The Real World

In an interview with Lynn Parramore, Noam Chomsky points to papers by Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen,and Jie Chen. Their work used patterns of campaign contributions to gain an understanding of how money functions in politics.

[The idea of Russian influence is] very hard to take seriously for a number of reasons. One reason is the work of Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues [“How Money Won [von Clownstick] the White House”]. There really is manipulation of elections, but it’s not coming from the Russians. It’s coming from the people who buy the elections. Take his study of the 2016 election [“Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games: [Fuckface von Clownstick] and the 2016 Presidential Election”]. That’s how you interfere with elections. Or the pretty spectacular study that he and his colleagues did about a year ago on Congress “How Money Drives US Congressional Elections,” where you just get a straight line [correlation between money and major party votes in Congress]. You rarely see results like that in the social sciences. That’s massive manipulation. Compared with that, what the Russians might be doing is minuscule. Quite aside from the fact that the U.S. does it all the time in other countries.

Chomsky continues to drive home his contention on the biggest threats we face.

Climate change and nuclear war. These are really existential threats. And what’s happening now is just astonishing. If media were functioning seriously, every day the lead headline would be this amazing fact—that in the entire world, every country is trying or committed to doing at least something. One country—one!—the most powerful country in history—is committed to trying to destroy the climate. Not just pulling out of the efforts of others, but maximizing the use of the most destructive means.

There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing.

Update (July 7):  Another interview with Chomsky in which he reiterates how big donors were the ones who really interfered in the 2016 election with massive last-minute contributions to Republicans.

Red and Blue

Barack Obama became famous for saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America". But the partisan divide has only hardened in the years since.

The latest World Happiness Report has America dropping four places to eighteenth.

Data suggest it’s no coincidence that relative unhappiness in the U.S. coincides with the election .... A June 2017 Gallup poll found that 25 percent of Americans listed the government as the most important problem facing the country, up from only 8 percent in October 2016.

Anand Giridharadas hopes that "Woke America" and "Great America" can somehow learn from each other.

Everyone is offended all the time, on both sides of the political divide. Taking offense is, in fact, one of the few things that brings us together. A Hollywood award show, a thermoplastic restroom sign, a visiting lecturer in a cardigan, a question about where one is from, a claim that black or blue or white or all lives matter — anything is fodder for the great American war of offense.

Woke America and Great America have lost the habit of genuinely arguing with each other. It takes a certain curiosity about, and hope for, other people to argue with them, and we seem to have fallen out of both those things.

There is a fine line between saying “this is why you’ll never understand me” and “here is what you’d see if you were me.” The intellectual underpinning is the same; the mission differs.

And Melanie McFarland points out how a handful of TV shows have tried to create dialog across this divide.

But Conor Lynch argues that a neoliberal consensus does broadly exist and that itself is a problem.

Though bipartisan politics is often hailed as responsible and respectable, there is nothing inherently good about compromise, especially when it ends up serving the economic elite and going against what the majority of Americans want, as is often the case in Washington today when Republicans and Democrats come together.

Lynch notes the widespread support for the economic agenda of Bernie Sanders and writes, "while the red-state/blue-state divide is real and deeply entrenched in American politics, the divide between economic elites and everyone else may be even more consequential in our populist age." Lynch reports that at a recent rally in Texas Sanders "rejected the hyper-partisan politics that have come to dominate our current era" and quotes him:

I've never believed in this blue-state, red-state nonsense. Yes, Lubbock voted overwhelmingly [Republican]. But any county in this country, which has people who are struggling, can and must become a progressive county.

Update:  A voter study finds that "[t]he number of voters who cast a ballot for Obama in 2012 and did not vote in 2016, or voted for a third-party candidate, outnumbered those Obama voters who pulled the lever for [the Republican]". They are generally non-white, younger, and lower income but not necessarily the most liberal.

Update (March 19):  Paul Rosenberg discusses the concept of "asymmetric polarization". He refers to the paper “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball,” by Joseph Fishkin and David Pozen.

[K]ey conservative political actors — from the Federalist Society to the Koch brothers' network — have long been intensely focused on just this sort of political struggle. Progressives cannot be expected to win battles in which they do not even show up, or at best bring a yogurt spoon to a nuclear war. And well-meaning “good government” types repeatedly do more harm than good as they reinforce a situation of one-sided disarmament.

Update (March 26):  In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discuss the future of U.S. democracy. Ziblatt:

The Republican Party is desperate. It fears that it is not going to be able to win elections, so bending and breaking rules to cheat their way into electoral victories becomes a preferred strategy. The rules that 30-plus state legislatures in the United States have adopted over the last decade have made it harder for people who are, by and large, lower-income nonwhite voters to register and to vote. That is deeply undemocratic. As long as the Republican Party is an overwhelmingly white and Christian party in a society as diverse as the United States, it is going to be prone to this kind of white-nationalist extremism. The Republicans must become a more diverse party.

Levitsky:

If in the fall of 2018 or in 2020 there is a shift to the Democrats, this, in principle, could prompt a reevaluation on the side of the Republicans to "refound" the party. Looking at cases around the world, in countries like Germany after World War II or Chile after Pinochet there have been efforts, after major catastrophes, for groups to reorganize themselves. It is difficult, but we don't really have any other options. It's probably naïve to think about going back to the norms that we had before. Probably we'll evolve in some forward direction, but it certainly did not have to be this sort of no-holds-barred partisan warfare that we've seen in the last couple of decades. If our democracy is going to remain even minimally healthy we need to develop a set of norms that allow our political parties to work through institutions.

It's very hard, really it's impossible, for me to think of a democracy in the world that survived an ethnic majority making a transition to minority status. There really has not been a successful experiment with multiethnic democracy in the world, and that's why the growing diversification of Western democracies is a real challenge. Looking at the reaction of the Republican Party over the last 10 or 20 years to these trends scares me a lot.

What gives me some room for optimism, and what makes me think that the United States has a shot to be the first successful multiethnic democracy, is that our democratic institutions are in fact quite strong. I think we did -- helped a lot by World War II -- a pretty decent job as a society of integrating immigrant groups that arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was pretty nasty, it was hardly a model, but we did it. So as a society, we have much more experience with dealing with diversity and with integration than do other Western societies. That's how I put myself to sleep at night.

Update (April 1):  A Pew Research Center study finds a growing education attainment gap between Democrats and Republicans. And, an on-line survey finds that supporters share a number of traits with Dear Leader: selfishness, a desire for power over others, preoccupation with money, and a preference for social traditions.

Also, a paper by lead author Andrew Whitehead shows that "greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for" von Clownstick. Paul Rosenberg explains.

When push comes to shove, the more vicious the leader, the better. The moral restraints of the deeply pious are the last thing you want for the job. Hence, [Fuckface's] impious leadership makes perfect sense, once you realize what’s at stake. It’s a feature, not a bug. And evangelical voters, Whitehead argues, know it.

Update (April 2):  Elizabeth Mika in an interview with Chauncey DeVega.

Having no conscience, [von Clownstick] does not experience guilt or shame or remorse, so he can say whatever pleases him at the moment to get people to do whatever he wants or needs of them.

People fell for this because they want what he has to offer. Ultimately, [Fuckface] embodies values that people do not necessarily want to admit to.

Update (April 8):  In an interview with David Letterman, Jay Z had an interesting thought about the current administration.

I think it’s actually a great thing, and here's why.

What he’s forcing people to do is have a conversation ... and work together. Like, you can't really address something that’s not revealed.

He's bringing out an ugly side of America that we wanted to believe was gone .... And we still gotta deal with it. We have to have tough conversations. We have to talk about the N-word, and we have to talk about why white men are so privileged in this country.

Update (April 15):  Conor Lynch argues that populism needn't be a threat to democracy.

Over the past several years, it has become clear that young people are embracing political and economic alternatives to the status quo, but this hardly means they are rejecting democracy. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that they are rejecting capitalism. ... [I]t seems likely that we are headed into a populist age. The task for the left, then, is to shape this populist age by offering a credible and convincing alternative to the defeated and ineffective neoliberal agenda.

Update (April 29):  Paul Rosenberg explains a state level legislative initiative called "Project Blitz".

The agenda underlying these bills is not merely about Christian nationalism, a term that describes an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and meant to sharpen the divide between those who belong to those groups and those who are excluded. It’s also ultimately "dominionist," meaning that it doubles down on the historically false notion of America as a “Christian nation” to insist that a particular sectarian view of God should control every aspect of life, through all manner of human institutions.

Update (May 6):  This is how far apart Americans are.

According to [an] NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, 76 percent of Republicans believe [Dear Leader] tells the truth “most of the time.”

[But] 94 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners—and 76 percent of independents polled—[said] they believe [Fuckface] tells the truth “only some of the time or even less frequently.”

Update (May 12):  Conor Lynch discusses how "aggrieved entitlement" leads angry, young white men to reactionary politics.

Ultimately the same thing that has driven left-wing populism has driven this politics of reaction: a legitimate feeling of discontent with the status quo. There are plenty of valid reasons to be disillusioned with the modern world, of course, but this dissatisfaction can lead one to embrace either a reactionary politics that fetishizes the past, or a progressive politics that aims to create a better future.

Update (May 13):  When Sam Haselby says it's time to question American patriotism, I think he's referring to what is called nationalism in other countries.

The sacred status of American patriotism in the US indicates only an ideological strength, not moral or intellectual soundness.

Sarah Silverman made a distinction between "we're number one" versus "we are one".

Update (December 17):  Paul Rosenberg follows up on Project Blitz strategy and progressive efforts to fight back.

Against Reason?

In a review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker, Simon McCarthy-Jones argues that the dictates of reason can conflict with the need for autonomy.

For example, imagine there is a political candidate or option being widely portrayed as the obvious and perhaps only sane choice. Could this drive some voters to vote for the alternative (potentially even against their own rational self-interests) in order to feel they are choosing freely?

And Elizabeth Preza reports on a study that found fear to be a more effective factor in recent elections.

According to University of Austin psychology professor Sam Gosling—one of the study’s co-authors—of the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), "regions highest on neuroticism are particularly receptive to political campaigns that emphasize danger and loss and that previous campaigns have not tapped into these themes as strongly as we saw in 2016".

Chauncey DeVega makes the connection between that appeal to fear and a growing sense of unhappiness.

A public that is miserable and in pain will often withdraw from politics and communal life. As seen with Republicans' high levels of support among precisely those voters who are most likely to be hurt by their policies, political sadism can be used as a type of fuel for racism, prejudice and white supremacy. There the pain and anger of White America is directed at some enemy Other who is black or brown, an immigrant or a Muslim, instead of at the corporate elites and gangster capitalists who drive the Republican agenda.

Conor Lynch takes issue with how Pinker overlooks the problems stemming from the Enlightenment.

[I]n Pinker’s account, what he calls “progressophobia” is not just prevalent on the right, where reactionaries long for the “good old days” and reject modernity out of hand, but on the left, where pessimistic progressives constantly deny or ignore much of the progress of the 20th century.

Being ruthlessly critical of the modern world does not make one anti-modern, just as being critical of American foreign policy does not make one anti-American. Modernity is a mixed and often contradictory affair, and acknowledging that does not make one a pessimist, a postmodernist or a “progressophobe.” In fact, it is necessary for any true progressive.

DeVega agrees that quietism is not the same as optimism.

While they are often easy vulnerable prey for demagogues, a public that is in misery and pain is also one which can be mobilized for radical, forward-thinking social and political change that can reinvigorate our democracy.

Update (January 26, 2019):  Phil Torres is not kind to Steven Pinker's book.

Mined quotes, cherry-picked data, false dichotomies, misrepresented research, misleading statements and outright false assertions on nearly every page.

Update (October 20, 2019):  Torres is generally annoyed with white, male "intellectuals".

Pinker and his ilk don't acknowledge errors when they make them; they are ideologues rather than truth-seekers, willing to bend the facts, launch personal attacks and censor critics to "win" debates. At exactly the moment in history when we need true intellectual leadership, people who exemplify intellectual honesty and integrity, the most, we get stubborn tribespeople.

Income Inequality Still Growing

Alex Henderson notes that the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is going to make inequality worse in the U.S. and quotes Warren Buffett.

[T]he wealth of the 400 [richest people in America] increased 29-fold—from $93 billion to $2.7 trillion—while many millions of hardworking citizens remained stuck on an economic treadmill. During this period, the tsunami of wealth didn’t trickle down. It surged upward.

The U.S. compares unfavorably to Europe.

The 2018 World Inequality Report ... paints a troubling picture of the United States' wealth distribution. According to the study, the top 1 percent of wage earners went from owning 11 percent of the national income in 1980 to 20 percent in 2016. The bottom 50 percent's share of the national income dropped from 21 to 13 percent over the same time period. In Western Europe, the 1 percent's control of national incomes has risen from 10 to 12 percent, while the bottom 50 percent's share has held steady at 23 percent—undesirable, perhaps, but decidedly more equal.

Update (February 16, 2019):  How bad does it have to be if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says income inequality is the country's biggest challenge? He notes that income growth for most people has decreased while "growth at the top has been very strong".

Strike

Amid the on-going teachers strike in West Virginia, now Oklahoma teachers are considering a strike over the failure to raise salaries.

Oklahoma is ranked 49th in the nation in teacher salaries, according to a 2016 study by the National Education Association. The average elementary school teacher makes $41,150, middle school teachers earn $42,380 and high school teachers make $42,460, according to a 2016 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The last time teachers were given a raise was 2008, the Oklahoma Education Association says. On top of that, the education budget has been cut by about 28% over the last 10 years.

Update:  Just today, the Governor of West Virginia signed a bill giving a 5 percent raise to teachers and state employees. The strike is over, but the state will pay for the raises with budget cuts in other areas.

Update (March 15):  More about the implications of the strike. Amy Traub:

Faced with jobs that don’t pay enough to make ends meet, health-care costs that break the budget, and public services exposed to countless rounds of cutbacks despite a growing economy, working people will push back.

Update (March 29):  Even though the Oklahoma Legislature passed the first tax increase since 1990, teachers there say it doesn't make up for ten years of neglect and plan to go on strike.

Update (March 30):  Oklahoma is on the verge and Kentucky has had some school closures.

Update (April 2):  Oklahoma is now on strike. And a rally in Kentucky.

Thousands of teachers and public workers from across Kentucky flocked to the state Capitol on Monday morning to protest potential budget cuts to public education and the passage, last week, of a controversial package of changes to the state’s public pension system that teachers had opposed.

Update (April 4):  Oklahoma Republicans aren't happy.

Update (April 8):  Arizona could be next.

Also, Dave Jamieson and Travis Waldron look at the history of teacher strikes.

There’s a short explanation for why these low-tax, GOP-controlled states are now facing rebellion: They have slashed public school funding significantly since the Great Recession, while also pursuing many tax cuts that have benefited businesses and the wealthy. The budget shortfalls that austerity has created have left no money to pump into schools or salaries, leading to teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and even four-day school weeks in Oklahoma. Teachers forced to take on second or third jobs have finally decided they’ve had enough.

But the longer explanation stretches back a full generation, to when teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky last walked off the job.

The work stoppages led to meaningful raises and investment at the time. But the promise they held eventually lost out to the anti-tax ideology of both legislators and voters.

Update (April 26):  Walkouts today in Arizona.

Update (May 11):  Nicole Braun notes that adjunct instructors don't necessarily get as much attention as striking public school teachers.

Update (May 16):  North Carolina teachers held a large protest.

Update (June 10):  Henry Giroux writes in support of striking teachers.

Under the current era of neoliberal fascism, education is especially dangerous when it does the bridging work between schools and the wider society, between the self and others, and allows students to translate private troubles into broader systemic considerations. Schools are dangerous because they exemplify Richard J. Bernstein’s idea in "The Abuse of Evil" that “democracy is ‘a way of life,’ an ethical ideal that demands active and constant attention. And if we fail to work at creating and re-creating democracy, there is no guarantee that it will survive.”

... 

Rejecting the idea that education is a commodity to be bought and sold, teachers and students across the country are reclaiming education as a public good and a human right, a protective space that should be free of violence and open to critical teaching and learning. Not only is it a place to think, engage in critical dialogue, encourage human potential and contribute to the vibrancy of a democratic polity, it is also a place in which the social flourishes, in that students and teachers learn to think and act together.

Update (January 14, 2019):  United Teachers Los Angeles rejected a contract offer last Friday and now over 30,000 union members are on strike for the first time in 30 years.

The union’s demand for reduced class sizes (some classes have more than 40 students) and more support staff are at the heart of the negotiations. The union also seeks a 6.5-percent raise, but union leaders say salary is only one piece of a puzzle. They also point to such shortfalls as elementary schools only having a school nurse one or two days a week, which the union says risks children’s safety.

Update (January 16, 2019):  Glenn Sacks reports on the Los Angeles teacher's strike.

One of the best things about the LA teacher revolt is the way it has helped wake the country up about the charter scam. Many articles in recent days have debunked the myth that charters are better and have detailed the way they’ve damaged traditional schools.

It was especially satisfying today at our massive rally outside the offices of the California Charter Schools Association’s offices downtown. The CCSA bought the LA School Board (in what was the most expensive school board election in US history) and the boardmembers they bankrolled installed Beutner as superintendent. Today the ladies and gentlemen of the CCSA no doubt looked out their office windows and realized that they’d been made.

Update (January 22, 2019):  The UTLA has reached an agreement that will end the strike after six school days.

Update (February 6, 2019):  Today marks 100 years since the Seattle General Strike. Steven Beda sees an important lesson even though the strike failed.

For today’s workers tired of decades of wage stagnation and fleeting benefits in the gig economy, the Seattle General Strike offers an important lesson about the power of organized laborers: When united, workers can take on the most powerful foes.

Update (February 11, 2019):  Denver teachers are on strike for the first time in 25 years.

Update (February 18, 2019):  West Virginia teachers announce another strike over charter schools.

Update (February 21, 2019):  With the charter school bill tabled, the West Virginia strike has ended. And now Oakland teachers are on strike.

Update (March 1, 2019):  The Oakland strike has ended with a significant raise and smaller classes.

Update (October 16, 2019):  Chicago teachers are going on strike.

Update (November 2, 2019):  The Chicago Teachers Union has reached a settlement.