TRUMP

 

 

It is a media cliche that Donald Trump is the Bernie Sanders of the left and Bernie Sanders the Donald Trump on the right. They are angry at different things. But the essence of both candidacies is their anger.
But that does an injustice to Bernie Sanders and it profoundly misunderstands the Trump phenomenon.

Trump shouts out anger. He does not hesitate to insult anyone. He has a foul mouth. He is all about Trump. Bernie, on the other hand, has a clear program. He is not just angry he is arguing for definite economic change, for a reorientation of the political system from being a system that caters to the rich to one that provides participation and attention to all Americans.

What is striking about Trump is not the Donald himself but the significant number of people who support him vociferously, often cruelly when they support his aggressive rhetoric against Muslims, against women, against all kinds of people.

Trump's supporters clearly are animated by vast angers and that is, of course, a real worry. Who the president is of our country does make a real difference. People disagree sharply about Obama's policies, for instance, the nuclear treaty with Iran, or the changed relationships with Cuba. But these and other initiatives are very likely not to have been undertaken had Romney, or even Hillary Clinton, been president in these last four years.

The choice of president makes a difference for all of us. It is an important choice.

Everyone knows that it is a bad policy to make important choices primarily on the basis of strong emotion. Many people believe that "being so in love" is a good reason for getting married. As a result the divorce rate is around 50%. (That is the common wisdom. Some people think that number is exaggerated. As a matter of fact it seems very difficult to come up with any very reliable numbers on divorce.)

Businesses that merge, businesses that split up into separate organizations, investors that move money from one investment to another, cities that tear down neighborhoods in order to build a road-a myriad decisions every day are best made on the basis of available information about the present and the future. The decisions are more likely to be good decisions when the evidence is being considered carefully, calmly and with a major effort to set one's emotions set aside.

The same is true of the choice of president. American presidents are very much involved in matters of war and peace. Many of us may die prematurely if we make a poor choice of president based on emotions rather than on rational consideration of what we know about the  candidates.

But Trump supporters are not involved in thinking as calmly as they can about what is good for the country. That is not impugning their ability to make rational choices and to think clearly about their situation and that of their fellow citizens. On the contrary, it makes perfect sense for them to be utterly irrational in their adulation of their favorite reality TV actor.

Statistics have recently been cited of a high rate of drug overdoses among white men in their 30s, 40s and 50s. These are people who were told, when they were younger, that they would be better off than their parents. But that has turned out to be false. Getting work has been difficult. Getting good work has been very difficult. All the while they were being good persons, working, hard paying their bills. But that has not been a successful strategy for them. They are always short of money and their work sucks.

These people feel they have been lied to. The political system has not paid attention to them. Politicians constantly talk about job creation, but it is mostly talk. Welfare goes, they think, to people who are lazy. Welfare, in fact, goes to the rich and the large corporations. No one speaks for working people. No one is seriously concerned about their plight and their disillusionment.
There are a significant number of Americans for whom our system is not working. They are by no means all persons of color. 

The white working class that feels ignored has given up on that system. When they cheer for Donald Trump, they are not participating in the electoral campaign to select the next president because as far as they can see, it makes absolutely no difference who gets elected to any office. Whoever it is, in their perspective, will not pay any attention to them. So they might just as well express their alienation by cheering for a big clown who is very entertaining because he plays to their secret, and not so secret prejudices.

I obviously cannot prove that most Trump supporters are not participating in the electoral process but, instead, are expressing their disgust with the political system which, they feel, has completely overlooked them. But I think it is a hypothesis worth  considering.

If this analysis is at all reliable, we can see that the neglect of what we today call "the middle class" is not only a gross injustice but it has serious consequences for our political system.

To the extent that significant portions of the population feel that the political system is not responsive to their significant needs, they conclude that political participation makes no difference. So they do not participate in the political system. They participate in public entertainments. The unfortunate fact is, however, that what is entertaining to them, may get us stuck with a totally incompetent president.

No democratic system that neglects significant portions of the population will remain democratic because the people left out refuse to participate. Hence only half the people in the US will vote for president and many, many fewer will vote in more local elections. It makes no difference for them. Why lose half a day of work to participate in a ritual whose results are of no interest to you.

The support that Trump continues to garner so far from showing how healthy our democracy is, manifests once again the precariousness of a political system, where going to mass rallies is fun and has nothing to do with politics. It is at most a protest against the failures of this political system.

Modern electioneering

Most of the time, when we vote, we vote for representatives. Voting on referenda is fairly rare and many of them are not binding on the legislature. We give different justifications for having a representative democracy. Most often people say we do this because there are so many of us and we cannot all get together to legislate. Therefore we have to give the job of legislating to a small number of people and pay them so that they have the time to frame the laws the country needs.

This, actually, does not work out. These days elected representatives spend 30 or more hours a week asking for money, raising campaign funds, soliciting donations--the larger the better--to their political bank account. There is not  much time left for legislating.

Another reason for representative institutions weighed heavily with the authors of the Constitution and other theorists. Some people, the framers thought, are much better equipped to legislate than others. There are some specially gifted, sage, and politically perceptive persons whom the rest of the electorate chooses to run the country. Not all of us are well suited to make laws and policies. But all of us have enough insight and knowledge to choose the persons best suited to be legislators.

What would such candidates for public office be like? Quite obviously they would be persons seriously concerned about the well-being of their fellow citizens and of the country as a whole. They should not be particularly interested in their own popularity, and how people think about them. They should certainly not be willing to fight for being elected. The legislative representatives we want should focus on our well-being and on the well-being of the country. Getting elected should never be their primary concern. If they are not chosen, they will be glad to see that somebody else even more competent has been selected.

Electoral campaigns, today, are quite different. Everybody considers them as contests in which some lose and some win. Running for election is more like running a business and trying to force one's competitors into bankruptcy. Or it is like a sporting event in which there is one winning team at the end of the season and all the others lose.

However critical I may be of politicians and government bureaucrats who, together, run the country, I have no doubt that I would not be competent to do their job in their place. I sometimes imagine myself being elected to Congress or to run a government agency and being totally unable to decide what needed to be done and how I was supposed to go about it. The people we elect must have certain competences which most of us do not have.

One competence that is clearly necessary is to cooperate in positive ways with other elected officials and officials appointed to the administration. If the different branches of the government do not work together, a great deal of time, energy, and money will be wasted and very little accomplished. The poisoning of the water in Flint Michigan is a horrifying example of that.

Candidates that are out to win the election do not promise to be good cooperators. They may be brave fighters or they may be people who fight dirty but they do not promise to run the country cooperatively as it needs to be run.
Candidates running to win are under tremendous pressure to be less than completely honest. They exaggerate their own qualifications and tell lies about their competitors. Persons who are willing to bend the truth for their own advantage do not promise to be good promoters of what is good for the people as a whole. They are not prepared to serve because their own interest is always threatening to overwhelm their dedication to the public good.

Candidates who are willing two spend two years or more saying "Me, Me, Me, Me!" must have powerfully egos and be largely focused on themselves, on their own desires and needs. Will they have the energy and attention to dedicate themselves to the people who voted for them and even to the people who voted against them?

Yes, at some point the campaign is over. People vote and somebody is elected. But if we consider the process preceding the elections it is extremely unlikely that the candidates that emerge will be servants of the people rather than servants of themselves.

Sometimes we get good presidents--albeit not very often--and we are really lucky. More lucky than we deserve. If we had any sense, the people who are shouting "Me, Me, Me, Me!" the loudest should be automatically disqualified. The people who are willing to spend billions on getting elected should not be considered.

The candidate that should be selected is the one who offers him or herself for a particular office but who refuses to engage in the self-aggrandizing speechifying that we expect from our candidates. It must be someone who is modest, who would be horrified to brag of past accomplishments as our current candidates do every day. That person must be profoundly public spirited, not a raving egomaniac like most of our candidates.

Bombing ISIL: defense of or attack on democracy?

Democracy is generally considered to be a political system in which citizens share equal power in determining government policy and/or who is going to be in the government.

Now ISIL a group we did not know about three months ago, rampages thought Iraq and parts of Syria, killing innocents, beheading hostages. President Obama decides to start bombing them.

The President refuses to consult Congrees because he says, they are only bombing, there are no soldiers involved in the fighting. So it is not a war. In actual fact we are sending soldiers to Iraq to train the Iraqi army. “Well,” the White House says. “They are not shooting at anyone.” Suppose they get shot at? And anyway is training soldiers not participating in a war?

The White House is not only threatening democracy by not asking citizens, it is treating us a utter idiots. And, yes, if citizens are idiots then democracy may not be such a good idea.

You'd have to be a lawyer to take the claim that we are not starting another war seriously. Can you imagine the people on the ground saying, as the bombs rain down on them, “Thank God, this is not a war”?

The President starts an air war unilaterally. His legal staff assures him that he does not have to consult Congress.

But that is surely an insult to our democracy. It says that the President can get us involved in one more war and the people are not to be consulted, neither are their representatives.

Congress is not doing much better. Leaders of both parties have suggested Congress not talk about this latest war before the elections. Their first priority is to win the upcoming elections. But why are they so eager to get elected or reelected? They are not eager to formulate national policy on this all important issue of war or peace. They are certainly not interested in representing voters. Many people are concerned about this new war. But Congress says: “let's not talk about it.” That is hardly the ideal choice of those who want to be the peoples' representatives.

Being in Congress must be a nice job even if you don't do what people elect you for.

With the November elections looming, I get frequent messages from my Congressman asking me for money. I have not heard any questions about the new air war. The congressman wants me to help him get reelected so that he can represent me. While he is running for reelection, he cannot interest himself in what I and other constituents think on this terribly important question of war and peace. He is an exceptional Congressman and I support him gladly. But it reflects on the terrible distortions of our democracy that election campaigns are ever longer—look at Hilary running for President—and are all consuming so that our representatives cannot do the job we elect them for.

What a sorry state of affairs! This new war shows clearly the extent to which ordinary citizens have been disenfranchised.

Occupy Wall Street-- a Year Later

When groups of mostly young people descended on Zucotti Part on September 17 2011, mainstream observers expressed exasperation: " They never tell us what they want; they do not have a program." These observers were looking for a limited list of demands: new government programs, new legislative agendas, or ending existing programs and agendas. The observers were looking for appeals to existing power holders.

Even observers on the left had elegant phrasing to conceal what Occupy Wall Street had said very loudly and clearly. The observers on the left talked about Occupy Wall Street "putting process in place of program." The Occupiers were accused of being so riveted on the General Assemblies and their procedural innovations that they forgot to decide what they stood for.

Surprise! None of that is true.

The Occupiers made a series of statements. They made them over and over for all to hear and read:

America is radically unjust and injustice is spreading like a virus. We are living though a veritable epidemic of injustice.

America is unjust because our decision making processes are infected by this plague of injustice. Rarely do those in power listen to ordinary folks. No one listens to the poor--both in the inner cities and in distant rural counties.

No more graphic evidence exists for that than the current electoral campaigns. By the time it will be done, the Presidential campaign alone will have cost the mind-boggling sum of $2 BILLION. What did they need all this money for? Did Obama and Romney come to every town in the US or, if they could not go there themselves, did they send a trusted emissary and sit down with citizens and ask: what is hardest for you now? Do you have any suggestions for us ? Here is what we are thinking of doing. What do you think about that? Together the candidate and his voters would try to work out a good plan—far away from Washington, corrupt legislators and lobbyists. (In Vermont, US Senator Bernie Sanders has been doing this for years, sitting down for long conversations in hundreds of towns. Vermonters have responded by re-electing the avowed socialist, Sanders, for many years. Polls have him currently ahead of his Republican challenger by 40%.)

That would be costly but it would not demand $2 BILLION. That money goes to selling us a bill of goods. It is tempting to say that the candidates are selling themselves to us but even that is not accurate for what we are being offered are neatly dressed up Barack and Mitt dolls—no more than virtual President and Challenger. Two Ken dolls with their Barbies decorously in the shadows behind them. Obama and Romney are not offering to represent us and asking us what they should be doing on our behalf. No, they are telling us what to think. They obviously believe that it will take a huge, high pressure sales job to get us to fall in line. They are not asking for our vote, let alone for our thoughts and suggestions. They are manipulating us big-time-- and being quite open and shameless about it—into pulling their lever on the voting machine. The appeal is strictly to our emotions, not to our intelligent and thoughtful self.

There is no conversation between citizen and politicians in the modern US. The politicians, their wheels greased by $2 BILLION from multimillionaires, are telling citizens what they should think.

The presidency has become a giant tube of toothpaste.

Politicians and millionaires have all the power, as the existing political communication--there is no conversation--shows. They have the goods and are trying to get us to buy them. They care for our opinions only to fine tune their advertising messages. Our opinions have no effect on policy. Is it any wonder that these powerful people make decisions that are inherently unjust?

The Occupiers uncovered the injustice of political communication where the powerful manipulate the people who do the work in America. Justice in communication, democracy, involves conversations premised on equality: everyone participates equally, everyone is taken equally serious, all decide on policies together. This is the democracy Occupy Wall Street advocated.

But they also practiced it. What they advocated was not one more well meaning but untried reform project. The many people in Zucotti Park, in many other America cities and in many cities all over the world demonstrated that democracy, justice in politics, shared and equal participation in political decision making would work. It would keep sizable groups housed and fed. It would provide medical services, maintain security and deal effectively with breaches. Incidentally it provided shelter and food for homeless people.

No one claims that the hard work of General Assemblies in Zucotti Park are a ready made template for reorganizing American politics. But American politics as it is today does not work either. It may work to keep people running on the treadmill in their cage. But it does not produce a democratic politics. It does not produce a democratic society. It does not produce JUSTICE.

In order to produce a just society where everyone has the means to have a good home-and-work life, we need to all be able to participate in carefully producing policies. No one has a blueprint of how to change over from what we call “democracy” today—a vast effort to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge—to different ways in which different groups-some large, some small—will be able to work out just policies together in conversations where no one is the boss, no one is in charge because they are property owners, everyone is equal.

The Occupiers elaborated methods for holding equal, efficient conversations. If America wants justice it will have to do the same.

If America wants democracy it must do what the Occupiers did and sit down and talk to each other about how we will run our affairs. As long we leave it to the owners of power and money to decide everything we get not JUSTICE but a big, fat NOTHING.

Voting for Obama

Yes you should vote for Obama but you should also know what not to expect if he wins:

Obama has collected more than $600 million in campaign funds. In the last month he has collected more than ever before. As it appears that he may win the election, every one who has the resources to buy access to the highest levels of government, is putting money into the pot so that next year, or the year after, if they need something done for them, they can call the White House and say "remember me I gave a large amount of money to your campaign two years ago."

If you expect government to be cleaner than it has been, you will be disappointed. Our system still is run by money. Money talks; not citizens. Obama getting elected is not going to change that.

Obama has spoken frequently about his extended opposition to the Iraq war. But in the course of the it has become clear that he is not going to change the dominant attitude of the US government toward the rest of the world. Obama may well believe, as do most people, that the war in Iraq was and is a terrible mistake. But he does believe that it is good for the United States to act as if we were entitled to tell everyone else what to do.

Yes Obama talks more about diplomacy, about even talking to our enemies. But that is all a question of the mechanics of being the most powerful nation in the world. If you have any hope that our country will stop being the world's biggest bully, don't expect that change from Obama. There is no reason to think that he would willingly cede any US power to other allies, or to international organizations.

Some of us believe that what we need is radical change. That means for instance that we have health care for all but cut out the insurance companies which currently, according to some sources, are earning $350 billion from health insurance. We have to pay those $350 billion but do not get any health care for that money which is just there to enrich the insurance company. Radical change means a single payer health care system that cuts out the insurance companies altogether. Obama's health care plan leans heavily on the private insurance companies to pay for health care for most citizens.

Radical change in the economy would go beyond regulating financial institutions to keep them from producing periodic crises, like the current one, when the people have to make up for the losses of the so-called "financial experts." What we have at present more than one witty commentator has pointed out is “socialization of losses and privatization of gain.” Radical change in the economy would equalize incomes so that everybody has a decent life and the difference in income between the rich and the poor is lower than its current 400 to 1. Radical change would mean that everybody has health care and decent education not only the children of the rich. Radical change would take on the matter of awful jobs, of job safety, of boring jobs, of tyrannical supervisors. Radical change would mean that everybody is entitled to decent working conditions.

While Obama talks all the time about "change," he is not going to produce radical change. He will make the world safer for business as usual.

But as long as we will have business as usual, we might just as well get a good version of it. McCain is for war. The present wars have cost many lives of Americans and others and are continuing to do so. There is no sign that they are increasing security for anyone. The financial cost of these adventures is astronomical.

McCain is on the side of big business; he is for deregulation. Deregulation is what has gotten us into our present mess. Deregulation is part of a religious faith in what they choose to call "the free market." It is a religious faith because it is not supported by evidence, by science, let alone by common sense. It is a religious faith because it is unshakable in the face of contrary evidence. The present financial crisis does not shake the faith of the free marketeers in the benefits of the unregulated market because nothing will ever do that. But being so proof against contradictory evidence is the mark of a religious belief.

Like Bush, McCain does not believe in being reasonable, objective, looking the facts in the face. As his running mate he chose a woman who is, however energetic and positive, plain ignorant. McCain has no respect for intelligence, for knowing things. He goes on his hunches.

If you have a choice of doctors, one of whom tries to keep up with current medical research while the other goes on his hunches, which would you choose? The same applies to presidents. You want someone who tries to get as much relevant information on any topic as is available before making a choice. Running our government is a complicated and very difficult job. Any sensible person would try to get as much information and expert opinion as available. He would look for a running mate who knows a lot about government.

McCain did not do that.

Here are good reasons for voting for of Obama. His opponent is totally unacceptable. His opponent also is burdened by the colossal failure of eight years of Republican governance.

But Obama will not bring radical change to our economic system. He will not re-fashion our foreign policy to be less macho, less inspired by Rambo and more by ordinary standards of decent human behavior. Obama's picks for his team may not be quite as unfortunate as some of George Bush's choices. But the basic system of cronyism, of helping your friends that have helped you with campaign funds is going to remain with us. Politics will not be less corrupt.

Whoever you vote for—remember that the election may end up being fixed. It would not be the first time that we owe our president to crooked election officials.