January 1, 2018--Liberal Fallacy: The "Woke"

One of my favorite Morning Joe guests is political and cultural columnist Anand Giridharadas (AG).

Friday, on the last show of the year, he was the final guest. It fell to him to sum things up.

He was asked about the status of the Resistance, the movement to resist the worst of the Trump presidency. Appropriately, for our tragically divided nation, he offered an expansive call for national reconciliation. 

Nothing to argue about with that, but there is much to be concerned about in the specific ways in which he hopes to see that reconciliation occur. 

To me it is representative of the Liberal Fallacy.

What he calls for embodies engagement in some of the very-same virulent behaviors Trump supporters participate in to support him.

After the show, AG summed this up on his Twitter feed. He wrote--

"In 2017, the Resistance was, and had to be a fortress, protecting America from a grave threat to the republic. 

"In 2018, it must be a church seeking converts. It must persuade. 

"Is there space among the woke for the still-waking?"

If one is serious about seeking ways to come together to seek reengagement, isn't it necessary for that dialogue not to be so one-sided? It is clear that he sees virtue only in his dug-in position along the cultural divide and calls for those of us who are of that persuasion to look for ways to be persuasive. Not to listen, not to be open to the heretical possibility that we too might be influenced.

Isn't this a version of the very thing so many Americans hate about the cultural elites? That we claim to embrace the truth, reject or not even listen to other views, and are eager to lead those our candidate called deplorables, irredeemable deplorables, and who AG, literally with pink patches on his jacket sleeves, also seeks to enlighten? About the truth. Our truth. To convert those who are "still-waking."?

To in effect say, "Better than you, we know what's good for you." 

And then what condescension, what self-assigned superiority is revealed by the "woke"-still-waking" paradigm.

This call is not going to get the job done. Actually, it will have the opposite effect. If we seek understanding and perhaps the beginning of reconciliation this is not the vision we need to guide us in 2018.

I was saddened that Willie Geist and the other Morning Joe guests hearing this, uncritically, without evidence of self-insight, came close to clutching hands and breaking into Kumbaya. 

It was a depressing moment at the end of a tumultuous year that summed up entirely too much.

May 29, 2017--Guest Blogger Sharon: Tone At the Top

Guest Blogger Sharon returns with thoughts about the ethical tone Donald Trump is setting for his followers and, if he were to have his way, America.

I will return tomorrow, Tuesday, with ruminations about Intelligent Design.

                                                     Tone At the Top

I first heard the phrase "Tone at the Top" about fifteen or twenty years ago. I didn't realize at the time it was a term which originated in accounting/audit firms. Used to describe an organization's general ethical climate, as established by its board of directors, audit committee, and senior management. Tone at the top refers to the ethical atmosphere that is created in the workplace by the organization's leadership. Whatever tone management sets will have a trickle-down effect on employees of the company. 

Many of the recent themes of this blog had me thinking about tone at the top again. This time not in a corporate context, but in the context of a leader and his advisers who conducted the vilest campaign in modern American history. He and his board have made it OK for Americans who are so inclined, to hate again, to ignore facts, and to admire someone whose behavior they would reject in another context. 

This week hearing Montana voters say they supported a candidate who assaulted a reporter because his behavior made it sound like the candidate was their kind of guy, made me wonder if people would feel as comfortable voicing this if just about anyone else was elected President. 

This is not to say that this type of behavior represents everyone who voted for Trump. Nor am I comfortable with everyone who did not vote for Trump or other Republicans in the primaries lumped together as Progressives, or Liberals. 

Having spent most of my adult life in a state that is red/purple, many friends, colleagues and neighbors had different viewpoints that didn't get in the way for over 40 years of cordial or even family-like relationships. Nor were most people, including myself, down the line categorizable. I know government employees who might usually vote for Dems who preferred some of their Republican appointee bosses to those they worked for under Democrat administrations.

But this is different. Trump has deliberately tapped into some really disturbing and powerful undercurrents in American life. Some of these people we've known for years and who are not unemployed coal miners or displaced manufacturing workers living in drug plagued towns have, with Trump as a model, felt free to say some pretty ugly stuff. 

One example. It's been about three years since I wrote about my dad's World War II service. At the time I read accounts of men who were captured during the Battle of the Bulge, who were first writing about their traumatic experiences 70 years later. To then hear a friend say Trump was right, John McCain wasn't a hero because he was captured left me dumbfounded. And that was only the beginning. I won't even repeat some of the other things that have been said.

If I have given up trying to reason with and understand people I already know who perhaps have spent too many years being brainwashed by Fox News, trolls and "news" outlets even further right, I have even less interest engaging strangers who want people to be free not to have health care.  I hold in special contempt those who encourage conspiracy theories that spur the lunatic fringe to shoot up pizza parlors, etc. (Fill in your favorite conspiracy or slur here).

For those who are not "deplorable" and just wanted to be heard, to shake things up or thought a businessman might be able to solve some problems, I wonder if they really still see this administration as setting the right tone to produce the results for which they voted.

Or perhaps this other New York businessman's profile which appeared in the Times last week is more apt. He sold people phony products and when customers complained, he terrorized them. He's headed to jail . . . 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/business/eyeglass-vendor-imprisoned-for-terrorizing-consumers-is-accused-of-fraud.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0

May 22, 2017--"Vile Scumbag"

A friend, referring to Donald Trump, posted this on Facebook--

Vile scumbag. How I so purely and truly despise this spineless sack of shit coward. When will the carnage end? It is just so exhausting.

About all other subjects, my progressive friend is an otherwise moderate and thoughtful person. He is also literate. But here he is so in a rage that he's sputtering semi-coherently.

I have other liberal friends, all of whom oppose the death penalty, who are so crazed that they are cheering the death of Fox News' founder, Roger Ailes and they are so excited that he is dead that they are wishing the same fate for Steve Bannon and Rupert Murdock. I am sure others are on their death list.

When I try to get them to tell me why they have these feelings of murderous fury they say, in effect, isn't it obvious. Two words--Donald and Trump.

When I press, some confess that their rage is connected to the anxiety and fear Trump and his presidency have unleashed.

They are afraid about what will happen to the environment and the Earth (the New York Times on Saturday published a piece about the accelerating melting of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antartica--it is occurring so rapidly that many scientists are saying that by the end of the century, sea levels will rise by up to six feet, enough to inundate much of New York City and south Florida); they are worried about their jobs (many are professionals who work for or are funded by the rapidly shrinking government); they have deep fears about what their children will be facing (many are mired in tens of thousands of dollars of student debt and living in their parents' basements); and almost all are panicking about their 401(k)s.

Above all, most are feeling unable to do anything about it.

Rage comes largely from feeling powerless.

These are very efficacious people who are used to helping make things happen. They pride themselves on their ability to take on complicated problems and move them toward solution. They have been upwardly mobile and feel that this is because they have earned their way and deserve to be part of the professional and managerial classes.

Now, as they see things, everything is changing, becoming upended by the barbarians who have seized control. Used to feeling accomplished and even superior, they are now finding themselves being treated disdainfully. Being dismissed. And worse than death, being ignored.

The "deplorables" are in charge. The knowledge my friends have acquired, the history they have participated in shaping is no longer, they feel, valued. And since they cannot figure out what to do, what to think, or how to fight back, rather than dig in for the long haul and devote themselves to a sustained and relentless political and cultural resurgence, when together, they complain, they fulminate.

When I ask them what they think will make a difference, they say joining the "resistance" movement. When I ask what's planned, they say more marches. When I ask when the next one is scheduled, they say they do not know. When I ask how long ago was the last one, they tell me they are not sure. Maybe a month or two.

I tell them I don't think this will get the job done. In the latest polls, last week, 84 percent of Republicans say they think Donald Trump is doing a good job. Considering what he has been up to, we need to figure out why that is. We need to figure out how to push these numbers and, forgive me, figure out ways to reach out to some of them and get them to consider other ways to think about what's going on. About how they are being manipulated and taken advantage of.

In the meantime, some friends say they plan to post more on Facebook.

September 13, 2016--The "Deplorables"

Candidates for the presidency should stay away from private fundraisers.

Or if they do attend (and they all seem to feel the need to) they should not make comments but just go around the room and say thank you a lot.

First of all, these bundler-sessions are not private. Anyone running for the highest office in the land who doesn't know that with smart phones nothing is private is not qualified to be commander in chief where at least a few things should be secure from Russian hackers.

Second, when hobnobbing in 15,000-square-foot houses with fellow one-percenters, they are prone to utter what they really think. And telling this kind of truth can be fatal to one's aspirations.

Hillary stepped in it last week at a Manhattan big-bucks fundraiser just as Mitt Romney did in 2012 in Boca Raton and Barack Obama did before him in 2008 in Beverly Hills where among like-minded folks he thought his remarks about average people "clinging" to their guns and religion were off the record.

Romney did him one better when he opined about the "47 percent" of Obama's supporters who were "takers," "dependent" on the government for their sustenance, while the well-oiled Floridians and of course Mitt himself were the "makers."

And now Hillary will forever be associated with her comments that "half" of Trump's supporters fit into "a basket of deplorables"--a presumably unwashed species of the "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic--you name it."

Those who shelled out $10,000 a pop to see her, the New York Times reported, applauded and laughed.

A few things to take away from this--

When will we hear equivalent outrage from the same progressives who justifiably condemned Romney for his 47-percent calumnies?

I think of my colleague progressives as fact-based thinkers who also strive to be openminded and fair. If I have that right, after they get over how to think about Hillary Clinton's alleged pneumonia and why she didn't tell the truth about it for 48 hours (when she was contagious, by the way), what will they have to say about her castigating "deplorables"? I suspect, alas, not very much.

Also, will they have anything to say about what the "clinging," "47-percent," and "deplorables" comments have in common? About how when members of the elite condescend and look down their noses at the underclass it makes those pt-upon people crazier and motivates them to embrace Donald Trump even  more fervently.

Then, as a matter of political strategy, candidates should be careful not to too lightly turn adjectives into nouns--

I suppose unsavories and amorals and obtuses work in some clever circumstances, but transmuting deplorable into deplorables can lose one the election.