Presidential Election 2016, Cont.

In the military, you can never be too dependent on any one individual.  It's too easy for them to go missing at a critical moment in time, and so you need an entire system designed to work regardless of who is or isn't there.


That isn't necessarily true in real life.  You can act as though people are interchangeable, and yet they really aren't.  It's a bit of a paradox, actually.  There are many different types of leaders, and what works for one won't work for another.  And yet sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't.  Certain stylistic differences (such as one leader who is loud and talkative versus another that is quiet and reserved) may not matter at all.  "Quiet and reserved" can come across as dignified, and heighten respect.  Or aloof, and become a negative.  Too much depends on context, and the relationship between the leader and the led.


That said, there are times when the person filling the role makes a tremendous difference.  Going back to my earlier discussion on counterinsurgency and grievances, it makes a great deal of difference if the leaders addressing those grievances argue for non-violence (i.e. Martin Luther King, Jr or Mahatma Gandhi) versus one that opens the doors to violence.


Which kind of reminds me of the Great Man theory.  Rather than take sides on this, I will say that the truth is probably more complicated than either side wants to admit.  That there are times when large social or political forces are at play (like nationalism and the fight against imperialism), and takes on a life of it's own.  And there are other times where a 'Great Man' (or 'Great Woman') living in a certain context, can somehow rise above that context and make a history-changing difference.


You can run this analysis on all sorts of situations - in war, for example, some people like to focus on the economics behind the war.  That is, during the American Civil War the north had more economic power than the South, particularly after following a strategy that minimized Southern economic strength (i.e. the Anaconda Plan and the South's failure at cotton diplomacy)...and perhaps the underlying economics did favor the North.  Yet if the North had repeatedly lost battles wouldn't the economic tides have eventually shifted?  And didn't the personalities matter?  General McClellan, President Lincoln, General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant, wouldn't history have been different if any one of these had been a different sort of person?


You can go deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole, too.  That is, could Ulysses S. Grant have been able to make a difference if the structure of the army (and society) at the time had been different?  What if he had never had a chance to lead a charge, and remained a quartermaster all his life?  What if he was unable to gain a militia commission?  What if his drinking problem prevented him from gaining a formal promotion?


I'm not really trying to say the system at the time was better or worse than what we have today, just pointing out that there are different contexts that can make it easier (or harder) to have the right person in the right place at the right time.  And that's assuming that Ulysses S. Grant was the right person at the right time, and that no other could have filled that role quite as well.


So I got to thinking about this, because of the current presidential election and Hillary Clinton.  It's like - if our system is healthy and robust, then to a certain extent it shouldn't matter too much who fills the role of President.  Or rather, it matters in a certain sense (Democrats and Republicans have very different points of view, and even though Congress has more influence on what becomes law than the president, the power of the President is not negligible.)  Yet, in another sense, what does it matter whether it's Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders?  Or, on the Republican side, whether it's Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

I bring that up, because it gets yet again at what has bothered me about the Democratic primary.  In 2008 we had a very wide field of Democratic candidates.  In addition to Obama and Hillary, there was John Edwards.  Joe Biden. Dennis Kucinich. and plenty more.


In 2016 it was Bernie Sanders.  And some minor characters that hardly had any air time, to be honest.  (The names I listed in 2008 were ones I recall seeing and hearing about significantly during the race.)  Even though I was vaguely aware that Lincoln Chafee, Lawrence Lessig and Jim Webb were running they never really gained any credibility as a candidate.  And I don't even really recognize Martin O'Malley.


I've heard mutterings about the Clinton 'coronation' almost this entire primary, and it kind of looks like someone (or a group of someones) tried to do exactly that.  Bernie Sanders was the ONLY real competition, and the Democratic Party resented him for that the entire time. 


It's...un-American.  And, frankly, disturbing.  Why Hillary?  Why should so many people be so determined to make her the next President? 


Not "why do we need a Democratic president".  No.  Why must that candidate be Hillary?  Why was this settled so early in the race? 


I say that, because it almost seems like the Democratic Party is stuck with a 'sunk cost fallacy'.  Let's go back to before the e-mail scandal grew legs, before we got deep into campaigning, and look at what we knew about Hillary.  She has always had high unfavorables.  Always.  This is something the entire party apparently thought they could work around.  (You can argue about whether it's fair or not, sexist or not, justified or not...but you can't argue that it's not there.)


Yet that apparently didn't matter.  Next - we know the Republicans go after the Clintons like a dog chasing a squirrel.  Funny how, in the last eight years at least, they didn't seem to go after the Obamas to quite the same degree.  That implies that (again - fair or not, sexist or not, justified or not) you will see the Republicans make life difficult for Hillary Clinton to a degree they probably wouldn't for any other candidate. 


On top of all of that, we have Hillary Clinton's noted preferences for privacy.  Again, her supporters say it's all justified, having survived those aforementioned attacks. (Isn't it great when you can use a word like 'aforementioned'?)  She's found a tactic that she seems to think works, and she sticks with it.  Unfortunately, her preferred tactic ends up making issues that might have been minor otherwise turn into something bigger.  See, Democrats and Republicans focus so much on each other that they forget most people don't really pay attention and hardly care.  It's kind of like in a counterinsurgency, where you're so focused on getting 'the bad guys' that you forget about the neutral farmers and workers who are just trying to make a living.


At the end of the day, half of what the news reports about politics is just white noise.  It only matters to politicos (and I'll include myself here) who follow that sort of thing.  So while Hillary may think she's got a great strategy for dealing with Republican harassment, the thing outsiders tend to pick up on is that her strategy involves privacy and secrecy.  And that she will go to ridiculous lengths to keep it that way, to the point where it seems like she really must have something to hide.


Even worse, is that I suspect she thinks it's okay to do whatever it takes to defend against Republican attacks, and doesn't seem to care that her defenses make her sound like a liar or an idiot.  See my previous post about her testimony on the (C) in her e-mails.  Okay, I can see why you'd think it's okay to lie to Republicans.  But to the FBI?  And to the general public?  They're more forgiving than the Republicans, and they probably wouldn't care too much if you had just told the truth from the beginning.  It'd probably be more like the wikileaks of state department cables, where anyone actually paying attention just shrugs and says "whatever".  (I added 'from the beginning' because if you don't do it right away, everything that gets dragged out into the light is suspect.  And if you apologize after denying you did anything wrong it sounds more like you're just doing what it takes to get people to forget and move on, not because you sincerely believe you actually did something wrong.  Especially if you undermine your own apology with later statements.)


This is tied in with something else I said earlier - why did nobody in the Democratic Party pull Hillary aside and tell her that being the subject of an FBI investigation was bad news, and that maybe she should withdraw?  Why, instead, did the entire establishment somehow act as though it was no big deal?  (yeah, yeah...those of you who still think it's not a big deal will disagree with me on this, entirely.  The funny thing is, though, that the people arguing that are almost inevitably people who have never worked with classified material before.)


So anyways.  The more that the Democratic Party insisted that Hillary was their gal, the more they put resources into supporting her, the more difficult it becomes to change course when her weaknesses come to light.  And the timing gets worse and worse.  If she had withdrawn at any point in the last year, the Democratic Party probably could have found another candidate.  At this point, however, they'd be in a lot of trouble if that happened.


Same thing with the possible 'October surprise' Assange claims he has.  If he released it now, the Democratic Party would have time to deal with it.  The fact that Assange is holding on to it indicates he cares less about sharing information and more about deliberately releasing it in order to shape the course of the 2016 presidential election.


If I were the Democratic Party, I would want to know what he thinks he has.  If it truly is enough to shape the race I would either try getting it out pre-emptively (if it's not as big a deal as he thinks) or get Hillary to resign right away (if it really is).  Why wait until October? 


Anyways.  To tie this in to my beginning musings - why is the Democratic Party (and the media, and all the various other organizations who have overlooked her weaknesses as a candidate) so determined to make sure she's the next President? 

Presidential Election 2016

I haven't posted in a while, partly because I didn't feel I had much to contribute on the Clinton-Trump campaign. 


I know where I stand, and think most other people do, too.  So there's just not much room for discussion or persuasion.  I also don't want to align myself with some of the worst conspiracy theorists and mudslingers.


I find myself dwelling most on my objections to Hillary.  Not because I support Trump, or think he's somehow a better choice. He's not.  I dwell on Hillary more because I want to explain to those who generally agree with me on Trump why that doesn't automatically mean I support Hillary.  And why I consider her a more subtle danger to the American I know and love.


First, one of the key differences that has come up in discussions with friends.  Some of the Hillary supporters basically think "all politicians lie.  Lying doesn't bother me, so long as they support the policies I want."  As such, they will support Hillary no matter how many scandals the Republicans throw at her, because in their eyes those scandals are not really unusual or beyond the bounds...and Hillary supports the policies they want.  These are the ones who dismiss the e-mail scandal as a 'pseudo-scandal', and don't understand what all the fuss is about.


This really, truly, and honestly bothers me.  We excuse politicians for lying, we accept that they will do whatever it takes to cover up their mistakes, and so long as those mistakes are not really meaningful we're okay with it?!? 


And what does anyone consider 'meaningful' for a scandal, anyway?  How do you decide the severity?  Granted, we all do this to some extent...I dismiss the Benghazi hearings, for example, partly because it seems a bit much to pin the whole thing on one person.


Sure, the Lewinski scandal was kind of trashy and one could argue that it had nothing to do with how effective a president Bill Clinton was, yet is it really okay for a president to outright lie like that?  (Apparently, to not a few people, the answer is 'yes'.)  Will the person who justifies lying about an affair really act too different if the issue is even more serious?  Can you trust them to make the right call if it will get them into trouble? 


I may go on about the importance of character at some later time, but I don't want to digress right now.  The important point is that I disagree with this point of view entirely, and I think character is pretty important when picking a candidate.  (This also, btw, is not an area where Trump compares favorably.)


So, then, what next?  Well...I have seen a number of articles trying to argue that "if we only knew the real Hillary, we would like her".  As if that means she has great character, and that we should ignore the smears.  Likeability...well, truthfully it's not the greatest assessment.  There are a lot of brutal people who can be quite likeable.  There are a lot of likeable people who aren't really qualified for the jobs they are applying for.  But okay, fine...it's great that she's a good listener.  I'm sure she will work the levers of power quite capably. 


Honestly, that's where my main concern comes from.  As the middle class has shrunk, as income inequality has grown, America is poised to become an oligarchy.  Perhaps we already are.  We are becoming divided into the 'haves' and the 'have nots'.


And the 'haves' are quite buddy-buddy with each other.  We are seeing the development of a global elite, one that may go shopping in New York one day and Tokyo the next.  One that may give a nod and a wink to the idealists who value human rights, while behind the scenes they do what needs to be done.  Or so they think.  These are the people that will put a Karzai in charge of Afghanistan, who will argue that realpolitik means that we must support Saudi Arabia.  And perhaps, in some cases, there's some truth to their claims.  (Maybe.)


This is where I believe the public and hidden transcript comes into play.  Because there are things we all know and suspect these elite do, behind the scenes, that never comes out in the light.  Is that bad, in and of itself?  Or is that just the nature of power?  Should we be concerned?  Or is it business as usual?


The internet has given us this capability for transparency that is amazing, sometimes.  And the responses to that transparency show that fears the public wouldn't understand may sometimes be overblown.  Wikileaks released thousands of state department e-mails, and most people just shrugged.


Which is why I was disappointed in Colin Powell when his e-mails to Hillary were released. For pretty much the same reason I think Hillary was wrong to have her private server in the first place.  What are you saying or doing, that you are worried would become part of the official record and subject to the law?  Do you think the public would misunderstand something?  If you truly believed it was the right thing to do, why can't you argue and explain that?  Why are you so afraid of public scrutiny?  (Public scrutiny.  Yes, I get why you'd be afraid that your political enemies would use whatever is public against you...and you may face pressure in the news and at home...but those things are actually really rather different, and distant from, the public.)


So anyways.  What bothers me with Hillary is that there seem to be so many, many, many people trying to make her the next president.  And they are willing to overlook so much, in order to do so.  It worries me, because it shows the elite manipulating the system to get the result they want, and in the process they are closing that system out to alternatives.  Not only that, but they seem to think that Hillary really hasn't done anything wrong. Nothing different from what everyone else is doing.  Which, rather than saying what Hillary does was okay, rather implies that the whole system is so screwed up that the elite no longer even know what's right and what's wrong any more.


This article, btw, captures some of my own perspective watching the political election this year.  She didn't know what the (C) meant?  She's either lying through her teeth or too stupid to believe. 


I keep thinking this election is a false dilemma, one unfortunately aided and abetted by the elite...so that out of a nation of 300 million we are left with these two horrible options.  Why didn't the Democratic Party quietly pressure Hillary to bow out when she was under investigation?  Why, instead, did the DNC support her so much? 

Too True

http://www.wired.com/2016/08/no-world-wont-go-back-normal-trump/

Corruption, Marketing,and Influence

Like most people, I have my own taste in music.  I like some of the current hits, dislike others, and mostly shrug and accept that taste is a personal thing and that not everyone will like the same things.

So when I was reading up on organized crime I found it interesting how they had a role in the jukebox industry, and in helping make some songs popular.  Now I had a second reason for why certain songs became popular, particularly from that era - someone with influence wanted to make it popular.

I brought this up because I wanted to discuss something with presidential elections, actually.  I wanted to go into more of what I meant by saying some people 'subvert the process'.  See - you don't generally get to those positions without a belief in your own locus of control.  That is, you are capable of influencing or controlling your fate.  There are all sorts of professionals out there willing to help (for a fee) make sure that you are marketed well.  Focus groups, political ads, consultants and speech writers...we all know politicians are practically a commodity in and of itself.  Kind of like music, or movies.  Except (just like with music and movies) it's very hard for an insider to know what is really going to work or not.

Movie history, in particular, is full of stories where directors thought something would be a hit and instead it failed miserably.  Or the reverse, where they make something nobody expected to be a hit.  Plus I think we've all had the experience of watching a movie when it first comes out, it's a big hit and we're super excited...and then when we watch it ten years later we wonder why the heck anyone thought it was that great to begin with.  I can watch a preview and know if the preview interests me or just makes me shrug, but how does the person creating the preview know?

Anyways, when you have people who are used to influencing opinion, creating opinion, waging a political battle for voters (and businesses) hearts and minds...how do you know when you're just playing the game of politics, and when you've crossed a line and subverted the system?

It's as easy for those of us on the outside to go "what were they thinking" when we see a horrible preview, as it is when we hear some story of corruption.  But the insider?  When they're in a business based on relationships?  How do they know when getting Vice President Biden's videotaped well wishes for a bar mitzvah is just a sign of friendship, versus the DNC chair putting her obligations to the Democratic Party in the backseat and drumming up support for her own re-election campaign?

Right now I'm not trying to say something was or wasn't corruption.  I just wanted to point out that something may not feel like corruption, may not seem to you as though it is affecting your judgment - and it still can be a problem.  My company's ethics training touched on this, with an example very similar to one I heard about in my undergrad years.  Someone offered tickets to a game...was that just two friends getting the chance to hang out together?  Or was it a bribe for helping the other guy out with a nice offer?

The thing is, lobbying, marketing, and sales reps all make money because what they do works.  And it doesn't necessarily work in an obvious fashion.  That is, a doctor doesn't say to him or her self "I'm going to prescribe this medicine to my patient because the sales rep gave me a really nice gift."  No...the doctor probably has a relationship with the sales rep, and thinks well of him or her.

Complaints about corruption come in part because average citizens can tell that what we want doesn't matter.  Like that study showing that economic elites and organized groups had an outsized influence on policy.  Trump is so radically different from the 'marketed' politician that many voters believe (foolishly, I think) that he's different.  That he's somehow more authentic, and not beholden to those interests.

Unfortunately, I think many political insiders convince themselves that there is no corruption, and that such charges are signs of naivety or foolishness. 

Wow.

So I saw an article on Facebook with a headline discussing class war and education.  I clicked on it expecting something about how elites will say that not everyone needs or should get a college education (true, I think)  while at the same time making sure their nearest and dearest still get one (in other words, this argument applies to all those 'other'  people, who shouldn't aspire to the top... But you and yours quite naturally deserve to be there and still should get the education- and the jobs, and social position that comes with it.)  I first heard something like this from one of the worst bosses I've ever worked for, so I can't say I think he really belonged in the tier he thought he deserved.

But as usual, I digress.  I did not expect this article, if accurate, to be what sounds like a hidden transcript of our dominant class.  One that starts off with such erroneous judgments that all the latter conclusions are suspect.  If this is true, no wonder 'the establishment' increasingly seems out of touch and clueless.

https://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/04/02/class-war-and-the-college-crisis-the-crisis-of-democracy-and-the-attack-on-education/

Wither Now?

https://praxis.ink/2016/08/after-trump-gop-elites-havent-realize-they-cant-return-to-the-status-quo/

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.