#31 / Donald Trump And Chairman Mao

 

1968: Public Humiliation In the Cultural Revolution

A book review by Pankaj Mishra, printed in the February 1, 2021, edition of The New Yorker, suggests a rather remarkable parallel between Donald J. Trump and Chairman Mao Zedong. 

Mishra's review was titled "Struggle Sessions" in the hard copy edition of the magazine, but the online version is headlined, "What Are the Cultural Revolution’s Lessons for Our Current Moment?" Surprisingly - at least to me - there may be quite a few such lessons! The following excerpt - discussing the Cultural Revolution inspired by Mao - will give you the flavor:

How did a tightly centralized state unravel so quickly? How could siblings, neighbors, colleagues, and classmates turn on one another so viciously? And how did victims and persecutors—the roles changing with bewildering speed—live with each other afterward? ...

Sensing political opposition in his own party, Mao reached beyond it, to people previously not active in politics, for allies. He tapped into widespread grievance among peasants and workers who felt that the Chinese Revolution was not working out for them. In particular, the Red Guards gave Mao a way of bypassing the Party and securing the personal fealty of the fervent rank and file. As the newly empowered students formed ad-hoc organizations, and assaulted institutions and figures of authority, Mao proclaimed that “to rebel is justified,” and that students should not hesitate to “bombard the headquarters.” In 1966, he frequently appeared in Tiananmen Square, wearing a red armband, with hundreds of thousands of Red Guards waving flags and books. Many of his fans avoided washing their hands after shaking his. Mao’s own hands were once so damaged by all the pressing of callow flesh that he was unable to write for days afterward. Predictably, though, he soon lost control of the world he had turned upside down.

To me, this description of Mao's Cultural Revolution echoes quite powerfully in the events of January 6, 2021, right here in the United States. Mishra makes the parallel directly, right at the end of his review, turning what I began to read as an article focused on the history of contemporary China into an article focused on us: 

The great question of China’s Maoist experiment looms over the United States as Donald Trump vacates the White House: Why did a rich and powerful society suddenly start destroying itself?

The Trumpian assault on the West’s “olds” has long been in the making, and it is, at least partly, a consequence of political decay and intellectual ossification—akin to what Mao diagnosed in his own party. Beginning in the nineteen-eighties, a consensus about the virtues of deregulation, financialization, privatization, and international trade bound Democrats to Republicans (and Tories to New Labour in Britain). Political parties steadily lost their old and distinctive identities as representatives of particular classes and groups; they were no longer political antagonists working to leverage their basic principles—social welfare for the liberal left, stability and continuity for the conservative right—into policies. Instead, they became bureaucratic machines, working primarily to advance the interests of a few politicians and their sponsors.

In 2010, Tony Judt warned, not long before his death, that the traditional way of doing politics in the West—through “mass movements, communities organized around an ideology, even religious or political ideas, trade unions and political parties”—had become dangerously extinct. There were, Judt wrote, “no external inputs, no new kinds of people, only the political class breeding itself.” Trump emerged six years later, channelling an iconoclastic fury at this inbred ruling class and its cherished monuments.

Trump failed to purge all the old élites, largely because he was forced to depend on them, and the Proud Boys never came close to matching the ferocity and reach of the Red Guards. Nevertheless, Trump’s most devoted followers, whether assaulting his opponents or bombarding the headquarters in Washington, D.C., took their society to the brink of civil war while their chairman openly delighted in chaos under heaven. Order appears to have been temporarily restored (in part by Big Tech, one of Trump’s enablers). But the problem of political representation in a polarized, unequal, and now economically debilitated society remains treacherously unresolved. Four traumatic years of Trump are passing into history, but the United States seems to have completed only the first phase of its own cultural revolution (emphasis added).

The warning that Mishra provides is timely and on target. Our political parties today do appear to be "bureaucratic machines, working primarily to advance the interests of a few politicians and their sponsors." Until this situation is changed, we remain totally vulnerable to the kind of political dissolution that China experienced during the years of the "Cultural Revolution." 

Mishra quotes the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran as stating, "History is irony on the move." To save ourselves from the irony that the United States might perish in our own version of Mao's great populist movement, we must get out ahead of irony, and time is short. To avoid that fate, it will be necessary for us all to become more personally engaged.

But if the Cultural Revolution can be a lesson to us, it is clear that we must be engaged in political building projects that begin at the bottom, not with some inspirational leader at the top. And our building projects, too, must have us building together, lest "siblings, neighbors, colleagues, and classmates turn on one another," and with the kind of heart-rending joy we saw in those who invaded the Capitol on January 6th, bring a vicious end to the American experiment in Liberty, Equality, and Justice. 

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/01/what-are-the-cultural-revolutions-lessons-for-our-current-moment

(2) - https://www.opb.org/article/2021/01/11/capitol-breach-mob-records-who-was-there/

#30 / The Marshmallow Test

 

The "Marshmallow Test," also known as the "Stanford Marshmallow Experiment," was a 1972 study on delayed gratification led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University. 

Here is the Wikipedia description of the experiment: 

In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the room for about 15 minutes and then returned. The reward was either a marshmallow or pretzel stick, depending on the child's preference. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures. A replication attempt with a sample from a more diverse population, over ten times larger than the original study, showed only half the effect of the original study. The replication suggested that economic background, rather than willpower, explained the other half.

A recent article in The Guardian references the Marshmallow Test as it compares how the United States and the U.K. did, compared to other countries, in responding to the coronavirus crisis. Prior to the crisis itself, it was thought that these two countries were the best prepared countries in the world to handle an outbreak of infectious disease: 

In October 2019, in those halcyon pre-Covid-19 days, a chart was published that ranked 195 countries according to their capacity to deal with outbreaks of infectious disease. Drawn up by the Washington DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland, the 2019 Global Health Security Index (GHSI) placed the US and UK first and second, respectively. South Korea came ninth, New Zealand 35th and China 51st, while a number of African countries brought up the rear.

In fact, countries like Vietnam, Senegal, China, and New Zealand did much better than either the United States or Great Britain in responding to the pandemic and containing it. And why was that? Well, we had President Trump in charge of everything, of course, and Britain had Boris Johnson, and The Guardian suggests that the way they looked at the challenge (sort of like in the "Marshmallow Test") was the main difference: 

One thing the leaders of all these countries have in common [the countries that were successful in responding to the crisis] is that they know an outbreak can grow exponentially, and that their best hope of containing Covid-19 was therefore to act fast and in a coordinated, data-driven manner. In a sense, each government sacrificed its population’s present for its future, but only because it understood that the sooner the sacrifice was made, the smaller it would be.

In contrast, the wealthy countries that topped the GHSI sacrificed their future for their present, arguing as US president Donald Trump did that the cure must not be worse than the disease, or in UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s immortal phrase, that “Our country is a freedom-loving country” – to which the only possible response is this line from Albert Camus’ The Plague: “They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.”

Delayed gratification is associated - and quite properly - with better life outcomes. A nation (or a world) that decides that the best path is to "sacrifice the future for the present" will likely not have much of a future - or even any future at all. 

When you next read your next article about global warming, remember that!

Image Credit:

https://earlylearningnation.com/2018/09/what-makes-the-marshmallow-test-so-iconic/

#29 / File Boxes Full Of History

 

Not too long ago, I had an opportunity to visit the offices of the Romero Institute, whose work combines public education, grassroots organizing, policy initiation, and high-impact litigation to expose injustice and to develop life-sustaining solutions to critical challenges to both human communities and the natural world. I was there to talk about the Romero Institute's effort to help inspire and catalyze a "Green New Deal" for the state of California, as a way to address human-caused climate change. The Institute correctly identifies human-caused global warming and associated climate change as probably "the single greatest threat to our human family."

The Romero Institute now operates out of a former high school building, located right next door to the Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz, California. What I saw in their offices, among other things, was LOTS of file boxes, the contents of which document the history of the justice campaigns in which the Romero Institute and its leaders have been centrally involved. The picture above is NOT from the Romero Institute. It is for illustrative purposes only. The Romero Institute has a LOT more boxes and files than are pictured above!

Seeing those file boxes in storage at the offices of the Romero Institute made me remember the file boxes of records that I amalgamated during my twenty years as an elected member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. I was a history major in college, and have a strong belief that remembering what we have done, both individually and collectively, is actually quite important. History, it seems to me, is often under-appreciated. This is not a recent thought, either. When I was elected to the Board of Supervisors forty-six years ago, at age twenty-nine, I immediately began a practice of systematically documenting the events with which I was involved during my tenure on the Board. 

By the time of my retirement, in 1995, I had created a 365-page set of indices (three volumes) listing every significant decision with which I was involved. Organized by date, this index will let anyone who is interested know where the relevant county records are likely to be found. The three-part index is called "The Patton Record," and anyone interested can get access through my website, on which this blog appears. You can find the link in the list that is located on the lefthand column. 

In addition to my personal index, I kept files on many of the key decisions in which I was involved. When I left the Board, I had 165 file boxes, measuring 220 linear feet. Again, my website has a link to these files, which are now maintained by the University of California. Check for "The Patton Political Papers" in the lefthand column of my website.

I am hoping that someday these records will turn out to be useful to someone who decides to do a history of Santa Cruz County during the final 25 years of the Twentieth Century. This was really a very extraordinary time, and I like to think that someone, someday, will want to write it all down. I am pretty sure that the Romero Institute is hoping that someone is going to write its story, too. It's a pretty extraordinary, and heartening, history. 

Aren't all of our histories a little bit like that? 

That's what I think!

Image Credit:

https://accessui.wallit.io/Paywall/HandleRedirect?returnUrl=https://current.org/2019/06/fans-collection-of-8000-cassettes-preserves-unique-era-in-princeton-stations-history/

#28 / The Devil And The Green New Deal

 

The New York Times article from which I grabbed the picture above is headlined as follows: "People Actually Like the Green New Deal." That strikes me as a kind of surprising headline, since I tend to think, "what's not to like?"

The Green New Deal resolution that was introduced into the Congress in February 2019 is described as follows in the official press release that announced its introduction:

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) today introduced a Green New Deal resolution in both the Senate and House of Representatives that would create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States, provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for Americans, and counteract systemic injustices – all while addressing the existential challenge of climate change. Recent landmark studies such as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report and the U.S. National Climate Assessment Fourth Report have made it clear that we need bold action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and we may have as few as 12 years to achieve it. The extreme weather, storms, droughts, and wildfires of recent years have made the worsening effects of climate change impossible to ignore.

Senator Markey and Congress Member Ocasio-Cortez (both of whom are pictured above) were joined by a number of co-sponsors, who also signed onto the Green New Deal resolution. Those co-sponsors included Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and our current vice-president, then a Senator, Kamala Harris. 

Markey and Ocasio-Cortez are certainly right about the need to take immediate action to deal with our global warming crisis. If we can do that in a way that will "create millions of good, high-wage jobs," that seems likes a legislative winner to me. As I say, "What's not to like?"

Well, it does appear that not everybody likes the Green New Deal - and I am not talking about benighted Republicans and corporate CEOs, either - those who are dedicated to maximizing corporate profits even if doing that brings on a "Sixth Extinction." 

As it turns out, a number of very sincere environmentalists are expressing concern about the whole Green New Deal concept. Jasper Bernes, writing in Commune, is one of the critics. He titles his critique, "Between The Devil and the Green New Deal." More extreme in her views is Cory Morningstar, who seems to believe that there is a carefully coordinated and malign effort to promulgate a destructive Green New Deal program, and this effort involves both the global corporate elite and what she calls "the non-profit industrial complex." 

I must say that I discount the idea that there is a bonafide conspiracy by groups like Conservation International and the World Economic Forum to go to war against both humanity and nature, all in the name of world domination and increased profits for the corporations that have already come pretty close to ruling the world. This is, pretty much, the charge levelled by Morningstar.

Other concerns, however, I do think have some validity. Here, for instance, is how Bernes begins his article: 

From space, the Bayan Obo mine in China, where 70 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals are extracted and refined, almost looks like a painting. The paisleys of the radioactive tailings ponds, miles long, concentrate the hidden colors of the earth: mineral aquamarines and ochres of the sort a painter might employ to flatter the rulers of a dying empire. 

To meet the demands of the Green New Deal, which proposes to convert the US economy to zero emissions, renewable power by 2030, there will be a lot more of these mines gouged into the crust of the earth. That’s because nearly every renewable energy source depends upon non-renewable and frequently hard-to-access minerals: solar panels use indium, turbines use neodymium, batteries use lithium, and all require kilotons of steel, tin, silver, and copper. The renewable-energy supply chain is a complicated hopscotch around the periodic table and around the world. To make a high-capacity solar panel, one might need copper (atomic number 29) from Chile, indium (49) from Australia, gallium (31) from China, and selenium (34) from Germany. Many of the most efficient, direct-drive wind turbines require a couple pounds of the rare-earth metal neodymium, and there’s 140 pounds of lithium in each Tesla.

This is, in essence, the same argument that was advanced by Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore in Planet of the Humans - although Bernes addresses the basic point in a slightly different context. 

I have written about the Gibbs-Moore movie previously, and I wrote about it pretty positively, because I do think it is important to admit that our first instinct is often to believe that some new "technology" is going to solve the problems caused by the way we have developed and deployed our earlier technologies. That is often a huge mistake. 

We, as humans, are quite enamored with our own great capabilities, so if Mother Nature is telling us that our civilization is "Out of Balance" (to reference another, much earlier environmental movie, Koyaanisqatsi), then we tend to think that our task is to solve that problem ourselves. In fact, quite often, our real task is to realize that we are the problem!

The critics of the Green New Deal that I am talking about are concerned that when we start talking about amping up our economy as we try to deal with our global warming crisis, we can easily become confused. 

We are, in fact, way "out of balance," and a bigger economy is not what is called for. What is called for is a reorganization of how we live together and conduct our lives within the limits established by the laws that govern the World of Nature. 

We do live, ultimately, in that World of Nature, and not in the human world that we create. This failure to understand the utter dependence of our own, humanly-created world on the world that we did not create, and in which we find ourselves so marvelously and mysteriously alive, is the general cause of many of our problems. It is definitely the cause of the global warming crisis that now threatens our species, and many more, and everything we have established over thousands of years of human civilization. 

I am in favor of dealing with economic injustice as we also take steps to reorient our relationship to the World of Nature, and to turn away from an economic and political system that always wants more, and that wastes more, day by day.  

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/opinion/sunday/green-new-deal-mcconnell.html

#27 / Mutual Aid

 

In These Times, a progressive magazine published in Chicago, ran an article in its December 2020 issue that was titled, "It's Together That We Survive Disaster." The article was, essentially, an edited transcript of a conversation held between Clara Blake Liang, an editorial intern with the magazine, based in San Francisco, and law professor and activist Dean Spade. Spade is pictured above.

Spade has a new book out, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next), and the new book was the excuse, pretty clearly, for the interview that led to the article. According to Liang's introductory material, Spade's book is "at once a theory, history and step-by-step manual on mutual aid, explaining how to radically redistribute care, avoid common organizing pitfalls and, ultimately, 'heal ourselves and the world.'"

"Healing ourselves and the world" sounds pretty good to me. In fact, it sounds like it's a kind of "must do" assignment. Spade's book may be a place to start figuring out how to accomplish the task. That word "together" in the title of Liang's article is what first caught my attention. We are in this life together, and so if there is ever going to be any effective effort to "heal the world," it will require exactly what Spade is calling for: "Mutual Aid."

Since I haven't read Spade's new book (only the review on which I am commenting here), I am not clear whether or not Spade gives any credit to Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist political thinker pictured below. Kropotkin wrote a book titled Mutual Aid in 1902, and I have read Kropotkin. I read him a long time ago, as a matter of fact, and I was and still am persuaded that mutual aid between humans has been, as Kropotkin argues, one of the forces, within evolution, that has helped advance the human race. 

 

There are lots of helpful advisories on how individuals can prepare for potential disasters, or how they can help themselves, individually, once a disaster has occurred. That's great. Taking individual action to prepare for a potential disaster, or to react to an actual disaster, is certainly appropriate. 

In the end, though, because we are in this life "together," individual efforts are not enough. 

I think Spade's revisit of the idea of "Mutual Aid" is timely. Unless we can rediscover and redeploy the kind of mutual aid that Kropotkin propounded - the kind of mutual assistance and support that has made it possible for humans to survive, we are likely not going to survive the disaster in which we find ourselves now. 

Read Liang's quick little article from In These Times. Then, let's see if we can't transform our politics, and transform our world, through Mutual Aid.

Peter Kropotkin

Image Credits:

(1) - https://inthesetimes.com/article/mutual-aid-disaster-emergency-organizing-solidarity-dean-spade-interview

(2) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin

#26 / Co-Ops In Spain

 

The New York Times has reported on a "softer" type of capitalism, in an article that appeared in the The Times' "Sunday Business" section on January 3, 2021. Peter Goodman's article, "The Basque Model for a Softer Capitalism," was printed right under another article, "Wall Street Eyes Billions in the Colorado." 

In that latter, gut-churning article, The Times reports on efforts by huge corporations in the so-called "financial services" sector to commodify water in the Colorado River Basin, all the better to appropriate the value of that water for Wall Street billionaires. Peter Goodman, telling a different story, lets us know that "co-ops in Spain make billions while protecting workers instead of lavishing executives."

I am not sure that The Times planned it this way, but Goodman's article is nothing less than a direct challenge to the kind of economic thinking that underlies efforts to dissociate water from the land through which it flows, the better to increase the value of this water, as a "commodity," to those on Wall Street who claim to be its "owners." 

Goodman lets us know about the Mondragon Corporation, located in the Basque region of Spain (see the picture, above). Mondragon cooperatives take the position that the ownership of an asset may not be dissociated from the asset itself, and from the value that the asset possesses. In other words, if a corporation is an organized effort to make money, those who do the work are the "owners," and they are the ones who get the profits. The value, and "ownership," goes with those who do the work, since it is the work that makes the value.

If you don't know about the Mondragon Corporation, just click that link. And read Goodman's article, if you can slip by the paywall.

Corporations are "people," the Supreme Court tells us, but they are not like human people. They are creatures of the law. They exist because of the laws we have written, which have brought them into being. It is possible then, using my favorite formula: "Politics > Law > Government," to redefine and recreate these monsters, and to "domesticate" them as we do so. 

It's about time to do something like that, don't you think?

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/business/cooperatives-basque-spain-economy.html

#25 / Talking To Yourself (Out Loud)

Nana Arielis, a writer and literary scholar who specializes in theoretical and practical rhetoric, has written an article in which she advocates talking to oneself (out loud) as a "technology for thinking." I am pleased to be able to pass on this link to Arielis' article, since I agree with what she is saying. 

When I entered Stanford University as a first-year student - this was in 1961 - I heard rumors about an elite writing program into which a few first-year students were being enrolled. I was not one of these chosen students, and I never really knew anything at all about the program, except the name. It was called the "Voice Project." 

If you are interested, you can click that link to download the full text of a study on the project. The study was published in 1967, and this is the first time, since 1961, that I have ever tried to get any actual information about the Voice Project. The website I linked summarizes the project as follows:

This experiment with 100 student volunteers was conducted within the regular freshman English program at Stanford University by a group of teachers who were themselves writers, and by an equal number of graduate students. The aims of the experiment were (1) to teach writing, not through rhetorical techniques, but through helping the student discover and develop his or her own writing "voice" and a personal or identifiable prose, whether the writing be creative or expository, (2) to involve in such teaching novelists, poets, playarights, essayists, and persons in diverse academic disciplines, (3) to work at various age levels, through involving both students and faculty in experiments in elementary and secondary schools, (4) to work with students from various social and economic backgrounds, and (5) to involve other institutions of higher education through visits, exchanges, seminars, and demonstrations. 

As I say, my information about the Voice Project was simply by way of rumor among the students. I don't think I ever knew anyone, personally, who was a participant, and so I am unclear about how I derived my ideas about what was involved. I did have an idea about what was involved in the Voice Project, though, and my idea was that the "secret" to great writing (which was going to be provided to Voice Project participants by those "teachers who were themselves writers") was for the writer to listen to his or her own "voice," as writing progressed. 

I will have to read the full study, I suppose, now that I have found that there is such a study, to see if this idea of mine is at all accurate. Maybe it's not, but what to I care! The idea I formed about the Voice Project when I was an undergraduate student has served me rather well. Based on whatever rumor about the Voice Project that I may have heard, I quickly decided that one could become a good writer by talking out loud to oneself, as one wrote. Is this what the Voice Project actually advocated? As I say, who knows? What I do know is that I definitely talk out loud as I write, and that this is how I have proceeded from 1961 to the present day.

I consider myself to be a pretty good writer (and other people have actually told me that, too, so that is not totally my own self-delusion). To the degree I am a good writer, I attribute my writing style and ability to doing exactly what Arielis advises is a "technology for thinking." 

Good writing does, obviously, have a direct relationship to good thinking. I believe Arielis is right on the mark, and I recommend the practice!

Image Credit:

https://psyche.co/ideas/talking-out-loud-to-yourself-is-a-technology-for-thinking

#24 / Gig Academics

The rather horrible photo above shows a frog that has been "gigged." The photo can also be seen at the top of my blog posting from April 15, 2017, a blog posting in which I inveighed against the "gig economy." That blog posting was, at that time, the third blog post that I had devoted to the topic. The link I just provided will get you to all of those posts, in case you have any interest in the subject, or in my thoughts about it. 

"Gig," by the way, has a number of definitions. These definitions include, when the word is used as a noun: 

Gig - a pronged spear for catching fish (or frogs).

I was reminded of the "gig economy" recently, when I heard from union representatives who are bargaining with the UC Office of the President on behalf of lecturers at UCSC and all the other UC campuses. I happen to be one of them. 

One key objective of the lecturers and the union is increasing "job stability" for the lecturers. The University of California (as opposed, for example, to the California State University system) generally provides no effective job security until a lecturer has taught for six straight years. The CSU System provides job security after only one year of teaching, for teachers whose evaluations indicate that they are doing an excellent job. 

My union representative called the UC approach a commitment to "gig academics." That reminded me of how much I dislike the idea that companies and other organizations with mammoth financial power think that the workers who make their organizations run are dispensable and interchangeable. Apparently, the UC System churns through its lecturer pool at the rate of 29% each year. That's the figure that the union gave me. 

In the UC System, and in the rest of our economy, too, workers should not be treated like "frogs" or "fish," and the "gig economy" is not a worthy economy for a nation serious about including everyone in the work that holds us all together. 

 

Image Credit:

http://info.flgatorhunts.com/blog/frog-gigging-trips-in-florida

#23 / Leverage Points

 

Not too long ago, someone sent me a link to an article dealing in "systems analysis." The article was titled, "Leverage Points: Places To Intervene In A System." I found it to be a very good article. 

The article is not too long (nineteen pages in a two-column per page format and with pretty large type). It is not protected by any kind of paywall, either, so you can easily get to it by clicking that link, above. While I would characterize the article as deliberately understated, it's amazingly thought-provoking, with very significant implications for almost everything we do. I am recommending it!

Donella "Dana" Meadows is the author of "Leverage Points." She was born in 1941 and died in 2001. The Academy for Systems Change calls her "one of the most influential environmental thinkers of the twentieth century."

After receiving a Ph.D in biophysics from Harvard, Meadows joined a team at MIT applying the relatively new tools of system dynamics to global problems. She became principal author of The Limits to Growth (1972), which sold more than nine million copies in twenty-six languages. She went on to author or co-author eight other books.

In brief, Meadows' article provides a general list of the "places" at which it is possible to make a change in almost any kind of system. She provides a few specific examples, but just to illustrate the general argument. Her article is a tool for thinking, not a prescription for any specific program of action in any specific arena. In the article, Meadows lists twelve different places to intervene in whatever system you may care about, and this list is presented in increasing order of effectiveness. The most effective place to intervene, in other words, comes at the end. As Meadows points out, we spend most of our time working for changes in those leverage points that are listed first (the least effective possibilities, in other words). 

What comes at the end? Well, the last two items on Meadows' list are:

11. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system - its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters - arises. 

12. The power to transcend paradigms.  

In other words, new "ideas," new visions of the future, not new "activities," have the best chance to lead to real change.

That seems right to me - and we need some of those new ideas and visions right now!

Does that sound just a little bit "too visionary" for you? Well, Meadows' leverage points approach can result in what are truly striking changes in how we live, how we "operate" our human civilization. Watch Tim Goncharoff talk about how that principle has worked out in my hometown, Santa Cruz, California. He calls it the "Banana Slug" effect, referencing the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz. This is "leverage points in real life." It is a truly impressive fifteen-minute, or so, presentation:  

Image Credit:

https://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/LeveragePoint.htm

#22 / Thank You, Amanda Gorman

That poem she read. Amanda Gorman. Poet Laureate of the Inauguration. 

That poem speaks to me. 

That poem speaks to us. It speaks to all of us. That poem is here, in its entirety, below. And you can read it. You can watch her recite it. You can see her present it. That poem is published and linked right here. 

But first, let me just give you a few picked out lines from her poem. These lines speak to me. These lines speak for me. 

I hope they speak for you. I hope they speak for all of us:

Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished ...
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside ...
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made ...
The hill we climb ...
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe ... prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be ...
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

oooOOOooo

The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves,

where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promised glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

oooOOOooo

Image Credit:

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/01/10270226/amanda-gorman-inauguration-poet-history

#21 / Turnabout Is Fair Play - Could That Be Right?

 

I feel certain that this saying, "turnabout is fair play," must be familiar to most of those who are reading this blog posting. The Grammarist dates the saying to the 1700's: 

The phrase ... originated in reference to gaming, meaning [that] taking turns assures a fair game. At that time, turnabout was rendered as two words as in turn about. Today, the term has taken on the connotation of revenge or retaliation, in the sense of two parties taking equal advantage of each other. Occasionally, turnabout is fair play is used in a friendly, teasing manner as an admonishment to keep things fair and equal.

Setting aside the occasional use of this phrase in a "friendly, teasing manner," I'd like to focus on its use as a justification for revengeful and retaliatory actions against those who have wronged us. Let's consider the possibility of that, as we think about the behavior of our former president, Donald J. Trump, and how we will respond to his behavior, now that he is gone. Is turnabout fair play?

Shortly after his election, in 2016, The New Republic noted that Trump specialized in humiliation:

Few people know how to humiliate like Donald Trump—he told his Twitter followers to check out a sex tape; he instructed Chris Christie to stop eating Oreos and forced him to assume the role of doting butler—but even fewer take humiliation as personally as Trump does. For eleven months, the Hillary Clinton campaign—as well as almost the entire Republican establishment—waged a war against Trump by attacking and undermining his claims that he was rich and smart and had a working penis. But you have to have shame to be humiliated, and Trump lacks it completely. The only thing these attacks achieved was the inevitable retaliation.

As The New Republic observed, Trump is a master of humiliation, and during the last four years, humiliation is exactly what Trump has so often dished out to others - and in great abundance. If that "turnabout is fair play" rule applies to politics - and why wouldn't it? - shouldn't we feel more than comfortable in trying to humiliate our former president right back? 

By extension, shouldn't we also feel quite comfortable in seeking to humiliate his followers, too, millions of whom have rallied to him, and to his false claim that the 2020 election was some sort of gigantic fraud. Shouldn't we, in particular, seek out ways to humiliate and pay back those elected officials (take Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley as examples) who pandered to Trump's untruths, and who helped set in motion the events of January 6th?

The idea of seeking the humiliation of our former president, and of his followers, came to me as I read a recent article in Psyche, titled, "The History of Humiliation Points to the Future of Human Dignity." The article began as follows: 

Humiliation is more than an individual and subjective feeling. It is an instrument of political power, wielded with intent.

Our former president certainly used humiliation as a political weapon, and in what appears to have been a very effective manner. Surely we all remember Jeff Sessions. After that example, who would want to cross Trump? Not very many people! So, shouldn't we take a "turnabout is fair play" approach now, and give Trump and his supporters exactly the same kind of treatment the president gave to others while he was in office? 

The Psyche article suggests that we should not, and the article is well worth reading in its entirety. Here's a short excerpt:

Mass opposition to the politics of humiliation began from the early 19th century in Europe, as lower-class people increasingly objected to disrespectful treatment. Servants, journeymen and factory workers alike used the language of honour and concepts of personal and social self-worth – previously monopolised by the nobility and upper-middle classes – to demand that they not be verbally and physically insulted by employers and overseers.

This social change was enabled and supported by a new type of honour that followed the invention of ‘citizens’ (rather than subjects) in democratising societies. Citizens who carried political rights and duties were also seen as possessing civic honour. Traditionally, social honour had been stratified according to status and rank, but now civic honour pertained to each and every citizen, and this helped to raise their self-esteem and self-consciousness. Consequently, humiliation, and other demonstrations of the alleged inferiority of others, was no longer considered a legitimate means by which to exert power over one’s fellow citizens (emphasis added).

I read this article yesterday, on a day that our new president called for "unity." Maybe that word, "unity," is not quite the right word - or, at least, it is not the most important word - because the divisions of thought, opinion, and circumstance in the public are profound, and real, and an appeal to something that is not widely felt or acknowledged will be unavailing. 

What will heal us, ultimately, will not be an appeal to a "unity" that many don't believe exists. What will heal us, instead, will be our recognition of the dignity of every person, whoever they are, wherever they come from, whatever they believe. Using  that approach to restoring a functioning democracy will require us to do the opposite of trying to humiliate those with whom we disagree - and who are, in fact, "wrong."

This is not, really, saying anything different from what I wrote about yesterday, in my posting on "Talking With Strangers," or that I wrote about on Monday, in "Trust Me On That." 

Talk and trust. That's what we need. We need to talk with those whom we believe have made a mistake - and who have made a mistake. We must trust that from such conversations can come conversion and real change. However tempting - however justified - we must try to avoid lording it over all those who have been mistaken, and wrong - Trump supporters, for instance, who don't think that "white privilege" even exists, and who are resentful and aggrieved for reasons we don't judge to be worthy. With all such persons, with everyone, we must talk as equals, and with no thought to humiliate. The opposite of humiliation is what is called for, conversations that provide no intimation that those with whom we disagree are "deplorable," or unworthy. 

I am hoping that our new president, who has chosen the word "unity" to describe what I am talking about, will be a model for this kind of healing approach, an approach that aims to repair all those things that have so disproportionately divided us. The responsibility for such conversations cannot be delegated entirely to our Chief Executive. That responsibility must ultimately fall on every one of us. 

We are, each one of us, as citizens, responsible for the maintenance of democratic self-government, and that requires us to treat with dignity all whose with whom we share the world, and especially those with whom we differ. That is, of course, the hard part! Despite how hard it is to turn away from the "turnabout is fair play" response to legitimate grievance, it is our responsibility to acknowledge and triumph over our differences by elevating the dignity of every other person, and by setting aside an easy recourse to the humiliation of those with whom we have disagreed, and disagree. 

Image Credit:

https://psyche.co/ideas/the-history-of-humiliation-points-to-the-future-of-human-dignity

#20 / Talking To Strangers #2

 

As political candidates know, each interaction with a stranger holds the seeds of a transformation, and each of us already has far more political power within our grasp than we acknowledge or allow.

The statement quoted above, a statement that I believe is profoundly true, is found on page 168 of Talking To Strangers, by Danielle S. Allen. Allen's book, which I highly recommend, was published in 2004, and is subtitled, "Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education." 

Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, Harvard's highest faculty honor, and she is also the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015, Allen was UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. 

Allen's book is unusual. While quite properly seen as a work of political theory, Talking With Strangers includes a literary analysis of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and undertakes a detailed discussion of Plato and Aristotle, with quotes in Greek. It is also, most centrally, a deep reflection on the "reconstitution" of the United States after Brown v. Board of Education. It is also, in many ways, a kind of practice guide to life within a democratic society.

The quotation I begin with, above, is found in the Epilogue, and serves as a summarizing statement. Of course, I particularly appreciated Allen's assertion that "each of us already has far more political power within our grasp than we acknowledge or allow." Not only is that true, but I think that this realization is the single most important thing that "we, the people," need to understand as we contemplate the future of our democratic republic. Still, while it is worthwhile to get to this summary, that is probably best accomplished by starting at the beginning. 

Allen begins by addressing the issue I wrote about yesterday, the issue of trust and distrust:

Within democracies...congealed distrust indicates political failure. At its best, democracy is full of contention and fluid disagreement but free of settled patterns of mutual disdain. Democracy depends on trustful talk among strangers and, properly conducted, should dissolve any divisions that block it (page xiii).

When theorists argue that democracies are based on consent, they mean that the entirety of a democracy's legitimate strength and stability derives from the allegiance of citizens. That allegiance endures only so long as citizens trust that their polity does generally further their interests; minorities must actually be able to trust the majorities on whose opinions democratic policies are based. When distrust among electoral minorities endures over time and congeals, such that citizens recognize themselves as constituting a disaffected group, only four outcomes are possible: (a) distrust of the electoral majority will be dissolved and converted into trust; (b) the group will leave the polity; (c) the group will rebel against the polity; or (d) the group will be retained by repressive acts of state force. (When distrust flows in the other direction, and the majority distrusts the minority, there is the possibility that the minority will be expelled or eradicated). The first eventuality - the conversion of distrust into trust - alone suits democratic practice (pages xviii - xix).

The greatest part of Allen's book discusses how best to build trust between those who differ on what should be done. The recognition that we are different - a "plurality," as Hannah Arendt would say - is one essential ingredient. So is the realization that sacrifice is central to our ability to live together. That word, "sacrifice," while it can extend to the willingness to "give one's life for one's country," is most honestly seen as a willingness to let some other group get what it wants, even while you and your group don't. However, a willingness to make that kind of sacrifice depends on trust - a belief that sometime in the future, the group for whom you and your group has sacrificed will makes its own sacrifice on your behalf. 

I could go through the book, outlining the entire argument that Allen makes. Better for you to read this book yourself. Think, though, whether or not what you have gotten from this blog post doesn't ring true, and doesn't describe our current situation. Today is the day we inaugurate a new president, with a new opportunity to forge a trusting relationship between citizens who are in different circumstances, and with different perspectives. We must not lose this chance!

If we are going to maintain a democratic politics in the United States, we are all going to have to sacrifice (in the way Allen uses the term). To arrive at a renewed and healthy democracy, we must above all else build trust among ourselves - among our differences! We need always to remember that it is trust that initiates the process of mutual sacrifice that makes democracy possible. Realizing this, those who have the most should be first in line for the sacrifice. Those who have the most must make the sacrifices that can restore the trust that will make our common life possible. Today, it is the political victors who have the most. Let us not forget that!

Did I say this before? This book is recommended!

Image Credit:

https://slought.org/resources/talking_to_strangers

#19 / Trust Me On That

Kevin Vallier, a philosophy professor at Bowling Green State University, has written a book called Trust in a Polarized Age." I haven't read the book (let me confess that immediately), but I have read Vallier's own summary, by way of a column in The Wall Street Journal. 

In the early 1970s, says Vallier, half of Americans believed that most people could be trusted. Today, fewer than one-third of Americans would say that. The United States, in fact, is the only established democracy to see a major decline in social trust, which Vallier defines as a "faith that strangers will abide by established norms." 

Economic inequality is related to this lack of trust among the "strangers" who are actually our fellow citizens. Corruption and ethnic segregation also play a role, but Vallier doesn't think that corruption, ethnic segregation, and economic inequality tell the whole story. They just aren't the full explanation. He believes that one likely cause of our growing social mistrust has been political polarization, which hasn't been as well studied as those other factors:

Growing up under polarized political institutions may lead young people to generalize from partisan distrust to social distrust. Americans are sorting themselves into social silos, seldom interacting with unlike-minded others, leading to less moderation and more radicalization. This may be due in part to social media, though recent research on the effect of social media has reached mixed conclusions on this question. But the effect is clear: In 2017, around 70% of Democrats said that Donald Trump voters couldn't be trusted, and around 70% of Republicans said the same of Hillary Clinton voters...

Some measures can help. When people witness better enforcement of the law—including the protection of clearly defined property rights and less manifest nepotism and favoritism at high levels of government—social trust can rise. The U.S. can also do more to break up patterns of ethnic segregation, including cracking down on inequitable mortgage lending and adopting school vouchers, which give parents more freedom to choose where their children are educated.

But political leaders have an especially important role to play. Some research connects having a largely symbolic monarch with higher social trust, perhaps because having a widely recognized and respected nonpartisan leader gives diverse people something in common. American presidents can’t play that role, and in general American elites are heavily polarized on both sides; they disagree with and dislike one another, and arguably pass those attitudes along to the rest of us.

If our leaders can defuse this hostility, rather than creating the impression that we’re on the brink of civil war, Americans may find it easier to develop clear expectations and norms for how people should behave, rather than anticipating that their fellow citizens will deceive or oppress them.

Tomorrow, we are expecting the inauguration of a president who has made it absolutely clear that he is committed to exactly what Vallier is recommending. Our outgoing president, and his supporters, quite to the contrary, have been suggesting that we are, indeed, on "the brink of a civil war," and the events of January 6th are probably not going to help restore the "trust factor" that Vallier emphasizes is so important.

I have a lot of faith that we can learn to trust each other more, but a greater appreciation of our ultimate and final "equality" is going to be required if we want to get there. As a young man from Duluth put it, way back in 1971:

I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different from anyone

As is so often the case, Bob Dylan is right on the mark.

There is a fundamental equality between us all. That's the truth. That's the truth that was recognized in our Declaration of Independence, and this fundamental equality between us is the essential foundation of our democratic union. 

We are all equal. That's the way we have to think about each other. That's the way we have to treat each other.

Trust me on that! 

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-are-americans-so-distrustful-of-each-other-11608217988

#18 / Intersectional Justice + NEPA And CEQA

Pictured above is Raul Garcia, the Legislative Director for the Healthy Communities program at Earthjustice. As Earthjustice likes to say, "the Earth needs a good lawyer." 

Maybe more than one!

Luckily, Earthjustice has a rather large legal staff, and if you're not familiar with its work, I invite you to click this link to find out more. I have supported Earthjustice for many years, and thus get information in the mail. The latest bulletin I received - the Fall 2020 edition of the Earthjustice Quarterly Magazine - included a conversation with Garcia that was titled, "Environmental Law for Intersectional Justice." 

In case you haven't heard about "intersectionality," the article just linked will provide some background. Demanding that we recognize the "intersectionality" of the problems we face is one way to point out that John Muir was right, a long time ago, in saying that:  

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

I think my own, often-repeated claim that "we are all in this together" also acknowledges the importance of "intersectionality" in our human affairs.

I particularly appreciated something that Garcia said about NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. Telling his interviewer how he first came to work at Earthjustice, Garcia told this story: 

When I interviewed with Earthjustice, Marty Hayden (Earthjustice's vice president of policy & legislation) asked me, "What do you know avout NEPA?" I'd never heard of it, or read it. He told me, "Take a look and let me know if you'd be interested in helping us protect it." I was hesitant at first because I wasn't an environmental lawyer, but that changed after I read it. When we met again, I told him it didn't read like an environmental law. To me, NEPA sounded more like a civil rights and civil engagement law. 

And that it truly is! NEPA, and the even better version that operates in California, CEQA, the California Environmental Policy Act, both give ordinary people real power to challenge proposed projects that the government "just knows" will be great. Without the procedures that NEPA and CEQA provide, those who are potentially affected by a proposed governmental action have the right to comment - to object - but there is no process to make the government actually pay attention to any protest received.

In fact, when NEPA and CEQA are not available, government agencies and elected officials typically ignore objections and questions. They say, "Thank you for your comment," and then they do what they have already decided that they want to do, anyway. 

When NEPA and CEQA are involved, if the government wants to do something that "might" have an adverse environmental impact, the government can't just ignore questions and objections and do what it has already decided is a good idea. Before approving and implementing any project, the government must first issue a "Draft" Environmental Impact Statement (EIS - NEPA) or a Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR - CEQA) and circulate it for public comment. Then, when comments are received, the governmental body proposing the project must respond, substantively, to each and every comment received, and issue a "Final" EIS or EIR. The government must then consider the Final EIS or EIR before taking action. In the case of CEQA, which is stronger than NEPA, the government must actually modify the proposed project if the Final EIR shows that there are feasible ways to reduce or eliminate negative impacts. 

The Courts have been willing to make the government follow through, too, so the government can't easily dodge these obligations. That does mean, just like Raul Garcia says, that ordinary people can demand and obtain environmental justice. It's a "civil engagement law," and the law is on their side!

Development and business interests, and governments dedicated to advancing those interests, can't get away with it if ordinary people will get organized and get involved, and demand that the government actually respond substantively to environmental concerns.*

So, if you ever hear that CEQA, or NEPA, is just some way for "NIMBY" anti-everything people to stop good things from happening, don't believe it. It's always hard to hold "our" government accountable, and to prevent the government from making decisions that ignore real impacts to real people, and to the physical environment. 

Thanks to NEPA and CEQA, it can be done. Take it from Raul Garcia! 

Image Credit:

https://earthjustice.org/library/raul%20garcia

* For folks from Santa Cruz, the University of California has just recently released its proposed "Long Range Development Plan" (LRDP), which proposes adding almost 10,000 new students to the Santa Cruz Campus. The EIR process just described will have to be followed. Click right here to be directed to a website where you can obtain a copy of the LRDP and the Draft EIR. The deadline for comments is March 8, 2021.