In 2007, on this overblown, sadly commercialized holiday whose historical moment has been buried by beer, barbecue, patriotic bombast, and over-the-top, often taxpayer-paid fireworks, I wrote what 2011 might bring. I wasn’t hopeful. I predicted:

Nearly one out of every six Americans will still be without health insurance. Attempts at immigration reform (whatever that means) will still have been eroded by more objections by many more interests with particular beefs. No coherent, consistent, effective American policy that begins to undo climate change will exist. American school children will continue to lag far behind other nations in math and science — and still have decreasing abilities as critical thinkers. Spending by lobbyists to influence federal regulators and members of Congress will be on its way to passing $3 billion for 2011. …

The income disparity between the top 1 percent of Americans and the rest of us — the other 99 percent — will have widened. The continual tension between those who demand increased security and those who fear erosion of civil liberties and constitutional rights will continue unabated. The debates and difficulties involving voting fraud and reform will have been heightened by the 2008 election as election foes bicker endlessly in courts about outcomes. And, figuring a 10 percent increase per election cycle, the top 50 industries will be en route to shelling out $850 million to just members of Congress alone in political contributions for the 2012 election cycle.

In 2011, noting I’d missed a few things, I again took the Republic’s pulse:

I did not predict — or even dream it could happen — the outcome of the Supremes’ consideration of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that deepened the hole in which corporate money could hide while paying for “electioneering communications.” …

Sadly, I did not predict that more than 30,000 journalists would lose their jobs in the past four years, lessening the ability of the press to hold government accountable. To me, corporations are now essentially the American government; more journalists, not fewer, trained in the same accounting chicanery that allowed Enron to flourish, are necessary to hold corporate government accountable, too. …

About 42 states and the District of Columbia have faced $103 billion in shortfalls for the coming fiscal 2012. Minnesota has shut down for the second time in six years because its leaders cannot agree on how to close a $5 billion budget hole. They are stuck in the ideological version of children proclaiming, “He did it.” “No, he did it.” Sheesh.

IN 2012, the consequences of ideological conflict became more starkly apparent to me:

Political warfare by any name is still war. Call it what you will: The haves vs. the have-nots, class warfare, or ideological conflict — it’s still a cruel war, and it inflicts wounds on far too many of us. Some are deep: The bank took the house. Some are possibly fatal: The insurance company wouldn’t pay for the surgery. Or the drugs for that cancer. Some will fester for a lifetime: College students face a one-trillion-dollar student loan debt. Some are a perpetual itch that scratching does not relieve: There will be no pay raise next year, and your contribution to the company’s health plan will double. …

Forty people — all billionaires — may have more influence on legislative outcomes than the 312 million rest of us. If those billionaires dislike the direction political Party A or Party B is taking American life, they can engineer an electoral coup by underwriting massive negative campaigns. …

And goddamn it, don’t tell me to stand up and keep fighting the good fight. We’re outgunned (and out-dollared). The public’s ability to respond fully and freely — a dream of Bronze Age Internet days — is diminished by corporatism’s reliance on our willing donation of personal data on Facebook, Twitter, et al. We’re the product being sold. We are sheep. We are cattle. We are demographically useful to modern America only between the ages of 18 and 49. What we say doesn’t matter. What we spend does.

In 2016, my rantings rang repetitively as too many of the citizens of the Republic appeared to remain blind to these realities:

This annual ritual of patriotic devotion does little but confirm to too many the untested certainties of received wisdom they hold without question. Those — including, I’d argue, many if not most of the nation’s politicians — do little to escape the confirmation bias that blinds them to realities and possibilities. Too few question authority. Instead, they seek only to bolster their own power. …

I am a citizen in a nation in which compromise, trust, and willingness to negotiate have been replaced by political, religious, territorial, or jingoistic alliances that Nick Cohen, in his book Far Left , says have “little to offer beyond a rootless rage.”

I am a citizen in a nation in which those who would lead us gleefully and outrageously tell lies to secure advantage. They can do so in large measure because really rich people continue to pour money into their campaigns. Thus dishonesty has become a political staple because lying has no political or electoral consequence. …

I live in a nation in which the Democratic Party’s platform of 2012 (not 2016) called this the party’s “North Star”: Reclaiming the economic security of the middle class is the challenge we must overcome today. Well, how’s that working out? …

How exceptional is a nation that has been at war, or in permanent preparation for war, since the end of World War II — but has won nothing? Military preparedness rules Washington thinking. But it is costly and erodes support for other national needs. Thus what has happened to the middle class, the nation’s infrastructure, both public and private education at all levels, the outrageous cost and availability of health care, and the individual’s belief anything is possible for me is decidedly unexceptional.

These excerpts reflect nearly a decade of frustration and anger, watching what I argue are harmful influences on the nation continuing to worsen.

A starburst by the Lincoln Memorial.

The ascension of President Donald to the most powerful man in the world is not an aberration of these trends over the last half century. Rather, The Donald is the logical result of a nation beset by tribalism, by a resurgence of racism, by a fear of those who are different, by the continued purchase of politicians and favorable legislation by corporate lobbyists and unnamed billionaires, by the continued accumulation of wealth by the few at the expense of the many, by the erosion of a once-admirable system of education from kindergarten to college, by the continued but unwelcome presence of American armed forces in other lands, by a governing political leadership that neither understands nor believes in science, by a president who insists on making enemies of friends … it’s a long list; you probably have your own.

That’s a bleak picture. But that’s my vision of what American has become in my lifetime. I’m not alone. Close friends have joked about what country they should leave America for … and then we all realize they’re not joking.

Still, friends and colleagues tell me, “There’s hope.” I thank them, but silently I wonder, “Well, where the hell is it?”

Then I remember Danica Roem, a former student of mine elected last year to the Virginia House of Delegates. She refuses to take campaign donations from political action committees or lobbyists. She will rise higher politically. I hope she can continue that philosophy. There’s hope in her mission.

Then I read about 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Rep. Joseph Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th congressional district. Crowley is the No. 4 Democrat in the House. He is, well, was, powerful. So presumably there’s hope in Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s mission.

Yet … already Democratic Party leaders are co-opting Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as the “future of the party.” She’s already given endorsements to other candidates. And she can raise money: “Democratic strategists believe an email signed by Ocasio-Cortez would be an instant moneymaker, and that her endorsements and campaign stops could help drive progressives to the polls in November.”

Both these women can provide hope to those who see a Republic in need of a rebirth based on principles rather than acquisition and maintenance of power. But the degree to which they can bring needed change in national direction will be directly related to how effectively they confront the massive, powerful, wealth-fueled headwinds allayed against them — often by those (take heed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez) of their own party seeking to take advantage of their success.

Maybe Ms. Roem and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, and other women entering politics, can draw moral sustenance from what Thomas Friedman calls “complex adaptive coalitions.” Friedman quotes a man who helped found a community discussion group that includes people of differing viewpoints:

The key to it all is trust. Politically we are all different, and our experiences are different. You can only get progress where there is trust. People trust that we are not in it for personal agendas and not partisan agendas. [emphasis added]

In trust lies hope. Yet I witness so little trust. So turn off cable news and its overblown punditry and panels whose members say I think and I believe instead of I know. Read journalists who’ve asked questions and received answers so they do indeed know. In all that time you save by ditching cable TV news, read a book. Coach your children to be more open to those who are different. Try to engage neighbors who differ in beliefs from you. Invite them for coffee.

Stop letting yourselves be told what to think instead of remembering how to think for yourselves.

I leave you with my closer from July 4, 2016:

The America you celebrate may not be the America that exists. Too many celebrants will watch the fireworks wearing blinders obscuring the realities that beset so much of America today. America can be a better nation, but those realities must be addressed by all of us — not just the Trumps or the Clintons or their rich, demanding, billionaire backers. But first we must all take off those goddamned blinders.

photo credits

first three by the author

Lincoln Memorial: Wikipedia Commons

Imagine you’ve been wronged. Someone, or some faceless corporation or other spineless institution, has caused you physical, emotional, or financial injury.

You want recompense. You want compensation. You want payback. You want it to never happen again — not just to you, but to anyone.

As the Ghostbusters say, Who you gonna call? The phone number on your bill or the back of your credit card that leads to a machine imitating a human being asking you to pick through several options, none of which fits your problem?

Do you call a local, state, or federal regulatory agency? Where you repeatedly run into Sorry, I’ll have to transfer you to another department. Or you go to the agency’s office and are handed forms many pages long to fill out — and no one will help you do it.

Do you try to reach your representative in state government? Or your members of Congress? Are you told to use the contact form on the member’s website? Do you receive a form email or letter in response saying We’re glad you brought this to our attention …

You want to reach someone who won’t lie to you. You want help. You need help.

Having trouble protesting the charges on a hospital bill? Can’t get the Social Security Administration to explain why your benefits have been delayed — or worse, denied? Having issues with a social medium (think Facebook, Twitter, et al.) failing to help you address bullying or harassment of you or your child?

Been calling the highway department for months about dangerous potholes in your street and received only broken promises of action? Concerned about the safety of your kids in their local school only to have the school board brush off your questions? Angry that police seem to stop you and charge you with motor vehicle beefs but not the next guy? Can’t get city hall to provide data from police on the nature of vehicle stops by age, gender, or race?

If someone or something has hurt you, and government or business or politicians blow you off, Who you gonna call?

You call a journalist. They listen to people’s stories. They look for patterns in people’s problems. They call the agencies or the corporations or the school board or city hall to ask Why are you doing this to people?

A journalist is not your enemy, despite what the president of the United States claims. Journalists operate to hold the corporation, the government, the regulatory agency, and the politicians accountable for what they say or do. They investigate claims of harm. They poke investigative flashlights into the darkness into which your complaints and concerns have vanished.

The president of the United States has tried repeatedly and arrogantly to make you believe that journalists lie, that they make up sources, that they have an agenda to make the president of the United States fail at his job. The president of the United States has said journalists are at war with the American people. He decries the work of journalists as fake news.

That’s authoritarian deceit used to cover the more than 4,000 falsehoods fact checkers say he has uttered as president. Those lies are verbal distractions to cover the numerous scandals and ethical morasses he and his appointees have wallowed in.

Says Marty Baron, editor of The Washington Post: “We’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work. We’re doing our jobs.”

That’s the press’s job: Look out for you. Look out for your issues. Look out for your problems. In the words of my newsroom godfather, Neil Perry, the principal job of a journalist is this: Defend your reader.

If the president of the United States has issues with journalists, then he should 1) look to his own actions or lack of actions and 2) read the First Amendment (perhaps for the first time).

Today more than 350 newspapers fought back against the president’s attacks on the press and his labeling of journalists as “enemies of the people.” In their own words printed independently, they defended their work as important to democracy.

That’s 350 newspapers fighting back against the malignant claims of the president of the United States.

If that’s a bit too much for you to desire to grasp, then consider this:

Think of yourself. Your family. Your career. Your children’s futures. Your opportunities, or the lack of them. Your health. Your wallet. Your ability to prosper in the alleged Land of Plenty. Your happiness.

Just think of you and your own issues. When no one else will listen or help …

Who you gonna call?

“Don’t trust anyone over 30.” — Jack Weinberg, 1964

 “I’m confident we’re going to win.” — Mitch McConnell, 76, Senate majority leader, during Kavanagh hearing

 “Do whatever you have to do, just win, baby.” Nancy Pelosi, 78, former House speaker, to Democratic candidates

 If you’re under 30 years old, then you’re one of nearly 60 percent of voting-eligible adults in the youngest generations in the United States. But you likely won’t be among the majority who actually vote. That’s a shame, and in this mid-term election, your failure to vote would be surrendering your future to political hacks and miscreants.

If you don’t vote Nov. 6, you’re risking your life. You’d be failing to hold accountable those who selfishly and foolishly put your life at risk — as well as those who refuse to act against such selfishness and foolishness.

The risks you face as a result of an incompetent, selfish Congress bowing to a president are many — a foolish emphasis on “saving” coal, attempts to weaken clean water regulations, curtailing regulations on uranium mill waste tailings, and numerous attacks on environmental regulations. All these, and many more, are risks to your health and longevity.

But the largest risk you face is the lack of congressional and presidential interest and action to curtail the coming consequences of climate change. Denial and rejection of science at the highest levels of American government mean that you — the young among us — will be those who face the outcome of uncontrolled climate change.

Should nations refuse to jointly address climate change — and the current American government has demonstrated it will not act in any leadership capacity — your ability to prosper, to enjoy life, to ensure a better future for your children will falter.

When 2050 arrives, you’ll be nearing retirement age. Today, you have about 325 million neighbors. In 2050, the Census Bureau predicts, the American population may exceed 450 million people. Your children will see the 22^nd century. More people facing a warming climate with consequences just becoming visible.

It’s important you vote Nov. 6. It’s equally important that you vote in 2020 and 2022. That’s how long it will take you to throw out every member of Congress — regardless of party — and replace them.

Why is that important? You are under 30 years old. Members of Congress average more than a quarter of a century older than you. More than half of the senators up for election this year are more than 65 years old. The Democratic House leadership averages 72 years old; the GOP leadership, 48 years old. Both parties’ committee chairs and ranking members are about 60 and older.

Because they are considerably older than you, they will be dead and gone when the harshest consequences of climate change descend on you.

You will be left — alive and hopefully healthy — to resolve the issues of finding electricity without generation of methane and carbon dioxide, dealing with the destruction caused by more frequent and stronger storms, and figuring out to best work with other nations in humanity’s common interest. That will cost trillions of dollars. (Imagine the impact of those costs on your taxes.)

Throw them all out. Every. Last. One. Members of the current 115^th Congress, one of the oldest on record, have failed to act in the nation’s best interest in regard to climate change.

Throw them all out. Replace them with younger members of Congress who understand and respect science. Replace them with your peers who seek humanity’s betterment rather than merely acquiring and holding on to power for self-enrichment. Replace them with those who will legislate wisely instead of obstruct foolishly.

Throw. Them. All. Out.

Seven years ago I wrote about the attainment of loyalty. Now, with deepening  sadness, I confront the loss of loyalty and its emotional costs.

As I have aged, loyalty, at least in the world as I see it, has trended to the transactional. No one needs look farther than the current president for a model definition of transactional loyalty.

Think of it like this: Who can do what with the least cost to and most benefit for me? We all have, perhaps, a nuance of transactional thinking in our dealings with others. We act with seeming kindness and generosity without request, but in the back of our minds, are we thinking, “This is an investment for some future return”?

Prominent in our heavily mediated world are exemplars of false loyalty practiced with cunning artifice. I suspect most of us have felt the sudden breach of loyalty, the feeling of back-stabbing betrayal — or, to be blunt, “I just got fucked over …” That nauseating sensation burns for a long time.

So what element of loyalty necessary for selfless service to another is missing?

Seven years ago, I wrote:

Nearly half a century ago, a friend sent me a telegram from half a continent away. “I need help,” it said. I replied: “En route.” I fired up my old LandCruiser and drove through winter’s wrath to get to him. Loyalty? Obligation? Duty? All, perhaps.

He trusted me to come. He had seen in me reliability, truth in speech and action, an ability to look past my own interests for the sake of his, and a strength of friendship well bonded. He trusted me to act in his best interests despite any risk to mine. He trusted me without reservation.

But in this world too often dominated by transactional thinking, trust has congealed into one shallow meaning — be damn sure the other guy covers his or her end of the deal.

That makes me feel trust as a significant human value is dying, if not already dead and cold in the ground. Still, if I expect to grant and receive loyalty, shouldn’t I despite the prevailing winds retain and exhibit the ability to trust?

Try to choose potential components of loyalty from among the field of more publicly prominent and mediated emotions — such as fear, hate, anger, rage. Can loyalty exist with inclusion of such baser emotions as its bonding agents? In our tribalized society, these emotions do present organizing calls for common ground. But I cannot see any of them as the heart of loyalty — only as messaging for recruitment for  causes with dubious merit.

Can a single act of betrayal destroy loyalty? Can that one act be forgiven? Does forgiveness rest on the nature of the precipitating event for the betrayal and whether such an event is likely to recur? I don’t know, but I’ve experienced both.

Over time, can loyalty fall victim to resentment for another’s isolated act that seems thoughtless at best or cruel at worst? Or is resentment the consequence of a loss of trust wrought by the act? Some scars run deep and are seemingly unforgiveable.

The trust embedded in loyalty can be lost with a single thoughtless act even if the actor is just temporarily blind to the value of loyalty. Or a weakening trust, eroded slowly over time like rain and wind grinding against bedrock, can fracture loyalty by taking its existence for granted.

I think the former is forgivable. Who hasn’t acted in the heat of the moment without thought of consequences? But the latter? I think not. It reflects a lack of commitment and selflessness. It signals that trust (and love) only faintly binds two people.

The disintegration of trust can be as swift as the death of an expectation of behavior in a crisis — Why didn’t you trust me to act in your best interests regardless of mine?

Loyalty needs love as much as it needs trust. I’m hard pressed to say which of those two ingredients is more important. How can love exist without trust? How can trust exist without love?

When loyalty eventually evaporates, through inattention or neglect, only a reactive, often transactional charade of a relationship remains, empty of trust and incapable of selfless love. Such past moments, and recognition of my own careless roles in those failures, have produced the deepest sadness I have ever known. Perhaps that’s why melancholy is the emotion that dominates my life.

Rebuilding trust, let alone loyalty, may be among the most difficult tasks two people can attempt. It requires two partners already feeling “burned” who may bring to the effort a wariness too deep to overcome.

Attend to loyalty with love, trust, and, where possible, passion. Loyalty is rarely regained without as much pain in restoring it as in losing it.

h/t: Ars Skeptica, Doc WinterSmith

Journalists report on the world’s important issues primarily in two languages — those of politics and economics.

When a budding college journalist asks me what she should minor in or take as a second major, my reply is swift but bitter: “As much as it disgusts me, take every course you can in political science and economics.”

“Why?” she asks.

“Because,” I reply, “if you can’t speak those two languages, then you’ll be clueless about what the major players driving the agendas are saying. You’ll be shut out of covering, let alone understanding, major issues.”

“Why does that disgust you?”

“Why should the world’s problems be examined from only two perspectives?” I counter. “That limits the range and types of potential solutions.” 

For example, the disciplines housed in the broad field of social science, which is where political science and economics find their homes, differ in two fundamental ways. Each has a different set of assumptions that mark the boundaries of the disciplines; each asks different questions, which also marks the boundaries of the discipline.

Where boundaries exist, vision is limited. That’s why my advice that young journalists should study political science and economics frustrates me: It gets them into the conversation but it traps them into the same boundaries marked by the other participants in that conversation.

Imagine a climate scientist (a real one), a wildlife biologist with an artist’s perspective, an Inuit seal hunter, an economist, and a political scientist sitting at a table pondering the urgent questions posed by accelerating climate disruption. Would they produce richer, more insightful, more potentially successful avenues of human action as a basis for public policy? I don’t know. Journalists don’t know, either. So perhaps they should seek people from such disparate disciplines to interview.

It’s important, of course, for journalists to report fully and faithfully what is said (and done) by those politicians and economists customarily sitting at the table.

But it’s equally important for journalists to report what disciplines of art, science, and even religion are not at the table and therefore unable to be heard.

Who can speak and who can’t underlies so much of how public policy is crafted. Journalists are responsible for making that clear and identifying who’s in and who’s out.

Will different voices help craft better public policy and produce social sanity instead of turgid tribalism?

I don’t know.  But I look around, and I can’t imagine those different voices making our lives more miserable than our current mainstream diet of politicians and economists.