America’s Arc of Moral Madness (and Hope)

The path of human progress is random, chaotic, and often maddening. Taming humanity—organizing ourselves for the common good—has been a fool’s errand since antiquity; cajoling and coping with humanity are perhaps the best we can do. Yet there is also a spirit in each of us that never surrenders. That in the face of what seems insane and insurmountable in the moment, we find a sliver of light through which we squeeze ourselves and dare to meet the challenge; through which we emerge again to restore ourselves and renew hope. Most Americans rise each day with the expectation that the day is theirs; that they will be left to their own desires and devices, as long as they treat others as they wish to be treated.

This fundamental right of self-determination governed by the norm of reciprocity has been with us since our nation’s inception that we are, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, “endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Life, liberty, and happiness. Throughout our history, we Americans have respected and protected—often with our lives—these freedoms fostered within the norm of reciprocity. At its essence, this is the magic of America—of an experiment that has (thus far) prevailed regardless of the enemy (external or internal) who might wish to shatter the persistent dreams and aspirations of Americans who are inherently in charge of their destiny. Today, we are facing one of those daunting moments when those we have chosen to represent our interests have, at best, a dubious commitment to our interests over their own.

The last seventy-five-or-so years have produced incredible gains in human welfare as The United States ascended to its throne as the world’s lone superpower. Compared to our parents and grandparents, our lives are a cakewalk. The affluence we enjoy is unprecedented in human history. The question today is are better-off humans better humans? Moreover, is what it means to be human due for a major overhaul? The late French philosopher, Michel Foucault argued humans are a curated composition of intellectual and moral architecture that if revised or discarded “would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.” Foucault was suggesting we humans are a constellation of cognitive illusions which durability relies on our collective subscription—of our willingness to play along. That what it means to be human is dynamic and impermanent, which is as the Buddha further argued, the nature of everything.

On the last day of March, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. during which he sought to assure us that justice was always on the horizon, that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” For those who remember 1968, or have studied that period in American history, our society was as fraught with division (if not more so) than it is today. The Viet Nam War, racial conflict, generational animus, severe air and water pollution, and a stagnant inflationary economy made us feel as if we had entered a dark tunnel that was sure to collapse before we ever got to any light at the other end. And, like today, there was plenty of violence in our streets, more often waged with bombs than with guns.

Our victorious euphoria that ended the long period of crisis that began with the stock market crash in 1929 and ran through Word War II, and which subsequently gave rise to large American families living in tidy idyllic suburban neighborhoods in the 1950s, would reach its climax in 1969 when we landed a man on the moon. During this period, “America is good” was our moral mantra. Four days after King’s assurance of justice at the National Cathedral, he was gunned down on the balcony of The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, the future suddenly looked bleak. The paint was peeling off the post-World War II America. Unbeknownst to any of us at the time, King’s “arc of the moral universe” had achieved its apex. It would prove to be a bridge to moral peril more than an arc—maybe even a bridge to moral collapse.

We then entered what became the malaise decade of the 1970s with double-digit inflation, a dishonest law-breaking president in Richard Nixon, and an ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation posed by the Soviet Union. With the Viet Nam War winding down in the shame of defeat, and the mess of Nixon’s Watergate scandal destroying what had been a stellar run for our federal government through the 1950s and much of the 1960s, the best President Carter could do was offer us redemption; if we would only turn down the thermostat, put on a cardigan sweater, and sacrifice more, Carter’s evangelical sensibilities believed we would be born again into greatness. He came to epitomize the decade with what presidential historians still refer to as the “malaise presidency.”

Then, a sunny smiling actor-turned-politician from California, Ronald Reagan, arrived on the scene to offer Americans absolution. We weren’t the problem; government was the problem. Our civil religion flipped from Carter’s jeremiads to a re-inspired version of the late 19th century prosperity gospel. Reagan was here to liberate us—to lift the cloud of malaise. In 1980, Reagan beat Carter in a landslide with 489 electoral college votes to Carter’s 49; a 10X drubbing. Then, suddenly, we embraced an ethos of entrepreneurial zealotry in pursuit of prosperity. Among other shifts, the best and brightest no longer sought a role in our federal government as they had after World War II. They became lawyers, investment bankers, and technologists who embraced investor Carl Icahn’s new ‘morality’ conveyed by the character, Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 movie Wall Street that “Greed is good!” The nouveau riche were back in style for the first time since the Roaring Twenties. Heavily starched shirts, suspenders, and mousse-laden hair for men, and leg warmers for women who swarmed the new Jane Fonda-fueled craze of aerobics became uniform staples of the 1980s. (I still have my suspenders by Hermes and my hair eventually recovered.)

In the period’s cultural observer, George Gilder’s, 1984 book The Spirit of Enterprise, he romanticized this new spirit of America in the 1980s as reflected in its newly-minted entrepreneurs.

Some are scientists, some are artists, some are craftsmen; most are in business. Although they act as individual men and women, they are nearly always driven by familial roles and obligations. They are not always temperate. Rarely elegant or tall, only occasionally glib or manifestly leaders of men. By fleeing their homes and families to go to far-off lands, may inflict and suffer a trauma of loss—and fight to justify and overcome it. As immigrants, many seek an orphan’s fate, and toil to launch a dynasty. Ugly, they wreak beauty; rude and ruthless they redeem the good and true. Mostly outcasts, exiles, mother’s boys, rejects, warriors, they early learn the lessons of life, the knowledge of pain, the ecstasy of struggle.

This spirit of enterprise, as Gilder called it, was accompanied by a new spirit of victory with the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Christmas holiday in 1991. The subsequent peace dividend was characterized by a sudden increase in both political and economic power for America. The United States was now the world’s lone superpower. The thesis of American exceptionalism that began with John Winthrop’s (1630) “A Model of Christian Charity” in which he suggested “we shall be as a city upon a hill [and] the eyes of the world are upon us” to settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and later invoked by many politicians including Kennedy and Reagan, made its transition from setting the humble example for the world to the neocon dream of reshaping the world in the image of America. We had won the Cold War and quickly dispensed with humility in favor of hubris. Winning is its own intoxicant.

An era of politics as blood sport was ushered in by the congressman and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich from Georgia in 1994 whose “Contract with America” began our precipitous descent into the dysfunction we see in Washington D.C., today. Gekko’s “greed is good” became Gingrich’s “gridlock is good.” Destroying the institutions of our democracy was picked up by the Tea Party in the early 2000s and is the core of the MAGA movement thirty years after Gingrich’s so-called contract. The late 1990s caught another huge tailwind after the end of the Cold War with the coming of the Digital Age. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs completely transformed the economy from bricks and mortar to 1s and 0s. We survived the fearful doomsday transition we imagined in “Y2K” as we rang in the new millennium and our moral orientation shifted again. “Digital is good” as the next moral mantra was born.

Americans were entranced with digital technologies in all aspects of their lives: work, play, and love. Meanwhile, in a cultural fit of delusions of grandeur, we lost sight of the virtues and values that created the greatest empire in the history of the world. Initially and dramatically, following the attacks of 9/11, with the lies of weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda in Iraq to justify the Bush/Cheney aspirations of an American exceptionalism on steroids. We had been poked with a painful stick and it was time America showed the world what it meant to be a superpower, or at least how we could spend trillions of dollars, kill tens of thousands of people, and destabilize an entire region of the world.

However, our greatest delusion may have been believing that linking human beings on a filter-free platform through Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook would somehow propel humanity forward. Social media promised to be an elixir for everything from the proliferation of democracy (remember the Arab Spring of 2010?) to solving all our issues related to human connection by friending and liking at the click of a button rather than a handshake or a hug. But like a toxic solvent, the ether of the Internet dissolved America’s social fabric. Within ten years, sharing cute pictures of grandma’s cats morphed into a laboratory of disinformation including an incubator of suicide for our youth. Contrary to what initially seemed to improve our lives, social media made us vulnerable, narrow-minded, depressed, and dangerous.

The Age of Deceit that began with Bush/Cheney has subsequently achieved its pinnacle of expression with the second election of Donald Trump. We experienced a moment of potential moral reset during the period of Barack Obama’s “hope and change,” but alas, a black man in our White House was more than too many Americans could tolerate. “Deceit is good” is today’s perverted moral mantra. If nothing else, Trump has demonstrated that lies have no consequences, at least no negative consequences for him. It is hard to find King’s “moral universe” anywhere in American life, today.

Many believe that the institutions we have built over two-and-one-half centuries will survive the wrecking ball of Trump and the MAGAs. As one scholar recently suggested to me in a retort to my concern that we now have a virtue-free president, while our founders believed wholeheartedly in the importance of virtues, our institutions are strong enough to survive regardless of who might occupy the Oval. In other words, virtues-in-leadership no longer matters. This seems like a specious—plausible but wrong—argument to me. I suspect it may even prove to be the ultimate expression of American exceptionalist hubris. At the very least, it is an extremely risky proposition. Alas, such is the life and inevitable death of empires; on this point history speaks with great clarity. Our city upon a hill may be reduced to rubble sooner, rather than later.

Recently, I attended the new Broadway show, McNeal, at Lincoln Center in New York City. It stars Robert Downey, Jr. as an aging Nobel prize winning writer faced with the many dilemmas of artificial intelligence (AI). Downey’s natural irascible nature was a perfect fit for his character, Jacob McNeal, who is a near-perfect writ-large reflection of the American character in 2024. Often intoxicated, but never wrong, never apologetic, and never in doubt. “AI is good” as our next moral mantra appears to be a certainty. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is our new Gekko, Gingrich, Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, and Trump.

To be clear, I am not advocating for the end of the development of new technologies. Technology has been essential to advancing human welfare. I am simply asking that we heed our mistakes—like those we have experienced with social media—and consider carefully how we apply technology in our lives. To pick our moral compass up off the floor and put it back on the table. Today, the arc King idealized in 1968 is a nearly unfathomable, random, chaotic, and maddening black hole into which algorithmic equations and quantum computing are sucking humanity into the abyss at astonishing speed. Notwithstanding the promise of improving human welfare, we risk allowing AI to extinguish the human spirit; to suppress volition and homogenize our lives. To prove Foucault’s thesis.

As creativity advocate, Kirby Ferguson has illustrated, we are experiencing a crisis of sameness produced by technology. AI doesn’t create thought; it flattens it into an average of everything. It wrenches the spirit out of the human. It turns both poor writers and great ones into mediocre writers. But, as Ferguson points out, conformity and repression often lead to rebellion and rebirth. Anyone up for the next Renaissance? Are you, or your child, the next Leonardo da Vinci?

Unfortunately, the endgame of AI may be to replace American exceptionalism-on-steroids with nihilism-on-steroids.  From humility to hubris to nihilism may be the signposts which tomorrow’s historians use to define America’s final descent. Taming humanity—let alone assuring justice—is becoming a quaint notion, indeed. Humanity itself may be an irrelevant locus of focus. But, no, it doesn’t have to be that way.

What comes next in the cycles of American history is anyone’s guess. Rebirth, or a descent into an entropic collapse are both possibilities, as are other variations between the two. Our task remains, however, the same: look for that sliver of light to squeeze through to fortify and restore our humanity—to bring hope back into our lives. We made our history what it was: a messy and inelegant march into the future. But, march we did and we remain (mostly) upright today. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt argued during another period of great uncertainty in America, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

For many, Trump is a blessing: a savior who will restore them to what they view as their historic and rightful place in social, political, and economic order. To produce a sort of retrotopia. Others view him as a curse whose deceitful, cruel, and sleazy manner is not just an existential threat to American democracy, but also to their own lives. Either way, our best hope—however perversely accomplished—is to get Americans back on track to moral goodness where truth, self-determination, and reciprocity snap America back to its potential as that city upon a hill. At our essence is something no technology or demagogue can defeat: a flame of resilience and ingenuity that resides deep within our souls. Not even a Blackwell chip from Nvidia can generate this spirit.

Our founder Thomas Paine wrote at the time of our nation’s birth, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” He also acknowledged, however, that

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

In other words, we need look no further than into a mirror to point the finger of blame for the government we endure.

In my lifetime, the four most inspirational leaders were Kennedy, King, Reagan, and Obama. Theirs are the faces that should be on our Mt. Rushmore of today. They each had very different political perspectives and extraordinarily different personal backgrounds. However, they had one thing absolutely in common: they all made Americans feel good about being Americans. They believed in the American experiment that began in 1776. They lifted us up and made us reach for what Abraham Lincoln called our “better angels.” Like Lincoln, the first two were assassinated; the third nearly assassinated; and the fourth, spared. (The optimism of unity is threatening to those who seek power through animus.) Their courage resided deeply in the core of their being and their belief in the unlimited capacity of the human spirit. They personified hope. In their honor, it is our duty to stand in opposition to divisive forces and to avert America’s moral collapse.

We are better off today, but are we better humans? The Latin-based word nihilism in its literal translation means nothing-ism: the rejection of moral principles where cynicism reigns and life is meaningless. Based on America’s current trajectory, we need to face the possibility that nihilism may become the defining character of the next America. Although our institutions may hold, they remain the object of human leadership. As columnist David Brooks observed, MAGA is perhaps most accurately considered as an inversion of morality made up of “performative arsonists.”

Destroying things is easy, building things is hard. I think we all believe (and expect) that soon-to-be empowered MAGA loyalists can destroy, but can they build? As we learned with our attempt at regime change in Iraq, being able to do the first and not the second can result in long term instability and expanded regional conflicts with no end in sight. Is that really what we want for America?

For the moment, as Americans we still enjoy most of our rights of self-determination. Being human still matters. All of these developments over the last seven-plus decades have been, as they always have been: up to us. Individually and collectively, we need to act to direct the future of our lives, our communities, country, and world. Notwithstanding the headwinds of Trump’s authoritarian nationalism devoid of any subscription to virtues, in America the people still decide. We have the power.

It is an evident truth that without darkness there can be no light. The spiritual parallel is that without suffering there can be no enlightenment; without despair transcendence is unachievable. That the only way out is through. Therein lies the path forward. It is time to stand again; to honor our voices; to move on from this moment with humility and determination. To make our presence known and, moreover, felt. To open, to release, and to rise.

 

By |2024-12-22T13:41:03+00:00December 7th, 2024|American Identity, General, The New Realities|0 Comments

2001-2021: From Crisis to Unity to Hope to Cruelty

September 11, 2001 was a pristine day across North America. Cool, crisp, and above all, crystal clear. The kind of blue sky no color palette can replicate. Conditions pilots yearn for.

I awoke just before dawn in the “Holidome” Holiday Inn in Salina, Kansas, in one of those 1970s-style hotels where each room faces a cavernous atrium for easy access to everything from shuffleboard to an indoor pool that permeates every molecule of air in the hotel with the stench of chlorine. I had landed the night before at the Salina Municipal Airport in a Bell Helicopter 206L with my co-pilot, Dennis Lang, after attending a family funeral in South Dakota. We were en route back to Dallas, Texas when the world, or at least America’s view of the world and its role in it, changed in the span of a little more than an hour. What I didn’t know at the time was that this date would also come to mark the beginning of the end of the American empire. America’s “unipolar moment” of unmatched power (as international relations scholars have called it) would subsequently be squandered in fits of accelerating hubris, deceit, and within two decades, cruelty.

After a barely edible breakfast served by a surly waitress in the atrium of the inn, Dennis and I took a shuttle to the airport arriving just as American flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. The flight from Boston to Los Angeles cleaved the tower leaving a near-perfect image of the fuselage and its wingspan. Weeks later I learned that of the three people I knew who lost their lives that day, two were on that plane and the other was killed as a result of it turning the floors above its impact into an unsurvivable inferno. Years later I wept, standing before their names carved into the smooth black granite of the 9/11 memorial. Like every non-terrorist who perished that day, they were among the innocents; young men with families and full lives ahead of them. All I suffered was a scarred soul; twenty years later the pain lingers. We managed to receive a clearance for takeoff just as United Airlines flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. I pulled all the power that helicopter had and headed into those pristine skies with only one thought in mind: get home.

To stay informed in the cockpit, we listened to Peter Jennings on ABC radio as we calculated our course, airspeed, and fuel levels in a long shot attempt to make it to Dallas in one hop. Jennings, who had given up smoking some years before, relapsed under the stress of 9/11 and started smoking again. He died of lung cancer four years later. Shortly after we cleared Salina to the south, the feared but expected order came from Kansas City Center Control: “all aircraft land immediately nearest airport.” As clear as that instruction was, we considered it as any helicopter pilot might, with equal parts of indignation and arrogance. Surely, we thought, that order is only meant for airplanes. We decided to keep going; low, fast, and outside of controlled airspace to see how close we could get to Dallas. As we came abeam Wichita, Kansas, Dennis said, “Uh oh, take a look to the east at ten o’clock.” Two stealth bombers were departing McConnell Air Force Base accompanied by four fighter jets. As they swept into the sky, they looked like two giant stingrays stalked by small dark pilot fish. It was time to talk to the tower in Wichita.

Given its geographic position in the center of the United States, and distance from any other airport of significant size, Wichita was being slammed by requests to land by aircraft from all over the world that were flying across the continent to faraway destinations. The woman in the tower who responded to my call was impressively calm and efficient during what had to be the busiest day in her career and in the history of the airport. She ordered, “November one-alpha-hotel, turn left heading zero-niner-zero and make approach to taxiway following Super-80 on final and in front of the Airbus turning final.” Following a rather acrobatic landing, necessary to avoid the wake turbulence produced by larger aircraft, I scrambled to get a rental car and hotel room while Dennis secured the helicopter. The last planes that landed that morning in Wichita were parked at the ends of the runway. Every square foot of pavement—including tarmacs and taxiways—was covered with aircraft.

Dennis and I checked into the Red Roof Inn adjacent to the airport along with other stunned travelers and flight crews who all had the same two questions on their minds: what in the hell just happened and, most especially, when can we get back out of here? Despite all the uncertainty and fear that were descending like a cloud bank on an otherwise beautiful day, the hotel remained eerily quiet save the drone of CNN emanating from every TV day and night. But, that first night of our unintended sequestration, the paper-thin walls proved no match for the sounds that still haunt my memory: the mournful sobs of flight attendants who realized how brutally those who served their final flights that morning had died—throats slashed with boxcutters by terrorists looking forward to the seventy-two virgins they had been promised in their twisted jihadist version of heaven. It took a couple of days, but Dennis—a cunning gnome of the skies—finagled the first clearance to depart Wichita after the events of September 11th. I am not sure what he said to air traffic control, but I hope most of it was true. We made it as far as Ardmore, Oklahoma, when we were ordered to land again. There was no way air traffic control was going to allow us to penetrate the airspace of Dallas-Fort Worth. To get home, we rented the only vehicle we could find, a van with two seats in front and none in back. It smelled like its prior usage had been for human trafficking, but it got us home.

For those of you who remember the days that followed, the most pervasive emotion was fear. The fear of where will they strike next? As I came to understand after interviewing several Bush administration officials years later, that fear nearly paralyzed the administration; they were determined to circumvent any further attacks on America and Americans throughout the world. To their credit, they largely succeeded.  I remember thinking twice about attending a high school football game at Aubrey High School in North Texas for fear a bomb would be detonated by al-Qaeda below the grandstands. (That’s what a few days locked down in Wichita will do to your mind.) That was the first time self-isolation seemed like the best strategy; something we all have learned to practice during the pandemic.

Fear became a powerful unifier, which seems somewhat quaint today as we have subsequently seen fear used as a powerful divider. But, united we stood. Never before or since have so many American flags been purchased and flown from virtually anywhere one could find to hoist the stars and stripes. Not the modified American flags people display today that represent their political tribe, just the red-white-and blue Old Glory. Recruiting centers for our military were swamped with new applicants who wanted to exact their own measure of revenge on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. With the exception of a few ignorant bigots who attacked mosques in America, most simply rallied around the flag; but, eventually, fear-driven patriotism waned and anger kicked in. Then, hubris. We were, after all, the world’s lone superpower and the Bush-Cheney administration wanted to display that power in the most devastating manner possible. Consideration of the national interest and the attendant discipline to pursue well-defined objectives—the hallmark of George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy—were thrown out the window in favor of reckless revenge promoted mostly by men who had never seen a battlefield in uniform.

Lest we forget, Operation Desert Storm conducted by Bush 41 that removed Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was executed after Hussein had ignored sanctions of the United Nations, and after an international coalition had been formed and the operation had been authorized by Congress. Combat lasted just six weeks and American casualties numbered 148. Saddam Hussein retreated to his palace in Baghdad and Kuwait was freed. Compare that to the thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent over the last twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan only to finally leave—just days ago—with little to nothing to claim as our winnings. Biden is getting the blame and the Bush-Cheney folks are mostly mute. But these days, the truth is buried under a mountain of deceits. We have become extraordinarily skilled at collective self-deception. Perhaps because the truth is just too embarrassing and painful to bear.

As the Bush 43 administration drew to a close in 2008, and the economy was being crushed by many ill-considered deregulations in our financial markets, a tall, skinny, lanky young man from Illinois—who cast himself as the next Lincoln from the same state—raised his hand to become the 44th president of the United States. Barack Hussein Obama, born of a white mother and black father, had the cojones to believe that Americans would put a black man with a funny name in the White House while a white woman named Hillary—of the Clinton Democratic Party dynasty—claimed it was her turn. What on earth could he have been thinking, or smoking? However, one of the things a person of Obama’s rather challenging profile learn is that to succeed in life, you must lead with fists clenched knowing you are going to get knocked down—over and over—but that if you keep getting back up, eventually those with more advantaged backgrounds will move out of the way as they succumb to a weakness of resolve born from their many entitlements.

To be clear, Obama didn’t exactly come from nowhere. He had killed it with his address four years prior at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Delegates and political kingmakers were awestruck at the state senator from Illinois. In his speech, he began by connecting with audiences in the arena and at home by presenting himself as evidence that in America anything is possible—that he would not be speaking as the convention’s keynote speaker if America was not a place where dreams could come true. In so doing, he gave us access to our own dreams and possibilities and, moreover, he personified hope. He called this “the true genius of America—a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles.” After years of fear and anger following 9/11, hope was ascendent once again, purveyed by a curious and unlikely messenger.

In March 2008, in one of his best speeches among many great speeches, Obama addressed the proverbial elephant in American politics and culture: the color of his skin. It was prompted by criticism of his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Chicago who had given many fiery sermons on race relations in America that later caused John McCain’s running mate from Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin, to accuse Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Obama confronted “black anger” and “white resentment” so effectively that it reminded me of when John F. Kennedy confronted criticism of his Catholicism in an address in Houston to protestant ministers in 1960. Once again, Obama’s hope-based rhetoric and intentional linkage of himself to Abraham Lincoln turned a political sinkhole for his campaign into a springboard.

In his remarks titled, “A More Perfect Union,” he reminded us that our Constitution—while failing to directly correct the stain of “this nation’s original sin of slavery” at the time of its adoption—allowed room for “Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part … to narrow the gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.” This was classic Obama, weaving both realism and idealism together to bring a calm clarity to his message while never slipping into the blame and shame game so prevalent—then and today— among those who intend to advance a progressive agenda. He never allowed his anger to subvert his higher aim: hope. His hope endured, but the change he promised to accompany it—the prospect of being a transformative president—would run into a juggernaut of thinly veiled racism that could not stomach a black man in the White House led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who made clear he would do everything in his power to assure Obama was “a one-term president.”

At the time of Obama’s election, I was living in Texas where, with the exception a couple of years spent in Washington D.C., I had resided since 1982. In my years there prior to his election, I had rarely witnessed overt racism. I expected it having been warned of southern dispositions prior to moving there from Seattle, but besides the institutional racism that was endemic throughout the United States, I rarely saw anything approaching racial conflict between whites and blacks. That changed once Obama became president. The “N” word, which was never used by anyone in my presence prior to his election, started to creep into otherwise normal conversations, used by folks I had known for years.

As Obama neared the end of his first term, racist bumper stickers started to appear on several cars in the Dallas area and stars and bars flags (aka Confederate flags) were hung in the rear windows of many pickup trucks and semi tractors. In the carpool line at my daughter’s private Episcopal school, a mother in a Cadillac Escalade had a bumper sticker with a black stick figure sodomizing a white stick figure with the phrase “Are we really going to take it this way for four more years?” printed below the illustration. Another popular bumper sticker signaled the melding of evangelicalism with racism in its citation of Psalms 109:8, “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” as a signal to Christians to rid the country of the scourge of Obama. By the newly antagonized white Christian nationalists this became known as “the Obama prayer.” Change did come, but it wasn’t the kind of change Obama had in mind. It was a shift from hope to cruelty, ushered in most aggressively by a self-proclaimed tycoon from New York City: Donald J. Trump.

Trump had learned his racism at the knee of his father and at the counsel of his father’s attorney, Roy Cohn (former aid to the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin). As real estate developers in New York, their racism was economically based. They equated people of color—any color—to be bad for business. But “the Donald,” as he liked to be called, saw a new path for his racism: to promote himself as a political great white hope. His angle: call to question the authenticity of Obama’s citizenship—so called birtherism. Trump’s incessant attempts to disqualify Obama’s presidency in this manner also gave rise to his favorite technique to discredit others and project deceits throughout his own presidency. The “Well, you know, many people are saying … ” this or that in an attempt to affect uncertainty and cast aspersions. It is a cheap middle-school grade rhetorical trick, but also proved to be very effective as he conveyed 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidency—roughly 80% of everything that left his (public) mouth from 2017-2021.

The Cruelty is the Point, a recent book by Adam Serwer, chronicles the legacy of the Donald J. Trump presidency as it illustrates through this lens of cruelty the innumerable inhumane acts by Trump and his acolytes like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, Greg Abbott, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and so forth. Immigration, healthcare, climate change, education, abortion, human and civil rights—regardless of the issue, the Trump modality always includes some form of cruelty. As Serwer argues, cruelty not only satisfies the male adolescent desire to dominate others, it is a powerful binding agent between like-minded people. As a community, Trump supporters rejoice “in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.” A man whose claims—from his education to his wealth—that are routinely recognized as fraud once the facts are known, finds comfort and validation in his capacity to hurt others. This is the Trump legacy, but it does not have to be ours.

As Americans, our day of reckoning is upon us. It is not coming; it is here.

Osama bin Laden presented us with a crisis on 9/11. Every crisis is a test. How we respond to the crisis is the real test. In the face of the 9/11 attacks we—at first—united due to our collective fear. But then, fear gave way to anger and ultimately hubris. An unchecked power, as the United States was in the early 2000s, is a danger to everyone, but most especially to itself. Empires are seldom defeated by a greater power; they almost always defeat themselves. We were offered a reprieve by the presidency of Barack Obama—a chance to return to the high road of virtue and integrity. To revisit the ideals of our founders who saw America as a beacon of hope formed in spite of our sins and transgressions; the greatest of which was slavery. But we allowed the racism that made that sin possible to be reborn and worse: we allowed its basis in cruelty to metastasize throughout our culture.

Today, the world looks upon America as a pathetic shell of its former greatness. They do so with a mix of scorn and fear as they look at the option of a world dominated by China. No, not Russia, China. An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal recently characterized the state of our union as the “Golden Age of Stupidity.” I observe what I have written about elsewhere—what I have called “a pride of ignorance”—spreading from its origins in the South like the delta variant from coast to coast and from border to border. Frankly, it frightens me beyond words. I keep thinking—hoping—that a bright political star will rise again, or a technological innovation will vanquish the threat of climate change, or some other providential stroke of luck will save us.  However, such good fortune rarely visits unworthy people.

If you read these posts regularly, you know that I try to nudge, cajole, and even beg people to summon their better selves. Unfortunately, nearly everywhere I look today, I see cruelty, stupidity, greed, sloth, and systemic failures. These are not the behaviors of a superpower. They are evidence of an empire slipping into a slow-burn descent into irrelevance. Most Americans are in denial, or turning an apathetic blind eye or, like the proverbial frog in the pot of soon-to-be boiling water, think how lovely it is that the water is warming. Too few of us are behaving like we deserve to call ourselves Americans in the manner of those who founded, developed, and were responsible stewards of American power. Our fate may simply be to stand by and watch the pot boil; to let the providence of Nature decide who survives.

By |2021-09-18T14:55:34+00:00September 5th, 2021|American Identity, General|0 Comments

Two Men, Two Destinies

“If you have no character your destiny is tragedy.”  These words offered by former federal prosecutor John Flannery as he described the likely outcome of Donald Trump’s presidency and life.  This notion of self-inflicted fate has been around for centuries as when  Oedipus the King was advised by Tiresias, “Creon is not your downfall, no, you are your own” (Sophocles, circa 430 B.C.).  The remarkable thing about the noose that appears to be tightening around Trump’s neck is that his nemesis, Robert Mueller, has yet to speak one word.  Trump’s addiction to peevish impulse, fearmongering, and deceit are tightening the rope with virtually no help from others.  All one must do is look at the faces of Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Miller, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, et al—that are often either bursting with rage or spewing contempt—to know these folks are not only in deep trouble, they know they are in deep trouble.  Contrast that with the seldom seen face of Mueller or, moreover, the face of John McCain even as he faced imminent death.  When you are on the right side of honor, tranquility is easy.

McCain’s final words were full of gratitude, self-awareness, and grace.  He spoke of the “privilege of serving,” of his “love for America,” and his “love of my family.”  He easily acknowledged “I have made mistakes”  and even in his life that included physical and psychological torture, and humiliating defeat, he claimed he was “the luckiest person on earth.”  In the end, he knew he had “lived and died a proud American.”  These are words of honor.  These are words of a man at peace.  He also had a message many thought was aimed at Trump.

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.

Those same ‘many’ wonder if Trump was listening; if he got the message.  But the question is not was Trump listening, the question is, are we?

McCain also deftly arranged his eulogies at his memorial service in the National Cathedral to be delivered by prior political foes, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  He knew that the accolades of former adversaries would be more powerful than those of advocates.  And, he wanted to show the world the spirit of his often stated credo: “we must serve a cause greater than ourselves.”  Of McCain, Bush said,

John was above all, a man with a code.  He lived by a set of public virtues that brought strength and purpose to his life and to his country.  He was courageous, with a courage that frightened his captors and inspired his countrymen.  He was honest, no matter whom it offended.  Presidents were not spared.  He was honorable, always that recognizing his opponents were still patriots and human beings.  He loved freedom, with a passion of a man who knew its absence.  He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators.  Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power. He could not abide bigots and swaggering despots.

Obama, more direct perhaps than Bush, but with a subtlety he mastered as a target of vitriol and racism himself, summoned us to engage anew.

So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty.  Trafficking in bombastic manufactured outrage, it’s politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear.  John called on us to be bigger than that.  He called on us to be better than that.  That’s perhaps how we honor him best, by recognizing that there are some things bigger than party or ambition or money or fame or power, that the things that are worth risking everything for, principles that are eternal, truths that are abiding.

The proverbial elephant NOT in the cathedral was, of course, Donald Trump, whom the press pool reported left the White House in his white MAGA hat midway through Meghan McCain’s remarks, perhaps for a round of golf.  Meghan, the most direct of all in assailing the antithesis of her father, Donald Trump, gave the most eloquent eulogy of the day closing with a line that will, no doubt, be broadcast over and over: “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

I have no hope whatsoever that any of these messages will be considered by Trump.  There is no space to comprehend virtue in a mind addled by avarice.  Again, the question is not did he listen, but are we?  The challenge is to restore our own sense of honor to deliver America to a better place than the dark mendacity that is Trump.

May we embrace the destiny of honor McCain so ably bestowed, and allow the destiny of tragedy to be Trump’s and Trump’s alone.

By |2018-12-31T17:50:20+00:00September 1st, 2018|Leadership|0 Comments

Obama’s Farewell

Tonight is Obama’s farewell address.  If his is received like his predecessors, few of us will listen.  It may, however, be the last sensible address given by a sitting president until late January 2021 when we will (hopefully) come to our senses and inaugurate the 46th president.  Unlike those missed celestial events that seem to always present themselves in the middle of the night, Obama’s will be available in real time and anytime thereafter to listen to, and re-listen to.  I recommend it.

Presidents often give their most compelling notes of wisdom in these addresses.  For the first time in their presidency they are allowed to tell us what they have learned and, moreover, what we should lock in our minds to avoid in the future, without immediate political consequences.  George Washington established this tradition when he cautioned us about partisanship.  It certainly was a warning we should have heeded.  He wrote that hyper-partisanship,

serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion.

More recently, President Eisenhower warned us of an emerging “military industrial complex.”  We should have listened to both. (See a compilation here, http://www.npr.org/2017/01/10/509052320/obamas-farewell-address-how-presidents-use-this-moment-of-reflection.)

The United States will survive Trump.  Power will be abused, mistakes will be made, people will suffer, but America will emerge battered but largely intact, and so will you.  But not if we don’t listen to the wisdom of those who came before us, and not if we don’t stand up, speak up, and act responsibly.  Our future is in our hands, not Trump’s.  Focus on the difference you can make.  First locally—home and community—then with a wider lens.  Do not bully or be bullied.  Engage with a calm sense of profound resilience.  It is your life and your country.  Own it.

By |2017-06-05T21:50:01+00:00January 10th, 2017|General|0 Comments

Sandy’s Last Victim: (President) Romney

In August at the Republican National Convention, Candidate Romney mocked President Obama when he said: “Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet” which drew groans and laughter from the Party loyals festooned in elephas regalia.  While Romney followed up his mocking with a reasonable pledge to instead concern himself with the American family as opposed to the sophomoric “Drill, Baby, Drill!” chant of four years earlier, he may have offended more than Obamians and human-hating environmentalists. He may have offended Mother Nature herself who sent the ambiguously gendered climate changer hurricane Sandy to submerge Romney’s campaign in its final days.

I may be proven wrong four days from now, but after studying the numbers posted at Real Clear Politics yesterday afternoon, it appears that Obama will win reelection.  There are too many ways he can win, and really no plausible pathway for Romney.  What was new and somewhat startling, however, was what appears to be Sandy’s effect on Florida; a state he/she rained on but passed on his/her way to slam the Northeast.  Florida, recently seen as a Romney certainty, may swing to Obama.  If Obama gets those 29 electoral votes he can lose every other swing state to Romney and still be reelected.

The Sandy effect on Florida is fairly easy to understand.  Floridians know a thing or two about hurricanes and are very sympathetic to their victims.  Obama has received great praise for his handling of the aftermath, which has, among other things, produced a November bromance-a-trois between himself, Mayor Bloomberg, and Governor Christie.  And remember, millions of Floridians either came from the Northeast or have family there today. Finally, Floridians are also aware—and were reminded again this week—that Obama appointed their former head of emergency management (a Jeb Bush man), William Fugate, as his head of FEMA who is also being (mostly) lauded for his handling of the Sandy aftermath.  Obama reached across the aisle to avoid a W/Katrina/Brownie disaster.

Last Thursday in the New York Times, Timothy Egan opined, “in the election of 2012, it looks like nature votes last.”  If it does, its deciding vote may leave Romney wishing that Obama had succeeded in his quest to “slow the rise of the oceans” that put the sunshine state on the tally sheet of President Obama.

 

 

 

By |2017-05-23T18:09:23+00:00November 3rd, 2012|General|0 Comments

The Best in Us

It is often said that the worst times bring out the best in us.  As I reflect on 9/11 and the decade that followed, I oscillate between anger, sadness, and disgust.  At times my jaw is clenched, while at others the tears well up.  Then, too often of late, I just hang my head in disbelief.  As an historian it is impossible for me to avoid comparing 9/11 to other moments of crisis in America, to other ‘worst’ times.  The run-up and aftermath of the American Revolution, Civil War, and Great Depression and World War II are obvious candidates for comparison.  What I find is that the significant markers that define the beginnings of these crises are characterized by both grave challenges and collective determination.  Americans come together and address the crisis with a high sense of resolve, responsibility, and sacrifice.  Our character is lean and strong.  During this period of comparison there are many more similarities than differences.  It is in the out years, roughly three years and beyond the initiation of crisis, when more differences are found, and where prospects for the future are defined.

Our initial response to 9/11 was similar to other crises.  Flags were everywhere and while a few people behaved in a manner unbecoming an American, most of us kept our cool and rallied around our leaders with compassion for those who lost loved ones, and a determination to seek justice.  In the out years, however, we lost our composure by compromising two things: our honesty and our humility.  Ideological bullies like Vice President Dick Cheney began by lying about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda in Iraq.  Inside the Beltway of Washington DC they call it politicizing intelligence.  I will call it what it is: lying.  The lies enabled a call to action that has cost us at least two trillion dollars and, across the world, the loss of tens of thousands of lives.  Once our honesty was lost, what little humility remained since we had become the world’s sole remaining superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union was vanquished by our hubristic response to 9/11.  Once our humility was gone, our national character—our identity—was lost as well. We were all sucked into a charade that has proven catastrophic.  The promises of the Cheney bunch—of cheers, bouquets, and new democracies—were never realized and now we are stuck in a quagmire without a clear exit.  The tally of blood and treasure lost is far from over.

Dishonesty, and moreover, arrogance, appear to be the primary products of the out-years after 9/11.  Now we behave at home the way we have abroad.  Our leaders in Congress swagger about with Cheney-esque anger and certitude.  Ideological bullying has become the norm.  Meanwhile, our president hides in the White House like a prom king who has just realized the student body doesn’t love him so much after all.  What courage he had has been overcome by his naiveté.  No, President Obama, the old white pudgy boys in Congress are not enamored with a young fit black man in the White House.  They want you out and they will do anything possible to bring that about.  It is time for you to fight for our future and forget about a second term.  Use the rest of your term to be the best one-term president ever.  If you do, who knows, you might even have a second term.

As I watched the tears shed by the children remembering their loved ones at Ground Zero on September 11, 2011, I couldn’t help but also wonder about all the tears shed by the children of those who have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan.  As I watch Wall Street prosper, I wonder why we can’t do the same thing for main streets all over America.  As I watch the middle class rise across Asia, I watch and wonder why we tolerate its decline in the West.  As I watch students across Scandinavia and Asia excel at levels significantly higher than our own kids, I wonder how we expect to remain a superpower.  As I watch our security, health, and environment decline from our dependence on fossil fuels, I wonder why we don’t launch a massive public initiative to produce new fuels and new distribution systems.

Many wonder these days if Karl Marx was right; if capitalism will produce its own demise.  It is an interesting question given our current circumstances.  I conclude, however, that capitalism and democracy are not the problem, character is.  We must regain our sense of honesty and humility to face the many challenges we face.  Once our character is lean and strong again we will have the courage to do what we know is right.  We will not allow those we elected to serve us to continue serving themselves first.  We will, once again, summon the best in us.

By |2017-05-23T19:50:02+00:00September 11th, 2011|American Identity, Leadership|0 Comments

The Reagan Echo: Donald Trump

In my forthcoming study of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, tentatively titled “The Disciple and The Alchemist,” I wrote about Reagan that,

He was a transcendent optimist—a spokesman-as-leader—who employed alchemy and soaring rhetoric to obviate contradictions.  He stood, as appropriate at any given time, near either Democratic or Republican mirrors to reflect and project his appeal through a libertarian prism, matching the prevailing mood of the electorate.  From the threat of communism, to fatigue of government intervention, to the embrace of an evil enemy, he knew how to change the angle of the camera and strike an appealing pose for his audience.

As I observe the improbable candidacy of Donald Trump for president today, I cannot help but hear echoes of Reagan’s appeal and alchemic modality.  And, the electorate seems to be just as depressed (or angry) today as it was in the latter stages of the Carter presidency.

The comparisons are eerie.  While Reagan espoused the “Gospel of Prosperity,” Trump promotes what David Brooks of The New York Times has labeled a “Gospel of Success.”  Meanwhile, Obama speaks of self-restraint and sacrifice the same way Carter spewed jeremiads of sacrifice-based redemption.  Like Reagan, Trump also believes in American exceptionalism based on overt power, projected for the benefit of Americans first.  Notwithstanding missteps, like Vietnam before Reagan, and Iraq/Afghanistan before Trump, for Trump Americans remain the chosen people in a chosen land, the new Israel.  Meanwhile, Obama, like Carter, tries to re-identify America as a force for moral good, waging humanitarian wars (Libya) and preferring cooperation to competition.  I can’t remember ever hearing Trump (or Reagan) utter the word ‘cooperation’.  Reagan’s Hollywood-styled past and Trump’s New York/Atlantic City slick-shtick (and multiple marriages) also place them in stark contrast to the Obama/Carter image of up-from-nothing populist purity.  Furthermore, I can easily see Trump reeling in the Religious Right the same way Reagan did with his “I know you can’t endorse me … but I can endorse you”; especially with either Palin or Huckabee at the bottom half of the ticket.

Trump has also taken a page out of Reagan’s early campaign playbook in his attempt to de-legitimize the President.  Reagan questioned Carter’s strength, patriotism, and decisiveness, while Trump has pounded the birther issue with the conviction of a Klansman.  Trump will easily get the angry white vote, and if he can co-opt the Religious Right (now Christian nationalists) with whitebread exceptionalism, he’s halfway there.  Trump’s next target will be to add the other half—fiscal conservatives—to his electoral coalition.  He’ll question Obama’s fiscal toughness in the face of huge deficits and the recent S&P outlook downgrade on US securities.  Trumps own fiscal follies will no doubt be recast as the scars of experience in a Hobbesian world.  He will ask the Reagan question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” and will couple it with “Who would you rather have at the negotiating table, a nice guy, or a winner?”  He might even say to Obama: “You’re fired!”

Reagan’s appeal resided in its simplicity; he pulled on American’s sense of patriotism and desire to “stand tall” again.  He re-imagined America’s special destiny as a “shining city on a hill.”  In a complex world full of nuance and strange alliances—one that calls for an Obamaesque mind and demeanor—Americans may decide they’d just like to feel good again.  They may prefer illusion to reality.  If they do, Trump’s orangish hair (like Reagan’s) won’t matter.  Some say Trump’s anger will do him in; this may prove to be wishful thinking by Obama supporters.  After all, aren’t we all angry?  Trump should summon his inner Reagan, and Obama better not make the same mistake Carter’s advisors did when they hoped they would face Reagan on election day.

By |2023-12-01T15:34:19+00:00April 19th, 2011|General|0 Comments

Obama’s Doctrine of Ambiguity

As one who studies US foreign policy, I am not a fan of presidential doctrines that are generally crafted by the press out of a line or two of a president’s speech.  The Monroe Doctrine may have actually been the only true doctrine, defined by its namesake, and even it proved susceptible to gross misinterpretation and extensive misapplication.  Moreover, in an age of complexity, doctrines, or grand strategies, seem less appealing or relevant than the flexibility ambiguity allows, which is clearly why President Obama favored ambiguity in his recent address on Libya.  We live in an age of supervention, where seemingly disconnected and anachronistic events have effects, which is an inexorable reality of complexity.  The larger problem however, is not about US foreign policy and its strategic design in a complex world; it is about American identity; it is about how we Americans view our role at home and in the world

Obama’s address about the US/NATO intervention in Libya (March 28, 2011) left those wanting to define the Obama Doctrine dissatisfied; there was (purposefully, no doubt) nowhere to hang one’s doctrinal hat.  Ben Smith of Politico probably summed this best when he wrote, “The doctrine is there is no doctrine.”  And while others like Mark Halperin of TIME lauded Obama’s address as “strong” even he underscored the ambiguity by suggesting, “George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence.”  When Obama and W sound the same on foreign policy, the case for ambiguity is unambiguous.  However, as attractive as the flexibility ambiguity provides is, we must also look at the sustainability of an open-ended policy of either adventurism (W) or interventionism (Obama)

The US has now witnessed two expensive effects of having an unassailable lead as the predominant military in the world: natural competitors find other ways to compete, and allies become dependent on US military power.  China has chosen to compete with the US by investing in their economy and protecting their currency (virtually all their military is deployed in-country to protect the authoritarian government).  Other non-state actors, like al-Qaeda, compete with asymmetric terror strategies that are difficult if not impossible to assail with a behemoth (US) military.  Meanwhile, as we have seen with Libya, US allies and their collective security system, NATO, are unable to provide the command and control platform to launch or sustain an intervention.  Therefore, the US, in its superpower/super-cop role, is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place; it must continue to fund its super-military for the benefit of friends, while its natural competitors gain in power through other means.  The result, unfortunately, is now and will continue to be the decline—perhaps even accelerated decline—of US power and well-being.

Obama could have at least started to halt this unsustainable trajectory of superdom, but he chose ambiguity.  He has missed an opportunity to recast US identity.  In so doing, he has (perhaps unwittingly) elongated the deleterious effects of Eisenhower’s warning about a military industrial complex, and reduced our capacity to invest in better long-term bets like education, alternative energy, and economic innovation.  Lest we forget, we have enormous financial deficits.  The US will likely be better loved by both allies and competitors for Obama’s post-W retooling of exceptionalism and lofty aims, but such love is an unsustainable luxury.  As Americans we must demand a refocusing on our own strength, resiliency, and well-being.  We can afford neither adventurism nor interventionism.  Prevailing on the “shores of Tripoli” may feel good today, but also puts our future at open-ended risk.

By |2017-05-23T20:15:24+00:00March 29th, 2011|General|0 Comments

“Dithering” Might Have Been Better

While Sarah Palin criticizes President Obama of “dithering,” maybe that is exactly what we should be better at when it comes to foreign interventions like the recent one in Libya.  Here are some observations/questions I recently offered in a US foreign policy group I belong to, to, in part, stimulate discussion about US involvement in Libya.

  1. Analogies are dangerous. Rwanda was not Bosnia or Kosovo, and neither are any of them Libya.  The events associated with each are born from different places, times, people, governments, cultures, economies, and laws.  Still, our memories of them are powerful, and in the last several days the interpretation of each is and has been projected on Libya.  As historians we have to interpret the record associated with each while we place a huge warning label on our analyses that reads This Will Never Recur Exactly As It Has Here. (A sort of historian’s caveat emptor.)  In critical ways, each event is different.  Richard E. Neustadt’s and Ernest R. May’s Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers warns us of the danger of analogies.  Their study shows many cases of the misapplication of history, operationalized in policymaking through analogies, that cause us to ask, years later, why in the hell did they do that?  In most cases speed is a factor, and the simple enormity of what decision makers have to deal with, all the complexities and scale.  Analogies simplify and justify; they are the fuel of dispatch.  However, if we do in Libya what we should have done in the Balkans or Rwanda, will we do what is correct for Libya?  If we begin with the premise they are different, then how is doing what we believe we should have done in Bosnia or Rwanda even logical?
  2. We must be careful what we wish for.  Or, asked otherwise by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s representative for foreign affairs and security, “And then what?” Qaddafi (Q) didn’t become a mass murderer overnight, in fact, where is the evidence of slaughter?  Obama hung his case on Q’s psychobabble rhetoric, where Q claimed he would show “no mercy,” to justify intervening to stop Q short of Benghazi.  I can only conclude there was no evidence of slaughter by Q’s troops on the way from Tripoli to Benghazi, otherwise Obama surely would have hung his argument on something more than Q’s “no mercy” pledge.  (I reflect on much of Reagan’s rhetoric in the 1980s and find Q’s nearly childish.)  Q clearly had the rebels on the run, but genocide?  Q has a long history of violence, like other despots (we ignore), but I am unaware of any history of genocide.  Yet, we have committed tremendous resources to a nebulous task of “protecting Libyans” who will now likely face a long ground war with a desperate despot.  Many would have likely died, and now many likely will.  Where is the victory in that?  Moreover, when a conclusion is declared—however nebulous—then what?  Who will rule?  Whom will they rule and how?  Perhaps we should watch Egypt (an arguably much more stable and developed state) to see if freedom and human rights prevail over what looks like a government that will likely be controlled by the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Time will tell, but maybe we should let it do exactly that.
  3. In the meantime, American identity is slowly changing, but politics are still politics.  The debate in the US on this issue, when you cull out the relevant pronouns, is really about the role of the US in the world—about American identity.  Involvement by the US in world affairs swings to and fro—from isolationism to overt exceptionalism.  Absent the pronouns, when you compare today’s debate to the days of Woodrow Wilson’s battle with Congress after World War I, there is an eerie echo.  We may be seeing Obama facing the same thing today.  Perplexingly, Obama seems a better fit for an advocate of a more restrained America, yet the facts (Afghanistan and now Libya) belie my perception of his intellectual disposition.  Then again, maybe it is just the primacy of politics.  After all, 2012 looms.  Both humor and pain can be found in the push and pull between the White House and the Congress (under the veil of legal issues like the War Powers Act).  Each is trying to create a position where, in the end, they can claim they were right.  So, ambiguity wins again!
By |2017-05-23T20:19:26+00:00March 25th, 2011|American Identity, General|0 Comments

Waging Legitimate Dissent: the Rise of the LDs.

At the center of freedom lies dissent: the capacity to reject the opinion of the majority and/or contemporary orthodoxy. Dissidents who founded the United States also passed a Bill of Rights to protect those who wish to express dissent.  Among other things, dissent is what made America what she is.  Great American dissidents include people like Frederick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.  By definition, those who dissent take unpopular positions and risk both their social and political membership and, at times, their lives.  Dissidents often say what others are thinking but who are silenced by fear.  Dissidents who prevail in their dissent—whose opinion or position succeeds in overcoming the status quo—are the engines of social and political innovation.  They allow society to lurch forward toward a better future. Today, we suffer from those who masquerade as dissidents as well as those who chant “Yes We Can!” or “No We Can’t!”  It is time to replace this noisy charade with affirmative and legitimate dissent.

Tea Partiers (TPs), or, if you prefer, True Patriots (TPs) are those who rail against our government for spending too much money and infringing on our liberties.  Several rallied in August in Washington DC with the self-ordained Reverend Beck, and last weekend with Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks bunch.  Most TPs want all spending cut or eliminated as long as it doesn’t affect their own benefits, entitlements, or patriotic impulses.  Medicare, Social Security, and Defense spending are sacred—so much for cutting spending.  And, forget about raising taxes, that’s unpatriotic too.  As for liberties, those who know God in the same way they do will enjoy their liberties; those who don’t, won’t.  For TPs, liberty has prerequisites.  In essence, TPs are not dissidents they are conformists.  They are the self(ish)-righteous.

The Blanks are the folks who chant “Yes We Can _____!”  The blank is where the who, what, where, how, and why go.  But, they leave it blank.  (Psssst! President Obama, this is your constituency!  It’s time to fill in the blank!)  Their proposals amount to little more than feel-good platitudes of liberal institutionalism that lack any semblance of specificity.  They’re like the dog that finally caught the bumper of the car it’s been chasing down the street for years, and are suddenly faced with the grim reality of answering “Now what?”  Moreover, they can’t understand why the driver doesn’t stop to congratulate them, and why their fellow canine packmembers aren’t cheering.  While they may have great ideas that might prove helpful, they have yet to realize that dissent is hard and painful work that requires courage, fortitude, and the sacrifice of fame.

The Dolts are the “No We Can’t” crowd—the negative dissenters—who mockingly sit on their un-callused hands at the local Men’s Social Club and practice harrumphing in between declaring “No!”  Picture Senator Mitch McConnell here.  They wear expensive suits to cover a well-earned paunch and haven’t had an original idea since they introduced Everclear into the punchbowl at a Nixon/Agnew campaign party.  The last time they embraced progress was when Viagra hit the market.  Before that it was Velcro.  To Dolts, smartphones are for people without staff.  Reform is an inherently socialist concept that will forever justify the concept of filibuster.  America is great and will remain so as long as we practice regression.  The hope-y change-y bunch is little more than a seasonal nuisance, like having to put one’s seersucker away after Labor Day. Dogmatism is just an appetizer before an entrée of certitude.  Dolts are happy to have the old John McCain back.  That maverick stuff annoyed them.

So, where does that leave us?  Fortunately, the TPs, Blanks, and Dolts leave plenty of room for legitimate dissenters (LDs)—for those who dare to face reality and offer substantive solutions.  An LD’s campaign speech may sound something like this:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight.  I can assure you that once I’m done speaking you will have heard several things you don’t like.  Once I’m done speaking you will have many reasons to vote for my opponent.  When you go to vote, you may even circle my name on the ballot and write in the margin “Anyone but that guy.”

I’m not here to tell you “yes we can, or no we can’t.”  I’m not here to argue with you about the Constitution, or the Bible, or the Quran.  What I am here to share with you are five things we must do to secure the future of our children and grandchildren – to preserve their opportunity to pursue their own life, liberty, and happiness.

  1. We must terminate Medicare.  Only then will those entrenched interests who benefit the most from this unsustainable system be brought to submit to true reform.  Only then will we be able to provide access to healthcare for every citizen at a reasonable cost.  Let me begin by pledging that I will not accept government provided healthcare if you elect me as your Congressman.
  2. We must terminate Social Security.  Only then can we have a new conversation about how to deal with our aging population and redress the role of family and community in America.  Let me begin by rescinding my own entitlement to Social Security payments in the future.
  3. For the foreseeable future, everyone’s taxes must go up.  Even if we terminate Medicare and Social Security and replace them with sustainable programs, we must reduce our current liabilities to a much lower percentage of our GDP.  I will share that burden with you.
  4. We must withdraw all troops, regardless of their designation—‘combat’, ‘security’, ‘training’, etc.—from both Iraq and Afghanistan, immediately. Iraq and Afghanistan are ventures which have failed and for which there is no reasonable alternative to withdrawal.  Furthermore, we must abolish the myth of America as the global policeman, and forever suspend our imperialist impulse to recast the world in our own image.  This too is unsustainable.
  5. We must immediately launch a Manhattan-project styled program to produce alternative fuels and new distribution systems to eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels.  Not reduce our reliance, eliminate it.  We must completely reinvent our orientation toward energy.

There are many other things we must do to make America strong in education, immigration, infrastructure projects, etc.  But unless we get control of our expenses, our foreign exposure, and our energy needs, we will never be able to address anything else in a reasonable, let alone sustainable manner.

If you want to ‘stay-the-course’ vote for my opponent.  There are those who insist if the captain of the Titanic had just rammed the iceberg head-on, rather than turning to take a glancing blow, the Titanic would have stayed afloat.  To those who continue to embrace false-choices like that I respectfully, and dare I say, legitimately dissent.  I affirm that the iceberg is on the horizon, but I prefer that we chart a new course before it’s too late.  If you agree, please vote for me.

Thank you for listening.

We have witnessed many times throughout history that conformity is dangerous; that there is no such thing as the wisdom of crowds.  (Remember the tulip bulbs.)  As author David Rieff recently wrote in The New Republic, the current political crowds “are studies in the lowest-common-denominator subordination of the individual to the collective and of the thought to the slogan: in short, complexity to simplicity.”[1]  Or, as Albert Einstein said, “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt.  He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.”

Each of us has a duty to think for ourselves and to reject the comfort of conformance.  We must summon the courage to chart a new course and accept the consequences of our prior foolish choices.  We must reject the sloganeering and invective of popular noisemakers and wage legitimate dissent.  If we do, we will preserve the promise of America.

[1] David Rieff, “The Unwisdom of Crowds,” The New Republic, September 6, 2010, www.tnr.com.
By |2017-05-27T18:33:27+00:00September 14th, 2010|General, Leadership|0 Comments
Go to Top