State of the Disunion

Has anyone noticed that the cultural divide in America in the 21st century isn't that much different from a map of the United States drawn at the time of the Civil War?  Most of the states drawn in blue are "liberal" states, while most of the states drawn in gray and territories drawn in brown are "conservative" states. In a previous entry, I noted that the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum. What I didn't note was how geography plays a big part in a region's cultural values.

Areas of high population density are often hotbeds of cultural diversity. One can not but have his or her values tested by being in contact with people who think differently. A typical New Yorker will have coffee at a pushcart staffed by an Iranian, eat lunch at a Kosher deli staffed with Mexican labor, and have dinner at an Italian restaurant staffed by Albanians. On another day, that same person may eat breakfast at a Greek diner staffed by Columbians, have lunch in a cafeteria staffed by native born Americans, then have dinner at a Soul Food joint before rushing off to an Irish bar....

Contrast the above to life in smaller towns in the old Confederacy. In many of these small hamlets, one might not even find one decent restaurant - and have to grab a burger at the local pub. (Charlie Daniels' "Uneasy Rider" comes to mind here.) Due to the remoteness of many of these places (think of small towns in the Rockies and in Appalachia), many people socialize with people who often are related to each other by inter-generational intermarriage. Their views often aren't challenged, as they only meet people like themselves on a regular basis. When one lives in these smaller communities, the locus of social activity is often the local church. This doesn't sound like much, but think of it as the one institution in the South that wasn't crushed after the civil war, and you'll see how dysfunctional values of 150 years ago could be preserved to the present day.

Religion, as an institution, changes much slower than society in general. This is good, when people need a connection to the eternal. It is bad when dysfunctional values are passed on from one generation to another.  Years ago, my mother made a big deal about our church changing the hymnal being used every Sunday. Imagine what it was like dealing with the issue of slavery - something which the bible permits and has rules for. If a person comes from a society that accepted slavery, and was forced to end it - it is likely that the religious institutions would be slow to follow the political mandate. It is also likely that these same institutions would help people find ways around the  political mandates (legal and illegal) - which we saw in the era from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights battles of the mid 1900's.

People in conservative areas are slow to change with the times, and there are still traces of institutional racism found across the USA - including the "Northern" states. In Nixon's "Southern Strategy", he knew what language the GOP could use to flip it from Democratic Blue to Republican Blue. And he was successful. Unfortunately, he also eliminated the mixing of conservative and liberal values in BOTH parties which helped stabilize American government. Now, we have a very conservative GOP which uses both a religious and plutocratic litmus test for its candidates - and its influence is growing in the short term, while demographics condemn it to likely failure in the long term. 

Would we have been better off if the South had left the Union? I'm not sure - it'd have been one hell of a hard border for both sides to police. Socially, I think the North would have been better off, and would have looked more like today's Canada with its higher priority on social welfare and fairness. The South, however, would have had a history similar to today's South Africa - with a period of Apartheid and ostracism from world politics, followed by a more democratic, but polarized country.  

Instead of what could have been, we have what we have now - a country fragmented along a rural/urban divide, where the more conservative elements are holding off on the needed investments in our common future. Sadly, I don't see anything changing soon....

Now that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, now what?

If the lunatics were in charge of the above asylum, I'm not too sure of how bad things would get. However, the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum below, and there's no limit to how much damage they can do....

Here's the problem - the wingnuts from the GOP's extreme right wing have taken over the party, and people like Ronald Reagan would be considered a leftist if his actions were listed without his name being attached to them.

Why is this important?

There is a lot of damage that can be done when one party is in charge of the legislative branch. There is even more damage that can be done when the same party is in charge of both legislative and executive branches of government. Regardless of what one thinks of today's Democratic party (and I don't think much of them), I am very upset at the rhetoric coming from the party in power.

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I'm a person who believes that as much power in society as possible should be left in the hands of the individual, and not the big corporation or big government. So my philosophy had led me to support a "pro choice" position on abortion, as well as a "pro 2nd amendment" position on gun control. The opponents of my viewpoints have valid reasons to disagree with me, and I respect their positions as important enough to discuss. In a healthy society, this discussion would lead to policies that would minimize the negative effects of preserving these individual rights. Sadly, in our society, both parties (and their supporters) are shouting past each other, saying nothing that the other side finds worthwhile to listen to.

This post will not be one that attempts to justify my position on these controversial issues. I could almost as easily justify the opposite positions on these issues - save that I don't want big government, big business, or some moral zealot telling me what I can do (or not do) with my body, and another moral zealot telling me what I can (or can't) use to protect myself (and my rights).

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When one party gains too much power, it can implement laws without the consent of a significant number from the opposition party. We live in a society where important decisions are being made with a public that is split 50/50 down the middle on most issues. Sometimes, this is needed. Other times, the opposite (no action) would be the best course of action to take.

Our founding fathers designed the American system to slow down the pace of decision making. The House of Representatives was designed for hot heads to vent their steam, while the Senate was designed to let bad bills go and languish in committee until they are dead and buried. This is very different from a unicameral parliamentary system as used in most of the British commonwealth - where one party can act very quickly. and get voted out (a vote of no confidence) at a moment's notice.

We suffer from a system which has become sclerotic. But should we be in a rush to change our system?  I doubt that major changes are needed. Instead, I think we need "small" changes such as term limits and non-partisan (or bipartisan) drawing of congressional district maps. We might also consider laws that break up the two party monopoly, mandating the governmental support for a third party in the same way that the Democrats and Republicans are supported in most states' laws today. Another avenue to help third parties would be laws to allow third party cross-endorsement of major party candidates. No matter what, we need to do something to destabilize the two major parties, as to help facilitate new ideas in the "public debate"....

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I find it amazing that both the Tea Party (on the right) and many leftists believe that the big banks are out of control. Yet they haven't bothered to look across the aisle to find that common ground needed to design meaningful regulation of the financial services industry, to rebuild checks and balances (like the Glass-Steagall act which once separated Commercial Banks from Investment Banks) needed for a sound economy.

In 2008, we almost saw a complete systemic collapse of the banking industry. I was in a bank that was reasonably well capitalized (I can't say anything about it now, as I no longer follow it in detail), while other "too big to fail" banks could have collapsed had the Federal Government not stepped in to save them.  (The HBO movie, "Too Big To Fail" gives a good idea of what was happening behind the scenes, and shows how close we were to the collapse I still fear so much.)

Recently, in the latest "Must Pass" bill, designed to keep the Federal Government running, we saw a relaxation of the "Dodd-Frank" rules that were designed to help prevent another systemic collapse of the financial system. Sadly, this bill was signed into law.

Right now, the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. Will they continue to act irresponsibly, now that they have the power to govern? I'm not sure. But I hope things will change for the better....

The failures of American Society

The American Empire is in decline, and the elite does not see this for what it is - a breakdown of the ties that bind us together as Americans.

America, like much of the Western world is suffering from structural unemployment. In short, we have too many people and too few jobs to go around. Neither political party has a clue about what has to be done, and even if one did, its actions would be negated by the other party. Winning the game of politics has become much more important than serving the people.

If the problem were structural unemployment alone, we might look back to the Great Depression and develop "make work" programs such as the WPA, using the labor to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Sadly, this is not the case. Many of America's social problems go back to the post WW2 era, and the slow desegregation of American society. Whites did not want to have their children educated in the same schools as "colored" children, and busing began to be used to desegregate the schools. The Southern churches became a hot bed of activity on both sides of the battle.

Richard Nixon sensed that the South could be flipped from Blue to Red, and implemented the GOP's "Southern Strategy" - opposing busing at all turns, and aligning the party with fundamentalist ministries who, in the past, had no political allegiance. Within a generation, the South had flipped from Blue to Red, and the traditional mix of power in both political parties had changed for the worse. The Democrats became a party of urban liberals, while the GOP became a party of rural conservatives. No longer was there a tie in either party that held rural and urban states together.

Culturally, we have become very divided.  Jonathan Haidt identified 5 basic moral triggers that people use to judge right from wrong, and they include:

• Harm/care: People are sensitive to suffering and have negative feelings toward those who are harmful and cruel. They value kindness and compassion.
• Fairness/reciprocity: A history of cooperation means humans have evolved a sense of fairness and reciprocity, leading to altruistic actions.  
• Ingroup/loyalty: People place moral value on those who do what's good for the group; are loyal to the group; and dislike disloyal members. 
  
• Authority/respect: Humans tend to respect authority and tradition.
• Purity/sanctity: The idea that we view our bodies as sacred. This idea ties into religious views about the body and human actions.

Liberals tend to care only about harm and fairness when considering whether something is moral or not, while conservatives have a more traditional moral structure, and tend to care about all five morality factors. Couple the conservative viewpoint with a belief that economic failure is a result of moral failure, and one will have problems when addressing major economic issues such as structural unemployment.

In the past, we once had common broadcast news outlets, where reporting bias had to be skewed toward the middle in order to keep a nationwide audience. Was there really much difference between CBS, NBC and ABC, save for their anchors (Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley, and Smith)? I don't think so. Without the ability to choose narrowcasted news, the American public got a balanced idea of what was happening in the world. This is not the case today. Cable allows us to select the narrowcasted news outlets of our choice, and we are fed the pablum that our biases want to hear - be it Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN. It's much harder to see things clearly when our news outlets have been chosen because they reinforce our political biases.

Why is narrowcasted news a problem? In the past, objective news coverage from Vietnam helped cause the removal of American troops from that country and end an unneeded war. Today, with narrowcasted news, there is little pressure to check and balance what the politicians are doing - and this has allowed the Military/Business elite (that Eisenhower warned us about) to put us in a position of fighting a "forever war".

"Forever Wars" take resources away from the needed rebuilding of our country's physical infrastructure. As a result, we've seen bridges fail, water mains fail, the electric supply grid fail, among other infrastructure problems. And little is done. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York a while back, we were woefully unprepared. The rebuilding of infrastructure is costing much more than it should, as we no longer know how to build and/or repair things at a reasonable cost. 

We've evolved to having an "us/them" society. If I talk about poverty, the first thought that comes to many minds is of a poor black "welfare mother" who leeches off our system. What most people don't see is that there is just as much rural poverty as there is urban poverty. Do those poor white mothers leech any less off our system?  I doubt it.  Both urban and rural poor are doing all they can do to get by on a daily basis - but the system is stacked against them.  Strangely enough two of the best posts I've read about poverty in this country came from cracked.com, the humor site....

• 5 Things That Nobody Tells You About Being Poor
• 5 Stupidest Habits One Learns Growing up Poor

And the sentiment is now being echoed in mainstream websites, such as in this article appearing in slate.com.

• Why Poor People Stay Poor

What people aren't noticing is that poverty has now come to the supposedly "safe" suburbs. Structural unemployment has left many families in need. And now, suburban food pantries are just as busy as urban food pantries.

The business elite no longer feels that it has to be in the same boat as the workers in the firms they manage. In the past, a CEO would rarely earn more than 30x-50x the salary of the firm's average worker. Now, CEO's tend to get 300x-400x the salary of the firm's average worker. Are the CEOs any better than they used to be?  I doubt it. A while back, the firm I worked for decided to merge with one of its competitors in the worst of economies. Cost savings, in part, would be achieved by letting people go - when the odds were very much against these former workers finding work at a livable wage. Who gained? The workers? No. The Stockholders? Not in a reasonable time frame. Upper Management? Of Course! But my old firm is only one of many. A major technical firm has outsourced many of its employees, so that it achieves the flexibility of having a labor force without rights. Who gains?  Certainly not labor.  Nor do the states where this firm has located its business units.

So, is there any hope? If we go back to Jonathan Haidt's moral value structures, we also find that liberals and conservatives have a lot in common - when they can stop talking past each other. They both want to resolve the problems of society, but they are caught in webs (as I see it) of tribal loyalties. If we can begin to recognize that all the stake holders in our society have legitimate grievances, only then can we start to repair the damage caused by our dysfunctional, disconnected elites....

Charlie Hebdo

What is it that many devout Muslims find offensive about any visual depiction of their prophet? I can understand why they might find the pictures in Charlie Hebdo offensive, but can't they do what Christians do when Christ is depicted in an offensive way - look elsewhere?

These radical Islamists (like radical Christianists and radical Zionists) are a dangerous cancer eating away at our society. The use of terrorism to cause fear must be pushed back. But most of the mainstream media refuses to publish any of the pictures that catalyzed the deaths that just happened in France. Why? They are afraid! This is why we must insist that these pictures are published - to insure that people know why the murderers committed their crimes and why we must protect satire at all costs, as satire is the most valuable of speech protected by the 1st amendment.

Years ago, Charlie Chaplin said that he would never have made "The Great Dictator" had he known how evil Hitler was. To me, that would have been a great crime in itself. Only Chaplin could put Hitler in proper perspective - as an evil man who was out of control and wanted to rule the entire world. 

We have a choice as Americans - run and hide, or defend free speech.  Years ago, Larry Flynt was asked why he appealed an obscenity ruling against Hustler Magazine. He responded that he believed that it was important to defend obscene satire - and the Supreme Court of the United States agreed, in an 8-0 unanimous verdict. He could have given up, but he didn't. 

Yes, I find Flynt a vulgar man - unlike his then peers, Hefner (Playboy), Guccione (Penthouse), and Goldstein (Screw). But I respect him and his peers (especially Hefner) for their work to preserve the protections of the 1st amendment. And I feel that it is important that we support the right to be offensive, for if we don't support it, our freedoms will be whittled away by those who want to act as moral police....

Borders, Immigration, and Crime

One thing common to both illegal immigration and illegal drugs is that our total lack of realistic governmental policies has resulted in the growth of criminal activity along our border by gangs who would have otherwise remained petty thieves.

Drug smugglers, having perfected the art of transporting illegal substances across our border, are nor transporting people across the border. "Coyotes", having perfected the art of smuggling people across the border are now taking on higher profit drug shipments. In short, our demand for both illegal immigrant labor and illegal recreational substances has again created a rich "Mafia", not unlike what happened during Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920's.

The very people who gain most from our porous borders are not the illegal immigrants who simply want to feed their families and are not the people who consume the recreational substances imported by the smugglers. Instead, the criminal gangs, businessmen (of dubious ethics), and government bureaucrats (on both sides of the border) are the people who gain most from the porous border. According to the Daily Mail, it costs from $4,000-$10,000 to move one illegal immigrant to the USA.   It is no coincidence we hear meaningless drivel coming out our political leaders saying that the voice of the people is wrong. They claim that Arizona is racist. But if it is, why are 30+ percent of Hispanics living in that state supporting a law which puts them at greatest risk of being profiled and hassled by the law? Yes, one can make the racism argument based on the percentage of Whites supporting this law. Yet, when the law has significant support among minorities, it means something else is at play - and must be understood.

As I am more familiar with the costs of educating a child, I'll use some slightly dated statistics to illustrate my points. Let's say that it costs $10k to educate a child in a high cost state such as New York. Special education (ESOL - English for speakers of other languages, Handicapped education, etc.) may double that price for affected students. What happens to a state that is burdened with educating large numbers of illegal immigrant children? Well, a rough breakdown for educational funding is - Local Government: 45%, State Government: 45% and Federal Government: 10%. In the mainstream class in which I student taught, 25% of the class required ESOL assistance. That's a lot more than 10% of the costs for the 20 kids in the class. Is the Federal government properly compensating the school systems for the added burden of educating these children? No!!! So who gets suck with the bill? The state and local tax payer. Is this fair? No!!!! The above noted situation is quite common in areas with large numbers of illegal immigrants - and the states are being crushed by the under funded mandates imposed by Uncle Sam....

But what should we do about this?  The problem is not just illegal immigration, but it is a vicious circle of problems related to drug crime, people in need of jobs, and people on both sides of the border profiting from illegal trade. First, we must defang the drug cartels - legalize the controlled substances, tax them, and destroy the profit margin that makes it possible to ply their trades. Next, we need to slow down the rate of immigration of low skilled labor. I propose making Mexico a buffer zone, where these immigrants would be required to attend certified English language training schools before coming to the USA. All immigrants would be required to demonstrate a rudimentary knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon tongue before being allowed into the USA. But this would not be enough - they would have to bid for the right to come to the USA - market based visas. Instead of the money going to the Coyotes (and associated criminal enterprises), it would go to the US Government instead. And finally, all of this money gained from market based visas would need to be distributed to the states providing services for these immigrants.

Of course, there are political concerns. I'd want for the immigrants coming to the USA using these visas to be ineligible for US citizenship. They would have the protection of American law, but not affect American politics, as they could not vote. This would blunt the impact of immigration for at least one generation - probably enough to eliminate the fears from the states most affected by immigration.....

Please note that this is only an incomplete starting point for a thought experiment. We need better solutions than we have now, and our government is ill equipped to provide them without meaningful public participation in political debates.

Another year over, and a new one just begun.

As usual, no one knows what will happen at the beginning of the New Year. But we do know that the old year brought a lot of change. And this year was no different. There were many changes, and yet, the world remained much the same as it has always been - an orb where over 7 billion people repeatedly fight to make it through another day of life.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has put out its usual memorial issue, where they commemorate the lives of those who have passed. And we are reminded of what we have lost, not knowing what we will gain in the years to come. There are many great people we have lost, some famous, and some who are not. But all have a commonality to them - they have made an impact on our lives.

We have seen the development of new enemies, as well as the neutralization of old ones. Who'd have thought that ISIS would be a major concern a couple of years ago? Who'd have thought that North Korea would attempt to threaten Americans if they watched a mediocre film that cast their leader as the focal point of bad humor? Who'd have thought that the USA would be working with Iran, and deescalating years of tension between the countries? And who'd have thought that the United States and Cuba would be normalizing political relations with each other?

Much of the news was controversial - not only because of its content, but for what it meant about the people being reported on. In the case of the Senate Report on Torture, we found that the CIA made a cascading series of moral mistakes after being charged with gaining information from GITMO prisoners, and then did whatever was in their political power to cover up their actions. Yes, the report was going to be political in nature - could anything coming out of Washington, DC not be political?  What saddens me most is that many Americans are so happy to use torture as a tool, forgetting that even our captives deserve to be treated as humans. in accordance with treaties signed by the United States.

But who could have foreseen the Pope chastising the Roman Curia? Of all 2014's events, this one seems the most amazing, as religious leaders have not sparked as much change as this Pope seems to have done. Without changing a letter of dogma, he has changed the focus of the message. Instead of rigid obedience and conformity, it is now one of forgiveness, tolerance and hope.

As they say, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." And this has been true about 2014. Hopefully, we'll see 2015 show more of the good side of humanity than 2014 did....