Framing Events

I've had some thoughts jumbling around in the ol' noggin, though I have had a hard time figuring out which parts to get into, and in which order.  (again).

It doesn't help that it's the end of the semester, which means I mostly have been putting it aside to focus on homework.

Part of the issue is that I can't figure out what 'story' I want to tell.  The way you frame the issue shapes everything.  So, for example, I could go with a "We're headed for World War II and we're all going to die!!!" or "Here comes the American version of the French Revolution!!!" or any other disastrous prediction.

Or I could go with some version of "Nothing to see here, move along".  After all, the status quo is a powerful force - right up until it isn't.  (I distinctly remember some analysis on intelligence efforts that discussed the problems with accurately predicting the future.  There's so much incentive to foresee - and hopefully forestall - negative events that predictions are slanted towards disaster, even though most of the time those dire predictions don't really occur.  The only problem with that is we then become complacent and assume that the status quo is going to stay, right up until the Soviet Union topples or the French revolt or whatever.  All of which we can find the evidence for when we look back, yet always miss when surrounded by the regular white noise of our own time.)

After all, despite the noise and furor over whatever horrible news story is out there today, most people are still quietly just going about their lives, doing their own thing.  (Though there are undercurrents of potential problems.  There always are.  I heard a couple people say we need to completely overhaul or system, maybe have another Constitutional Convention.  People are pretty fed up with the system as is, and they're looking for alternatives.  In counterinsurgency terms - the public has grievances.  It remains to be seen whether our system can address those grievances legitimately (i.e. through elections, as we've done - more or less - for the past couple of hundred years) or whether the perception that our elite have locked down the system to such an extent that elections are useless will grow.  With potentially dire consequences down the road. (God, I hate predictions like that!  You can't really set a time or date.  Can't say if it's 10 years, or 100 years...and there's so many things that can happen to forestall or foster such an event that it's almost useless to say.  And yet...and yet there's the ring of truth to it.  Mostly for reasons I planned to cover in the jumble of a post coming up.)


It also doesn't help that we, Americans at least, put serious pressure on ourselves to always be upbeat and positive.  I find that I don't really want to write anything too negative for a couple of reasons - it's probably not going to get that bad, too dire a prediction doesn't really give us much of an option to do anything about it (i.e. if World War III is right around the corner, then screw it!  I'll stop trying to be sensible and just blow all my money living it up until we die in a nuclear conflagration.  Yes, I'm exaggerating that for dramatic effect), but  mostly because I hate feeling like a Debbie Downer.

So most of what I shoot for is clear-eyed, open analysis of our system that confronts our problems head on while making it clear there's still room for hope.

Which is tricky.  For example, when I said "we're losing our democracy" in an earlier post, it was meant more as a call to action, a dire prediction meant to help encourage a discussion regarding what we can do to avert that disaster.  Not as a cynical statement of hopelessness.

I have no idea who I'll vote for, can we have a do over?

Sometimes, on occasion, one of my employees will tell me about something another employee did.  Responding to that is kind of tricky, though some supervisors say you should discourage this entirely.  Too much tattletelling can create a work environment where everyone is suspicious of everyone else, and people may only tell on those they dislike...which lets personal issues get in the way of it.

On the flip side, I (as a supervisor) can not be everywhere at once.  And my people generally know when I'm around, and aren't stupid enough to do something wrong where I will see it.  So I won't really know there's an issue to address if I'm not told...

Stepping aside from those sorts of questions, however, is what happens if I do decide to address it.  First, I have learned to space things out from when someone talks to me and when I address it.  That's because one of the first things the employee does is to try and figure out who told on them.  To me, that's missing the point.  I'm addressing you because you did something wrong.  Something you should fix.  Who told me that you did something wrong is beside the point, and makes me feel like you don't really think you did anything wrong.  And probably aren't going to do anything to fix it or change it in the future.  (Or, at best, that you'll just try not to do it where you might get caught). 

Even worse, of course, is that whoever I'm addressing might try to take revenge or get back at someone if they figure out who did it.  And may even mistake the source, and make life difficult for someone who is completely uninvolved.  (I had someone at our mid-year review mention that she was mad at the HR person and me for a little while, because one of her co-workers claimed we had told the co-worker she'd said something.)

So anyways.  I generally try not to fill this blog up with work stuff.  I brought all that up more because I want readers to understand where I'm coming from when I say that I'm pretty disgusted with how the Democratic Party has handled a variety of issues over the last year.  Some of their arguments sound like something a five year old would say (i.e. "But everyone else is doing it!!!"), some of it is the response of my less mature associates (i.e. "Who gave you that information?!?  Was it the Russians?)...

and none of it actually addresses the wrong that was done.  It makes me think that they really don't see a problem with it, assume that this is just 'business as usual', and are more upset at having to deal with a media scandal than that they have any real belief that wrong was done.

One of my employees likes to talk politics, and he claims that the Democratic Party has always been corrupt, and that it's only this past year that's made it obvious to everyone.  Note: I am not looking for a "Republicans are just as bad" response, because that's just another way of looking away from the problem.

And is there a problem?  I think so.  The wikileaks e-mail dump about the DNC shows that Debbie Wasserman Shultz was playing favorites.  Howard Dean, who I presume ought to know as he was a DNC Chair himself, believed the DNC was supposed to be impartial.  If the Democratic Party can show that these e-mails were forged, then I would care more about Russian involvement.  (Their attempt to influence the election is disturbing, but it wouldn't have been possible if the DNC wasn't doing something wrong in the first place.  So to me this is a lesser problem than what the e-mails revealed.  Wikileaks allegations that there is more to leak is somewhat more disturbing, mainly because if they're going to leak it they should just get on with it.  This attempt to time when you release info shows that they aren't really about freedom of information so much as using an information  I get that loyalty is a prized trait in political circles.  So much so that they will value the loyal supporter over someone more talented (and this brings it's own issues, and has it's own implications, but that's a post for another time).  If Hillary wanted to take care of a loyal supporter - someone who wasn't supposed to act like a loyal supporter in the role she was in - than I'm sure she could have found an ally to hire Debbie.  The fact that Hillary felt no need to distance herself from Debbie, and hired her on (even if it's a token role), shows that Hillary really doesn't see anything wrong with what Debbie did.

All my arguments hold true, as well, for what I find disturbing about those defending Hillary's use of a private server. 

And the total lack of concern about this, the attitude that nothing wrong was done and it's all just conservative witch-hunting, kind of makes me mad.  I still think Trump is worse, but I just can't bring myself to say I would actually vote for Hillary.  Not when she, her staff, and the entire Democratic Party doesn't seem to realize that they're doing anything wrong.  In some ways I have more respect for the Republicans who are speaking out against Trump than for the Democrats who are willing to look the other way so long as their candidate wins.

And this ties in to another article I read, Politico's article discussing how Barack Obama decided Hillary should be his successor.  See, I get why he would want his legacy to continue.  I suppose there's reason to think Hillary's most likely to succeed.  Hell, according to a site I go to Hillary most closely matches my own views...and I guess I'm supposed to be a supporter.

But here's the thing.  How you get somewhere matters.  It's part of that whole "do the ends justify the means?" debate.  If the only way you can make your policies continue, if the only way to secure your legacy, is to do things that subvert the democratic process and basically take away our right to choose...

Than that's a pretty big problem.  Almost, but perhaps not quite, as big as Trump taking office.  It's presents a very different sort of problem, one not quite as big and bombastic, one that is perhaps even scarier in how quiet and subtle it is.

After all, nobody seems to think there's anything wrong with Hillary hiring the former DNC chair.

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.)

Democracy, Biases, Self-Interest

I think the Founding Fathers had a pretty good read on human nature, so they set a system up that tried to take our own foibles into account.

I am not so sure it works, in the long run.  It's amazing how we can laud democracy in the abstract sense, talk about how wise the public is in choosing who they do...

and in the more specific sense, there are a lot of people who don't seem to know what they are talking about, or are poorly informed, and it seems amazing that we get anywhere at all.

But I didn't start writing this post to go into all of the curious blend of optimism and pessimism I have when watching our political process in action.

I brought it up because I wanted to talk more about self-interest, and biases, and what makes our system work.

We have this whole separation of powers thing, all these different competing groups, because the whole idea was that the competition between these groups would prevent any one faction or branch from dominating.  Worried about the power of the presidency?  Let's appoint a Supreme Court justice for life.  And insist that Congress approve.  Worried about a legislature that's out of control? Give the president veto power.  Worried that public opinion will be easily swayed by emotions and poorly thought out yet popular programs?  Add in an electoral college, and a Senate that (originally at least) was appointed by state governments rather than popular vote.  Worried that your less populated states will dominate politics unfairly?  Make half your legislature based off population.

Worried that the effect of that will crowd out less populated states?  Give each state two senators in the other chamber of legislature.

This whole intricate system is supposed to keep government working, not because it's necessarily perfect (it can be messy, and slow), but because the self-interests of each different group should help balance out the growth in power in another group.

Students of American history apply this concept to all sorts of things.  They may decry the rise of presidential power, because they think we are losing that balance.  Or discuss the freedom of the press as yet another balancing force.  One not created in the Constitution, but one that plays its role.

We have a system where individuals can have a say, which is pretty amazing.  Yet more and more people feel like it's broken.  (Though many feel it's broken in different ways...so it's not like there's unity on which way we should be going)

How can a democracy work when people don't participate, and don't vote?  When political parties get a stranglehold on the system, making it harder for third parties to rise?  When parties seem to be more and more polarized, and cater to the extremes of each side?

I'm not even talking about the role of money here, though any internet search will find plenty of articles on it.

And how do we come to a consensus on good policy, when self-interest dictates certain policies even at the expense of the whole?

That's a problem that's been with us throughout all of human history...

It's too easy to get cynical and depressed, to think everyone is always out for themselves and that it's unrealistic to expect anyone to think of the greater good.  Especially when we can be so subtly biased. 

Take any class on human cognition, or logic, and you'll discover how horribly illogical we all are.  How easy it is to get biased, to jump to conclusions.  To only listen to those who agree with and confirm our existing beliefs, and to shut out and deny the ones who challenge what we think.

And yet somehow, history shows that this isn't always what happens.  That sometimes people do listen to evidence, and change their minds for clear and logical reasons.  That sometimes leaders do act for the greater good.

How did we ever come to value logic, and the role of the devil's advocate, and all these other things if human nature is so determined to be self-centered, illogical, and biased?