They'll Drink the Sand

I try my best to make sure I have diverse feeds, and something recently made me realize I was seeing/accepting certain viewpoints that I shouldn't.

Namely - far too many people deride Trump supporters as 'uneducated and/or racist hicks who can't be reasoned with' (or some variant thereof), which honestly just feeds into the narrative on the right of 'coastal elites who look down on hard working Americans', and I found myself thinking about why those 'hard working Americans' don't seem to support the policy suggestions that are most likely to help them.

This isn't to say the most common explanations are entirely wrong, necessarily. We've seen such blatantly racist actions in the last few years that I've had to accept there's far more support for that than I'd previously believed. And it's true that a college degree is a significant factor in political views...

But I'm reminded of something I came across when I was reading up on modern slavery. Reminded that in these places, where the person in charge pays so little (and then loans out money for emergencies, like for health issues, or weddings, and the like), that many of the people who grow deeper and deeper in debt accept the burden of that debt.

They don't want to skip out on it, even if it's unfair and burdensome... because an obligation is an obligation, and they want to pay their debts.

THAT is the attitude that makes people look down on forgiving student loans. I get why and how student loan forgiveness can be a great thing, and not just because I might be able to benefit by it... over and over again we hear about how 'millennials are killing x', and things that essentially boil down to 'we aren't consuming enough'... but how can we consume more when so many of us are burdened by crushing debt? How can millennials buy homes when they're paying the equivalent of a mortgage every month in student loan debt? I mean... I'm luckier than most. Or made better decisions than most, depending on how you want to look at it. Doing ROTC, getting an Army scholarship, and various other things have put me in a much better position than most of the other people I know...

On the other hand - how does someone wind up with over $200K in student loans, anyway? I've never even come close to that level of student loan debt. Maybe if I'd gone to an Ivy League school? Or gone straight to grad school after an undergrad? And why is someone agreeing to take on that level of debt, in the first place? Didn't they look at the average income in their field and figure out how much of a burden it would be?

So the thing about jobs, and creating a booming economy, and discussions on student loan forgiveness and whatnot, is that to some Americans none of that matters. The macroeconomics behind it, the systemic issues (like the rising costs of college, and the way wages haven't kept up with inflation) - none of that matters.

Because people chose to take on certain debts, and are now trying to get out of it.

They don't want freebies, they want 'good' jobs (i.e. jobs that pay well enough that they can afford the things they want.)

Now, there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on. I know, for example, that there was one study showing that support for welfare is associated with white perceptions of minorities.

And the desire for 'good' jobs means you'd think there'd be more support for increasing the minimum wage, especially when the economic boom in cities that have done so shows that at this particular point in time there's an economic case to be made for doing so (in different circumstances, you probably would see the negative consequences so me people predict for raising wages. I don't agree with a blanket statement saying it's always a good policy to do so, but if/when people working 40+ hours a week still need food stamps and/or welfare to make ends meet then a case can be made that people aren't being paid their full economic value. And, again, it's not exactly shocking that people aren't consuming as much and the economy isn't doing as well as it could. Not that those whose income is tied to the stock market necessarily believe that.)

It seems such a shame, to me at least, that so many people who just want to make a good living seem to fall for the con-game Trump is playing. Like that BS about saving jobs at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, or coal mining, or any number of things where he has talked the talk and utterly failed to walk the walk.

It reminds me of that line in The American President -

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Trump, to me, is that mirage... and our current political elite has failed so drastically that people are crawling through the desert towards that mirage, and trying to drink sand.

I think the cynicism in Shepherd's response is the heart of the problem, here. Do we - average voters, the bulk of the American electorate - know the difference between a mirage and true leadership? If we do, then if you believe strongly in a cause and it fails to gain traction, is that because you're missing something and/or not messaging right? Or is this true:

People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

In which case, you - the one who knows better than all those idiot people out there - are justified in doing whatever it takes to make the 'right' policy  happen, because people don't know what's good for them. (This, btw, is the 'elitist' attitude people on all sides of an issue can fall prey to.)

The Wall

When you pull back and look at meta trends, the frame changes.

For example, European history was shaped for centuries by conflicts between the pope and ruling monarchs over things such as 'who had the authority to appoint a bishop?' or 'who has jurisdiction in this situation?' or 'does the pope crown the king?'

Hard to remember in the present day, with the separation of church and state (which developed over centuries for Very Good Reasons), but you'd have a hard time truly understanding parts of history without that frame.

I wonder if there is a similar meta-frame in the current political imbroglio. Our Founding Fathers created checks and balances between the three branches of the government for good reason, but on a meta-level the last century or so has shown the rise of the presidency to an unprecedented degree. My classes talked a bit about how that happened, about how it's easier to try and influence one president over multiple members of Congress.

There's a heckuva lot to get into on this topic, too much to do justice to the topic. If you're interested, definitely look up the academic research on it.

I brought it up because the standoff between Pelosi and Trump is as much about who truly has the power of the purse as it is about all the other things we see in the news.

Congress is the legislature. It's supposed to pass laws and handle the budget. We've allowed the president to take the lead on such things, in recent history, in part because the sitting president is considered the leading power in his (and maybe someday her) party. As such, the congressional members of that party don't really want to undermine him or air public disagreements.

So the standoff, to most, is the typical Republican vs Democrat shenanigans we're used to, showing in a shutdown that is worse than (but not much different from) previous shutdowns.

Yet I can't help thinking that it undermines the precious checks and balances written into our constitution. After all, the president was clearly NOT given the power of the purse, nor the right to create legislation.

If he wants a wall so badly, he should really be doing his best to make sure more Republicans are elected next time.

But that's not the way our political system is working these days.

Groupthink

I didn't realize how bad it was in congress, it's practically a blueprint for all the worst elements of groupthink.

What a mess.

Brainstorming

What a crazy time to be alive.

Making sense of things is almost impossible, and I'm not really sure what I'm going to type here. I just felt the need to sort of brainstorm it out.

There are a couple of underlying... assumptions? heuristics? worldviews?

Whatever it is, it tends to shape my perspective on a lot of things. Some of it's pretty basic - like the concept of a 'social contract', and the importance of people feeling like they  have some sort of say in their governance. (It's part of why gerrymandering is such a threat to our system. More, I would say, then whatever fears or worries the people instating it have about what would happen if they didn't have power. Undermining the social contract, undermining the connection between the will of the people and their government, is far more of a threat to America than bloated government, high taxes, etc.)

Free speech is good, protecting minority opinions is good. (The problem with lack of gatekeepers to filter out the crap is part of what I wanted to brainstorm here. Protecting minority opinions has similar complications - does it include protecting racists, for example? Otherwise someone is still deciding what is 'acceptable' and what isn't, in which case free speech and protection of minority opinions is really just protection for the ones we agree with. The underlying issues, though... the problems with censoring speech, the ills that occur when minorities are not protected, well... these are values we - the West - have come to over a long period of time. And, unfortunately, they are values that somehow wind up getting challenged. Again and again. It's sad when people who claim to be all about America are somehow the very same people pushing for things that go against the values we fought for and stood for. But that's a really long topic to get on, and I'm not sure I want to do it right now.)

Fear is almost always a bad sign. Fear, the actions/plans/strategies based on fear, and the results of fear-based strategies are almost always bad. To do a mish/mash of two quotes that I saw on a computer screensaver once "Fear is the mindkiller. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I remember reading about the Civil War, decades ago, and thinking 'the fear that the North would outlaw slavery led to the attempted secession of the South, which wound up making their fears realized... and probably even faster than they would have been otherwise.' That is, when we act on fear, we can often lead to the very thing we are afraid of. (So, for white supremacists, letting fear that we will eventually be a minority in America lead to violent actions and upheavals could actually hasten a time when we are, in fact, a minority. But then, idiots like that probably assume - since they're foolish enough to think the color of the skin somehow makes them superior - that they're going to win any coming showdown. Considering how many wars had unpredictable results, I think that's a remarkably foolish gamble. But hey, nobody has a monopoly on stupidity.)

So anyways, on to the rambling.

Over a decade ago (how weird, to talk in terms of decades now!) my boyfriend at the time commented on his Toyota truck and the concept of 'buy American'. I am absolutely horrible at quotes, so I'll just paraphrase his reasoning -

He bought the best truck on the market. If they want him to buy American, then America needs to step up and be that best truck on the market.

I know there's a whole bunch of underlying things not addressed here - disparities in the economy that allows certain goods to be manufactured more cheaply for one reason or another, tariffs, transportation, etc. - but I think he brought up a rather good point.

Namely that, when threatened, challenged, and afraid, there are two ways of dealing with it. Step up to the challenge and get even better (in which case, the issues with, say, competition being able to pay lower wages, just becomes a driver for getting even better. A challenge that makes your eventual triumph even more meaningful, since you had a handicap the entire time)... or let fear drive you into trying to protect your position by eliminating the competition somehow. Tariffs, 'buy American' drives, things that allow your existing business to continue to compete even when other businesses might actually be providing a better product at a lower cost. (Again, note that this is a complex topic, especially when you get into what countries like China have been doing to help develop their own domestic businesses. The people pushing for these policies often justify them by saying 'this is what they're doing, so we have to do it as well in order to keep up.)

The underlying reasoning, for all of that, is fear. And as I said above, that's sort of one of the things I consider noteworthy.

In political science, they've noted that previous presidential candidates often spoke positively. Uplifting. We want leaders who challenge us to rise to the occasion. To shoot for the moon. To stand up to the Soviet Union.

Trump. Well. Even though he had some of the typical markers ('Make America Great Again' talks about how great America is) the underlying structure is entirely fear based. We have to 'Make America Great Again', because we no longer  think we are. We're somehow losing our greatness, according to some people at least. (And just as Jim Collins described in 'How the Mighty Fall', that fear can make us susceptible to anyone who promises to save us. And so we get some outsider riding in on a white horse to save the day, even though they very often are actually the ones who wind up delivering the final, fatal blow.)

Great presidents encourages us to stand tall and rise to the occasion. Trump, on the other hand, feeds our fears and brings out the worst in everyone. Aside from politics, aside from anything else, seeing the sheer level of pettiness he brings to our political system is horrifying.

And I am disturbed, perturbed, and disappointed in all the various people who allow him to have what influence he has. Because nobody can be a leader when others refuse to follow.

The Republicans in particular have been awfully horrifying with how often they wind up justifying supporting Trump even when it goes against things they used to stand for. Christian conservatives as well, who laud someone who seems like the epitome of everything Jesus stood against.

But hey, that's politics, right? Should I really be surprised at how much people are willing to compromise themselves, at how nicely they can come up with something to justify doing whatever it is that is in their self-interest? Whether that's supporting Trump, or doing shenanigans to try and shape the upcoming midterms in their favor (even when it means closing polling sites and/or moving them to hard-to-reach places, because apparently they'd rather undermine the social contract and disenfranchise US citizens than lose an election.)

And that, right there, is how you know someone's political judgement has been compromised. That the wisdom of our founding fathers, who understood the risks of power and put all sorts of careful checks in place, has been lost by near-sighted people more concerned with staying in power than maintaining the legitimacy of our system.

When did we become so afraid? Why are we so afraid? We're in one of the best positions, as a nation, possible. We're capable of being so much better than this.