.

Well, as the title of this blog posting proclaims, quoting Emily Dunn, I also contend that "GOOD PEOPLE DO EXIST!!" In fact, it is my belief that if any one of us went canvassing door to door, in a neighborhood located in even the "reddest" of the "Red States," that we would find a lot of "good people." They might not be people who would share each and every one of our own political perspectives, but they would be decent people, and the kind of people we would be happy to have living in our own neighborhoods.

What was exceptional in Emily Dunn's experience was that human decency overcame the radical detachment that is fostered by a society that is more and more in touch not directly, person to person, but through media that isolate us as individuals. When you make a mistake with a Venmo user, whom you don't know, you have no real connection with that person at all. No surprise if they treat your Venmo transfer as "found money" for them.

As Emily Dunn's story illustrates, there are exceptions, but what really helps people decide to be decent to others is some actual human contact.

If there is any hope for our democracy, we are going to need lots more person-to-person contact with people whom we don't know. When that kind of direct, human contact is involved, I think we will find that "GOOD PEOPLE DO EXIST!!"

Lots of them!

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-accidentally-venmoed-149-to-a-stranger-good-luck-getting-it-back-1531411133

#208 / Before I Go To Sleep

Back in June, I complained about an email I received from Kristen Gillibrand. Gillibrand is pictured above. She represents the State of New York in the United States Senate. Click the link to see my earlier blog posting, objecting to an email communication that I judged to be manipulative and insincere. It turns out that I am not the only one getting emails from Gillibrand that profess a false familiarity, accompanied by an appeal for money. 

Ben Mathis-Lilley, who blogs the news for Slate, has made a similar complaint. In Ben's case (and Gillibrand did address him using his first name), the Senator told Ben:

When I go to sleep at night or gather my team to talk about our priorities, I think about you.

Ben didn't buy this claim, any more than I bought Gillibrand's statement that she was "inspired by my courage, resilience and persistence." I have all those qualities in spades, of course (at least in my own mind), but since Gillibrand doesn't know me from Adam, I can't really credit her statement that she has been "inspired" by how I have demonstrated these qualities.

As The New York Times noted in a recent article, Gillibrand is tilting her economic positions to the "left," towards "populism," as she contemplates a campaign for the presidency in 2020. In terms of my own political positions, that sounds like a change for the better. However, as The Times article notes, there are those who worry that Gillibrand's statements are evidencing the "what do I need to do to get elected syndrome," without actually disclosing what she truly believes, or what she would do if elected.

In all fairness to Gillibrand, lots of politicians are taking the "false familiarity" path to money raising. This blog posting is a second plea to our politicians not to head down that road.

Now, more than ever, we need politicians who are honest, and who will actually tell you the truth. Sending out fund-raising appeals premised on the idea that the recipients will be flattered by false statements (statements that are intended to make them feel good), doesn't bode well for dislodging the guy we have in the White House now.

He's pretty good at false statements. 

One of the best!

POSTSCRIPT:

Immediately after having published this blog posting, highlighting a campaign email from Kristen Gillibrand, I received an email from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialist candidate who just won a Democratic Party primary against a powerful "conventional" Democrat, in New York's 14th Congressional District. 

I am sorry to have to report that this heroine of grassroots politics has quickly succumbed to the same kind of political consultants who have been providing advice to Democratic Party politicians like Gillibrand. 

Addressing me as "Gary" (we have never met and I have never had any contact with her at all), Ocasio-Cortez began her money pitch this way: "Gary .... let me start by telling you how impressed I am with you ..." 

Alexandria. Let me start by telling you how unimpressed I am with this fake familiarity. While we have never met, I at least do know something about you, having read about you and your recent victory in New York City. From what I know, I am impressed with YOU, but I am not impressed with this tactic. 

Please! You can do better! You could write a money pitch that does not present itself in a fundamentally dishonest way, appealing to me with false flattery. I would like politicians whose political positions I support to be honest (in all things).

Image Credit:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/kirsten-gillibrand-fundraising-email-i-think-about-you-before-i-go-to-sleep.html

#207 / Cash Me Outside

Some will remember Danielle Bregoli (a recent photo is presented above). Danielle is the young girl who, in an earlier incarnation, fought with her mother, and cursed her mother, on the Dr. Phil show. You can click the link for a YouTube video of the entire incident. At the end of the interview with Dr. Phil, thirteen-year-old Bregoli challenged the "hoes" in the audience to "Cash me outside. How 'bout dah?" A more recent video shows that she is still getting herself off by fighting in the street. 

I learned from an article in the Sunday, July 8, 2018, edition of The New York Times Magazine that Bregoli has now been reimagined (with a lot of help from a couple of publicists) as "Bhad Bhabie." That is supposed to be pronounced, "Bad Baby," but "Bad Barbie" would probably convey the same idea. Bregoli is now a rap musician. The newest incarnation is pictured above.

What struck me forcibly, as I read about "Bhad Bhabie," is the congruence of her emergence as popular public figure with the emergence of our popular and "beloved" President, Donald J. Trump. Both of them are foul-mouthed, aggressive, anti-intellectual and belligerent bullies. And both are aiming to pull in the big bucks.

Culture is contagious.
Culture is catching.
Like to watch you move, girl.
You really are so fetching!

You go low (Mr. President)? We go lower!

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/magazine/the-big-business-of-becoming-bhad-bhabie.html

#206 / We Go High

On July 4, 2018, Patricia Okoumou was arrested as she climbed the Statue of Liberty. She has pleaded "not guilty" to charges against her for trespassing, interference with government agency functions, and disorderly conduct. In commenting on her actions, Okoumou cited Michelle Obama as her inspiration: "Michelle Obama ... said when they go low, we go high. And I went as high as I could.”

Writing in Amor Mundi, the Center's weekly blog, Roger Berkowitz and Samantha Hill, the Director and Assistant Director, respectively, of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, commented on Okoumou's actions, citing what Hannah Arendt had to say about civil disobedience: 

In Hannah Arendt's essay "Citizenship and Civil Disobedience" she argues that civil disobedience emerges when our political institutions fail and lose their legitimacy. The nature of our political institutions requires continuing citizen participation in matters of public interest. Representative government can only retain its authority insofar as citizens have a meaningful way to engage the political institutions that give form to daily life. Arendt argues that representative government itself is in crisis today because all institutions that permitted citizen participation have been eroded by "bureaucratization and the two parties' tendency to represent nobody except the party machines." Civil disobedience emerges amongst the people "when established institutions of a country fail to function properly and its authority loses its power."

I can't imagine that there is much disagreement about a claim that "representative government is in crisis today." I also think that most would agree that our government has been degraded by "bureaucratization and the two parties' tendency to represent nobody except the party machines."

It is one thing to understand this. It is another thing to change the conditions that have undermined democratic and representative self-government. Acts of individual civil disobedience can dramatize our dilemma. Organized civil disobedience, which is something other than protest marches in the streets, is going to be needed, if we are to restructure the realities that we can all so plainly see have brought our nation to the danger point. 

We are all going to need to go quite a bit higher!

Image Credit:

Hannah Arendt Center, Amor Mundi, July 08, 2018

#205 / Dilemmas Of The Left

The New York Times says, "There Is a Revolution on the Left. Democrats Are Bracing." The Times' story is focused on what is happening in Michigan, where a progessive Muslim candidate is seeking the Democratic Party nomination for governor. The primary election in Michaigan is scheduled for August 7, 2018. 

In a story that appeared on Sunday, July 22, 2018, NBC says that "Democrats" are doing more than "bracing." According to NBC, moderate Democrats are holding secret meetings to derail any effort to move the Democratic Party to the left. 

Progressives, says The Times, are feeling empowered. More moderate Democratic Party leaders are feeling scared. They seem to think that if the Democratic Party goes too far to the left, the Democrats will lose to the Republicans. Or, reading between the lines of the NBC report, maybe those so-called "moderate" Democrats who bemoan any "leftward" tilt are really on the side of the rich and famous, and their allegience is there, not with the ordinary working men and women who are being savaged by our economy.

The following excerpt from The Times' article gives you a feeling for what is at stake: 

DETROIT — For Rachel Conner, the 2018 election season has been a moment of revelation. 

A 27-year-old social worker, Ms. Conner voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries, spurning the more liberal Bernie Sanders, whom many of her peers backed. But Ms. Conner changed course in this year’s campaign for governor, after concluding that Democrats could only win with more daring messages on issues like public health and immigration. 

And so on a recent Wednesday, she enlisted two other young women to volunteer for Abdul El-Sayed, a 33-year-old advocate of single-payer health care running an uphill race in Michigan to become the country’s first Muslim governor. 

“They need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want,” Ms. Conner said of Democratic leaders. “There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down and saying, 'That wouldn’t really work.'" 

.... Mark Brewer, a former longtime chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said “progressive energy” was rippling across the state. But Mr. Brewer, who backs Gretchen Whitmer, a former State Senate leader and the Democratic front-runner for governor, said Michigan Democrats were an ideologically diverse bunch and the party could not expect to win simply by running far to the left.

Similar issues are arising in Britain, where Jeremy Corbyn, the Bernie Sanders-like leader of the Labour Party, is trying to take his party into a majority position in Parliment. The complaint from the more moderate members of the Labour Party is that Corbyn and his policies are just too radical, and that Labour can't prevail if the party doesn't adopt a set of more moderate positions. 

Writing in Counterpunch, Louis Proyect comes at the issue from the opposite side. He outlines what he calls "the dilemmas of the left," and he thinks the problem is that "the left" isn't nearly radical or progressive enough:

The left internationally has been stuck on the horns of a dilemma for quite some time now. When radicals take state power but fail to abolish private property, internal contradictions eventually catch up with the government and dash the hopes initially placed in it—Syriza in Greece and Chavista Venezuela being prime examples. With Cuba and North Korea as relics of the “communist” past, there are few on the left that consider them as models in the way that large parts once did fifty years ago, even more so when both hold-outs are now moving rapidly toward a Chinese-style economy. Just this week, there was news that Cuba will now recognize private property under a new constitution. Despite such discouraging tendencies, radicalism persists mostly as a result of the assaults on living standards the capitalist system imposes.

Since Proyect bills himself as an "Unrepentant Marxist," it probably isn't unexpected that he would think that any political agenda that doesn't seek to abolish private property is just not up to snuff. I guess his advice to the left, in both Britain and the United States, is simply to forget about trying to win public office if you don't have a truly progressive agenda.

I like to think of myself as "progressive," but I have never thought that getting rid of private property should be a political objective. I totally repudiate that idea, and think, in fact, that the idea of abolishing private property is very "un-American." I am pretty certain that an overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way, and let me include Bernie Sanders is the list of people whom I do not think want to eliminate private property.

The Declaration of Independence is our nation's statement of "first principles." It says, and I believe it, that we all have certain unalienable rights, and that among these are the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." I am quite aware that the "pursuit of happiness" part of this formula is an American innovation, and that the initial phrasing, which I believe was inspired by John Locke, was "life, liberty, and property."

I am not of the opinion that Thomas Jefferson's revision of the earlier formulation was intended to convey the thought that a right to private property was not to be considered as one of our unalienable rights, and a review of the Constitution, in fact, which was adopted as a way to constitute a government that could actually achieve the promises outlined in the Declaration, makes clear that our governmental system is absolutely committed to protecting the right to individual private property.

So, I am not seeing the "dilemmas of the left" quite the way the article in Counterpunch sees them. Our American system of government is premised on the idea that our elected officials, who actually become the government once elected, should do what the people who elected them want. Every election is supposed to be a contest between political parties that represent groups of people with different political objectives, and different ideas of what the government should do. The group with the most votes wins. That is the way it is supposed to work, at least. The Democratic Party's only dilemma, as far as I can tell, revolves around the following question. Which side are you on? Do we, as Democrats, want to represent people who have lots of money and power, or do we want to represent everyone else?

Working to achieve a particular public policy result is what a healthy politics is all about. Turning politics into an exercise in which the main objective is "winning," instead of advancing a particular set of policy goals, is a corruption of politics that has gotten us to where we are now. Most people don't vote at all, because who wins the contest doesn't make any difference. Unless the party that wins is going to do what the people who elected it want, why bother to vote?

That's the dilemma for the Democratic Party. It is pretty simple. Which side are you on?

Image Credit:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/11/bernie-sanders-jeremy-corbyn-labour-for-the-many

#204 / A First Run For Elective Office

Let's hear it for Eric Holder, pictured above. He is thinking about running for President. You can read stories about this in The Hill, The Root, and The New Hampshire Journal. 

Holder, as we probably all remember, is the former Attorney General of the United States of America. He now works for Covington & Burling, an international law firm with offices in Washington, D.C.

Covington & Burling represents the rich and the powerful, particularly as they lobby for favors from the United States Government. I would not be surprised to learn that the law firm's clients include many of those bankers and financial types whose irresponsible practices led to the 2008 financial meltdown that stole billions of dollars from ordinary working men and women. You remember them, right? They're the people that Eric Holder, as Attorney General, did NOT try to prosecute. 

Early reactions to the Holder, "I'm thinking about running for President" trial balloon will start coming in soon. As everyone ponders the idea of Holder's possible candidacy, I would like to suggest one thing in Holder's background that should get some attention, and that might not otherwise come to mind.

Holder, thinking about running for the highest office in the land, has never held elective office as a public official directly responsible to voters. He has been responsible, instead, to private clients, particularly the rich and powerful kind. Of course, our current president didn't have any kind of previous experience as an elected official, either, which might actually be relevant as we think about who should come next.

Why should we care about past electoral experience?

Well, if we actually believe that our elected representatives should be directly responsible to the people who elect them (and I actually do believe that), then it would be good to consider electing people who have some practice in being subject to voter direction. I think it's a plus for candidates really to understand that principle because they have personally experienced what it means to be elected by, and to be responsible to, the voters.

One of the reasons I really liked Bernie Sanders, as a candidate for president in 2016, is that his personal history in political life began with running for, and being elected to, the office of Mayor in a small American city. He worked his way up from local government to the United States Senate. In each position he held on the way up, Sanders had to get directly elected by the people. There are some important lessons that come from that kind of experience.

The article previously cited, from The Root, lists ten people whom The Root believes are top candidates, on the Democratic side, for the 2020 presidential nomination. Only one of them has no previous experience in electoral politics: Eric Holder.

It is important that talented and committed people contemplate, and then undertake, the difficult assignment of running for public office, and then serving in public office. Politics, today, seems so dirty and corrupt that good people hesitate to become candidates. That is not good.

Good people should run for political office, and that includes Eric Holder and many others.

However....

My advice for candidates (but especially for the voters) is that candidates for high office should get some experience in a lesser elective office first. In other words, potential candidates should aim high, but get some experience before going for the gold ring. Try starting at the bottom, or down a few rungs, before you run for president!

I still like that Mayor to President model, too!

Image Credit:

https://www.theroot.com/eric-holder-for-president-obamas-former-attorney-gener-1827750203

#203 / The Front Door To American Power

That is Maria Butina peeking in from the right. She is, for those not following the national news, a Russian. She has been accused of being a Russian spy, as well as a woman willing to use sex to advance her nefarious plans. She also has a close relationship with the National Rifle Association. 

Butina is now being held in a jail in the United States. She says she was just a student (she recently got a Masters from American University) who happens to like guns a lot. To get an idea about the gun thing, consult the picture at the bottom, or click this link. Fact is, a picture of Butina with a gun also figures prominently in the article to which I link in the very first line of this blog posting. Click that link, too, to solidify your understanding that Butina really does like guns.

On July 18, 2018, The New York Times ran an article titled, "What Was Maria Butina Doing at the National Prayer Breakfast?" Maybe The Times hasn't been aware that those who like guns a lot also like to hang around with the religious set. I am sort of joking. According to The Times' article, which quotes a professor at Dartmouth, the National Prayer Breakfast is a "backdoor to American power." Because of that fact, The Times implies that the National Prayer Breakfast is exactly where we would expect a gun-loving Russian spy to show up.

I actually don't want to talk about Butina all that much. The references to her are really a digression, and have very little to do with the point I want to make. I just couldn't pass up an opportunity to feature a sexy, gun-loving, religious, Russian redhead in one of my daily commentaries, which are usually so abstract, theoretical, and/or pedestrian.

Enough about Butina! (But click this link for even more - and note the gun!).

My comment today is about the statement that the National Prayer Breakfast is a "backdoor to American power." The Times and the Dartmouth professor make this statement because a lot of entitled, rich, and well-positioned people in American society attend the National Prayer Breakfast. Many of us think that power resides with people like that. Well, that's true, of course, Members of Congress and the lobbyists who throng where elected officials gather (and the National Prayer Breakfast certainly qualifies) do wield significant economic, social, and political power. 

Here is my caution. I think it is important for ordinary Americans not to fool themselves into thinking that the best way to access political power is to find some way (sex might do it!) to cozy up to the kind of people who attend events like the National Prayer Breakfast. Going after power that way, in fact, is definitely trying to access power through the backdoor. 

In our nation, power ultimately resides with the people. That means you and me. The best way to access that power is to remember, first, that you have it yourself, and then, second, to organize with others to mobilize and use your own power to advance the causes in which you believe.

That is how to get to power through the front door.

Image Credit:

(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/opinion/maria-butina-putin-infiltration.html
(2) - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/nra-maria-butina-spying-charges-trump-campaign/

#202 / Just Spell My Name Right

Pictured is "Big Tim" Sullivan, a New York City, Tammany Hall politician. Here is a brief biography from Wikipedia: 

Timothy Daniel Sullivan (July 23, 1862 – August 31, 1913) was a New York politician who controlled Manhattan's Bowery and Lower East Side districts as a prominent leader within Tammany Hall. He was euphemistically known as "Dry Dollar," as the "Big Feller," and, later, as "Big Tim" (because of his physical stature). He amassed a large fortune as a businessman running vaudeville and legitimate theaters, as well as nickelodeons, race tracks and athletic clubs. Sullivan in 1911 pushed through the legislature the Sullivan Act, an early gun control measure. He was a strong supporter of organized labor and women's suffrage. The newspapers depicted Big Tim as the spider in the center of the web, overstating his criminal activities and his control over gambling in the city. Welch says that, "assigning the role of vice lord to Sullivan gave Tammany's enemies a weapon to be wielded in every municipal election between 1886 and 1912.

Sullivan may also have been the person who first proclaimed, "I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right." However, this attribution to Sullivan is not really clear. The honor might go, instead, to P.T. Barnum. Click on this link to see a discussion about who said it first.

If you are interested enough in "Big Tim," you can click right here to find out more about the "gun control" legislation that Sullivan authored. According to the account that accompanied the picture featured at the top of this blog posting, the famous "Sullivan Act" was designed to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, while preserving the ability of gangs and mobsters to maintain their guns, all the better to terrorize the citizenry. 

I haven't done any real research on that topic, and am not at all sure that the claim just referred to is accurate. Wikipedia downrates claims that Sullivan was mobbed up, and pretty much identifies Sullivan as a progressive hero, advocate for the "little guy," backing women's suffrage and organized labor.  

I ran across Sullivan's name because of my interest in that well-known quote. These words about politics and publicity are the real subject of today's blog post: 

I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.

Having been an elected official myself, and one who was never supported by my hometown newspaper, and who thus received a lot of "negative publicity," I can verify that there is some truth in this observation. Which brings me to our current president, Donald J. Trump. 

I agree with Patrik Müller, a Swiss journalist. Müller points out, in a column in the June 19, 2018, Wall Street Journal, that Trump is glorying in, and profiting by, all the negative publicity he is receiving. Müller's article is titled, "The Press's Cult of Trump," and it is his observation that the press's obsession with our president's every utterance or action is helping to elevate the president's power and significance, and thus the president's ability to assert a political dominance that is in no way justified by any reality of his person or his politics.

Maybe Barnum, not Sullivan, really was the first person who first pointed out that even "bad" publicity is "good" publicity. Barnum has always been associated with the saying, "there's a sucker born every minute," and while the attribution of that saying is also contested, our president doesn't have to know where these observations came from to seize upon them as helpful guides to his political conduct. 

President Trump's ferocious obsession with the media and his willingness to do anything to get his name before the public indicate that he has learned these lessons well, no matter who first pointed out these political truths.

Without trying to discover the origins of this advice, maybe we can finally realize the profound significance of the observation that for a politician and public figure even "bad" publicity is often "good." 

Feed a cold, but starve a fever. That's another well-known advisory. Isn't that a pretty good prescription about how we should treat "Big Don" Trump, as he appeals for our attention? 

Image Credit:

https://retropundit.wordpress.com/1913/01/11/insane-big-tim-sullivan/

#201 / Cities = Civilization

Biological life is one thing. "Human" life is something more. Human beings, uniquely, create the world in which they most immediately live. We do not live in any kind of unmediated relationship with "nature." In fact, we live in structures, and communities, and our "civilization," as a human accomplishment, requires the creation and occupation of cities. 

In an article published in Foreign Policy on July 3, 2018, the magazine warns us that the pandemic of contemporary war is now, more and more, a war fought inside cities: 

Most of the large-scale conflicts of the 20th century were predominantly rural, with urban battles such as Stalingrad being the exception rather than the rule. Mao Zedong called on the guerrilla to move among the people like the fish in the sea, thinking of China’s rural peasantry. But today, nonstate armed groups — such as rebel groups and sectarian militias — more easily find ways to blend in with the population, raise more funds, and hinder government crackdowns in cities.

The cities most involved in contemporary war (like Mosul, pictured above) are destroyed. This is a loss that cannot easily be mitigated. As Foreign Policy so politely puts it:  

Governments and their militaries should be aware of the urgency of rehabilitating urban services and, when possible, leave them intact. The ICRC has advised warring parties, for instance, to avoid the use of explosive weapons in densely inhabited areas and to steer away from infrastructure that will be critical for civilian populations. There are strategic reasons for this, alongside humanitarian ones: The long-term instability and underdevelopment that follows armed conflict can fuel local tensions and increase the risk of relapsing into conflict. As cities expand across the developing world, preventing and de-escalating protracted urban conflict is one of the most critical strategic and humanitarian challenges of our time.

I say that these observations are phrased "politely" because I find the subliminal message, above, to be an acceptance that we will, in fact, continue to do to cities what the picture shows that we have done to Mosul. Sure, it would be "better" if cities were not destroyed. That should be avoided "if possible."  That is what the article seems to say.

Well, the urgency is far greater than that. When we allow war to destroy cities, we are "ending the world" for all those who lived there. We are destroying civilization at its root. 

It is an illusion to think that this is not our problem, we whose cities have not yet been destroyed. 

Putting an end to civilization, anywhere, is a peril to us all.

Image Credit:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4682490/How-Mosul-transformed-ISIS-occupation.html

#200 / The Purple Army

In a New Yorker article titled "No More Secrets" (in the hard copy version), Adrian Chen documents the life of "Ice Poseidon," who makes a living as a live streamer. Ice Poseidon's real name is Paul Denino. Chen's article, sailing under the rubric, "Annals of Technology," provides a somewhat sympathetic view of a person whom others call "one of the worst people online."

I have not explored the world of the live streamers (even after reading the Adrian Chen article). I think I might have to sample this online ecosysystem, however, and not only to provide me with examples for the class I teach on "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom." Hundreds of thousands of people follow Denino online, in real time. His followers have formed a "Purple Army."

Could the techniques described by Chen, employed by Denino, be turned to some sort of positive, political purpose? That seems to me to be an intriguing possibility. 

Denino builds his following by being outrageous (sexist, racist, and crude). The article that calls him "one of the worst people online" provides examples. As I say, the Chen article is a bit more generous and forgiving, though not uncritical. 

We already have lots of opportunities to witness a politics that is sexist, racist, and crude. I think you know who I am talking about!

Maybe there's another way, though, to build the right kind of "army," by using some of these live streaming approaches. I think it's worth thinking about!

Image Credit:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/ice-poseidons-lucrative-stressful-life-as-a-live-streamer

#199 / Zinn Talks Trains

Howard Zinn, pictured, was an American historian, playwright, and activist. Among other things, he is the author of A People's History of the United States. 

Thanks to Jim Weller, who is a resident of Santa Cruz, California and a community minister with Peace United Church of Christ, I am now armed with a Howard Zinn quote that I had never heard before. Writing about rent control, Weller quotes Zinn as follows: 

You can’t be neutral on a moving train.

By this, Weller says, Zinn means that "if you are on the train, you’re going where the train goes, like it or not, unless you can somehow stop the train, and then you’ll still be on it wherever it stops."

Looked at in one way, this observation is profoundly discouraging. We are, indeed, all "on the train," and the train seems to be heading straight to Hell. This would be a fair evaluation of the state of politics, social solidarity, and environmental and economic policy in the United States today. 

I don't remember Zinn's writings, including that People's History, as suggesting that we are doomed and that we must inevitably go where the "train" of history seems to be taking us. 

I seem to recall that Zinn suggested that we could stop the train. And if we found ourselves in a place we didn't like we could then redirect our travels, towards the place we really want to go.

You can't be "neutral" on a moving train. You are going where it goes. That is definitely the truth.  Unless we do something about it, that train is going to continue on down the tracks in the direction it is going now. 

Zinn's "train talk," though, is just the "beginning of wisdom." It is not "the end of the story."

Don't you want to head in a different direction?

Let's get together and stop that train! That's the first step...

Image Credit:

https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/howard-zinn

#198 / Aztec Ethics

"Life on the slippery Earth," an article in Aeon, the online magazine, outlines the difference between "Aztec ethics" and the ethics we have learned from Plato and Aristotle:

While Plato and Aristotle were concerned with character-centred virtue ethics, the Aztec approach is perhaps better described as socially-centred virtue ethics. If the Aztecs were right, then "Western" philosophers have been too focused on individuals, too reliant on assessments of character, and too optimistic about the individual’s ability to correct her own vices. Instead, according to the Aztecs, we should look around to our family and friends, as well as our ordinary rituals or routines, if we hope to lead a better, more worthwhile existence (emphasis added).

The article is worth reading. What it says, above, seems right to me. I'm with the Aztecs!

Image Credit:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/321343

#197 / Other People

According to Sartre, "Hell is other people." At least, that is what Sartre had one of his characters assert in his existentialist play, No Exit. 

The-Philosophy.com website tries to explain (or explain away) this quote. 

Kirk Woodward, quoted in a blog called Rick On Theatre, calls the "Hell is other people" statement "The Most Famous Thing Jean-Paul Sartre Never Said."

Here is what I think. I think that other people (all of them) are what make this life so wonderful, and make our lives worth living. See below, as anecdotal evidence: a picture by the incomparable Shmuel Thaler, a photographer for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, my hometown newspaper.

The photograph shows people celebrating in the streets of Paris, on Bastille Day, July 14, 2018. 

Aren't we lovely?

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people

(2) - https://www.facebook.com/shmuel.thaler/posts/10215875125647680

#196 / I Am Going With Dylan And Debs

Chris Hedges, pictured above, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political commentator who warns us on a frequent basis that we are living in "an inverted totalitarian state." Hedges faithfully reminds us that our nation is pursuing a modern variety of imperialism and that we have convinced ourselves that our imperialistic actions are motivated by, and justified by, our self-proclaimed "good guy" status. Hedges routinely, and properly, decries our massive investment in, and our devotion to, war and the military, which are hugely damaging to our democracy. As a contrarian, Hedges is often quite irritable and dyspeptic as he dispenses this invaluable advice.

One of Hedges' recent commentaries in TruthDig was titled, "Et Tu, Bernie?" This opinion piece provides a good example of Hedges' irritability and dyspepsia. In the article, Hedges "goes off" against Bernie Sanders, calling him "a loyal party apparatchik," who has squandered "his legacy and his integrity." 

The article is worth reading, painful as it is to someone like me, who strongly supported Sanders' presidential campaign in 2016. Some might think it a bit overwrought, but there is a point well made, or so I believe. 

What is most worth thinking about in Hedges' article is not the status of Bernie Sanders' integrity. Rather, the article ought to suggest to us that we can never rely on someone else to do our democracy for us, no matter how principled and imbued with integrity she or he might be. Democracy, in other words, is a definite "do it yourself" project. If anyone thought that Bernie Sanders would do it for us, that person will be disappointed. I think Hedges is right about that. 

In the article, Hedges quotes Eugene V. Debs, a democratic socialist political activist and trade unionist: 

"I never had much faith in leaders,” Debs said. “I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses—you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.”

Bob Dylan puts it this way: "Don't follow leaders; watch the parkin' meters."

I value Hedges' social and political analyses, but I am not buying into Hedges' dyspepsia in this case. I am not going to question Bernie Sanders' integrity.

There is a problem, in politics, with relying on leaders who will end up disappointing us, in various ways. To insulate ourselves against this experience, I am going with Dylan and Debs!

Image Credit:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-07/chris-hedges-us-citizens-are-living-inverted-totalitarian-country

#195 / Let's Hear It For The Fourteenth!

On the Fourth of July, The New York Times ran an editorial titled, "The Promise of the 14th Amendment." I recommend this editorial! Just click this link.

In the online version of the editorial, the headline makes a statement and then asks a question: "America Started Over Once. Can We Do It Again?" Good question!

As The Times points out, our Constitution was fundamentally flawed from the inception. The "more perfect union" promised by the Constitution was a union far from "perfect." Supposedly, the purpose of the Constitution was to constitute a government that would achieve the objectives of the Declaration of Independence. For those who may have forgotten why there was a Revolutionary War in the first place, the Declaration of Independence is definitely the "go to" document: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

As the Times' editorial so properly states: 

The original Constitution of 1787 was, for all its genius, a deeply self-contradictory document — a charter by and for a free people who enslaved hundreds of thousands of others. In 1776, America’s founders declared that human equality was not only a self-evident truth, but a fundamental premise of their new nation; barely a decade later, they officially rejected that premise, writing inequality and subjugation directly into the Constitution.

The 14th Amendment, following the Civil War, made the promise that our nation would be rededicated to the proposition that we are all "created equal," and that we are all endowed with with "unalienable rights," among which are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

That was a great promise, and we have seen at least some, but not enough, follow through.

The Times tells us that America started over once before. It asks us, can we do it again? That is a very good question, and I think it's time to try! As I put it in my own Fourth of July posting, it is time to "Return To The Revolution."

The Fourth of July and the Fourteenth Amendment. Good start!

Image Credit:

http://news.kgnu.org/2015/05/new-challenges-to-the-fourteenth-amendment-expected-to-fail/

#194 / McPolitics

Yascha Mounk writes about the "nationalization" of American politics in the July 2, 2018, edition of The New Yorker. Mounk is a Lecturer on Government at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at New America, and a columnist at Slate. His article in The New Yorker is titled, "McPolitics." His latest book is titled, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is In Danger & How To Save It. Presumably, this book deals with the "crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism," since Mounk's website says that Mounk is "one of the world's leading experts" on that topic. 

I have always found self-proclaimed statements about one's expertise to be a bit off-putting, but I can vouch for "The Rise of McPolitics," which is the title that was given to The New Yorker article as it was transformed from the hard-copy magazine version ("McPolitics") into the version available on the Internet. 

I think that Mounk's article is worth reading. I recommend it. Among other things, it convinces me that "local" politics is important, perhaps supremely important, as we seek to save our imperiled democratic institutions. 

Image Credit:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-rise-of-mcpolitics