America is a representative democracy. During the furious days and the 60's the call was for "direct democracy" and, in fact, the personal computer was called out as a possible way to that form of governance. I think representative democracy requires a bit more action on the citizen which is its great failing. Not only does a citizen have to be conscious of his self-interest and assume that his self-interest is also the collective interest but he must be conscious of the processes that make up the republic, including the counter to your self-interest. Many have reduced that to money and leave it at that but I think it's more complicated. The problem is that as the culture becomes more and more successful it is easy to stay the course and not want anything to change. But underneath that success is great stress and anxiety that leads invariably to social disruption. The system can't afford to collapse but it can't afford to be ignorant of problems. When it stops solving the problems of huge groups of people it will be easier to attack. Yet, common sense says that no problem can be solved completely. Poverty will never disappear. Human activity will always be altering the natural world in some way. Crime is not going to disappear soon. However, the problems that can be subdued to an extent are things like income stagnation, rising costs of housing and food, homelessness, wide=spread anomie, etc. The relation between the success and failure of the culture goes way beyond class, race conflict or simple Darwinianism. It's up to the free people to come up with the new forms of politics that bind these things up and makes it easier for the success of one to aid the failure of the other in such a way that each are liberated in the act.
I don't want to rationalize what already exists. I don't want to tear down what exists. I don't want to accept so many of the generalizations and stereotypes that fly through the air like angry bugs. But I'm also skeptical that things can move in the direction I want them to. I see some movement.
The cult is organized around the idea that the "larger world" will thwart, destroy or otherwise block their progress as human beings. The world is kept out, the cult protects itself and the people live through the leader and the emotional ties the leader is able to effect. And many people do relatively well in the cult. They do feel protected and grow and develop as people. However, one thing is very clear. The cult never becomes "better" or "enriching" as the culture it rejects. It doesn't have the dynamic to do it. The more you know the less you know but the more you care.
I would take American history out of the hands of cults. It is mangled early on and used as a prop for political purposes but it does utterly no good to try and make any history a "moral story." It is not a myth-lesson. It is a reality, just as our experiences in the city is a reality. It's a vast impression at first, then starts to differntiate as we draw attention to a few items of interest. But we know it is vaster than what we have learned so we take chances and try to explore it more. It is always a sollid things that presents us with more options. These realities are not "good and evil" but complexity. Good and evil is contained within the self and the need to differentiate between good energy and bad energy is paramount. To project that into reality is false but to understand it as a reality within the self is true. And after the great separation comes complexity. And we accept complexity because our fierce devotion to the spirit that divides the good from the bad is real. It's on us. It's our burden.
I saw a clutch of 1%'ers the other day on TV. I had a hollow but familiar feeling that the democracy is a sham. It is and it is not. It's clear that we are "ruled" by the elites and that our participation in the running of things is minimal; that is, the other 99% who are reduced to deciding which tribe of elites has brought the most persuasive techniques to the media. And the same universities that train the elite financiers and politicians, train the media types who are taught the valuable techniques of subtle persuasion, even propaganda that can be tried out on the masses of people. And between myself as a citizen and the point of decision making are layers and layers of sub-elites who fill up all the bureaucracies and form the core of interest groups, advocates, non-governmental agencies etc. The elites don't consult with me. I want to be able to go to my representative, articulate a problem and hav it mean something. I have only one vote, nothimg more.
The real relation between the elites and the others, such as myself, is a simple one: "do you trust these bastards?" Off the top of my head I would say no. And here we reach into a more speculative area because an honest mind must say this: "I don't want the country (whatever it is) to spoil and disintegrate and get picked over by those who have an eye to pick it over." That frankly, the country is too big to fail but rather than fail will be completely taken over by the 1% who see themselves as a freshly minted "founding father generation" who must save democracy from the riff raff that make it up. All those tattoos, freaky music, and fast food fatties. All those dopey video addicts who could care less. Having said that there is nothing baring me from entering the fray. There is nothing stopping me from showing my displeasure or disappointment. It is duly noted and the mind passes forward.
When does democracy becomes simply, "earnest futility?" Yet, things are moving, people are living. It is the moving, living people that count. And they will move and live even as the nation collapses or declines.
If a culture protects itself against its own fury perhaps a few have a shot at doing something really well. Too big to fail, too big, too complex for the citizen to grapple with meaningfully, an object of fear or loathing, vast corruption in the culture at large, meaningless, puerile cultism among other things. It can't help but be run by elites but the more the people are removed from the hard shape of government the more likely they will kiss it off as the Romans did as the Russians did under the Soviets. It has a will of its own now. As long as the people feel they have a will of their own things can move forward a bit. But at some point the two wills will collide and be shocked how they have damaged if not destroyed the other.
Laughter may be the best way to confront a mature, powerful republic as an innocent free liberal democratic citizen. After, of course, a few years of brilliant study. And in the end it is the development of the individual human being that counts. And it is the sense of justice and rightness developed in the individual human being that counts.
June 7, 2022
A COUP
Call me an incurable romantic but the Constitution remains central to my political thinking. Once it becomes bankrupt, once it no longer holds the loyalty of people, once it loses its status as the centerpiece of American democracy, the populated land mass now called the United States will become something other. It will devolve into strong armed ambitions fighting for loyalty. It will be embroiled in conflicts that could last decades. It will most certainly be subject to foreign interventions. All of this will make for a bad future, one that will not seek, as the Constitution seeks, a balance between wealth creation and the flourishing/well-being of the people. At the far end of that process you might have a more interesting creation than the United States but getting there would not be a happy event. There would be diminishment along every longitude and latitude of activity. The generations that follow would fall into a death spiral. They would know nothing more than their diminishment and experience it as "the only way." Historic fate would destroy the ability to think outside the parameters of the diminishment. Perhaps that's a reason I connect myself to the physical region where I have my life and experience, that to a certain extent conditions and nourishes me. I have tried to demark that region as the northern half of California. So those two things are central to my idea and feeling for America. And a hedge against her loss of identity. Whether I think that will happen is another question. I like to say that it is either the end or the beginning, let us always choose a beginning.
Perhaps strong resourceful states, like California, would be able to stave off the disintegration of the federal government, at least for a while. Then again, why wouldn't the powers eroding the federal government erode state governments? We capture the fear to make sure it doesn't run away from us and gain a life of its own.
It seems threatened today. Or is that the fear getting way out in front of us like wild Mustangs in a Nevada desert? It's very disturbing to me that after the attack on January 6th, 2021 there was not a call to renew the spirit of the Constitution or liberal democracy. The event, itself, seems not to have produced a transcendent feeling as 9/11 did 20 years ago. That's a red flag for me. Trumpism is to be blamed. But what is Trumpism but the ability to thumb the nose at "authority?" It is the ability to nullify common sense. It's no coincidence that Trump was a wealthy celebrity that had cred in the modern American culture that values both qualities. It gave him the authority to signal, if not an attack, a revulsion at the nature of things.
I have a feeling that the January 6th moment is the last bolt from that side of things. Except for vague polls I don't find any great move to disunion or to switch loyalties from the Constitution to another entity. I see a lax country responding to the manipulations of media who are deft in the arts of entertainment. Conflict is at the core of every entertainment. The media understands this and plays it up in competition with itself. Conflict emerges from gradients of pressure that are felt differently among different people. Learn that and you can manipulate emotions pretty well. I don't underestimate, either, the ability of foreign players to manipulate media to encourage conflicts.
It leads to a question. "can fascism happen here?" Can the US host this particular evil? I would have said no up until the last few years. And one understands that anything can happen anywhere at any time. So that "eternal vigilance" is a necessity. Trump represented this huge portion of people who simply don't trust the ways and means of democracy, the habits of democracy, the value of law over men and so on. They've always been there and I don't know if they are growing or have shot their wad January 6th. Americans respond when their "way of life" is threatened. But fascism doesn't necessarily challenge the way of life of people. It's that the people, safe and contented, give up their ability to discern and be critical, to autocrats like Trump. It's been said many times but it's important to clarify where one is on all of this. It arises in a growing climate of fear and hate. It arises in a loss of civic life, the loss of rational thinking, the loss of a sense of growth and development, learning curves and all those emotional and psychological factors that go into transforming masses into citizens. Democratic people should never allow themselves to be played a fool.
And reading about how close we were to a coup in 2021 with the storming of the Capitol reminds us that it was only the head of a long body of bad actors and bad actions taken by the Republicans. That's the liberal view at any rate. While I agree this area needs a lot of scrutiny I have faith in the system. The key is the fact that Congress and the Supreme Court are independent of the Executive, no matter how much they overlap in certain responsibilities that require them to cooperate. The moment Trump instigated his coup Congress would move not simply to remove him but delegitimize him to the point that no one would obey his orders. If he had a cult like following in the government that would try and install the coup much more opposition would rise up, even violently, and go arrest Trump or otherwise stop him. The FBI and other police agencies would be involved. It would be something we'd never want to see. The problem, as Rome proved, is that if the animus against the government is long and lasts several generations, punctuated by a few dramatic events, then you might weaken it to the point where a critical mass of people wouldn't move against a coup or other displacement of the liberal democracy. In fact, more than a few might welcome a benign despotism. That tells me that what is needed is a renewal, if not renovation of liberal democracy and its spirit.
American politics in the 20's: Crazy schemes and generalizations meet their vicious resistance. Why has the liberal democracy "enlightened" core crumbled to the point where the crazy wings are determining the political imagination? If, indeed, that is the case. The media plays it as if it is the case but then the media is in the entertainment business. It is a powerful industry. And doesn't democracy in a large complex society work in this fashion? That is, outrageous things thrown up out of the left or right, visceral response by the opposite, a few kernels are conserved in the body politic and the "system" takes over. The system being the Repubilic that palms itself off as the rational agent as against the irrationalities of the people. But we see that the Republic is often a reflection of the people and their irrationality. What happens if this conflict, this fight gets out of control because more and more of the middle feel compelled to one side or the other? And what is being fought over? "American identity?" Or is the irrational fight over the effectiveness or non-effectiveness in being able to ameliorate the living conditions of various pluralities?
Fascism, like war, needs a lot of collaboration in the total culture and I don't think that is there. Mere support for Trump is not collaboration. If educational institutions, police, military, non-profits gave support for a future Trump regime perhaps you'd have that possibility. What check would there be on a Trump if he decided to "take over"? Congress, courts, and states all come to mind. A free press. The people themselves can strike or protest. Another thing to think about: the two most authoritarian Presidents we've ever had were Lincoln and FDR, rated in the top 3 of all-time. They inherited a crisis and were given extraordinary powers but not without resistance.
And it depends on whether the crisis is real and felt real by a mass of people or is a fabrication by one party or the other to scare up votes.
* * * * * * * *
Who has credibility when it comes to political ideas? Not policy because that is argued by lawyers or professionals. But the animating ideas that create the ability for policy to succeed or not comes from somewhere. University intellectuals? Churches, synagogues, temples? Think tanks? Popular culture? Bloggers or columnists on national media? What medium do they come through? TV, internet, lectures, books, magazines? Political parties? Do they arise in a vacuum or are they contended with from the beginning? Can they be led back to the human source of ambition, power, truth, love, etc etc? Have the ideas played out before, do they have a history in some other guise?
Delusive wine conjures an implausible belief that a society will have "progress" when at the heart of the political culture is hate and anger. To have progress you have to have a level of mutual respect and trust. All the aggressiveness of Trumpism and all the generalizations of the left produce hate and anger and leave the center rather bankrupt. One side may win but will later lose and it will roll on into eternity. Or exhaustion.
What do we suggest to improve the thing? An expansion of experience along with a broader knowledge base plus playful sympathy for other points of view and the levels of pressure different people experience. A commitment by the society to give space to the learning curves necessary for individuals to go up in order to become complete citizens. Not a sentimental history nor a weapon wielded by ideologists but enough complexity to teach the citizens of the present that problems are not easy to solve but they are solvable.
We do not live as those in the past lived, including the American past. We hardly recognize them and, in fact, only recognize them through extensive study of the persons, art and literature, economy and politics of the times. You can only extract a few nuggets of worth from any period and happily make those your own. We are better for the fact of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and so on despite the fact they had their blind spots. Not all of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton but only that which represented the best in themselves which came under the pressure of fighting the British and then forming a new government.
The fact that many persons, many arts and literatures, economies and politics followed and added to the layers of experience is also true and fastened into the culture we navigate today.
May 29, 2022
CHANGIMG OF THE GUARD
It's a young culture, it always is. That's it's strength and weakness. So I look at it with the eyes of my 26 year old youth and can actually relate to it somewhat. But then, I'm here with this experience and knowledge and I know that the world doesn't end at 26. Age has taught me that we live in splendid fabrications but the work of life is to transcend them and from that moment, create new spaces and options. That's the modern way or was going to be. Not that the fabrications are to be dismissed with contempt but more that they fill up with our meanings until they can't be contained any more.
I don't think the country can "survive" in the present political set up. It has to break down the current political energies and make something more liberal and democratic out of it. I don't see the deep divisions able, of themselves, to heal themselves. It will result in a weakness in decision making, problem solving that will have long term consequences.
The assumptions of the past 50 years are crumbling as the baby boom generation leaves the scene. When I hear arguments or tropes from those eras I wince and ignore them. The baby boomers led a very progressive era in which there was advancement in civil rights, women rights, environmental, consumer, gay and the whole litany. There was a backlash led by Reagan and the evangelicals. It will be up to the, emerging generations to cherry pick which values and issues are important and which are not. What new ones to adopt, what is impossible and what is possible. This is still being formulated, leadership is being discovered. We are really between these tectonic shifts but by the end of this decade there should be a much clearer picture. One sign: the conservatives are easily deflecting the critiques of the liberal left and making them moot. It is incumbent on the liberal left to come up with new angles of attack, new forms of politics. My kindest advice has always been to ditch the neo-marxism that controlled civil rights and feminism at the theoretical level. Get some creativity in your ideas. They won't emerge out of automatic, bankrupt responses to the conservatives.
Both parties have false narratives because each does what it can't possibly do which is to develop a "national identity." The tell for that are the useless words each uses to try and smear the other. "Socialists" "racists" "white supremist" "cultural elites", none of which explains anything about the actual lives and systems that make up the US. These words and others that have created the present political era will also destroy it. At this moment they zero each out except in specific states and cities where one has clear domination.
* * * * * * * *
I do think that the black protests over the past few years are a very healthy expression of democracy. Some have taken advantage of the fact but the overall necessity of the protests don't change. I have no solutions. I step back and listen to those who are deeply involved. I don't think anything good will come out of demonizing the cops. Are these cops who shoot blacks racist or poorly trained? Maybe a combination of both.
I think back to my experiences in cultures of diversity in Alameda county, even Sacramento. To live in areas like that requires, over time, a lot of transactions between different faces, races, genders, beliefs, ideologies. It's a learning curve. It takes you out of your comfort zone. You must respect others and their struggles. That was the prime lesson. If you allow some curiosity percolate in you start to learn about others, their backgrounds, etc etc. This was especially the case in Berkeley since so many students came from around the world. It makes a difference. We must still allow ourselves to be moved by suffering. That's a skill in itself.
Changing the system, economic and political, will only change a few surface things. The key is change in the hearts of men and women. And be clear: A democracy does not want to be a tribal, caste society piled one on top of the other and privilege then cascading down from top to bottom. It must be centered in the "Republic" and around the Republic must dance the many peoples of the democracy who are fulfilling their potentials in a life they have chosen. It must return to the middle-class culture that was eviscerated by wealth and celebrity that made the middle-class into chumps. You have to return to a middle class political/cultural value system and drive the right and left back to the margins.
* * * * * * * *
Democracy is an experiment so they say. It's always looking for the right combination that will unlock the "perfect situation". That is, wealth being created, the people, as a whole flourishing, the middle strong enough to make wealth work for the Republic rather than the other way around. Race, gender, class don't mean as much as success in unlocking the treasure trove of possibilities.
One thing the Democrats underestimate: how discredited the academic left is to the majority of people, even Democrats. Trump used this with some effectiveness by posing Biden as a "trojan horse" that will allow the neo-marxist/feminists radicals to enter the corridors of power. You assault people head-on, you force them to accept the "truth" of their history, their country, etc at tremendous peril to your political idea. This seems to me to be a chronic condition of the American polity for a while. I saw it in the 70's and it is repeating itself in the 20's.
The left will have to reform itself. It will have to get rid of its identity politics and admit all identity is good and to embrace all identities. That the attempt to create a new proletariat from minorities and women has failed and will shrink more and more as you progress through this decade. The Democrats have to go and embrace those that is has despised. It has to focus on middle class values and middle class interests.
We can safely say, "at some point in the future the United States will not be as it is today," and go from there. Two hundred years from now they may be writing about the "era of huge nation-states" lasted through the 21st century before new forms of sovereignty began to stir out of the ruins of failed nation-states. I hope not. I would be truly alarmed. I want liberal democracy, I want a sovereign nation, a federal system with very strong regions in it. So, the dangers to these entities have to be admitted, while the strength of these entities is emphasized in ways that are beyond formal, political statements by well-to-do politicians. It either is or it ain't.
May 20, 2022
THE PLAY OF OPPOSITES
Politics is a ceaseless struggle of opposites that inches things up a bit but does not perform what the extremist wants which is total transformation. Bit by bit the thing is transformed by intelligent, patient people. That is the difference between the mature democracies and the struggling ones.
Democracy depends on the intelligence of the people and the trust between the people and the institutions. Whether that describes America or not it's too late to quibble. The hour is getting late.
One interested in these democracies at this stage should pay attention to the quality of the infrastructure of governance. And that would go from the federal level, the state level, the county and city/town level. Wherever there is law and administration of law there should be a modicum of interest. How healthy is it? How corrupt is it? Where do the money trails lead? Does it rid itself of the corruption or is it brought low by it? What is the quality of leadership? What is the quality of the people? I can see where pessimism gets the upper hand but these questions are beyond pessimism and optimism. It's way beyond that time. Both are political postures of no good to anyone.
A stable freedom will produce variety while, at the same time, strengthen the foundations on which a good structure is built. One thing implies the other. Since those two elements are what we are looking for some of life is spent in creating variety, enhancing it and so on and some of it is spent on the foundations. I've been both places. One is not enough, especially as you mature. Variety is the delight of poets. Foundations are the things philosophers support and build.
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When young, "all is permissible, everything matters, nothing matters." Hopefully a young person is humbled or, even, humiliated away from this notion that allows him or her to fall into some bad dead ends.
"Your generation, your parents, your society, your heroes even won't take away the sins of youth."
So it was the hairy beast with a thousand eyes and millions of parasites running freely inside of her, whooping as the beast bucked up and down, left and right. It was the upright who said they would tame her, left now in the road in a heap. Something shined in each eye, sometimes a reflection of good and sometimes a reflection of bad. It would find any root, any buried bone and dig it up so the sound and debris frightened off the children.
Suspended animation? I doubt it. "To do that which can't be done anywhere else." To avoid the crowd. To avoid the temptation of throwing everything over for an addiction.
But then, the next move? The strike in what direction? Where is the supportive community?
There are no solutions without understanding the complexity of what is to be solved. Even if the solution is simple it must travel through an ungodly complexity. This is why I ignore the simple emotions of people who are passionate about a subject. Have they broken the problem down and admitted its devilishness? Have they accounted for the objects the solution must pass through? Have they attempted to make allies from enemies? Have they explained why the solution will benefit those who have political and financial capital? Or are they out to avenge an idea? And sometimes the description of an authentic problem begins with an innocent plea.
The key is to make allies rather than enemies and nothing makes enemies more than self-righteousness.
The greatest temptation for the American is to wrap himself up and around the enormous size and power of his country and feel that nothing more needs to be done, that all is right and happiness is not something earned but a right which, after all, one would defend more fiercely than the nation.
Ah but to make the effort to wrap oneself up and around the great size and power of the nation!
Not the whole of it but the whole that you, a mind, can hold with confidence. Then, confidence and knowledge of your own ignorance and the ability to learn and develop until there is no more growth possible.
That applies top to bottom.
* * * * * * * *
I go through what America has produced, what it has tried to produce or trying and what it may be in the future. That is, produce for my cultural/spiritual nourishment as well as utility. When I read that Jefferson was steeped in Europe gives me an opportunity to do as well. Knowing that Jefferson despised a lot of Europe informs me a good deal. Has technology made us uber democrats? No but they have permitted things to happen that wouldn't have happened in a non-technical set up. The fact that Lincoln was a ravenous country bumkin who learned to fly by the seat of his pants permits me to do the same thing, in fact, demands it in a sense. The fact that many Americans have opened many pathways obligates me to check them out at the very least. I am delighted every moment by new expressions of human freedom I never knew existed.
The down side is that human nature, including the sort Americans carry around, tend to conform. Now it could be conforming to some wild idea but conforming it is. There is a rigidity of pathways which gives an American some orientation at the very least. It is always saying to the person, "Chaos waits on the otherside." Rather than, "have such confidence in your own way that you delight in the ways of others." And the conforming is motivated quite clearly, by the desire for wealth and power. Therefore, wealth and power have long stilted, withered lines behind it trying to conform to what started as inventive paths. The pressure is to conform, not to open new pathways. That is the sad conclusion, not absolute but persistent as one wanders through the American scene. The least interesting part of America is the vast conforming society that can be predicted at the beginning of any new generation.
It begins as soon as you have permanent classes that "can not move," from where they started because the country is too deeply involved in the intrigues of the world and simply can't afford the types of renovation that would be needed to prevent more and more decay.
That said, the living must deal with America as a "whole", as a federal system with both awful complexity and opportunities. A question arises, "is America too big to fail?" And does that fact give leverage to very conservative elements that need to move forward?
May 5, 2022
INHUMAN
I have conflict with modern politics because I am against the inhuman. How can I love and create in the face of the inhuman? How can I objectify it to the point where I know it is inhuman and yet don't get demoralized by it? You can only fight the inhuman with abstractions. And abstractions can make people crazed with the inhuman. Democracy is supposed to produce free people who understand their freedom can be done in by the irrational and so they evolve out of the irrational in their political lives. Hopefully there's a path to do this. But even the most rational system, if it is big enough, becomes inhuman to my own delicate self and is out of reach of my delicate liberal democratic feelings. Yet, history teaches me that if these systems collapse the wrong people suffer. If the systems fail so much value is lost. So it's a bit of a dilemma.
"How should the systems change to effect this, this, and that?" It's very problematic. Crisis is probably easier to deal with than "on the verge of crisis". There are outcomes you want and then the elimination of possibilities for the systems, for the people to change attitudes, etc. Every citizen should go through this process. I know the populism now in place in the US will not end well but that concerned citizens should roll with the punches and think a decade or so ahead. The populism will burn itself out. Such is my opinion at any rate.
When I think over things there were two major swings that closed one era and started another. One was 1980 and the election of Reagan. The other was 2001 and 9/11 and the war on terrorism. Whether that means another swing is upon us is another question. Looking over the year I would guess it is. 2020 will be a significant number to a great number of people going into the mid 21st century. Realignments, readjustments, rebalancing for much of this decade.
The 1980 to 2001 period was, overall, very good. The economy came storming back, the demise of Soviet Union and end of the paralyzing cold war. The computer and internet stimulated culture and economy. The 2001 to 2020 period was, overall, very troubling. The terrorist attack, the difficulties in Iraq and middle-east, Katrina, the financial collapse at end of first decade, finished off with pandemic and economic problems. And, apparently, the shaking apart of the post WWII liberal order that was established by the US and allies. The election of Trump.
Of course those are general impressions because a lot of things happen to many different people, good, bad, and ugly. I don't count it a "good time" when I got cancer, reminding me that millions had some form of the disease no matter if it was happy times or down times in the USA. Or when I saw homeless behind the motel I was staying at, reminding me of the flow of homeless I saw in the streets of San Francisco. There is a lot of stupidity, cruelty, evil as well as their opposites that occur in any period of time.
The eternal new and old are there.
The mind fully knowing the past is confident in the present and future. That's a truism.
The trick is to dehypnotize from the eyes of power, avoid hatred of power, avoid merging the self to power without the critical mind, that is, one that can objectify power. You have to build up an intelligent understanding of the sources of power, the distribution of power and how a citizen is connected to power and what they can do. The system needs fresh streams flowing through it as well as stable forces, even resistance to those fresh flowing streams.
* * * * * * * *
Trying to read political commentary is a strain. I think the political burnout is authentic. I've set out my minimum for political belief: strengthen the middle class, upward mobility, monitor wealth and create a middle class culture that aspires for middle class values. Quit giving money to cynics and nihilists. What you want in a liberal democracy are grounded, well informed, experienced people in families who feel connected to the Constitution. Very simple. The Constitution was written for the people. Go read Madison. It was not written for well funded think tanks or Ivy League lawyers. There is no other way except to destroy liberal democracy through fascism or communism. And get religion back to the local and out of the public realm.
Reading back some Events from 15 years ago. "Man, time is a blink of an eye," says that trickster. I have to admit I had some cleverness in me back in the day. But what has happened since the '04 election? One was the failure of Bush's second term, ending in the financial collapse. Obama did yeoman work in stabilizing the society even if he had to bail out banks and car companies rather than homeowners and workers. Then there was the rise of China, very rapid and rather disastrous for a lot of workers in this culture. China became the unknown rival who people projected against but something is there. Then you had these color revolutions and Arab Spring and a lot of American leadership could be questioned in relation to those, ie. Egypt, Libya, even Syria. And throughout this decade there have been books and articles from foreign policy experts about the collapse of the American consensus, the liberal post WWII order, that created the world order, along with the Warsaw Pact which disintegrated decades ago. And that consensus is breaking down or apart and that is never a good sign for any world at any time. So that came into focus. And as the economy healed it also revealed disparities, inequalities and produced the Wall Street protest and then Black Lives Matter protests. And of course, the pandemic, economic distress, more chaos. The media made a mistake with its fixation on Trump. They should have promoted the idea that the democracy is larger and more powerful than Trump. It should have promoted the strength of liberal democratic values and habits. But anyway. It should have chided the elites and experts to reinvigorate their credibility and make themselves accessible to the people. Trust, all around, needs to be restored.
Americans have become, of late, crazy dogs. They've been bitten by the mad virus of destructive vision.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that America, laying on a map for instance, is like a computer motherboard. It is more a function or circuit that knows all other functions and circuits and carries the whole motherboard in its one circuit, its one function. It has access then to all of what it is. It takes extraordinary intuition and rational mindfulness to get to that point. It inspires a moment of responsibility.
It is One, then widens, then stretches back to the best semblance of One. It is ragged but the effort is rewarded.
* * * * * * * *
I don't hate power or those who want it. I am skeptical of it, wary of fake emotions and idealisms that seem to disappear at the first opportunity to use other people's money. I am not part of the inside crowd, I'm not part of the power elite.'
I'm a literary character out on the coast somewhere. Critique has its place. Too much from one angle of attack spoils the critique but the market is large. What is needed are effusive, creative objects driven by the love of life, love of freedom and that possess all the complexity that reality itself has.
I count it as progress that we, in this place, have more interest, more fascination for the slaves and persons like Sojourner Truth then for the old slave masters and plantation owners, many of who worked hard to perpetuate their legacies and to resemble ancient aristocrats of Rome or Greece. They are dust and nothing to history now. His slave has succeeded beyond both the slave and the master's dreams. Life lives in such wonderful irony!
* * * * * * * *
Two people choose radically different paths, even contradictory paths but they are connected to the same system of governance. That system says, "live as you please (within the law), respect the other, even try to understand the other. No harm in that. The problem arises if each of the two people see the other as "mortal enemies," as is the case, apparently, today and has been in the past. People have been shot and killed for their political beliefs. Or caned in Congress. Or ripped apart in editorials, dehumanized by educated editors. All of that is true enough.
What is apparent to me is that what society is now will not be society tomorrow. This is a perpetual feature since people are relatively free to experiment with ideas and life styles and enter new forms of development that opens into new pathways. It's the constant, vital movement and change in society that is so good about it although it takes time to get used to. That's why the attention of citizens shouldn't be on how people live, even their beliefs but on the health of the system of governance. How can opinions and ideas stay the same when everything changes?
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April 2, 2022
TOXIC AND FRAGILE
The toxic politics of today have little credibility except in the negative sense that all decisions and non-decisions have consequence. Better to lay out some general foundations for future politics based on a credible reading of the present time.
Toxic and fragile are apt descriptions of national politics. I stick with the identity I have in my physical region and all that goes on in it. It is diverse, it is challenging, it is full of the good, bad, and ugly. It is filled with constitutional values and liberal democratic ones. Freedom is a creed, a responsibility. It is connected, not simply to the rest of America, but to Latin America and Asia.
Who can define or even articulate whether this is a democracy or not? It is a republic form of democracy, a representative democracy. It's important to admit that when a group of citizens become enemies then the republic is in the state of impending failure. And then you begin to wonder about it's future. It could devolve into an imperial state and be run by a few who get all the benefits of freedom and abundance. It could break apart under pressure from a world that wants to reclaim it in some bizarre way. It could get better and make astounding leaps into a state no one can imagine. The only answer is to try and figure out why large groups of people are so alienated and treat it like a disease, that is, a piece of information you need to begin healing the patient.
The idea of having a "liberal democracy" is to have a strong mediating center to keep the extremes from ripping everything apart. It is up to that liberal democracy center, then, to lift out of the hate and craziness of the extremes the conditions that create such hate and craziness, whether it is the plight of the rural poor or the plight of the urban poor. Both manifest in stark and dramatic ways, both are dangerous left to themselves, they are usually led by people who won't solve the problems so the liberal democracy must take on these problems----I have faith that will happen.
Political imagination would figure out how to benefit both the rural poor and the urban poor simultaneously.
A question to ask is, "if all "people of color" were removed from America would a Trump still arise?" I think he would have because I think the "spiritual" question is the lack of experience and knowledge in large swaths of the country which certainly exacerbates a racial problem andg most social problems that exist in the country. Trump was a result of people protesting their economic and cultural status. Minorities and immigrants were convenient scapegoats but those scapegoats would have been found if this was a purely white nation. The fact that they were often scapegoats makes a difference obviously. And the pressure on the political class is to create a more "united" states. Whatever has been used to this point has failed to do so.
The conservatives don't want the government to guarantee outcomes. The liberals have to better articulate "jump starting" upward mobility and get rid of identity politics or leave it behind when they graduate from college. The asinine generalizations of both ends of the spectrum need to be pulled down and new angles of attack, new attitudes developed toward the society-as-it-is.
Both the "ascension to power" and the "conservation of power" are corrupting processes as the framers knew. All they had to do was look at themselves to figure that out. This is why skepticism is a key component of democracy, the critical mind, and some understanding of "how much corruption can be tolerated," assuming that all who seek power and all who have power are corrupt. There is no "hero class" of people who will start off pure and undefiled and come out the other end the same. Assuming that you have to continually assert different ambitions, different types and keep them all on their toes, competing with each other until they gain respect. The system is dependent on people who are less corrupt than the classes of power. Once the people ape the corruptions of those classes of power then a generation, perhaps the democracy itself is lost. Populism has a light and shadow and has to remember that even a populist leader comes under the same law of power and corruption. Who grows up? Who takes on the burden of responsibility for the democracy? I saw a lot of good and heartening things this election.
Several comments on elections:
- Make allies out of enemies.
- Grievance is the central characteristic of democracy.
- Instill learning curves among all the angry people.
- You win some, you lose some get used to it.
- No one wants to be fodder for the numbers crunchers.
- The campus has as much credibility right now as pollsters.
It should become a more integrated society. Ironically "identity politics" is a separator, a fracture rather than a unifying idea. Another instance of Marxism killing everything it touches. The integration of society is pretty much in place in urban areas. Most people are not happy where they are, however it is they orientate themselves. The restlessness is a good thing. The government can do some good. The best thing it can do is to provide the infrastructure and support the private projects that will build down into the 21st century.
Identity politics was a political check against the prevelance of white supremecy rather than a positive value that could be carried past its dependence on white dominance. At some point political identity has to emerge from personal experience and knowledge that has the sort of complex social experience that transcends any single identity.
It demands tolerance and the full embodiment of liberal democratic values rather than allegiance to whatever-you-are-born-as.
You need a broad economic policy that covers both urban and rural areas and that avoids the words "black" and "white". Infrastructure projects no question. Biden is hamstrung like Obama was in coming into a situation that needs repair, both with the virus and economy. There will be pressure for racial justice, focused first on police. There is no substitute for knowing things and building lives based on knowing things.
You can not have a radical change in systems without a lot of violence. Violence would threaten the nature of Constitutional law and make the liberal democracy moot or not credible. Therefore the violence would have to play itself out to the bitter end as the defenders of the Constitution engaged in violence as well. And if it got too much perhaps a third party would come in to clean up the mess. This is the fear I have of the toxic wings. And it doesn't matter whether it is the passive, "wolves in sheep clothing" professors who cultivate the undermining that would lead to violence or the crazy, aggressive proud boys type. If you believe the foundations are rotten and must be changed right now you are calling for the destruction of those foundations and everything that it supports. Where if you replace this rotten plank here, and cracked brick there, over time you can renovate the whole over a long period of time. Political parties, ideas are no different than any other organization. They must establish trust. They must establish their credibility. They must establish their fidelity to the values and ways/means that has brought so much good and success to this point.
The threat of violence is far greater on the right wing at this time. And despite what is said about it the polarization that is depicted is not leading to a civil war. For one thing too much benefit is delivered even to those who are discontented. Most political violence is subdued by local law enforcement and it doesn't get out of hand.
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March 9, 2022
QUESTIONS
Thinking over things on a lazy winter day, bright and cold, some questions appeared to me.
What if freedom fails? What if a free people, free institutions, documents that are dedicated to freedom, the resources to ensure various types of freedom fails? What will that say to the future? That would be a central question for generations among thinking types I would guess as they muddled through a classic "small group controls everything" set up in the US.
Another problematic question when looking at liberal democracy and the necessity of the individual liberal democratic citizen: Can it operate as a liberal democracy if there is an exponential amount of information available to any generation and yet the individual, even groups of individuals can only gain a small fragment of that information? How then is "freedom" defined?
Who would not defend liberal democratic values? That is, due process, free association among the fully energized people. Creativity, innovation, checks and balances, many more. If these do not survive in America but survive in Antarctica then I am loyal to Antarctica. If you don't defend these values then why should I have any trust or loyalty to you?
What is the imaginative, intellectual, creative life of the people? How multitudinous is it? After all, liberal democracy either justifies itself as the constituent level or is just another huge, bureaucratic state. A blooming culture creates the republic.
Democracy justifies itself when it successfully develops new ideas, new forms of doing things, new beauties, new facts, etc etc. A person so inclined to justify democracy must focus and work hard to get to this point of view. Despite all the talk there is hardly any encouragement at all.
What is the check on "populism" if it is a "power" and subject to the precept that "power corrupts," esp. if that power is connected to unshakeable belief? Where is the check then? If all the checks are discredited then what prevents the "populism" from becoming a storm that corrupts and becomes an asteroid as well as a storm; a huge earthquake as well as an asteroid and storm?
What are the paths out from a given such as the pressure gradient created between ideality and reality? What are the paths? One was "to the past," since the present obliterates it so blithely. Second was tos "God," because faith is a tough sell. And third was to "self-rule" because the largeness and complexity of the republic and democracy seemed to make self-rule moot. And certainly "to one's own work," which seemed to attract pressures of every sort. Those were mine, there are any number of others. It is a personal thing, as democracy is.
* * * * * * * *
I don't know what the state of the union is. It's too big for anyone to properly understand or comprehend. You have to go ask the 300 million plus people who make it up. On balance I would say the majority would say the state of the union is ok. That means, for them, life works fairly well, they've learned to ameliorate their frustrations and outgrown their hates and resentments. The systems could use some sprucing up but they still do their job. The president is an embarrassment at times but at least a live body is in the White House and he's saying the nostrums we love to hear. Next year will occur. And if the asteroid hits it was never meant to be --- life on the planet at any rate. Ah, the entertainment is superb. It alleviates some knawing questions when I really think on things. We have one rival in the world, namely China, and it is good to have a rival because we love competition.
There are many who would say otherwise.
Today reminds me of the 60's-70's period. A disillusionment of the establishment because of bad war, wide-spread corruption and demands made on the systems from all directions. The difference is that the essential protest is in the form of Trump, a one-time President, and his followers. And the protest is against a lot of the assumptions that have been carried from those previous times. A certain dissolution of the center takes place and the polarities fight for the future. It appears to be a fight to the death, especially since you have very interested bystanders such as China, Europe, and Russia trying to find ways to take advantage of the situation. It's not dire yet.
You have a nearly impossible political situation in that the two sides of the great divide are rooted to very emotional responses to "reality." Such that any fact put before them can be sliced and diced on behalf of the emotional response and does not change the nature of the emotional response. One side is rooted in religious soil, provincial values and the other rooted in racial and gender identity---any attempt to develop an idea that transcends these emotional responses is hewn down before it is able to mature. This zero sum gameness will go on and on until new generations appear and America faces an existential crisis that shakes it to the core and demands a rebalancing between wealth, middle-class, and poor such that the middle-class is at the center with the ability to determine political and cultural values.
It's a crazy, nonsensical political atmosphere today. It is utopians versus realists of a sort, neither side very original or compelling. So the eternal fight and results no one is satisfied with and some unanticipated shock that sends everyone under cover. The good live their lives as honestly as possible. They understand that they will outlast the incompetent and impossible views of those who want to change everything or change nothing. It absorbs the tar from the souls of people and makes with it a terrible design.
You don't pet sick dogs or play stick games. You don't act as if anything is not wrong with the poor animal.
I subscribe to this notion of government that I saw expressed by John Adams. Almost all conflict in history is between landed property that becomes wealthy and unlanded persons who have to labor for their survival. The problem of government was to try and keep wealth from oppressing the people and the people from destroying the society as it went after wealth. The solution was to create a republic where wealth was represented in the Senate and the people represented in the House and an executive who would mediate the two and make sure, especially, that wealth did not oppress the people. They were sensitive to that because that's the class they were from and they knew wealth and power corrupted through time. The reason to have a stable government and society was so wealth could be created and the people could flourish in freedom, using a multitude of resources developed for that purpose. Insofar as that is the result you have a successful society.
* * * * * * * *
The idea that there was a time of "no conflict" in the US is rather preposterous. It had enormous conflicts from the very start; religious, regional, ethnic, pro vs anti-slave, "Anglophiles vs Francophiles", Whigs vs democrats on and on it went. The wounds of the Civil War healed over many decades. The wounds of the "60's" are still open. Conflict is there because people fight for their sense of rightness. And "ambition fights ambition." And I see no independent armies being formed or Congress being locked down by the evil dictator etc. The people are free to engage or not engage and, frankly, many good ones are chased away by the stinkpile that is modern politics. Or is that a shithole.
The pursuit of our self-interest is always cleaner than the politics we observe.
* * * * * * * *
The Kennedy era and Reagan era are now "historical" in that very objective analysis can take place. Some things leak through from those eras and they will be synthesized by the emerging generations, those from 20-50 years old who are confronting some major problems: rivalry with China, "income disparity", degraded infrastructure, "war on terrorism" --- among others.
Politics is hardly solvable at this point. Better to turn to truth and beauty as it was in the beginning. The expression of beauty which is some sort of felt symmetry in the mind. Or, some new juxtaposition that works because the artist knows the world. They are states of meditation without a doubt.
The political situation is very poor in this day and age. It must be that the foundation of our politics, up and down the spectrum is false. I always felt hate and fear were the foundations of the majority parties. Perhaps but it could be something else. The rationalizations of the liberal democrats and radical republicans are transparent because their "world" described by their politics is impossible. This is why there is such a ferocious attempt to efface and wipe out the opponent. What is missing is the solid, free, liberal democratic citizen who is able to marginalize the radical wings and not get effaced as has happened. There is no center. There's no center because every effort was made to destroy the middle-class from which a center is built.
The key is to steer between the clashing rocks of nihilism and petrification. Between the rocks and the sirens is the happy hunting grounds of the creative spirit.
Of course if there is a thin crust of very corrupt powers that control or attempt to control life, inaccessible to the checks and balances in a democracy then most everything is superfluous. Why then would it matter if you had a liberal democracy or a theocracy? Why would it matter if you had communism or fascism? The outcome would be completely predictable, that is, complete exhaustion of the society, a collapse in the belief or trust in the systems and the decay that would follow. That is always a danger for a liberal democracy. My feeling, after going through a variety of cycles of these sort of beliefs, is that you need to press your values and express the way you think the world ought to work for, if nothing else, the aftermath when chaos has successfully brought the culture low. Show me the facts. Prove your stories of corruption at that level to me. It is completely possible to have that level of corruption, it has occurred throughout history at that level and we now have a much more profoundly complex political culture and a new set of tempting technological advances that allow for the control of many in fewer hands. If I was convinced of such a thing I would more likely fold in out of sheer impossibility and try to eke out whatever satisfaction I could in life. The thing as a whole would become a black door I would never enter and so you would havek more withdrawal of attention, less criticism, and the sort of state you see in Russia under Putin, the kleptocrocy. It is very tempting to think on huge scales like that. But, I've heard many things in the past fifty years! And some of the rumors and murmurs underground have proven true. Another indication to me that the free liberal, democratic citizen has to fulfill itself.
Corruption is one of the prime experiences of the liberal democratic citizen. It occurs because ambition is encouraged both in economic and political pursuits. It's understood that the ambition operates under guardrails and laws that keep it or try to keep it in bounds. The pursuit of ambition usually creates grades of corruption if of nothing else one's ideals. It can be a shock no matter what belief system you may have or inherit. But then, even the moralists have ambition.
* * * * * * * *
At this stage of things, as I gravitate toward deep maturity, as I am sucked into the inscrutable vortex of time, I look at the fate of the nation-state. I am assaulted all the time by demands from different groups, most of which are legitimate or have some legitimacy. I usually have no answers because most of the conflicts will not be solved especially if the nation devolves to the kind of identity conflicts that I see. I see nothing but infinite conflict so that little progresses. Too much hide bound nationalism on one side and too flimsy connection with the fate of the nation-state on the other. Somewhere between the nationalism and globalism is the medium you need for a healthy society. Globalism only if most of the nation benefits, an acknowledgement of what does not benefit and then some safety net there. Globalism by itself will blunder into a kind of state capitalism as you have developing in China with a resulting loss of liberal democracy. On the other hand the kind of extreme nationalism I see will sweep away liberal democracy in the mistaken belief that its systems must survive whether those systems have evolved out of any semblance of liberal and democratic or not.
It is amazing to me that so called smart people encourage the sort of conflicts be they ethnic, racial, gender, class, geographical knowing that these conflicts are thousands of years old, lead to wars, are never really solved. They might get exhausted for a time but are fired up again down the line. Whereas, the promise of liberal democracy is that the democratic mind will come up with new forms of political imagination that overcome the nature of the identity. The nature of these conflicts is such that an honest mind begs off and leaps up and out to protect the nature of the governance, its health and well-being as the country tries to survive through the 21st century as a world leader. And loss of that leadership and loss of the integrity of the US, loss of its productivity, loss of its powers would not bode well for the future. After all, we could become the greatest globalists around, neglect our own nation, while China, India, a united Europe all play the nationalist game very severely. And yet, more income growth, more sound infrastructure, more profound husbandry, more development in marginal areas, better education from the ground up all add to the strength of the nation-state. Something is just missing in the political conflict I see going on today.
Their eye runs down a narrow but deep channel. Life does not work well. The resentments are simmering. "The Media is our Inspector General."
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March 3, 2022
IS IT GOOD? REALLY?
Perhaps we make a judgement at some point that the "civilization" is good but is that enough? It's a curious question the modern type asks because the level of affluence and education has freed people from obsessive identification with the civilization. Often it is seen as nuisance and held in contempt. I can't believe no one has wrangled with that question seeing how we perceive little else but the thing built around us, the thing that contains us, the thing that determines us, the thing that we pass through. Hopefully a curious person has a chance to study or become familiar with civilizations different than ones own. Just don't make too fast a conclusion!
A person assumes if he or she is pushing him or herself to the good, then that which organizes him or her is as well. At least they get acutely aware when they are striving for the good and the civilization is heading for the bad. Not that there is an absolute marking for these things. How many Romans knew what would happen to vaunted Rome, as it was happening? Some knew without question but plenty did not know anything but whether they were eating that day.
I assume that the free, liberal democratic citizen is only that when he or she attains as full a consciousness as he or she can, given some innate limitations of the mind and world at any given time. That a democracy is better with a critical mass of that type of population then a critical mass of ignorant, superstitious, fearful, inexperienced types.
A society obsessed by its own imperfections is a neurotic one rather than a progressive one. A progressive one would convert some of the dissatisfaction with imperfection into productive, surprising, creative ends. In fact, living a free life, a moral life, a productive life is the chief protest against all the forces of chaos ready to destroy everything, whether it is a weapon, masses of people, or a disease.
Democracy is under girded with trust and honesty. Without those qualities the system falls through its own dark nature and lord knows what's on the other side. It's not that everyone must be perfect but that public transactions have to have the fiber of trust in them to be effective. That's one thing that has left the citizen in a moral quandary. Is there trust and honesty in the public realm any longer? And, if not, what can be done about it? The citizen is rather defenseless. "Well, I will operate in my own zone and cut away any real relation to the rest of it even though I know one thing implicates many other things."
Massiveness, speed, money all tend to undermine the need and/or desire for trust and honesty. And this is why it appears the culture is "something other" than what it was supposed to be. "But people are happy and the economy sustains jobs and people live well."
* * * * * * * *
Viewed as a statistic America doesn't look so good. It leads in incarceration, gun violence, it's not great on equity etc etc. It is not a paradise. It is always producing vitality and exciting things and always producing decay and decline. It's not a monoculture. I don't think there is a national culture. There is a corporate culture that uses mass media to cast its net. Either your region is good or bad, on the downside. And even the bad ones have some redeeming quality. It forces one to act, to take on your own cross and find a way. It's aggressive this way. It is less and less a "society" and more loose regions that have their share of delights and problems. There are countries that would be a lot more comfortable to live in. I think of Canada. But Canada has no aspiration. America has aspiration which makes it weird with energy and off kilter. If you connected with the organizing principles you are better off than if you are alienated from those principles. Even so the alienated can enjoy freedom and have forms of expression that can be energetic. It's not for the faint-hearted, the passive. Identify with region, dig into region and know it at every level. Study the federal level but understand how uprooted it is from the society that gave it birth. Use freedom well.
If democracy is only protest then what do you have besides a people who are expert at protesting? You need builders. You need people who get things done. You need explorers and innovators. Democracy itself, in its structure is a protest against stasis and mediocrity. It's baked into everything. But only political or social protest will undermine the society's will to do anything as the protestors insist everyone either be for them or against them. The society has to have the instinct that says, "ok, your protest is nice and we get it, now start developing policies that we all can look at, criticize, subject to questions, and eventually vote on." An experienced protestor would know this. Inexperienced protestors spoil everything by making it about the protest itself and the protestor him or herself.
* * * * * * * *
A lot of attention on the "breaking up of old liberal order," set up by US after World War II. Some are worried and horrified, some are fatalistic, some think it's a natural process. Good arguments can be heard on all sides. I would not fear the future, I would be wary of it. Liberal democracies need to double down on what makes them so to begin with: free, fair elections, transparency through unfettered press, due process, checks and balances, universal education, the dissolution of barriers to entry into the upward, productive path. They need to form solid alliances, especially to block the designs of Russia and China who are trying to take advantage of the "breakdown" of liberal world order. It seems crazy to loosen the ties with western Europe. India and Japan/Korea would be other places I would focus on.
Points: China pushing out American influence in that region. I think long-term the Belt and Road project is the initial steps to encircle the US just as it has been encircled. It may seem paranoid at this point but I do believe that is in their long-term plans.
Some other points:
- India-US protection of Indo-Pacific ocean area
- Putin's attempt to undo NATO and turn US and EU against each other
- Border between US and Mexico
- Environmental cooperation
- Fighting drugs and organized crime and corruption at the nexus between these activities and public institutions
- The future of space
It would seem to me that foreign policy has two goals: avoid costly wars, increase trade to keep employment up, revenues coming in, incomes rising etc. The ability of government to discipline itself. Rebuilding of the diplomatic corp.
Domestic policy has a few more goals: Ensure the safety and freedom of the citizens. Account for all citizens who suffer and struggle. Increasing the ability to invent, innovate, practice productive efficiency, Upward mobility, especially among those who have been caught underneath the systems. Ensure that wealth contributes fully to the center of culture.
* * * * * * * *
Every generation has a certain level of sincerity and certain level of "this is our best and we are pressing it up against the obstacles." Then a falling away as the next generation sees the holes, see where they missed and with the same sincerity begins to fill in and make better until exhaustion. On and on it goes. Things improve but there are always problems to be solved.
What does it say about the strength of democracy when statements like this are made: "Trump is destroying democracy." If democracy is that fragile it doesn't have a chance against worse enemies and phenomena than Trump. Democracy is not febrile. It's true that Trump was a bad president, shouldn't have been there, and hopefully will not re-emerge in 2024. But it's also true that the President is not an Emperor whose divine genius contains the fate of the Empire. Besides, if the people had read the Federalist Papers or read a decent account of the destruction of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC, they could easily have spotted Trump as the scorned, sybarite Senator buying his office or the English aristocrat entitled and diseased and ruinous. The whole purpose of the system was to prevent Trump from emerging!
Are you free? Can you move on that freedom? That's the central question. Or, a central one. And, after all, what is freedom? What if it's something we've merely glanced at from time to time and have yet to find the tools to truly express it in any way, shape, or form? "Oh but we are free in relation to the unfree." That simply proves that a rat may not be a hyena but neither are a full developed Redwood tree that dominates certain landscapes.
The growth and development of anything, large or small, is the thing to grasp, the thing to know. "We are free because we don't have slavery." "We are free because we don't have many diseases that plagued people in the past." "We are free of the grinding hard work that wore so many people out." "We are better educated." "We travel more and have more mobility." "We engage our minds more." No doubt in self-reflection we admit our limitations, our own shadows and say, "now, learn our lesson and don't go down this road." We don't want the lakes and rivers polluted. We don't want large groups of people isolated and demeaned by their isolation from the mainstream. We don't want the people to destroy themselves because they think they have not met expectations. And we certainly recognize that life for many is grinding work, not so well educated, susceptible to modern diseases, and less mobile.
Many of the abstractions that have captured modern Americans are embarrassing. It appears to be the turnip truck flying through a cloud of obfuscating words.
March 2, 2022
PASSAGE
I've seen some attempts to explain the past 40 years, with the turning during the 70's toward Reagan. That's partly true. Here's what I think happened. An "idealistic" generation went through a profound disillusionment of Vietnam and Watergate, primarily, and swore off politics. That was noted at the time as a "going inward" that swelled up the new age movement, cults and other manifestations of political alienation. As that happened the private sector went through a long process of "reform", some directly related to the new age philosophies or practices. So, a more "humane", a more "compassionate" corporation came into vogue and was taken up by the explosive computer revolution. Reagan convinced the middle-class to abandon government and give its loyalty to the private sector. That began the long process of stock market appreciation and subsequent asset appreciation that favored upper middle class professionals. It's true that Reagan put in policies that attracted foreign investments and there was the stimulation of the computer revolution. Add that to a breaking of the labor union and a turning against the welfare state. These definitely occurred. Throw in race animosity without question.
Most of it had to do with taxes and stagnant wages and the middle-class distrust of labor unions. It was evident however, in a real change in the people themselves. It was also evident that the suburbs gained much more political power than cities.
Those who liked the trajectory of the reform period could feel this turn very acutely and were rather shocked by it. It became very clear that the conservatives had a lot more energy because they had not been a part of the reform fights on the previous several decades. The activists and reformers I knew in Berkeley were very burned out and lacked any vitality to resist Reaganism, especially as the nation swelled in pride and capital during the 80's.
Capital started to be seen as the solution to problems rather than activism. It became a truism that "affluence was better than poverty", that, at least with affluence you could solve some of the problems that had been front and center in the previous decades. The problem was that there was a separation in the generation between those who pursued their private goals and a lesser group that adhered to the reform spirit. Don't underestimate how stimulating the computer revolution was in the 80's and then the internet in the 90's. And, of course, tremendous sums of money poured through those revolutions.
By the time Clinton left the White House that generation was at its peak, entering middle-age. It did not return to the idealism of its youth. It had set as its goal the "enriched, unique life and approach to life." A member of the boomer generation could say, in the late 90's, "this country has never been stronger than it is now!" And considering that the Soviet Union was gone and America was the sole "super power" and the economy was booming it couldn't be argued. The reform movement, including civil rights, retreated to the academy to conserve its ideas but had little or no reach into the larger society.
The last 20 years has produced a different period beginning with the 9/11 attacks and the war on terrorism. There were also scandals in the corporate world and a feeling, very distinctive in the early 00's that while the market was doing well, the real economy of men and women was stagnant at best. Katrina revealed a deep underclass, mostly black, that hadn't improved for decades and every city had its equivalent New Orleans. It was becoming more and move evident as well, that the entrance of China into the global market, the release of former communist countries into the global economy, the advent of computer/internet, and the development of "globalism" as a way to move capital rapidly around the world seeking appreciation had devastated parts of the American economy. The rust-belt especially lost jobs with no back up for workers. Corporate consolidation and focus on short term profits that could be made in the market, replaced investment in growth and development, new technology, and new infrastructure. That led to the collapse of the financial markets in the later part of the decade because of the mortgage crisis.
When Obama became President he spent all his time building back the economy. Whether he had to or not he did bail out the money and not the people. So, while the economy was saved the condition of the people did not change all that much. The money companies were in tech and didn't need as many workers to produce fantastic profits. All this led up to the election of 2016.
Before that a vigorous but amorphous protest, Occupy Wall Stree, had gone for a few months but it was the anger of the middle, lower middle class that determined the election. It's difficult to know how well the economy performed under Trump and how you determined what is good and what is bad. Health care was a significant area of economy. Obama care tried to correct some of that but Trump undid a lot. Trump passed a tax bill that put more money in very rich hands rather than middle and working class people.
The question of "inequality" became a major concern for scholars, thinking types, and political types across the board so there was more focus on inequality, what it meant and what were the possible solutions. And currently, a sudden collapse due to the COVID, the loss of jobs because life stopped, that added to the lack of revenue for various institutions, a condition that worsened as the pandemic moved forward.
Then came the massive protests of people not simply on behalf of blacks but in protest to the inequalities, generally felt by people of color and poor whites. All of that has given rise to new energy in the progressive political area, mostly young and urban. However, they have yet to show much creative response to the problems and have fallen back to old discredited socialism. The other new condition is that China is now felt to be a legitimate threat to American economic, if not political and military power. It's not viewed as an abstract threat.
Some things have changed. For one, wealth does not feel secure at this point. It now has a bad reputation and is being shamed every which way. Second, there will be an attempt to rebuild the economy on a sounder basis, an economy of making things rather than on capital appreciation, more focused on the middle-class with support for upward mobility by the poor and working class. This has to be done without sacrificing some of the very dynamic parts of the system like entrepreneurship, invention, and innovation.
You hear and read crazy things in a period like this. I long ago rejected direct threats to the Constitution in the form of revolution. And that was on the table back in the fabled times. Revolution was "romantic" because it promised instant transformation from the bad to the good, "if only..." But on studying history for a while it was clear revolutions can't be fabricated. It exists because of a tremendous failure in the society itself, one that is usually fixable before the revolution. America had gone through the disruptions of a "revolution" in the form of a civil war, one that was not going to overthrow a particular government, one that was going to establish a separate government. But that would have left the US government weak and subject to forces disruptive and destructive to Constitutional values.
Revolutions are "romantic" because there has to be a structure in place to administer laws and keep the society from killing itself. The arduous attempt to make it look like the system is "rigged" is not compelling enough to see the whole collapse in a heap. If you truly believe the whole thing is rigged then it must be destroyed and pulled down. But all the persons who benefit are going to defend the system and so violent revolution is implied every time I hear the "system is rigged" either by "Jews" or by "white supremacists" or "intelligent lizards." "Wealth" comes closest to the truth. And is the classic reason governments are destroyed.
Yet, wealth creation is a necessity and baked into the system so what is needed is oversight, reform, regulation of wealth and the protection of the system of governance from the predations of wealth. That's where the not-wealth parts of the society need to organize and rally behind.
* * * * * * * *
Paused a bit to watch a program on the Nazi's of 30's. It was very sobering, more so than other times when I've reviewed that period of time. It was so awful, so degraded, and anti-life, a democracy should always review this history once a year, at least. It does make one grateful on the one hand, then very wary. It can happen. You can descend slowly but surely into the anti-democratic state. You won't necessarily have a holocaust or all out total war against your neighbors but, without a doubt, you can lose the preciousness of the democratic experiment. Listen to the warnings! Trump may not be a Hitler but he is a warning, a canary bird in the mineshaft that public anger can produce a leader like Trump. More tolerance, more compassion, more freedom. Whenever I see a film like that I wish for those qualities.
You need brave freedom, bold people, unafraid persons. Lots of checks and balances, strong liberal democratic institutions, parties that vet their own in dynamic ways, a thorough understanding that state power should always comes under scrutiny. The left has totalitarian tendencies, anti-democratic types, nihilists and cynics but the right wing is far more dangerous at this point. My dad used to tell me, "you don't know, can
't imagine how that period of time was." He wasn't in the European theater but I accept his admonition. And now that generation is almost all gone. What we have now is the remnants of the Vietnam era and "wars" fought by professional soldiers, usually against far weaker countries.
* * * * * * * *
Democracy is a court room that you are required to report to in order to make public judgments. You bring whatever knowledge and experience you can to it and agree to give an honest judgment based on the facts and arguments you hear.
You may have nothing in common with the accused, the prosecutor, the judge and others of the court but you are there to do your duty. You establish credibility and allow for a contradiction in assumptions and roll things over to come to some conclusion. The assumption you have as one member of the jury is that all the other juror members are as sincere as you are. If they aren't then sound judgment can be nullified by the appeals to emotion sometimes thrown their way.
Democracy, as I understand the term, is absolutely dependent on the development of the individual and his or her ability to come large to the stage and know and understand. So, the first attribute of the good citizen is the ability to stand naked to the human universe and admit what problems exist, admit that they exist beyond his or her abilities to do anything about and begin an earnest study of the problems. At the very least the citizen learns who has credibility and who has none. And those who lack it are shut up and ignored.
Democracy is also the meaningful demonstration of freedom. The two exist as the same coin with two faces.
We know the political class is corruptible, often incompetent and has bought an office to up sell to those who want its influence. It is the citizen, then, that has to establish the nature of problem-solving, the criteria for credibility, the vision to cross boundaries to solve problems and so on. The politician is not going to do this on behalf of the people. Just as the people have to pump their own gas these days, they have to be their own best leaders.
The human frame contains beauty and the discovery of the spirit in a man; the protection and flourishing of each. That is one of the functions of being a free man and it is dependent on, if not good governance then non-catastrophic governance. In other words, the obligation of vigilance on the part of the free citizen.
February 1, 2022
GUESSING THE FUTURE
To a collective grouping of people, political or otherwise, one should ask a simple question, "through yourselves could you have produced the Constitutional government?" Or, "Could you have fought and won a Revolution? A Civil War? A World War II?" I have severe doubts up and down the line. If they can't why would I give my consent to their will to power? And if they don't want my consent and just bully their way into power doesn't that tell you who they truly are? The right and left fail these tests. So, who are they? "Could you have produced a labor movement or civil rights movement out of yourselves?" Or, rather, do they simply want to live on the legacy of these things?
If America becomes a total failure, implodes, disintegrates or just goes lax the future will say, "see, men and women can't tolerate freedom. All the growth and development of a free man or woman, all the protections, all the diverse activity and opinion led to ash." I don't think that would be a good outcome for humanity. Somewhere between overweening pride and abject demoralization the free man and woman needs to find themselves and stand up straight and learn to build things, learn to dream big, learn the arts of self-rule. It's not a given.
America could go through many permutations in the next few centuries that can't be predicted. At the end of that process I would want to have those qualities but nothing is assured. It begs the question, "who would save America were it to fall into totalitarian hands?" A purely academic question, one that would be asked during the stalled life in the pandemic.
The truth is there is always vitality and always decay in this country. It is always ascending and descending, progressing and regressing.
The non liberal democratic elements got hold of politics for a lot of reasons. Some books I've read of late have pointed those out. I would suggest it all started in my youth when the new left drove out classic liberalism from the university and began to teach "identities" as the source and goal of political power. It was the reverse image of the fascist, nazi racial superior identity in that everything would become, ipso facto, "superior". But that put "fascism" as the norm, as the default, again, an idea fostered by the neo-left. This was then met by a rise in fundamentalism and "white backlash" that has ignited the irrationalities of the right wing. Note: Neither politics is rooted In the strength of the American experiment which is liberal and democratic. Tolerant and confident. There was a loss of rational thinking or, worse, the belief that the first strong idea in the brain is the Truth and to be defended to the max. There was no cultivation of knowledge, no outreach to new sources of knowledge and experience but the ideas of idiots driven by primitive emotions. This is what the media and many of the people thirsted for because conflict can never be sustained within individual people, it must find its way out into the collective public. This makes the scene very unappetizing and nearly impossible to do anything about but take the liberal democratic values and have a lot of patience as these political wings burn themselves out.
The poor distribution of national income is another source, perhaps the ultimate historic source. And, frankly, the US is a huge nation-state with many regions, with various problems that are not shared by other regions. These conflate with national political will. Strip away all the excess this country has piled up in government and then see what things are needed for maintenance and growth of all the regions. I, for one, am tired of the southern Baptist cultures determining the national will.
And news plays up conflict and the politics is seen as a vast drama between good and evil. It's not. And the drama of it just obscures the fact that it is a grinding, procedural, system of trade-offs that depends on the trust and mutual respect between the representatives. Of course the drama isn't for the representative, it is for the drama starved, deracinated citizens with no foundations of common culture who want an instant fix to everything or else.
I see some pretty good ideas, especially on the progressive side, but with the lack of trust and mutual respect it's all gas and is simply a point of manipulation by all sides. The ferocious ones can't see this, never figure it out and belong to that long history of "masses" that fills up the nightmare known has "history." And yes, the framers were concerned about it. Just as they knew Trump's existed from their experience of inherited power and how a lot of that inherited power was crazy. A decent reading of the Federalist Papers will bring you to that conclusion.
Will America become better or worse? This is an impossible question because it is too large and complex to make simple judgements or predictions. I know that if America declines through the 21st century it will be a messy one, a ragged and painful one. It will result in the loss of Constitutional law, the federal system and, eventually, be open to invasion and conflict between regions. The wealthy regions would sustain themselves for a bit but eventually, because they would depend on stronger regions or nations for protection, their wealth would be siphoned off. There would be a decline in infrastructure, a far sharper division between economic classes. Some good features of the old United States would remain. There would be a cataclysmic event that would precipitate this decline but within a generation or two it would appear as if, "this has always been this way," and people would judge society by their own self-interest and experience in the moment. So, that would create a new history for the US that would be centuries in the making. Perhaps it is inevitable but I wouldn't want to be a part of it. I would not want to be a part of America that did not try to be the United States where all the resources were available to the people even if it didn't think of itself as a complete whole.
Trump was the product of the corruption of American culture; the idea that there are no consequences for what you say or do and that the ends justify the means. That is, how could you possibly be flawed or corrupt if you end up with a jet, beautiful women, golf courses and hotels? And in that perfect storm he's landed in the one place where character trumps all. And all of his riches, all of his jets and beautiful women, all of his golf courses can't help him one iota. He stands shorn of everything but what he has been in life, what he has avoided and palmed off onto other people. A con man, a liar, a thug, a bully, a potentate and now a man with absolutely no credibility. The man who cried wolf too many times and will be devoured by the times as a result. As with the Clinton's he's a fantastic literary character who has somehow conned his way into this powerful position mainly because a good many people can be conned. Perhaps the jolting realization that they've been royally had will do some good. I doubt it but you never know. America is a sad place. We've violated every decency and thought we could get away with it. We've torn down every barrier to our greed and refused to look at the consequences. So, now we're this. An appalling spectre on the world stage.
Trump was really a culmination of the past sixteen years or so, since 9/11 or the suspect election of 2000. It's the "war on terrorism," and the "war of the wealthy on the rest of us," "war of destroyers against the Earth".
What can one say but that this period of time will be scrutinized in a negative sense for why and how it produced a Trump Presidency. And it will always come down to fear and loathing among the democratic people.
* * * * * * * *
Trump represented the triumph of a section of the American electorate that has been in the shadows for decades. They now have a provisional role in governing and are tasked with helping things move forward whether they are in or out of power. It's too early to make judgments. If the contentious political culture succeeds maybe the smart guys learn something. If it fails it will be buried for a good generation or two and something much more sensible will emerge. It looks like failure to me. It looks bumbling and incompetent, goofy is the word I think. But it is too early to tell.
He and his followers were tasked with solving the problems which exist whether they wanted them to be or not. It seems a large part of that electorate is fatigued by all the problematicsf offered up daily and want them out of their lives. It is the part of the electorate that can't tolerate complexity because they've never crossed the threshold of knowing how to deal with it so it only appears as a threat someone, somewhere is to blame for. Will that part of the electorate "grow up" if and when Trump is no longer in the picture? A free society has a strange way of making these sort of adjustments in both over simplifying and over analyzing problems.
Ultimately a period of time dominated by the irrational can not be trusted. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its seductions.
When a man or woman awakens to the shadow of humanity a shockwave goes through them. But that is only the first step in a long path of understanding the totality of humanity, the light of humanity. And as I have noted in some of these journals, in a moment of illumination, "understand the shadow but don't become the shadow."
Americans fail when they don't allow themselves to entertain their contradictions. The urban secular types of the coasts should study the spiritual founders like Christ and Buddha and figure out why they are so significant and learn from them. And the middle of the country should study science, read Erasmus and Camus among others and understand why a secular society is necessary. If they don't do these things they become awfully predictable and that which can be predicted can be controlled. Freedom emerges when the contradiction is conscious of itself and meets itself in some agonal process.
CHALLENGE
One key to democracy is the type of challenges it takes on. So, as I look out into the present and future what challenges do I see? The environmental/fossil fuel challenge is large, something that can engage the energies of the people. It is to stimulate, to vitalize, to defy---these are the hallmarks of a healthy society. Income disparity/lack of opportunity/special emphasis on black poverty would be another immense challenge the culture should take on. Politics would exploit these things, democracy would take the challenge on face up. Improving the infrastructure--- another huge challenge. Improving the educational system. Improving the ways and means of electing people, the sources of leadership etc. Obviously no one can do everything, even big and significant things. But, you look at the society in that manner. Not wealth, not achievement in sports, not political power. That's where leadership comes in, something woefully lacking today.
Democracy needs stimulus. It needs challenge. It needs to be able to connect as a society. It needs to return to trust and mutual respect. That is what drives things forward. This country is standing still and is sick because of it. It is motionless with fear and ignorance. When it leaps productively into the dark it comes out, usually, changed but more productive and sane. Standing pat at this point would be self-killing.
The dynamic and free society escapes a lot of intellectual analysis because Marxism is dead. It can not go forward into the future and yet the university holds onto it and refuses to see anything different. I assume the academic world is on the cusp of a huge sweep of reform in the coming decade. I suppose it's been said over and over again. It's the least of our problems.
I have two social/political identities. One is "organic" and comes from the physical experience I've had living in the northern half of California. It has enough richness and complexity so that I'm grounded in the real, so much so that richness and complexity from any other source outside the region is absorbed and used. But then I live in a federal system, a source of governance that is rooted in the Constitution and its history of interpretations and requires certain principles: self-rule, due process, due diligence, tolerance, separation of powers, freedom, imagination, intellect among others. Freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religious belief, freedom to redress grievance and on on. Governance deals with very basic items: solution to problems in community, making sure the people don't tear each other apart, making sure that other powers outside the borders don't tear the country apart. Economy, justice, infrastructure are some of the sources of problems the governance takes on. I adhere to these things because I believe them, because in my experience they are true.
* * * * * * * *
SELF-EXAMINATION
I had gone through a long idealism and its disillusionment but I don't think I was prepared for the types of negativity that I met with as a young guy. It was only when it looked like liberal democracy was being challenged at the very root that I became interested in studying it or giving politics some thought. I believed the end of liberal democracy would spell the end of most things good and leave the door open to either fascism, communism, or fundamentalism of one stripe or another. It was the age of disillusionment after Watergate/Vietnam, that contributed without a doubt. The struggle with the novel opened up the need to express the meaningful---- the relation to power being one foundation. Even if power, itself, is meaningless, our relation to it may be very meaningful. I thought it was a personal thing because it fully implicated the nature of the human being.
I found it difficult to accommodate anything expressed that did not bring me to my finest, best self. If that was elitist so be it. I was exposed to a much greater spectrum. Politically I have my doubts about the left but find myself there more often than not. I am not for "socialism" but I am for the government to stimulate growth where it needs it. I think such a thing needs a lot of due diligence. I do not believe that pitting classes, races, genders against each other furthers the democratic way. Extending rights for some does not mean reducing rights for others. I think being "prudent and wise" is the way to go in geopolitics. "America first" while emotionally satisfying doesn
t work, is a losing proposition. Democracy is a thinking man and woman system because thought has to cut through so much that is inherited by the old reptile brain. We are, by nature, un-free. We have to find the agency of our liberation. The spiritual is the most authentic path although it has proven to be a pitfall in the past. By nature, human beings are organized by strong willed people who may not, in the long run, have the best interests of the people in mind. Democratic people need to find leaders out of their struggle to liberate themselves from their oppressive natures. And then surround the process with due process, due diligence, freedom to investigate independent of authority, freedom to associate, etc. It seems absurd to repeat these things but perhaps they need to be repeated every generation.
I don't regret it but like every other endeavor I discovered all kinds of experts and people who had a greater grasp on the subject than myself. I tried to get a foundation on American liberal democracy and then used myself as a way to understand the growth and development of the citizen and his relationship to power; from the profound outside to the knowing inside for instance. That the quality of the individual was paramount and so the questions of "quality" and "individual" had to be addressed. Vision was necessary and I projected a lot of vision on behalf of America in lieu of projecting it through a novel. On the one hand you don't want to be so crimped down in the present you can't see the rising waters around you. You don't want to be so comfortable and complacent that you don't see the danger signs. But on the other you don't want to look so cosmically that a decade or even a century is a mere instance of your ability to predict the next one and so life is unreal and has little meaning. Perhaps that is why I had myself implicated in the question, myself and my own writing life that I had always viewed as transcendent to politics. It was always grounded by the fact I was a citizen in a putative liberal democracy. A liberal democracy where I did not have any significant power.
When I was going to Sacramento State I used to go to the state capitol and sit in on legislative meetings, committee meetings and so on. That was always interesting to me. The transcendent moments of the times, mainly the exploration to the moon and viewing the Earth from a distance, as a whole and the proliferation of nukes along with a classic bind in geopolitics added to a hot, irrational war in Vietnam were very crucial. The attack on materialism by the counter-culture was very effective with me. It generated a connection with the poverty roots of my family. The uprisings of minorities and women were very stimulating because they shook out the complacency about freedom and the nature of democracy.
I came out of the extremes of Abysmal nothingness and highly defined idealism. The gap that created! And the climbing from one to the other determines a great deal. Facts had replaced myths but facts had created "instant annihilation" and "habitation of universe" among other things both of which did what old myth did which was pull the mind beyond the mundane daily and into something terrifying and exhilarating.
Liberal democracy assumes that when men and women are free they are the most constructive force in the universe. This is generally true, at least in my experience. That freedom demands a kind of controlled irrationality that needs to be guided to productive ends. So you need both the structure, say in the infrastructure of governance and the will to power ignited by freedom. Sometimes it gets rather perverse. Sometimes it get rather destructive. In the end it is superior to the repression of people.
The world is always problematic. It must be balanced by beauty and pleasure.
* * * * * * * *
Politics is about the management of power. It's been that way from the beginning of time. That management is guided by the founding document but changes with the times. The struggle today is between complexity and simplicity. The shadows of each are usually prominent in the political culture. Unless you experience problems as complex things to be solved and deal with them as complex entities; as, in other words, exactly as those who are called on to solve the problems experience them you will not develop the trust necessary to have a flawless sort of management of power.
Yet sometimes, simplicity is precisely what is needed. Learned simplicity that cuts through the dense complexity because one knows it so well.
The structure of power, the founding document, doesn't tell anyone how to live. It is the not-power that is the significant thing in the society. How does freedom and resource express itself today? Power is there to ensure the on-going prospect of fully developing freedom and resource.
The operation of a society like this should be fairly simple: a strong middle-class imposes its values on both the political state and the marketplace and is able to bend wealth to its essential centrality in the society while not interfering in the perks of wealth making. A strong middle-class then can develop the types of structures that pull the poor up and into the middle class to further strengthen it and fulfill the obligation of the society to provide opportunity for all, happily induced by upward mobility. The creative, progressive, inventive part of the culture comes from oblique angles no one can predict. Politics that demonstrates its fidelity to this process has my loyalty. I haven't found it yet.
Democracy is not complicated but it is a thinking person's system. And it's always assumed that the most democratic principle exists as you get closer to the center of power. At least the rhetoric of democracy is more prevalent. But if it's only groups of highly educated people running huge agencies cut away from the heart of the people then maybe you'd better call it something else. And not that it can't be successful in that configuration. In fact, it may start rationalizing that it is the only way the system as a whole can be successful. And my point of view was that of the jury member who comes into a highly professionalized system guarded over by insiders and who is called on to make ultimate questions using his or her common sense, experience, and knowledge. The system at this stage of things is "too big to fail," and no one person, even party can correct it. But it still needs the jury member to validate it. And the jury member is an individual and is not beholden to the system so much as is knowledgeable about it and wants to be proud of it and wants some wisdom applied when it comes to its workings.
The cultural aspects of liberal democracy are crucial. It needs the lines of force that collect and move people every generation, moving them to do the same things with some adjustments. And it needs the disruptions that bring on the necessity for the adjustments.
"Culture" is meaningless if the society that rushes around one is unknown. Culture produced from ignorance and acclaimed by the ignorant damages a society because no one is encouraged to know the whole of it. There is no culture beyond the youth threshold ---- youth thinks it knows everything, knowing nothing. Advertisers and politicians revel in this fact.
The polity is viewed as "broken up" into three or four parts; it depends on who is benefiting from the marketplace, how provincial people are, and the ability to facilitate a variety of views in the same brain, among other attributes. Ever hear of any political unity among 330 million people? The "divide" of people is really a part of checks and balances.
There is always room for improvement. The "culture" may embarrass us but we know time will move it along. The knowledge of that is absolute and a great solace. The politics may be rotten so we say what we would like politics to be and the future can decide. What space do they want to occupy? The machines are scary or can be, we admit our fright and concern and maybe the future takes up our cause. At least they see the puzzle, the game that consciousness can play with even the most dreadful aspects of society.
January 19, 2022
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