Political Realignment and Party Umbrellas

An interesting article -  http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-realignment-partisan-political-party-policy-democrats-republicans-politics-213909?cmpid=sf

I've been thinking about how incompatible various political ideologies are,  even though they are stuck under a party umbrella due to our two party system.  Not sure I entirely agree with the analysis here, but I liked that the author was pointing this out.

I've actually been thinking what parties we would have if we had a parliamentary system.  That is, the Republican party could actually be divided into fiscal conservatives, christian conservatives, libertarians and (I suppose, based off the article) nationalists.  Not sure business interests and free trade are a separate strain or are mixed in with the others.   Christian conservatives are not actually about limiting government, at least when it comes to the transgender bathroom bill and other examples I could give.   That kind of conflicts with the libertarian ideology.

I actually didn't bother writing the post on this because I've got a harder time delineating the Democratic side.  Liberals, progressives, labor, social justice...

Not ready to write that one.

Of course, I also was thinking of writing about the problem with getting too focused on ideology in the first place.  When studying for my Master's in Public Affairs, we talked about evidence based policies.  To me, that's crucial.  If evidence shows something supports our goals (what goals being another far too long discussion for right now)  then I don't care whether it fits neatly into any of the existing frameworks.  If privatization works, I'm for it.  If privatization doesn't (some public services don't really have a competitive private sector in the first place, so you're just adding another layer of inefficiency), then I'm not.

Hard-heartedness

I wanted to discuss a couple things that seemed only distantly related at first.  Upon further reflection, however, I think both have to do with the human tendency to harden our hearts.  And so I kind of want to begin with a Bible quote instead (for those of you who aren't very religious, please take this as coming from someone who had a religious upbringing and finds it easier to talk about this by drawing on those experiences.  It's not meant to proselytize or convert anyone.)

"Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:8-9

Most people discuss this one, rather obviously, when they want to talk about divorce.  Yet I want to discuss the concept of a hard heart more.  So much of the politics of today seem to require hardening your heart in one way or another.  Mostly in self-defense, I think.  After all we've all seen people begging on the streets, and most of us find some reason to ignore them.  (For me, personally, I would rather support a homeless shelter or food pantry that will hopefully be more involved in their lives and make sure my donation is used well.  In other words, I don't really trust the people asking for money on street corners.  Everything I know about the world says that's probably a good thing, yet there's an inner voice that says being able to ignore suffering when it's right in your face is not really what God asked us to do.)

I wanted to tie this in with two different topics.  The first touches on a strain of thinking I've noticed on the right.  I dated someone over a decade ago who once said he thought we should nuke the entire mid-east and turn it into glass.  At the time I ignored it, because I didn't think he truly meant what he was saying and I also knew he was not in any position to actually make it happen.  In other words, idle words by someone expressing an emotion rather than a real policy.  He was condensing an entire region down to a shallow and superficial caricature that he considered a threat, and indulging in wishful thinking.  In reality, any such plan would be horrible.  

Every region of the world has families.  Children.  Women.  Men.  Some people who may be cruel or a threat, and others who are just trying to raise their families in some semblance of peace.  There's an entire field of thought focused on what would make a 'just war', what's considered a reasonable and proportional response, and what he was suggesting was so clearly out of proportion that it wasn't even worth taking seriously.

And yet I hear comments like that, still.  Even worse, we have a presidential candidate who seems to believe the same thing.  What was almost laughable in someone with absolutely no power to make it happen becomes pretty scary when it's said by someone who could.

I understand, to a certain extent, why we harden our hearts like that.  You can't serve in the military, can't make peace with what you are being asked to do (to other human beings, albeit from an opposing force), without finding some way of closing off your empathy.  Hell, I hate terrorists so much sometimes that it kind of scares me.  The things they do are horrible.  I understand why people choose to do so, and yet I think it's in some ways a mistake.  I suppose in some ways I'm influenced by a book I read some time ago, in which the author talked about how prisoners of war were not affected by PTSD the way soldiers were, despite both dealing with awful and traumatic events (with the exception of Holocaust victims).  That part of the reason soldiers were affected was because of the things they did during the fight.  In other words, we harden our hearts to fight a war...but it has consequences.  A part of us knows that what we are doing is done to people who in other circumstances are just like us.  

I, personally, don't like to forget that.  Not because I think we should stop fighting, because if I believe it's worth fighting even knowing that, then it's truly important.  I sometimes wonder if that explains some gender differences I've heard of off and on.  No scientific studies of it, of course, and I hate to say there's a gender difference for sure.  Yet even though men do the bulk of fighting and spying I've heard that the women who get involved are often even harder and more dedicated than the men.  Spying, for example, involves lying and betraying people you are spending a lot of time with.  Time that generally leads to some sort of sense of fellowship.  That's actually really hard to do.  But if you've convinced yourself it's worth doing, worth fighting for, then it's a little easier. 

And so I can say that jihadists are human.  They have feelings, and are trying to do what they think is right.  If they gave up fighting and chose to live a quiet life in peace and security somewhere, I would be okay with that.  Maybe even pity them.  But as a movement, as a belief system that justifies murder, torture, rape and slavery...they are worth fighting against. (And we'd better make sure our own belief system doesn't justify the same sorts of things.)  And that is also why I oppose overly simplistic beliefs that justify hardening our hearts and lead us to say inhumane, stupid, and poorly thought out things like "let's nuke the middle east".

The second, related, topic goes back to my question on modern slavery.  "How can anyone justify doing that to another human being?".  Clearly, the managers and business owners that are dependent on debt bondage and control have hardened their hearts to the people working for them.  Sometimes it's necessary.  Hell, I manage people, I know exactly why and how it's necessary.  You get someone who isn't performing well, and who isn't a good fit, and who isn't really improving despite your attempts to train and develop them, and you have to let them go.  It sucks to know what sort of trauma doing so causes.  The job loss, the uncertainty, the pain of not having any money.  And if they have a family, you know it will cause all sorts of difficulty for them as well.  For children, even.  All you can do is hope that they find a better fit somewhere else, some other place where they can excel and succeed...because they clearly are not doing so where they were. 

We have this image of the good businessman as someone who makes the tough decisions - and yet to make those tough decisions, they have to harden their hearts and ignore the very human costs to the people under their responsibility.  And yet I think there's another way.  I tried finding an article I read years ago, unfortunately all my search terms come up with other studies.  It was a company that ran into trouble and had to downsize.  As my search terms indicated, there are a whole bunch of problems that come when a company lets people go.  The ones who stay are more afraid of losing their jobs, morale suffers, the company as a whole suffers.  So much so that some people debate whether downsizing really pays off.  The article I read said that this company managed to avoid most of the backlash, and they did so by opening up the decision on who to let go to their employees.  The employees met in groups, and their recommendations didn't always have to do with who was the best worker.  Sometimes it was "so-and-so has a family of four that would suffer more if they lost their job".  Yet allowing the employees that level of engagement and control meant the ones that the company as a whole did not suffer as much when they did downsize. 

And so a parallel seems apparent.  Just as a soldier hardens their heart to the enemy, and yet can probably be an effective fighter if they don't (I would even argue a 'more effective fighter', except that the type of fighter I envision won't fight for unjustified reasons...which can cause problems with discipline if you've got leadership that doesn't appreciate that), so a business man or woman hardens their heart to their employees, and yet might possibly be an effective business leader if they don't.  Perhaps even a more effective business leader. 

It goes against the grain, goes against a lot of cultural beliefs.  Just consider the pressure Costco gets for paying higher wages.  Or the backlash against that company that decided to pay it's employees $70,000 a year.

Yet what if the hard-hearted business leader is actually a bad thing?

More on Nevada

http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/

A Travesty of Democratic Politics

If there is ever anything that would make me #Never Hillary, and I don't say this lightly, it would be what happened in Nevada yesterday.


I don't have time to write anything more, have to work today.

What Threatens America - Internal Cleavages, II

Okay, okay.  Today I want to talk about Trump.  Or to be more accurate, what Trump's candidacy represents.

I have to admit that when I (reluctantly) talk about Trump I normally talk about what I actually understand.  Namely, the appeal he has for people who feel left out and ignored.  The people who feel they've lost their job to China or Mexico.

But one of the first positive responses to Trump I heard was from someone thrilled to hear a public figure say whatever he really thought.  For some, Trump's lack of political correctness is a huge part of his appeal.

I feel like this is a tricky one to address, because you either sound like you're a racist (i.e. I should be able to say what I like even if it's really hurtful to someone else, and I don't care that it bothers you so there) or you sound like a nagging parent (i.e. why can't you respect other people?)  That, or you're an apologist for racists...excusing the hurt their words and attitudes can do to people who've been hurt often enough already.  Or, on the flip side, you're an intolerant hypocrite who tries to make everyone conform to your views.

I could go on and on, but I think you know all the stereotypes.  All the ways we portray the side we don't agree with.  There's even cute little facebook memes that capture a viewpoint in one neat little picture  (I have a much harder time finding the liberal memes on political correctness, btw)

And the very difficulty we have talking about this is a sign of what a huge problem it is.  It means we are not have a national discussion, we practically can't talk about it.  Not in a caring and empathic way, one that doesn't outright dismiss the other side. 

This was something I noticed when our company had their Culture of Inclusion summit.  We spend a day and a half there, some clearly annoyed at being forced to attend, and only touched on the attendees real thoughts at the tail end when someone anonymously asked a question. 

The Starbucks attempt to start conversations about race was a disaster.  Unequivocally a failure.

And in this day and age, where we see anonymous hate and internet trolls that aren't always doing it for the lols, I think it's safe to say that we have a public consensus and some pretty powerful private dissent.  (For good or bad.  I'm trying my best not to condemn any one side right now, as this post isn't about saying who is wrong or who is right.  I'll leave that for another time.)

Unskilled Labor

I wanted to add a little bit on unskilled labor, based on my own experiences.

At my company we have a mix of company employees and contract labor.  Our contracted labor is temporary, and can work a maximum of 1 year at a time.  They don't get benefits, and are paid less than the company associates.  In my experience and most of my fellow supervisors, contract labor is almost more trouble than it's worth.  it takes time to interview them, then more time for the background checks...and many don't even make it through that process.  If they get hired and are good, either we hire them for a company position or they find something better elsewhere.  If they aren't good, then we wind up firing them.  Often for attendance issues.  Turnover can get rather high, which means we're also spending a lot of time training them...and we can be left short-handed at particularly bad periods of time.  It also seems like their less motivated than our company associates, so their work can be sloppier and slower.  From a production perspective it really sucks. 

The company as a whole, of course, is looking at other factors.  It's easier to flex contract labor to the needs of the business, hiring more if we get busy and letting others go if we are slow.  It's also cheaper, from a benefits perspective.  (Supposedly.  If you include all the training time and overtime when we're shorthanded, it really depends.  I believe we successfully argued that a few of these positions should be converted to company employees...but we're not going to get all of them.)

I wanted to discuss one particular task that on the face of it is about as unskilled as we get.  Since our distribution center ships about 12,000 lines of product a day, we go through a LOT of cardboard and plastic shrink wrap.  Every time you empty a box of product, that box has to go somewhere.  Every time we unwrap a pallet of product, the shrink wrap has to go somewhere.  We try to recycle as much as we can, so we have a baler or two where we scrunch the cardboard or plastic down and wrap it with baling wire, then stage it for pick up.  We also try to re-use some particular boxes (we call moon boxes and jewel boxes) where the flaps on the bottom fold...easy to flatten, easy to fold together again to create a box when needed.  So we hire contract labor to sort the cardboard, place the re-usable boxes in densos and bale the rest.

Since workers throughout the facility are picking product (and thus breaking down boxes and discarding shrink wrap) we have collection points all over...and utility drivers that will move the material to the baling area.

Like I said, baling is about as unskilled as it gets here.  But this is what happens when we're shorthanded -

The material can't get baled fast enough, the utility driver starts running out of space to place the material.  The driver may try to place it down one of our aisles, but now it's in the way of equipment pickers.  They can't reach pallets of product unless they  move the cardboard or plastic out of the way. 

If the utility driver can't find a place to put it, then they just stop taking the material from the collection points.  The employees then run out of space to place the cardboard and start piling it on an overhead rack that runs all along the conveyor.  Next thing you know, you're up to your ears in cardboard.

Since the baling job doesn't require any particular skill, it's actually hard to keep the best workers there.  We always have better places to put them.  Or, again, they feel underutilized and find some other job.  But since we don't put our best there, we have to spend more time supervising the area to make sure the employees aren't sneaking off to check the cell phones (that they aren't supposed to be carrying in the first place) and making sure they're actually working.  That's assuming they show up regularly in the first place.

It's particularly frustrating when you get someone who is a good fit.  Who is reliable, works hard, and shows up regularly.  Frustrating because you can only keep them for a year (assuming they complete that year), and once they're gone you're right back on the merry-go-round. 

I run into that in my current role as well, and still have some associates upset when a particularly reliable temp completed his year we couldn't keep him.  Ever since then, it's been a month or so where we're shorthanded while I interview candidates for the position, followed by a month or two where the position is filled, then losing them for one reason or another.  Oh and, btw, if we're in overtime or have heavy volume and we're shorthanded I don't like to pull my full time associates away from processing to do that job.  Which means half the time my shipping associate and I are doing the bulk of it, and I ask my associates to do some of the other tasks (i.e. wrapping their pallets instead of staging them by the wrapper for the temp to handle).

Some of this speaks volumes about the current labor pool in the area.  I think unemployment is actually somewhat low (about 4%) so it's hard to get any response to a posting in the first place.  Some of it, however, also speaks to how little incentive they have to do a good job.  Or rather, their only real reward is to do well enough to get hired on full time.  That and the fact that warehouse work does pay more than minimum wage.

Cardboard baler is definitely an unskilled position - yet the consequences of treating the position as easily replaceable can have a big impact on our operations. 
 

Modern Slavery, and Thoughts Thereof.

Boy Drinking Tea near Brickmaker.  Helmand Province, Afghanistan

When I was reading about modern slavery, the author mentioned slavery amongst some brickmaking families in Pakistan.  The way it works is this: someone comes and offers a great job.  "Come work here, the pay is great!".  When someone takes the job they will find that they 'owe' money for transportation to the work site.  Plus the site is so remote that it's hard to buy food and living essentials.  Those are provided by the business, at a higher rate than normal. 

The worker soon finds that he (primarily a 'he') keeps sinking into debt.  This might be the case regardless - some brick making businesses are better than others -  but dishonesty on the part of some managers makes it worse.  These workers can't read or write, and so they have no way of verifying that their debts are being documented correctly.  Or that attempts to pay if off are counted correctly.  So even the hardest workers, ones who have no family emergencies to pay for, don't go into further debt because of unexpected illnesses or a planned wedding, will sometimes wind up deeper in debt because of this dishonesty.

While in debt the worker can't leave.  Can't quit and go find a better job.  Can't take out a loan and go to school.  The business might trade his debt (and thus his labor) off to someone else, but it never truly goes away.  If the worker causes trouble or tries to leave, the owner can try to call in the debt right then and there.  As long as the worker keeps working, the owner may let the debt ride.  This debt can also be passed on from generation to generation.  So someone might be making bricks simply because their father or grandfather took a job that promised great wages and wound up sinking into debt.

While I took the picture above in Afghanistan (and not Pakistan), I wonder if there were some other questions I could have or should have asked when we visited this brick maker.  I somehow assumed it was a mom and pop business, though in this culture the mom wouldn't be an owner.  It just looked like a family run business, since the kids were clearly part of a family working here.  Now I wonder who actually owned the business, and how well the family was paid.

As I've been reading up on this, I find myself wondering "How can people do this to each other?"  How can you be so divorced of empathy, compassion, respect for life and human dignity...how can you be so blocked off from our natural desire for connection...that you would create a system that depends so much on making other people's lives miserable?  And not just the worker's life, but the lives of his or her children?  The entire family?

I know enough to say that it's not exclusive to any one group or culture.  Our own history of company towns show some eerie similarities, though some of the companies had high ideals for creating a town like this.

What Kevin Bales indicates in his book Disposable People is that our modern economy makes it hard to know where and how such practices makes it into our modern economy.  It's made me think about what a fair cost is for a lot of things.  He mentions that oftentimes the business owners are divorced from the day to day running of that business, they just put pressure on the middle managers to save money...and some of those managers find the only way to make profit is to "reduce expenses" i.e. find ways of paying less for labor, since other expenditures are fixed.  And so we have charcoal burners in Brazil working in a similar fashion.  (I have carefully avoided talking about the sex trade, as there are other factors involved there...but some of the same dynamics are at play.)

What is a fair cost?  Maybe we really should be paying a couple of dollars more for those chocolate bars, as one example, that claim fair pay for the workers.  Or (to bring this closer to home) maybe an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac isn't such a big deal, if it allows workers to make enough to raise a family without food stamps and welfare.  And Walmart, which is one of the largest employers, shouldn't pay a wage that also requires welfare to raise a family.

"But what about the free market?" you might ask.  Aren't these the wages dictated by supply and demand?

And how can we expect these companies to compete if they raise our wages, when companies can go elsewhere to pay even less?

If companies were barely breaking even I would think that's a valid point.  Can't expect somebody to stay in business if they're not making any money.  Yet this concept of 'rents' interests me, because the difference between the sale price and the cost of making something can sometimes be substantial...and who gets what portion of that 'rent' says a lot about our economy today.

Shifting gears a bit,  I want to throw something else out there.  Back when Spain was extracting a lot of gold from the Americas most nations thought wealth came from hoarding gold.  The more gold you had in your treasury, the better off you were.  Part of Adam Smith's genius was pointing out that a good economy did not come from hoarding gold, but from a free market economy.  (btw, he also thought the government should be responsible universal education and public infrastructure).

I would love to see some studies asking whether the modern equivalent of 'hoarding gold' is doing the same thing.  That is, just as I've seen article after article talk about how wages are stagnant and the middle class is shrinking I've also seen repeated articles mention that various groups (large corporations, the 1%, etc) are sitting on piles of money.  Some of that is probably  necessary.  No business wants to go under because they lack liquidity during a crisis (that's happened to a couple big names already).  Yet how much of that is good business practice, and how much of that is the equivalent of hoarding gold?

As for the free market economy, I'm not entirely sure we're seeing it at play here.  Certain groups seem to have captured the market, to the point where they're able to influence the economy more than would happen otherwise.  For example, could Walmart seriously find workers if those workers were unable to get welfare to make ends meet?  At some point people will say 'it's not worth working my butt off when I can't make ends meet on the wages I'm getting'.  Or even "why should I work hard just to make sure some CEO or shareholder can buy a private yacht?"

Actually, I think people are already saying that...which is why this ties in a bit with immigration.  Illegal immigrants sometimes take the jobs that Americans don't want, because those jobs pay too little to appeal to someone who grew up here.  Businesses, rather than increasing their wages, hire illegals instead.

A few final thoughts.  I don't believe businesses should be charities.  Keeping unproductive people on the job hurts everyone.  At the same time, I think we've already made the decision (as a society) that we don't want people fired for lack of jobs to wind up homeless and dying on the streets.  Hence the social safety net, such as it is.

We're facing some major transitions today.  Automation - and globalization in the more industrialized economies - is taking away a lot of the jobs that used to be there for what's called an 'unskilled' population. (Even though it's called unskilled, experience and skill can make a big difference in improvement, so it's technically not.  I've seen this at work, where we have some pretty simple jobs anyone is capable of doing...and yet it's hard to find the right person for the role.)  I don't want to be a Luddite, and throw away this technology just to keep people employed.  I think that's a waste of resources.  I also think that very few people enjoy doing the boring, monotonous jobs that are best suited for automation.  (It seems sad to say that all a thinking and feeling human being is capable of is to do some repetitive and brainless task.  I kind of feel they should be paid more not because it requires a special skill, but because it's such a waste of human potential.  Reminds me of a science fiction book that had a restaurant that was considered classier and more expensive because it used real human servers.) 

And so I wonder what an economy like that would look like.  One where most people have the skills to do the higher level jobs, where only a few people work the 'unskilled' ones that can't be automated - and are paid well for it - and where our products cost what they 'should' in so doing.

Some things would probably be much more expensive, but if it's made using the charcoal  made by the Brazilians I mentioned above, isn't that an artificially low cost?  Or if a t-shirt is now twice as expensive, but the price we're used to came from ]mistreated garment workers, is that truly a fair price?

And how much would truly destroy a business, versus just changing what portions of the pie everyone gets?

What Threatens America - Channels for Addressing Grievances, Cont.

Someone once said that when you're driving on a highway anyone going faster than you is crazy, and anyone going slower than you is overly cautious. 

I think this is true for a lot of things - we're not objective about it.  I want to tie this into two different things, and the connection is probably not obvious at first.

In Iraq back in 2006/2007 the Sunnis and Shia were really beginning a civil war.  I remember reading about how the moderates (who I love, since they seem the very people necessary to stopping the spiral of self-destruction) were targeted.  When people actively believe something, anyone who disagrees is a threat.  Like a person going slower than you on a highway.  It's almost worse when you think they 'ought' to be a supporter, because then it can feel like a betrayal.  (Like white supremacists who think white people who support minorities are somehow race traitors.)  And so the groups fighting bring pressure to bear, creating a situation where everyone has to pick sides.  If you're not with us you're against us, and a target.  (This is also a weakness in the jihadi movement, as they can splinter into separate groups arguing over whose beliefs truly represent what they claim is God's will.) 

In situations like this people get sucked into fighting 'the enemy', and forget that the key terrain is often the people in the middle.  And so you can win the battle and lose the war.

To bring this back to American politics - activists are called that because they are passionate about a cause.  They are activated to take action...which in some ways as good, since that's the only way change happens.  In other ways it's bad, since they can find anyone who doesn't share their passion a threat. 

We've had a two-party system for a long time, and in a way the people who are most involved in their parties are activists.  That's why my political science classes said that politicians cater to their base in the primary, then tone it down and pivot to the middle in a general election.

The thing is, when you're an activist like that, when you truly believe in your cause, you will support actions to 'win' that can be destructive to the larger whole.  You forget that the key terrain is the general public and you focus on defeating 'the enemy'.  Defeating Democrats, or defeating Republicans, or whoever.  That's probably why our Founding Fathers considered parties a threat, representing factions that were dangerous to the public interest.  Didn't do much good, as political parties started almost right away.

I brought that up for a couple of reasons.  First, because parties have made choices over the course of our national history that made sense in terms of winning, but ultimately are detrimental to the public interest.  Gerrymandering is the first one that comes to mind.  So, for example, Indiana has a political system more conservative than the views of it's population.  Part of what makes this so bad is that people don't feel like voting matters.  If you're district is set up so that it's always red or always blue, what does it matter whether you vote or not? Your district is still going to reflect - or not reflect - your views.

The parties have also manipulated the system so that it's easier for them to get elected, and significantly harder for any third party or independent candidate to win.  Candidates of the major parties automatically are put on a ballot, while anyone else has to jump through hoops.  Those hoops can involve getting more signatures, petitioning state officials, and more.

I brought that up because I've noticed some of the Democratic supporters seem very offended that Bernie ran as a Democrat, since he's been an Independent so long.  There have been arguments that the primary system is biased against him, and these defenders will say "but he's not truly a Democrat, and it's our party's primary in the first place.  We can do it however we want."

If they were taking about selecting the chair of the Democratic National Committee I would agree 100%.  But we're talking about a presidential election here.  We're talking about nominating someone who is supposed to serve all of America, and not just the Democratic Party.  And we're talking about a system that has made it so hard for anyone to run who isn't a Republican or a Democrat that it's to all intents and purposes impossible.  Like activists who are so focused on defeating the enemy that they forget where the key terrain really lies.

I know they don't think their threatening the public interest.  After all, you don't get that active and involved unless you believe it truly is in the public interest.  But the interests of any political party are not necessarily the interests of the public.

This, btw, also holds true to the Republican attempts to force their political representatives to toe the party line.  It makes them more cohesive in Congress, makes it easier to push the agenda of the party...and it also means they are less representative of the people who actually live in their districts.  (and just as in Iraq, the moderates become 'the enemy' and are targeted.  Less bloody targeting, but they lose critical funding and find it harder to get re-elected.)

In the short run it doesn't seem like an obvious problem.  In the long run, you wind up with more people feeling disenfranchised, disaffected, and upset by a system that isn't very responsive.

What Threatens America - Channels for Addressing Grievances

I want to devote some thought to how we address grievances here in America.  I wanted to start, first, with the follow up to some of the issues I've posted about before.  In Flint, Michigan a couple of lawsuits are in progress as we speak, the Governor has issues a public apology and vowed to drink the water himself.  It's still an ongoing topic, not something I would say is done by any means, but things are being done to address the grievance. 

In Ferguson, Missouri even though the specific officer involved was not indicted the federal Dept of Justice investigated the police department and determined that it had engaged in misconduct against the citizens of Ferguson.  Again, this is still an ongoing issue...and there are people who think not enough was done (and others who think too much was done).  I'm not trying to judge how it was addressed, so much as pointing out that various groups are trying to address it.

So it sounds good, right?  We have grievances, they're being addressed, nothing to worry about?

Except that these specific instances are also examples of deeper underlying grievances.  Racial differences.  Class tension.  Elitism.  Leadership that fails to address a problem before it blows up into a full-blown crisis.  (This last one is not the best point, since who knows how many situations were addressed before they became a crisis?)

Note that I said "racial differences" instead of "racism".  That's because the different opinions about incidents like this reflect different cultures as well as actual racism.  "Law-abiding" primarily white citizens who support and respect law enforcement (and I count myself and most everyone I know in this category) have a hard time understanding why people - people who used to get arrested for loitering and other minor offenses in order to force them to work on various projects; who saw law enforcement bring out dogs and hoses against men, women and children - don't trust the police.  Are some of these incidents truly about criminal behavior?  Or is some of it because an officer doesn't feel they are given the respect due as a representative of the law?

Yet I actually want to focus more on class grievances - in part because that is what Trump appears to be tapping into.  I've seen article after article over the last decade that has talked about the shrinking of the middle class.  Stagnant wages.  Greater disparity in income.  We know this is happening.  You have to be living under a rock to be unaware of this...

And yet nothing serious is being done.  During the Great Depression we had the Public Works Administration, during the Great Recession we had austerity.  We have respected economists saying we actually should have had even more stimulus, we have article after article talking about our aging infrastructure...and none of it seems to translate into actual policy changes. 

I read economic articles talking about 'recovery', how the companies who were bailed out during the financial crisis were able to pay everything back, how things are better...yet none of it seems to trickle down to the average person.  Getting by is just as much of a struggle now than it was 8 years ago.  (and then we get articles saying "we need consumer spending to grow the economy", and I have to laugh.  Where do you think the consumers get the money to spend?  They're tapped out...they're going to keep being tapped out until debts are paid off or wages grow.)

I can get into nitty gritty details more at a later time, I kind of wanted to point out a few other things first.

A few years ago a study showed that the collective preferences of ordinary citizens has almost no effect on policy, whereas the collective preferences of our wealthiest citizens have a much greater impact. 

In other words - the wealthy don't seem to care about the struggles of the everyone else, and they're the ones who actually make policy. 

This is a pretty massive and difficult topic, so I'll probably post some more later.

A Side Note on Counter-insurgency and Leadership

Before I went on to the next topic I wanted to touch briefly on the third condition for an insurgency - leadership.

Just as you can put out a fire by targeting any one of the three parts of the fire triangle, so you can try to fight an insurgency by targeting leadership.  This, however, has some serious drawbacks and I don't recommend it as the sole course of action.

The basic problem is that if you get rid of leaders without addressing the underlying grievances all you are doing is postponing the problem until another leader crops up.  Spending resources constantly looking out for that next leader is exhausting, and any potential leader only has to succeed once.

I think that's what some of the more tyrannical rulers try to do.  Some may even be aware that it's only a temporary fix, and may try to address the underlying issues...but it's hard to say whether or not they will succeed.

Going this route seems a bit like catching a tiger by the tail. 

What Threatens America - Internal Cleavage Points

So how does my previous post tie into the threats facing America today?


The concepts of grievances, how grievances are addressed, and insurgencies apply to much of our current political world.  We just (mostly) have agreed by certain rules that prevent it from turning into actual war.  It's interesting how political commentary will use some of the same terms, except it'll be a "political insurgency" that gets played out in votes and rallies.


So - grievances, ways to have those grievances addressed, and leadership.


You have to remember what Europe was like back when America was colonized...this was at the height of Europe's religious wars.   The Thirty Years War was just one example.  Many people immigrated to the United States to get away from it all, and most accepted a live and let live approach.  Or tried to...that's why we created a Bill of Rights.  It helps set clear limitations on what the government can do, so that people don't get forced to worship in some other religion, or get stomped on for speaking their minds.


Our history is a bit more troubled than that, of course.  The anti-Catholic history of the United States is really a rather interesting example, especially given how much attitudes have changed since then.  Consider Maryland's state history, or anti-immigration attitudes towards the Irish and Italians, or the campaign worries about JFK's Catholicism.


Anyways.  There's been intolerance, prejudice, and widespread support for laws against one group or another.  There's been violence, lynch mobs and riots.  There's been civil unrest.  In short, some sectors of our society have grievances. And yet it's not, generally, been a clear case of one entire group against another. 


The Civil War was not a slave rebellion against white rulers.  There were abolitionists fighting for the end of slavery, Unionists who were still prejudiced against blacks but didn't want the country to disintegrate, and various other motivators.  And so the Civil War was more white vs. white with support from former slaves.  In a sense, you could say that the grievances were being addressed...slowly, painfully, and not always well.  Yet they were addressed well enough that people kept trying to make the system work.


Our tradition of civil liberties and our Bill of Rights means that there are people who will support a group that isn't their own.  And that's good, because our political fights are less about one ethnic or religious group fighting another, and more about what laws are in keeping with our evolving social norms...particularly with regards to civil rights.  The schooling a naturalized citizen has to go through means many are even more familiar with our history and rights than our own native-born citizens...and many accept the beliefs laid out in the Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights as their own.


This, btw, is something people don't always understand.  We have a long and ugly racial history, and it looks like a pretty obvious cleavage point.  (In the right - or wrong - environment, it could be).  And so enemies like al Qaeda try to weaken us by inciting racial conflict.  And just as al Qaeda may have incited violence in Iraq by bombing the al-Askari mosque, we have people in the States who launch attacks hoping to start a race war in the US.


To bring this back to threats facing us today - we are not at the point where we're going to have a race war.  Yet.  Thank God we're not!  There are definitely grievances tied to racial issues, but so far we're addressing them through accepted channels.


There are other grievances, though...grievances tied class issues, the shrinking of the middle class, globalization, economic change, etc.  Since I'm keeping this at a more general level I won't get into the specifics of those grievances, just pointing out that they exist.  And that it's when accepted channels for grievances fail that you really have to worry.  Which brings me to my next topic.


(to be continued)

What Threatens America - Some Background Info

I promised specifics, what we can do to hasten or halt a decline, what specifically is threatening America today.  But my first attempt was still too broad, and I have to narrow this down to something reasonable.  (I don't want to get stuck postulating and philosophizing on a grand scale, not right now.)


So I'll think I'll start with terrorism, actually.  One of my classes asked a question I still sometimes think over - what's the difference between terrorism and an insurgency?  This isn't the age old "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" type of statement, though I do believe there's a difference between the two.  (Terrorism is, in some ways, a tactic.  They deliberately target civilians in an attempt to create terror).  This question is less about the tactical differences and more about what the difference is between the two, when both can involve violent attempts to overthrow a government.


Every society has it's tensions.  Every. Single. One.  That's part of why it's such a miscalculation to assume the 'enemy other' is somehow monolithic and perfect.  (Communist China and Communist Russia had cleavage points.  China itself is hardly monolithic, though I'm sort of ashamed to admit it took a while before I realized that.  It's not just the Uighurs to the west, either.)


How a society resolves those tensions has a lot to do with whether it's a success or failure.  When we talked about what creates an insurgency (as opposed to a terrorist), there were a couple of elements required.  There had to be grievances felt by the population, those grievances were not being addressed through accepted channels, and there had to be leadership for the insurgency.  Kind of reminds me of the fire triangle, actually.  Grievances are the fuel.  The inability to address those grievances through accepted channels is the oxidizing agent...and leadership adds the heat (obviously, different leaders can take the insurgency in different directions...away from violence and towards civil rights, for example.  Or away from terrorist tactics and more towards military and government targets).


So the difference between a terrorist and an insurgent may have something to do with the success (or failure) of their efforts.  A terrorist is basically operating from weakness.  There aren't really enough of them to act in a conventional way...so they do these dramatic acts in order to gain attention to their cause, provoke a counter-reaction, and recruit more people.  Sometimes the government forces add more oxygen to the fight, like France in Algeria.  Rounding up the innocent in an attempt to get a small portion of the guilty led to the radicalization of people who were previously neutral, and created more support for Algerian independence.


When a group reaches the limit of their support, they're faced with a choice - accept that they don't have the support they need?   Accept, basically, that they've lost?  Or decide that their goal is too important to give up on now, and to push on.  This is when a proto-insurgency may move more towards terrorism.  Let's say they don't have enough support, refuse to give up, and thus resort to dramatic and violent attacks.  (And so the dividing line between one and the other is fluid, and throughout history an organization may change from one to the other and back again.)


The founding basis for our democracy is that we had a system that allowed grievances to be addressed through accepted channels.  Don't like what you see?  Vote.  Feel like your needs aren't being addressed?  Vote.  Have a grievance?  Vote.


Your ability to make a difference is not guaranteed.  Not everyone will agree with you, and you may lose an election or ballot proposition.  But there's always next election, next year.  And if you're tapping into a real cause, more and more people will be persuaded.  (Without disruptive and painful things like insurgencies and terrorists.)

Modern America

Some days it seems like the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and anything we try to do will just make things worse.  (There are assumptions in that statement, such as that it's bad for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.  Let's not digress into whether these things are good or bad at the moment.)


I do, however, keep remembering that history often winds up surprising us.  That just when it seems like the powers-that-be have gained some sort of lock on control, the unexpected happens.  Consider how ruling families in Europe regained control after Napoleon, only to lose it again almost 100 years later.  Or the labor movement, which somehow managed to create a 40 hr workweek (with 1.5 pay for overtime) even though the odds seemed stacked against them.  You could make a similar story regarding Tammany Hall, and other situations where the powerful seem to have everything in their favor.


So all hope is not lost, even when things seem darkest.  A reminder I feel I need to make, particularly in this day and age.


I bring this up because the America I know and love seems threatened by a variety of factors.  This is probably not a controversial statement, as survey after survey shows that Americans are unhappy with the direction we are going.  What makes my statement different, I think, is that I disagree on what those threats are.  It's not Islam, it's not our growing diversity, it's not gay marriage.  It's not globalization, or immigration, or the loss of manufacturing jobs in and of itself (though all of those things contribute to the hard times faced by many in America today.)


I have had a fascination with history, with what helps a nation rise or makes a nation fall, in part because I feel America is at a crucial point right now.  The decisions we make now can hasten or halt our decline.


Again, on the generic level, I think a lot of people agree with me here.  It's the specifics that differ.  I think I'll do a couple posts to discuss those specifics, with the caveat that I'm by no means a professional historian.  These are just some thoughts or trends I've noticed in the course of reading up on things, and should not be considered rigorous by any means.

The Establishment, News Sources, Difference Making

I had planned one other follow up post - mainly to explain why I said the Establishment suffered from groupthink.

My thoughts have gone in a different direction, however.  If there's one thing I've struggled with in making a life in the civilian world, it's that I know at least a little bit of what's going on in the rest of the world.  I can't turn a blind eye, can't pretend it isn't happening. 

I feel out of step, because so many others are focused on daily living...and yet I'm hunting up articles on the Yazidi or reading up on modern slavery. 

I suppose it does tie in to groupthink, at least a little bit.  See...I've noticed that my news sources have different topics and serve different purposes.  Facebook tends to cover what the average person is really thinking, even if it's some quick little meme.

I like memeorandum just to keep tabs on the major news media, even though a lot of it never shows up on facebook and only matters to the few news wonks (like myself) who follow this sort of thing.

And I originally had some feeds going to Google Reader, when Google Reader went away I wound up transferring them to Digg. I select ones that are thought provoking, that force me to consider another point of view.  Or they're just fun bits of history that introduce me to things I never knew. :)  They do not always reflect my own views, but they're worth reading.  So here's a sample of articles I found and saved, whether through my own feeds or through the Digg engine.  Some of these are long and dry, not well suited to the quick memes we see on Facebook or the short tweats on twitter.  They're more substantive, thought-provoking, and often touch on issues that I think are deeply important.  And so I find myself wondering, when all this other stuff is going on, why the news is so full of 'issues' that seem so trivial and unimportant.

Some of these, btw, seem truly concerning.  Like Chicago's Homan Square, where people are detained in violation of everything I'd ever heard about the legal process. 

So anyways.  I'm rather disturbed by how often I find an article that truly seems important, and it comes to be via Digg or Facebook and hardly makes a blip on the mainstream news.  I've heard the phrase 'echo chamber', and I've unfortunately come to conclude it's pretty apt.  I keep tabs on what they say, but I don't think they're truly covering the important issues of our time.  Which is pretty disturbing, when you think about it.

Yet I don't feel I have much to do with that.  I'm not in a position to make any of it change.  I'm more concerned with finding a way to get involved, to do something about the things I am aware of...and hopefully, do something in a way that lets me keep paying my mortgage.