Bjorn Philip Beer's Open Salon Blog

John Adams on the Boston Bombings and the Boston Massacre

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:04:07 -0400

“Strict constructionist” and alleged defender of the Constitution, Senator Lindsey Graham, recently suggested that the second suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombings need not be burdened with Miranda rights or a trial in our regular legal system. No one should be surprised that within hours, many “conservative” talking heads began echoing that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ought to be interrogated and treated as an enemy combatant, which means he ought to be tried in the parallel legal system that has been created and maintained since 9-11-01. Whether these proponents of the shadow legal system truly believe this is a good idea based on sound legal principles and firm intellectual moorings, or whether they see it as an expedient wedge issue to divide their political opponents, we don’t need to question their motives to explore the utter moral and legal bankruptcy of their position.

What we do need to discuss – urgently – is the deep wellspring of irony that Graham and other extra-legal hawks have unwittingly stumbled upon. On March 5, 1770, British soldiers massacred a group of civilians, killing five, and injuring six. In this Boston Massacre 243 years ago, these soldiers were probably considered with the same contempt that we all feel when we started reading about the two perpetrators of the recent bombing and subsequent shoot-out. The angry crowd then viewed these soldiers as monstrous villains, just as we rightly view the Tsarnaev brothers today. However, the angry crowd then called for their immediate hanging, just as many in the angry crowd today have called for their enhanced interrogation, trial as an enemy combatant, or even torture.

We must contrast today's calls for the use of the shadow legal system with John Adams’ agreement to defend the soldiers. This was a bold move on Adam’s behalf: Adams was a prominent Patriot and one well aware of the promising career ahead of him. Even many Loyalist lawyers declined to defend the British soldiers before Adams was asked to defend the same. He agreed, and gave it his best shot in order to ensure the principles of a fair trial and the rule of law. He applied his principles at a considerable risk to his prominent role and leadership in the emerging Revolution.

What is so amazing about this story is that Adams himself said that the Boston Massacre – where he defended the enemy – was the catalyzing event in the American Revolution, calling it the "foundation of American independence.” Yet, it wasn’t just because British troops lost the battle for public opinion, but also because legal principles of the Revolution were displayed above and against the passions of the crowd. Adams took a bold and risky move to be on the wrong side of the crowd. Why? Did he have Loyalist sympathies? Hardly. Instead, he had the courage of his convictions to insist that the rule of law, and the principles of a fair trial ought to transcend his career interests or the passions of the crowd. Rather than channel the crowd, he countered it.

So, I encourage you, the next time you type “Boston Marathon Bombings” into a Google search to see the latest news of the status of this “enemy combatant,” I hope you click on the autofill option that comes up when you get to “Boston M….” Click on the Boston Massacre and try to apply its lessons to today. Study history for its wisdom and for the deep keel it provides in today’s stormy media seas where sensationalism is valued over substance and the quantity of news is valued over the quality of news. Understand and take to heart the principles of the rule of law for which this country once fought.

Empty suits in the Senate like Graham and those calling for domestic terrorism subjects to be tried in a secondary legal track as “enemy combatants” are pitiful excuses of statesmen when contrasted to the towering principles for which John Adams courageously fought at a risk to his own career. Just as Adams courageously stood up to the mob of fellow patriots in Boston who would rather have taken matters into their own hands outside the legal system, we need to stand up to those today in our society who would see individuals tried as enemy combatants in a shadow legal system just because the act has been labeled as terrorism by the government or the media. If history in many countries is any guide, a terror that is every bit as terrifying as any terrorist attack is gradual degradations to the rule of law. We must confront those politicians today who would use a large American flag to hide from view that they are tearing up the Constitution. We fought a revolution to establish the rule of law then and we must fight those – with the law and with reasoned argument – who try to undermine the rule of law today.

As these lessons echo from the past, there is further irony that echoes today. Many of these so-called conservatives today who are advocating for the use of a separate legal track ought to take note that many conservative intellectuals (an extinct species, of course) such as Russell Kirk, have cited John Adam’s influence on the revolution and constitutional government as a fundamentally conservative one. In one of my all-time-favorite books (my liberal friends may be aghast that I would say this) The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, arch-conservative Kirk maintains that Adams is the “founder of true conservatism in America.” Adam’s insistence upon the “liberty under the law” was based upon a deep cynicism towards humans' ability towards self-government if not bolstered by a robust rule of law that could hold back the madness of the crowd or the unitary dictates of any one individual. According to Kirk, Adams was an “avowed conservative” well “before [Edmund] Burke denounced French delusions.” To translate this for modern “conservatives,” many of whom only get their political and legal theory from Fox News, this means Adams was conservative before being conservative was cool. (Of course, it’s not cool to be a conservative today because faux conservatives like Graham make thoughtful people run wisely in the other direction.)

If there are any conservative intellectuals around today who are silently frustrated by and isolated from the rabid members of their own ranks who are foaming at the mouth to subvert the Constitution and the rule of law, please find courage from Adams in order to speak up to and against the agitated members of your own side. A conservative government is a strong constitutional government. A conservative government is one that protects individual rights at the direct cost to both executive and legislative power. A conservative government is one gives the enemy a fair trial today, should we ever desire a fair trial for ourselves tomorrow. The rule of law is simply the legal enshrinement of the Golden Rule. Fake conservatives in George W. Bush’s legal team made a flawed detour, one that is followed by the Obama administration to a large extent: it is time to get back on the right path.

So, should you fancy yourself a defender of a conservative worldview and find yourself agreeing with Senator Graham, it is time for some serious self-reflection. I’d advise you turn off the TV and radio and temper your opinions by reading both the story of John Adam’s brave defense of the British soldiers and what one of the last great conservative intellectuals said about John Adams. It should be clear to any thinking conservative that Graham and the other hawks are neither conservatives nor intellectuals, but diviners of the spirit of the mob.

Bjorn Philip Beer is a software executive, writer, and father who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. After graduating from Georgetown University on a full scholarship, Bjorn worked in both political polling for national political groups and corporations, political campaigns in North Carolina, and for the non-partisan think tank, the Center for the Study of the Presidency, where he worked for former Ambassador to NATO (and Republican) David Abshire.

The Terror Within: Prioritizing Fear in the Wake of Boston

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 14:04:21 -0400

Last week when the Senate voted down sensible and popular legislation for background checks on gun purchases, all of my fears were put into perspective. This coincided with a week full of fear after the tragic bombings in Boston and subsequent lock-down. As the dust settles, it is time to have a candid discussion about how we rank our own fears and be honest with ourselves about the terror within our society.

For longer than a decade, we have been told to live in fear of the external threat - the enemy outside – and a potential repeat of the horrific attacks that killed almost three thousand on 9-11-2001. We have mobilized trillions of dollars to respond to this threat, invaded two countries, witnessed the deaths and injuries of our own soldiers and many more innocent civilians, and extended (unconstitutional) military operations into a handful of other countries. We have paid for this “War on Terror” on credit: through deficit spending and on the backs of future wage earners and tax payers. We have been told the threat level “has been raised to red,” and we believed them every time. Now, after recent bomb explosions at the Boston Marathon, the government and the media would have us also fear public gatherings and sporting events. We locked down a whole city on account of one armed man. We are being told once again that “everything has changed."

But I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to publically affirm the same. Any act of terrorism is bad, but the terror that is all around us every day is much worse when measured in human lives. The "terror within" ends the lives of the equivalent of ten 9-11’s every year. I am talking about the terror where an average of 100,000 people in America are shot every year and an average of 31,537 are killed by gun violence every year. I am talking about the terror of being afraid of your neighbor, and the terror of not knowing if your child will come back from school without being shot. I am talking about the terror that kills 2,829 kids every year (this is almost the equivalent of one 9-11 attack comprised of youth alone per year!). I am talking about the terror of Newtown and also all of the other banal, faceless statistics of all the shootings, violent domestic disputes, and thousands of heat-of-the-moment exchanges where a handgun or assault rifle is readily available when it shouldn’t have been. I am afraid of the same banal statistics of daily shootings that all of us have become morally numb towards. I am afraid of how easy and cheap it is to buy a semi-automatic weapon and high capacity magazines that can empty a clip of 30 rounds (and empty a classroom of 30 children) in seconds. I am afraid of the terror of my neighbor who is only a trigger away from shooting up the next local gathering. I am afraid of the cowards in the Senate and the villainy of the NRA. This is the terror within that I am afraid of, but I am not afraid of terrorism.

For me, it’s more than just fear of the terror within. It’s also shame. I am ashamed of our current situation because – while we wage a global war on terror at a huge cost and huge fanfare – I am more likely to be killed by my fellow citizen than any terrorist. Despite all of our “defense” spending to fight evildoers abroad, the evil lurks in our communities: I continue to be in higher mortal danger from a person in my community, family, school, church, or neighborhood shooting me where I work, live, study or worship. I am ashamed that as a new father rather than asking myself which school is better for my daughter’s education, I have to ask which school is safer. I am ashamed of the terror woven so deeply into the fabric of our society that we even seriously entertain the idea of arming teachers. How pathetic. How shameful.

We need to ask ourselves how we got here. Fear is an evolved response to our environment, and one that served us well in the Pleistocene: we have this instinct deeply wired into our brains because it helped our ancestors thrive and survive. We have been lean, mean survival machines over the past 200,000 years, but in modern life, humans are bad at approximating relative risk accurately. We overemphasize sensationalized threats with villainous faces while ignoring larger-probability threats that hide behind the cognitive veil of statistical abstraction. Today in modern life, fear of the wrong thing is making this country into a dystopian nightmare that falls far short of the “American dream.“ Our government used to tell us the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but lately, our fears have been central to public policy formulation. Our fears have been manipulated, amplified, distorted, and used to sway our votes or influence us to buy certain products or numbly accept offenses to our Constitution. Whole industries, political careers, and media personalities are built upon the foundation of fear. False fears, irrational fears, and misplaced fears are making us less safe because these distortions in fear are directly distorting government spending and action in inefficient and counterproductive ways. Fear of the wrong thing is simply irrational, and it’s literally killing us.

We talk a lot about our rights as citizens, but we often ignore our concomitant responsibilities: I have a responsibility as a citizen and a father to teach my daughter to know her own cognitive biases that we humans all succumb to if we’re not vigilant about how poorly we judge risk. I will try to help her prevent her amygdala from being hijacked by people who use fear to sell products and sway votes: I will teach her to think with her whole brain. I will give her the tools of rational thought to earn the sapien part of homo sapien. I will teach her to look at the statistics to understand that she is more likely to die texting on a phone while driving to school than she is to die in any act of terror by any foreign or domestic terrorist. (Where’s the War on Texting-While-Driving or the War for Better-Public-Transit, by the way?) I will do this because I want her to be a citizen worthy of her rights, not a pliant sheep like millions of our compatriots with a misplaced prioritization of fear who will all-too-readily give away their liberties for the comforting illusion of total security.

Why do I care so much and why should you? Fear is always the powerful solvent in which democracies dissolve because fear distorts our thinking about the delicate tradeoff between security and liberty. Fear makes us non compos mentis in this important transaction. Yet, it is the responsibility of an informed citizenry in a democracy to know what we ought to be afraid of. We don't need to be afraid of being in crowds at sporting events. Instead, we need to be afraid of the moral, political, and intellectual rot of this country that puts the influence of a well-connected interest group – like the terrorist organization called the NRA – above the interests of the majority of Americans who want both the 2^nd Amendment and rational gun laws. We’re not talking about banning guns – we’re talking about banning them from people who shouldn’t have them. We need to rationally limit the terror within.

I hope you join me in refusing to be fearful of the wrong things, and I hope you are very public about it. This is a personal choice and an important political choice. It is a choice that needs to be expressed publically to affirm your responsibility as a citizen in a democracy. I am not afraid of Al Qaeda or any Boston bomber, because – from the beginning of this expensive War on Terror - the chance of me slipping in a bathtub and dying was always much greater than the chance of me dying in a terrorist attack from those chimerical “sleeper cells.” Today, I am not afraid of dying in a marathon because the risk of dying in a car crash driving to the marathon is greater (my personal risk of having a heart attack before I reach the finish line is probably the highest!). I am not afraid of what the media and the government tell me to fear because I know what to be afraid of: of the terror we’ve cultivated and allowed within over the past decades. It takes a conscious choice as a citizen to not let the media or government hijack your amygdala and fly it into the building of reason. Speaking out will help encourage others to do the same: courage is a contagious thing.

In just the few months since the Newtown terror, the laws and public policy that the NRA has hijacked over the past decades has led to the deaths of 3,530 people, which is larger than the number of people killed when terrorists hijacked airplanes and flew into buildings over a decade ago. But, where is the outrage? Where is the mobilization of public resources? Where is war on the NRA? Instead of fearing terrorists and sporting events, we ought to fear groups who have hijacked the democratic process to push radical and ideological policy against the democratic will of the majority.

The system is broken. Terror masterminds at the NRA advocate quite successfully for unrestricted access to a tool that kills more than the equivalent of one hundred 9-11’s in total since 9-11-01. We need to be more fearful of – and confront – the gun lobby and the ability of lobbies in general to terrorize and subvert rational public policy, engage in a system of legalized bribery, and to hold politicians at electoral gunpoint. This is a battle that will require citizens to both use the tools of democracy and to “just say no” to false fears so we can begin to talk about the real terror within our communities. It’s time to spread democracy at home and confront the wider fact that narrow, ideological groups can use a system of legalized bribery and electoral intimidation to hold the will of the democratic majority at gunpoint. The solution begins when you join and support groups in your community that are fighting an uphill battle to restore democracy here. I won’t play favorites, but there are dozens of such groups, so get involved.

Talking heads, government officials, and so called “terrorism experts” of the military-industrial-complex will tell us “everything has changed” after 4-15-2013 just as they did after 9-11-01. They will want budget increases for yet more defense spending, they will ask for further militarization of local police forces, and will ask for further curtailment of our freedoms. But nothing has changed because the underlying risk probabilities haven’t. We bought that nonsense before at a great cost to our society (and especially future wage earners), at the cost of many innocent lives, and at the cost of our moral leadership in the world.

It’s time to say enough is enough. It’s time to proclaim “fear no more,” or at the very least fear the right things in the right priority. You can’t be the land of the free if you scare yourself out of your freedoms; you can’t be the home of the brave if you’ve built your house on terror within.

Bjorn Philip Beer

Charlottesville, Virginia

Cautionary Letter to Armchair Pundits from a Former Pollster

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:10:36 -0400

Dear Armchair Pundits:

When you post the latest poll numbers and provide us with your analysis, what you say might mean less than you would like. This is especially true when the poll you cite has a difference between Obama and Romney that is equal to or within the margin of error of that poll. Romney now leads Obama 50% to 47%, which seems significant until you read that the margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Is this good news for Romney? Absolutely. But does it predict the future? Absolutely not.

This could be a close race unless really big shifts happen. No one (not even paid media pundits) will be able to say with 100% confidence what is really going on until the first returns come in November 6th. Polling is half science, half heuristics. Please keep that in mind. About half of the pre-election predictions will come true, so of course someone is going to "nail it dead center" in their prediction each cycle. That much is assured.

We humans discount the Unknown and the Unpredictable: big shifts and swings can still happen, gaffes and mistakes can be made by either candidate, negative media saturation can make people stay home, and unleashed super PACs could throw some surprise punches as well. Indeed, we may have surprises that come from GOTV operations (or, the flipside, voter suppression efforts). As The Doors song goes, "the future's uncertain and the end is always near."

When you read or repost polls, keep in mind that the methodology that made one polling firm "accurate" last cycle is a badge only earned in hindsight. That same firm’s methodology might not be any more accurate than another polling firm's methods this time around. Please know that each poll you cite is a weighted (i.e. massaged) piece of data. The pollsters have to make educated guesses and slight corrections to their results to make sure their small sample reflects the predicted weights of voter turnout amongst different voter segments. This accounts for much of the variation you see between polls that sample from the very same population at the same time. Further, given that many key demographics have different rates of cell phone use (which is harder to poll than more stationary folks who have landlines), quality data is harder and harder to find without additional effort and cost.

Ironically, the best thing you could do for your candidate is to say that the other side is winning. Please hear this contrarian out. Calls that "we're doing this, y'all" or "we're going to win" are more likely to give your social media friends an attitude that it's ok if they don't stand in line at the polling place two weeks from now. In contrast, fear of narrowly losing by a tragically small handful of votes will probably do more to your side's essential GOTV efforts than confident assertions that "we're ahead." Sometimes when a potential voter says "oh, my team's ahead," their next thought is "maybe I'll stay at work/home." If you really want to help your side, say "this is going to be close! Every single vote counts! Victory is threatened!"

I will end with one cautionary story. In the 2004 election, I was a paid worker on a congressional campaign that was based out of the Democrat's coordinated campaign office in North Carolina. I watched as a growing number of campaign workers and volunteers start to flirt with the possibility that Kerry/Edwards might actually carry North Carolina in an upset surprise. "NC is going Tar Heel Blue," I recall one true believer shouting. This was on Election Day, in a place where people had easy access to field and polling data from different allied campaigns.

Kerry/Edwards lost North Carolina by a whopping 12.4% margin. Some polls on the eve of the election showed this margin to be half that size, leading some people to suggest that North Carolina might actually be "in play" which is wonk speech for "not ignored by the top of the ticket." Even people with the best information and intentions can still get things wrong.

Remember that the future is always uncertain, which underlies the immediacy of now. This is what makes politics exciting for spectators and participants alike.

Regards,

Bjorn Philip Beer

Bjorn is a former campaign worker and former pollster for a major DC-based firm (where he worked on projects such as Berlusconi, Blair, Hillary Clinton, Merck, Ford, Altria Group, Peabody Energy, and various smaller campaigns). He now lives in Charlottesville, VA.

I Won’t Vote for a Climate Change Ostrich

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:10:13 -0400

Despite our dangerous flirtation with runaway global warming and the ongoing acidification of the oceans, our two potential "leaders" said nothing about climate change in any of the three debates. This is the first time in 24 years that climate change wasn’t mentioned, even though the rate of warming has occurred much faster than was expected in the predictions decades ago. In past debates, candidates may have doubted, debated, or debased global warming; but in this debate, they ignored it. Something is broken.

The third and final debate was a vapid smattering of talking points to show who can be tougher on defense than the other guy. Obama bragged that "our military spending has gone up every single year that I've been in office," and Romney said it wasn’t enough. We have been told by Barack that “hope” is the way “forward;” we are told by Mitt that we should “believe in America,” but then the most important defense and foreign policy subject of all time is ignored for a childish sandbox debate about war toys and who plays war better. “We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined," said Obama, a trend that both candidates will clearly perpetuate.

These two politicians - the best that either the Democratic or Republican party could muster - sure had a lot to say about "defense" in their third debate. What is “defense?” Ours is a sprawling empire of almost 1,000 military installations, which encourages other wealthy countries to freeride under the protective umbrella we provide. Defense contractors pour their largesse upon both Congress and the campaigns of Obama and Romney, proving that the nightmare of military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about is a boldfaced bipartisan reality. We needlessly maintain a costly nuclear weapons program that could destroy the world many times over. We spend more on “defense” than the next dozen countries together, a fact Obama seemed almost proud of.

Who pays for this? Ironically, those who will really pay for this “defense” spending - tomorrow’s taxpayers - are not being taken into consideration when it comes to their number one defense issue, having a climate conducive to life and civilization. Talk about taxation without representation! All of this “defense” spending today and tomorrow is to protect us from a threat that is less likely to end our lives than a car crash. Where’s the war on texting, speeding, and drunk driving?

Voters are about evenly split on who “won” the last debate, whatever that means. (hint: nothing) But voters are unified in their belief that either Obama or Romney will keep us safe and sound with all of the great weaponry, bases, and predator drones we spend so much of our kids’ future earnings on. There may be meaningful differences between Obama and Romney on many issues, but on the staying power of the military-industrial-complex, you can sleep snugly at night knowing some things will never change. So much of our federal budget (as well as our current deficit and the financing costs related to past deficits of past wars) will continue to be devoted to this perverted notion of “defense.” We are arming for past wars and future wars we will never fight. Meanwhile, we are not doing anything to reduce the rise of CO2 into our atmosphere, unless you count the temporary decline in emissions due to the recession. But after hearing the last debate I should be able to sleep at night knowing all is well in Pax America, safe on the still evening before collapse.

We should be scared enough by the terrifying math of global warming. But we should be even more scared that our mainstream politicians have failed to provide leadership. They can deliver us “shock and awe” and the death of Bin Laden, but they cannot propose or discuss a coherent plan for dealing with a threat to civilization that is much bigger than any single terrorist act. However gruesome 9-11 was and however “measured” our response was (a response that led to as many as 100,000 deaths in a country that had nothing to do with 9-11), global warming will put the destructive aims of any terrorist into context. Increasing severity of heat, droughts, coastal flooding, crop failures, and storm-related deaths will be compounded by the inevitable collapse of key ocean-based systems. In a world with seven billion inhabitants, droughts and dwindling seafood resources will certainly lead to famine.

This is a reality that will make terrorism in the past few decades seem quaint in compare. We are very close to triggering runaway climate change as disappearing ice caps reflect less light back into space and as melting permafrost releases more greenhouse gasses. Add this to the fact that today’s observed warming is based on emissions from many years ago, we are looking at an apocalypse: alarmism is more than justified in light of the alarming facts. If you are not an alarmist by now, you inhabit a magical land of delusion, detached from any semblance of a bio-physical reality.This is a scenario which would mean human misery on a scale unheard of in modern history. Who is the real terrorist in this scenario? The answer is simple: those who favor increased “defense” spending over at the cost of any meaningful action on climate change.

I am ashamed of our country. There is no flag big enough to hide our moral failure on this issue. I am ashamed that these are the two best people we could come up with for the job. In the last debate, both candidates talked about the importance of American leadership on the world stage, but how can that be said with a straight face? Our leadership on world stage is completely non-existent (or even malignant) at climate conferences and on global efforts to curb emissions before it’s too late. We fly in on the last day to offer some laughable voluntary emissions reductions plan, and otherwise do everything we can do to escape any sort of mandatory program with binding targets. What American leadership? Democrats and Republicans are doing something worse than leading from behind: they hinder effective policy.

This is the largest threat that civilization has ever faced. Yet Obama and Romney spent all their time talking about a threat that poses a smaller danger to me than drowning in my bathtub. At least I can protect myself from that threat by taking a shower (and perhaps a shorter shower, at that). In the last debate they ignored an issue that will turn the 21st century inside out. On our current path of inaction, it will be - quite literally - hell on earth. So, neither won my vote in the last debate. I will cast a blank ballot because I will not debase myself in support of any candidate who can’t honor the basic bargain that a citizen makes with her government. A citizen consents to the power of the state and yields certain freedoms in return for safety from common threats. These two frauds, Hope and Dope, don’t offer me, my wife, my soon-to-be-born daughter, and my community any safety from the biggest threats in this world today. They ignore that impending threat for a measly 1% increase in the GDP or to defend against a non-state asymmetric threat called terrorism. Obama and Romney will not keep me safe. To think otherwise is to not think.

Our society - obsessed with positive psychology and the importance of self esteem and group identity over facts, reason, and logic - tells us that anger doesn’t solve anything. Steeped in advertising since a young age like fish in water, each of us has been taught that choice - whether political or consumptive - is the answer to all that ails us. Our society tells us to get behind the lesser of either evil. We feel that choice gives power. Yet, this election is a narrow and false choice. If you care about life on this planet and value human civilization, you should be angry. Emotions like outrage or anger - we are told - are not healthy even when they are in the service of our survival instinct. In reality, our minds are honed by thousands of years of evolution to get angry when our survival is at stake and our interests are being flagrantly ignored.

If, like Eric Hoffer said, “anger is a prelude to courage,” it is time to get angry, because we are about to elect either coward. Those who stand to benefit financially from the further destruction of this planet have more of a stake at the democratic table than you and the majority of people who have a stake in the continuation of civilization and the planet upon which it depends. Even if “your guy” wins, lobby groups still bought Congress. Even if Obama or Romney have a road to Damascus moment, see the light, and fight the good fight, they will be up against forces larger than even their best intentions.

I am angry. You should be too. Your government is failing to protect you and especially those who will have the great misfortune of inheriting a climate that has a higher concentration of C02 than at any point in our 200,000 years or so of human existence. Our failed governmental institutions - corrupted by a system of legalized bribery - have broken this sacred contract. The first prerogative of any legitimate government is to provide for the physical protection of its citizens - present and future. Given their current uninspiring stances and past (in)actions and half-steps on the issue, either a Romney or an Obama Administration would continue to fail at this basic contract between government and the governed.

What do we do with this legitimate anger? Most of us seek to avoid conflict, and fail to see that politics (the process of who gets what, when, where, and why) is a raw confrontation of interests. Those interests who play politics successfully (those with power) know very well that it is a raw confrontation of interests, but we think it’s just about one consumptive choice on Nov 6th, as if we were deciding between an iPhone or a Droid. We are consumers - not citizens - who think we can control our reality with our ballot and our wallet. We like to be happy with our choice and our symbolic exercise of agency. We like the feeling of confidence that comes with knowing “our guy” is on our side. But our political system produces something a bit different than that. We must wake from this self-comforting dream to confront the nightmare that is our current political and ecological predicament.

So, what next? What happens November 7th, the morning after election day? It is time to get money out of politics, regulate CO2 as a pollutant, and see the oil, gas and extractive industry lobbies for what they represent: terror. It’s ok to get angry, because it comes from a place of legitimate moral outrage and is motivated by the acceptable desire for survival of life and civilization. I love civilization and it’s products and creations; I love life and desire the continuance of an amazing product of evolution called human consciousness. Anger is justified because so much is at stake. Anger is justified because it will lead you to meaningful action. Anger is justified because it makes a government scared of and responsive to its citizens, kind of like a democracy. So, please get involved in three areas: 1) on the issue of climate change http://www.350.org/ 2) on the dire need for meaninful campaign finance reform in our “democracy” https://movetoamend.org/ and 3) on real electoral choice and competition http://freeandequal.org/ Donate. Organize. And raise hell before we have hell on earth.

The Irony of Hope

Tue, 9 Oct 2012 13:10:59 -0400

Depending on their political slant, many talking heads in the news seemed either shocked or gleeful in light of the recent news that the presidential race is heating up. According to the latest polls, President Obama and Governor Romney are tied. It is obviously too early to say that the performance of one debate played a decisive role in this election. Indeed, Kerry in 2004 got a first-debate bounce about the size of Romney’s that didn’t quite pan out in the long run, so I’ll still stick to my guns that debates are less decisive than talking heads would suggest. In any event, all signs point to this being a very tight race. Many of Obama’s supporters are understandably worried that Mitt’s momentum will continue.

Yet, if Obama loses to his Republican rival, the defeat will be filled with irony and should give each of his supporters a cause for somber reflection on the possibilities and pitfalls of mainstream party politics. If, according to American writer George Saunders, “irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up,” the irony of an Obama defeat would be deafening.

Four years ago, candidate Obama campaigned on a platform of hope and change. This message spoke directly to voters weary of the Bush years. It motivated voters – even many disillusioned Republicans – to jump on board. In fact, the campaign apparatus of the Obama campaign, Organizing for America (OFA), had many mainstream Republicans and centrist Democrats trembling at the possibility that Obama would use this army of volunteers and small-time donors to challenge the cynical status quo in Washington. According to Republican strategist Ed Rollins, "this would be the greatest political organization ever put together, if it works. No one's ever had these kinds of resources." Although I had very mixed emotions towards Obama at the time of his election and didn’t believe he was the messiah that many in my peer group had prophesied, I was tremendously optimistic that this campaign organization could radically upend the corrupt system of institutionalized bribery that we have in this country. I was wrong.

The irony becomes apparent when we examine how vastly underutilized OFA was over the past four years. It was vastly underutilized in crucial Senate campaigns (like Scott Brown’s upset win in Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts), it was vastly underutilized in key policy debates (especially healthcare), and it was effectively disarmed and disbanded in policy discussions when it was placed under the aegis of the centrist and more corporatist DNC. Some of the best political journalism in the past four years is Tim Dickinson’s Rolling Stone article on the demobilization of one of the most promising structural developments in politics since some of the good-government reforms in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Indeed, hope had a very short half-life, as Obama left the grassroots on the bench. Never has a president done so little with so much raw grassroots potential.

But the irony of ironies of an Obama loss in 2012 would be that his unique style of politics came home to roost. Obama attempted to float above the divided political landscape like some sort of post-partisan dirigible, almost with the professorial detachment of a modern-day George Washington who lamented his compatriots getting split into Federalist and Anti-federalist factions. In practice, Obama’s naïve overtures to the Republicans revealed a curiously meek negotiating style where one offers concessions to the opponent prior to even sitting down at the negotiating table. It should surprise no one that the Republicans in the House and Senate – many of whom cut their teeth in the Gingrich Congress – would act like those who learned the ropes in the shrill style of the 1990’s. Despite the fact that Obama made a deal in 2010 to extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, the Republicans still called him a socialist, despite all evidence to the contrary. But what did he expect? It is like story of the man who carries the scorpion across the river and is surprised when he is stung midstream.

Due to the “prior commitment bias” of many of his supporters, it is easy to cast Obama as a victim in this whole escapade. Rather than look at Obama’s weaknesses and deficiencies, it is much easier – psychologically – to focus on the intransigent stubbornness of the Republicans. But that is a cop out. Both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements are a testament to what happens when the presidential “bully pulpit” isn’t effectively used, when a vacuum of silence existed regarding the pro-Wall Street agenda of both the Republican and Democratic parties over the past few decades. Obama had a mandate for change, but brought in some of the very same Clinton people who were key figures behind the revolutionary wave of bank deregulations that occurred in the last years of the Clinton presidency, deregulations which certainly had a great deal to do with how we got to “too-big-to-fail.” Despite the fact that most Americans agreed that a new direction was needed, compromises with the failed policies of the past continued.

The most ironic aspect of an Obama loss would be that his signature policy achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was based on right-wing ideology. The centripetal force that keeps Obamacare together is the individual mandate, a sordid compromise with private insurers and a dangerous precedent where the federal government forces private citizens to purchase a very flawed and inefficient private good. In return for insurance companies being prohibited from dropping coverage for preexisting conditions, there will be a requirement – backed by the force of the federal government – that non-insured private citizens purchase private insurance plans. Not only was this right-wing brainchild birthed in the arch conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank, this idea was wholeheartedly adopted by Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. Why didn’t we just vote for Romney in 2008 and save ourselves the disenchantment?

Despite a respectable electoral mandate that repudiated the prior decade of dismal policy choices, despite the Democratic party then having control of both the House and Senate, and despite the popularity of a single-payer system that would remove inefficient private insurers from the provision of healthcare (as is done in most other OECD countries), Obama forged ahead behind closed doors with a healthcare reform bill that is hardly “socialist” as his critics incorrectly claim. If anything, the private insurance lobby today has an even greater stake in the electoral results at both the Presidential and Congressional levels. Instead of being reformed it is possible that private insurers are even more entrenched than before.

Today, America’s healthcare system is a balkanized hodgepodge of private and public coverage where the currently socialized components (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, federal employees, teachers, etc) hobble along while private citizens are forced to buy a flawed private good, the regulation of which is severely influenced by donations from the very industry being regulated. (If you are curious how much the insurance industry cares, take a look at FEC data at opensecrets.org.) In sum, we now have a system where private insurers still make their profit for playing their central role as an administrative “middleman” (with questionable value-added in the actual provision of healthcare), and the public coffers will still pick up the loose ends anyways. Key parts of healthcare will continue to be socialized as they have been since the 1960’s, but the aggregated purchasing power of these programs will continue to be unrealized. This is not a leaping-off-point for further reforms, but instead a dead-end street and missed opportunity.

The irony is that Obama’s timid above-the-fray approach backfired from both a policy and political standpoint. From a policy standpoint it backfired because it included some of the worst Republican ideas and completely ignored the various types of healthcare systems in other OECD countries, whether they are systems that force private insurers into a non-profit model or systems that cut out the middleman of private insurance all together. In fact, the vast OFA army of volunteers, supporters, and small time donors was not mobilized to push even for a meager “public option.” Obama only used OFA in the 11^th hour of the healthcare “reform” effort after many ideological concessions to the Republicans and the insurance industry had already been made.

Further, from a political standpoint it backfired because Republicans didn’t meet these policies and ideological compromises with reciprocal overtures of good will. Instead of extending the olive branch in kind, they acted like any self-respecting opposition party would do: ignore the concessions and keep fighting. Obama’s window of a popular mandate began closing. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements captured any residual grassroots momentum or rhetorical high-ground that had once been channeled by Organizing for America. Blame the Republicans? Perhaps that is giving Republicans more credit than they deserve and giving Obama less criticism than he deserves.

If Obama loses to this politically-ambidextrous and opportunistic moderate Republican from Massachusetts, Obama certainly did his part to bring about this defeat. The past four years have been a triumph of cynicism over hope and ineptitude over change. Many of the worst Republican ideas were continued or brought to fruition. It is time for some serious reflection – especially if Obama wins. Whether Obama receives the defeat he’s worked so hard towards or if he squeezes off a narrow victory, it is a perfect time for his most enthusiastic supporters to wake up and rethink the American political process.

In particular, rather than invest hope and energy into one messianic candidate every four years, it is time to explore the structural issues in American politics where the constant need for campaign cash at all levels of government creates a system where the best Democrats pursue the same policies as the worst Republicans. (Exhibit A: Clinton’s second term; Exhibit B: the widespread Democratic support of the Iraq War; Exhibit C: a healthcare “reform” plan created in a Heritage Foundation luncheon.) Sadly, rather than learn valuable lessons in civics and the dark wholesale realities of politics, many former Obama supporters will blame the Republicans or give into justified apolitical cynicism. I believe the only hope is to channel any remaining energy and enthusiasm towards non-partisan efforts to get money out of politics and remove the trough from the pigs of both mainstream parties. I am fond of http://movetoamend.org, but there are a number of groups worth supporting.

Until we get money out of elections, Democrats will continue to ape the Republicans and their failed ideas. Until we get money out of elections, Democrats will continue to attempt to outcompete the other side in the desperate dash for corporate cash. Until we get money out of elections, Republicans will continue to be fiscally profligate when in power, like “conservative” Dick Cheney who said “Reagan showed us deficits don’t matter.” Until we get money out of elections, crony casino capitalism will be the policy priority of either major party. It is critically important for Obama supporters to realize it is not enough to blame Republican intransigence; rather, Obama supporters must honestly ask themselves two questions. First, why is it so profitable to resist change, regardless of which party is in the majority in either branch of Congress? Second, why did the Obama Administration go out of its way to compromise principles with failed right-wing ideas of the past few decades? Unless you can answer those two questions, all hope is hot air.

If Obama loses, it will be ironic that he lost to the type of moderate Republican he was trying to emulate. Perhaps Mike Duncan, the outgoing chairman of the Republican National Committee, presciently captured the irony best in 2008: "put simply, Barack Obama just ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower." Perhaps the silver lining consists in acknowledging that, if Obama loses, at least he lost to the most moderate (or least rabid) candidate in the GOP primary. It most certainly could be worse.

I’ll end by quoting a figure who knew how to get things done in the face of reactionary intransigence. Gandhi wisely noted that “all compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is surrender. For it is all give and no take." Would an Obama victory in 2012 be an opportunity to renew (or rather, restart) the fight for the fundamentals of social justice and economic fairness, or will it be another four years of unnecessary compromise and surrendering to the failed ideas of the past?