Letters: Questioning our Political Future II
Howard Johnson and Steven Hahn continue their conversation…
Dear Howard,
I offer you congratulations on being so confident in your identity that you offer a declaration in both opening and closing your letter. I’m not so sure what a Democrat is anymore. The ones I hear most about are opposed to free speech, think the intelligence agencies are our friends, and want to start a war with Russia. They sound a lot like Republicans…from the 1950s! I take it you’re not that sort of Democrat.
While I’ve always been too independent a thinker to adopt anyone else’s label, I spent four decades mostly voting for Democrat candidates. I had misgivings most of the time, but you have to vote for someone, and I completely rejected the Republicans’ cozying up to fundamentalist Christians and their social agenda. Long before the Democrats doubled down on their divisive diversity strategy and the politics of identity, I was beginning to have doubts about their sincerity. They purported to be the party of the little guy standing up against moneyed interests, but I never saw them embrace any meaningful campaign finance reform. They were just as enthusiastic as the Repubs in creating PACs to circumvent individual donation limits. When it came to governing, they were equally happy to spend money on their pet projects in their pet districts for their pet lobbyists. How about foolish and unnecessary wars? The Dems put up hardly any resistance to invading Iraq and only became critics after its inevitable failure. Count Hillary among the party’s biggest cowards. Immigration [both legal and illegal] Repubs love the cheap labor that suppresses wages for existing citizens, while the Dems have their hearts fluttering over new voters they hope to capture.
I’m familiar with your adage about Democrats and Republicans. In its traditional understanding of the parties, it would seem to address the natural evolution of youth’s idealism being tempered by age’s experience; some would call this wisdom. To acknowledge life’s natural limitations is a large part of maturity. Yet the psychology of the “progressive” continues to insist on the impossible project of perfecting human beings. If only we could conquer those pesky instinctive urges — violence, greed, tribalism — then the long-desired utopia would be achieved. We’ve come a long way, most reasonable people will admit — no more pogroms, Mongol hordes, or widespread slavery. Just a little further the progressive will insist, we must change attitudes, the very thoughts of the miscreants. “I cannot rest until I live in a world where no one’s feelings are ever hurt again” might be the rallying cry of today’s young idealist. And I say, to insist on how the world should be is the birth of the totalitarian impulse, no matter how well intended.
Not that I think you hold these views, Howard, but it is a slippery slope.
Your fellow American,
Steve
Steve; yes, we have problems. No question. Here are my thoughts.
Hannah Arendt, who made a life of studying dictatorships said that an important step leading to the loss of freedoms was the belief that all politicians lie. It’s political nihilism, the belief that there is no meaningful stuff anywhere in politics. At the very least, even though I may be skeptical of those I vote for, I must turn from complete cynicism and the desire to burn it all down.
But where does this cynicism come from? Let me consider some possible suspects.
Ralph Ellis has an article where he lays the fault directly at the feet of the intellectual elite. Yep, he thinks that they have been what Russian Intelligence would call a “useful dupe”. Over the last couple centuries these intellectuals developed the idea that morals are more like preferences — each to his own; there is no basis for right and wrong so you can just sort of make it up for yourself. Of course, this is a great benefit for someone that already has nefarious purposes and you can see this moral nihilism all around us.
In Ayn Rand’s upside-down objectivist philosophy, that bilking the poor out of their money is just and giving people a break because it’s the right thing to do, well that is just evil. You can see it in businesses that say they’re changing the world for good and even have a philanthropic arm, yet when you look closely at the business model, they’re basically just legally ripping people off and they refuse to consider any philanthropic ideas that don’t shield their platform from any sacrifice.
You can even see this in the church, especially the ones that pay so much attention to the Old Testament. They think that because the entire Bible is true, that the Old Testament Law is just as important as the Gospels of Jesus. The problem is, when they preach this way, they’re effectively dismissing the entire reason for Jesus’ ministry of salvation.
No, no, no; not every reasoning can lay claim to the same moral standing. Some things are right and worth standing up for, and some things are just downright wrong, and the people involved need to be called out for shoddy morals. We need a society that knows right from wrong and not one filled with all this cheap second-rate philosophizing. So, as a first point, I believe most people still know right from wrong and we need to validate these beliefs and return to living by them.
A second point comes from Jesus’ observation that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. Let’s get beyond any afterlife controversy and just acknowledge that it is very difficult for rich people to believe in the ethical universe that Jesus gives us in the Beatitudes.
In 1943, facing a debt crisis during the midst of WWII, President Roosevelt proposed a 100% income tax for income above $200,000. (It was negotiated down to 94% and most of the rich wound up paying about 70% after loopholes.) For this FDR was called a traitor to his class. You can see, even in that time of all-out war against fascism, the rich were more loyal to other rich people, to their class, than they were to their country. I really believe that many of the super-rich believe that they would be better off within a system of oligarchy like Russia than in a democracy that wants to raise taxes and to make business models fair. Even big Democratic donors resist taxes and any ideas that they’re responsible for giving back to the country that enabled their wealth.
Ezra Klein had a recent (Aug. 30th) conversation with Anand Giridharadas about the rich’s (especially Silicon Valley) charade about changing the world for good, even while shoring up the systems that give themselves advantage and keep other people out; and many of these elites are Democrats too. Yes, Jesus finished that story with the hope that, with God all things are possible. But he didn’t say there would be a high rate of success especially left to their own devices.
Given all the above, I do find it somewhat ironic that Trump, the populist, is a Republican. Trump touts himself as a rich guy, but he seems enamored with Vlad Putin, who some people think is the richest person (or Godfather) in the world. That Trump might want to emulate him and all his ill-gotten gains is just a bridge too far for me. Putin’s not gettin’ into heaven through the eye of an atom, much less a needle. Let’s get real.
Rich guys don’t like government spending because when the bill comes due, it’s not the guy making $14 grand or even $100 grand a year who’s going to pay the bill. Not with wages sittin’ like they are. So, they have this strategy: cut taxes now, say that the economy is going to boom, and when it doesn’t, ask everyone to get serious about privatizing (by which they mean cut) Social Security and Medicare. That’s the opposite of what is needed. No Republicans talk about justifying regulations (like on banking). They just talk about cutting regulations that get in their way. Does anyone know what is was like to work in 19th Century sweat shops?
How about trade? It’s not Canada or even Mexico that’s eating our lunch; it’s China. Trump talks a good game, but he is doing nothing serious on China. Indeed, it’s the big companies that salivate over that market and are giving away the house for just a little more of the pie, the country be damned. And Trump does business with China too. Oh, and let’s not forget the market fundamentalists. In nature there is only one market; it’s eat or be eaten. All other markets are man-made creations and they are always made to favor some people over others. So, if you’re a market fundamentalist, you really mean that you want a market that favors you, the fundamentalist. But, you find markets that favors other people not so fundamental. All in all, Trump is one with the Republicans. Cut taxes and regs, the consequences be damned. Give them a Supreme Court appointee who real raison d‘etat is to protect the rich. Fan the flames of conspiracy and act like the TV ratings junkie that he is. He not giving us something better than Obamacare. He’s going to drive down the already declining life span.
Steve, I refuse your cynicism, but agree with the source of your anger. We are now at a point where anger is growing in ways that demand a response. We need change! Who here would dispute that? And the Democrats; indeed, many are speaking with forked tongues, even if they’re lying to themselves about it. But Republicans are at the center of open conspiracies. And it’s not about tribes. When we lived in tribes, the word meant something entirely different. This is Lee Atwater’s (Nixon’s Brain) southern strategy; a classic case of divide and conquer. In humans, the sum is greater than the parts. We need a nationalism that brings pride and brings us all together, not this cheap Trumpean divide-and-conquer crap.
Even though I’m a Democrat, I’m also thinking in the mode of a Burkean conservative. Burke’s statement that “the principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged” makes his politics a branch of ethics and thus separates him completely from Machiavelli and the whole modern political tradition that makes power supreme.
Like most people there are many parts of this world and this country that I want to conserve; a legacy to pass on; you know, just tryin’ to leave something worthwhile behind. That’s my focus and call.
Howard
References
http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2018/07/intellectuals-totalitarianism-and-post-truth-culture/
https://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=695
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