Analysis, Prescriptions, Etc.

Due to previous experience as an analyst, I know that the way we describe something often shapes the decisions made to affect it...whatever that 'something' is.  I suppose that's not too different from 'framing' the issue, in a sense.

It goes beyond that, though, as well.  There is a lot of white noise out there, so you have to pick and choose what's relevant.  What's worth noting.  And what isn't.  Add to that the usual complexities of life (i.e. delayed responses, difficulty attaching outcomes to causes, etc) and sometimes it's a wonder we can predict anything.

On this, my second blog, I've been trying to keep my posts a bit more focused...and less meta.  It's hard to do justice to the topics, though, since so much depends on my particular worldview and how I filtered things in the first place.  If I skip all that, then I can write a simple and clear analysis that may disagree with someone else's analysis because I didn't go into the underlying assumptions.

I got onto the topic for a variety of reasons.  First, because of where we are in history today.  Can we "Make America Great Again"?  Did we stop being great?  Were we ever great?  If we were great and aren't any more, then what caused us to stop being great?  (As analysis often drives the conclusion...that's a pretty key question.  I think most people know what Donald Trump's answer to this is.  Even if you agree with him that America was great and is not any more, you can disagree on why or how that happened and come up with a completely different solution.)

Second - well, pinpointing how or why something occurred in human history is notoriously difficult.  Just look at all the books that discuss the fall of the Roman Empire.  Or The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and other books in a similar vein.  It's hard to do analysis like this on historical events, it's even harder to do in the present time.  Particularly because people have reasons for pushing one particular cause over another, and nobody knows what the end result will be.

I kind of wanted to add something here, as well.  Sometimes the side that 'wins' does so because they made fewer mistakes.  It doesn't mean that they had the perfect strategy...and sometimes they can mistake the real reason for their success.  I think of that, in particular, when I consider why dictators take power (and the lessons their offspring all too often learn about how to keep power).  A strongman may seem like a blessing when you've lived through a devastating civil war, and many people seem to think the brutality of a dictator is what allowed them to end the devastation.  Yet I think Caligula shows that brutality in and of itself isn't enough, at least if your Praetorian Guard decides to do away with you. 

So anyways.  With regards to foreign policy, there are a variety of theories on war, international affairs, etc.  There's the concept of realpolitik, there are realists, idealists, etc.  The policies you prescribe often have to do with what your underlying assumptions are, and those schools of thought have a lot to do with that.

This also gets at the hidden transcripts I talked about earlier.  Some of the people making these decisions believe they're making the ugly but necessary calls, the ones that look horrible in the light of day...yet they feel that's the way it has to be done.  And has always been done.  That any criticism shows you're too idealistic and should never see the hidden (ugly) inner workings that lead to such decisions.  Sort of like the famous quote that "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

So there can be a couple of competing narratives, two of which seem particularly relevant to America for the past fifty years or so.

In one, the people can not understand the reasons for decisions that look wrong on the face of it, and so must be sheltered and protected from the dirty work.

In the other, the elite are trying to hide their corrupt and self-serving decisions from the light of day.  Whether it was justified or not, doing so maintains their own control (and at the expense of the people.)

I said the last fifty years or so because these competing narratives seem to play out with the Vietnam War.  That is, you have some people who justify all sorts of things in order to fight Communism.  I am going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and say that they truly did think Communism was a tremendous threat that needed to be fought with every tool at their disposal.  These are the ones, then, who feel practically betrayed when the public so directly turned against them.  They aren't willing to question the decisions they made, to consider whether they were truly the best options at hand.  You see a more recent version of this with George W. Bush's argument that we needed to "stay the course" in Iraq.  In this worldview, the right decisions are being made and the right things are being done...ugly though they may sometimes appear...and we just need to stick with it and see it through.  (This is not helped by the fact that sometimes sheer perseverance really does win the day.  I would argue, however, that anyone who is horrified at Mao's willingness to lose 300 million Chinese should understand that perseverance can be a devastating way to 'win' and should probably not be your sole strategy.)

On the flip side, you have an entire generation that grew to distrust their government (because of Vietnam, and more)...and see repeated attempts to hide information less as a a necessary part of the business and more as a sign that we are no longer a true democracy.  That our government doesn't really respond to the will of the people, so much as to that secretive cabal of government, business and military interests.

Interlude - American Political Ideologies

I've been mulling over my next step, figured I'd do something on foreign policy next.  But again, that's a rather broad topic and I'm not ready to write that post yet.  I saw some headlines discussing what could possibly replace the Republican Party, and it reminded me of something I kind of wanted to do.  Namely, lay out the ideological threads behind some of the parties.  Their strengths and weaknesses, and how they support and conflict with each other.  This is by no means meant for historical accuracy.  It's more the impressions I've formed and my own understanding of the concepts.  And since I don't think I really have all that many followers (other than friends and family...thank you all) I figure I can digress and delay as long as I want.  Anything someone's dying to know my opinion on, they can just ask.

So, in no particular order:

Christian Conservatives - these want to bring Christian values into public life.  That can be a good thing, and I have a lot of respect for the truly devout.  Yet far too much of this group reminds me of all the New Testament complaints about the Pharisees in Matthew 6:5-6.  They're very showy about their faith, and very judgmental.  Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors (who were concerned pretty low-class) and notably warned people about casting stones.  Too many of this group come across as judgmental, holier-than-thou, and all about casting stones.

Fiscal Conservatives - the idea here is that we shouldn't be spending more than we can afford.  I think most everyone would agree.  The attempts to limit debt, however, might not actually make economic sense if you believe in Keynesian economics, that is.  Keynes argues that in a depression you can't expect the economy to improve through most of the other sources of economic growth, so the government should stimulate the economy with public spending.  (Which might work if we balanced that out with public saving during the boom years, but unfortunately we also tend to spend more when times are good.)  There are tons of economists out there who will explain the issues here to a far greater degree than I care to get into.  There are economists who disagree with Keynes, and I encourage you to read up on their various points if this interests you.  This whole topic is still open to debate, which makes it hard to say whether public spending during a downturn is a good idea or not.  I will say that the basic idea makes sense, but if you can't balance the budget by spending less than you have to talk about raising revenue.  In other words, raising taxes.  This group, in general, is where the staunch anti-tax group resides, so that's generally a non-starter.  The anti-tax push is another strategy that works well in the right circumstances and becomes ridiculous in the wrong ones.  Unfortunately, this position is so rigid that it's practically bypassed the brain and turned into a reflex.  No debate is made about what the appropriate tax level should be given the current situation, the answer is always "less".

Libertarians - this is home to the anti-authoritarian, small government, independent types.  When I said the conservative umbrella has conflicting ideologies I was mostly thinking of the Christian Conservatives and Libertarians, since libertarians generally don't care at all about what you're doing so long as it's not impacting them.  This appealed to my brother Kawphy a lot, so we've had a number of debates on the topic.  In an isolated world, this makes a lot of sense.  But in an interconnected world (where, for example, a business might dump waste into a river that eventually contaminates a city's drinking supply) it's not that easy.  Plus businesses have shown a tendency to abuse the situation if they're not forced to change (i.e. child labor laws, overtime laws, modern slavery, etc.)  The other downside to this is that such policies generally help the ones already privileged.  Another article I have completely failed to find again discussed specific policies and how they hurt the disadvantaged (i.e. poor, minority, etc.)  Instead, I'll just give a link to a Rand report.  I read the key findings but have not read the entire report, but it sounds like good and relevant info.

Classic Liberalism - to me, this is where I picture the Jewish lawyer who represented someone from the KKK.  These are the people who believe in freedom of speech so strongly that they will ensure the rights of someone who is saying things they violently oppose.  Classic liberalism is about more than free speech, of course, but there's something appealing about such strong convictions.  It seems to raise us up to be better people, and to see the worth inherent in all of us.  I have a hard time finding a bad side here, actually, which probably says something about my own biases. Unfortunately, it's called 'classic' liberalism because things have since changed.

Neo-liberalism is apparently a thing, but as this article shows it's not really in common usage.  I'm not too familiar with the term. 

Social Justice Warriors - the article on neo-liberalism mentioned that they are trying to get away from the excesses of liberalism.  In my mind that's associated with two things - social justice warriors (to steal a term) and labor.  With regards to social justice warriors, they are aware of the long history of racism and prejudice in our country and realize that this history makes it hard for people to truly rise through their own efforts.  These are the people familiar with the way banks used to deny loans to entire neighborhoods, not because their credit was poor but because the entire neighborhood was black.  They know that there is a poverty cycle, that someone born into poverty has a very difficult time escaping it.  They are very aware of racism, sexism, and prejudice.  They know that every time a black person hears negative things about their race that it makes it that much harder to shrug it off and disbelieve it.  And they want to do something about it.  The backlash we see with Trump supporters is partly because of the belief that this group exerts so much pressure for conformity that people no longer have the freedom to speak their minds.  That this group will use the government to enforce those norms, creating a stronger, more powerful, and more centralized government.  I personally admire the ideals and get the history, but I don't like the excesses either.

Labor - I think most everyone's familiar with this one, so I won't go into too much detail.  If you enjoy having a 40 hour work-week, it's due to this group.  I don't like the historical ties to the mob, or the corruption.  The labor movement can go to excess, and hiring incompetent or poor employees can be tough when they're in a union, but in a world where we've seen so much wage stagnation I feel like there's bigger problems right now.    I know opposition groups have made a big deal about public sector unions, like the teacher's unions.  That's in some ways tied to fiscal conservativism, small government, etc.  Globalization weakens this group considerably.  

Progressives - someone resurrected an old idea, here.  I originally heard about progressives as the group that pushed to reduce corruption and end the influence of party bosses (selecting the candidate in those smoke-filled cigar rooms).  What I remember was that their plans didn't actually succeed in and of themselves, the parties found ways of maintaining control, but the popularity of the movement seemed to reduce some of the problems.  Tammany Hall is one of the big examples, though wikipedia says they lost influence after going up against FDR and don't credit the progressive movement.  Anyways, a quick look online describes progressives as more like my social justice warriors.  The ones I've met do share some of the values, but are more focused on corruption as well. 

I think I'll leave the definitions separate in my own personal head, with the understanding that people will mix and muddle things in all sorts of ways.  Most people probably have a mixture of these, for example.  Or will call themselves one thing, but their self-definition is closer to one of my other categories.  I also did not go into foreign policy definitions (i.e. hawks or doves).  This has gone on long enough and, again, I think most everyone is familiar with them.  It is somewhat amusing, however, that the hawks - who generally favor military involvement and military spending - are stereotypically on the right where they oppose big government.  How can you claim the government can't run anything, then turn around and support the military which is run by the government?