By Charles Peek
For starters—guideposts from our prophets:
If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. -Samuel Adams (sadly, not the beer guy)
You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. -Jessica Mitford (lots of a generation’s consciousness started with her)
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. -Elie Wiesel (and so much for the both—parties, candidates, whatever—are equally to blame)
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. -Desmond Tutu
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. -Leo Tolstoy (get around that you so-called evangelicals)
Well, as most scriptures add, whoever has ears, let them hear.
Meanwhile, how some of the shenanigans of this administration are playing out in corn country:
The Koch brothers became, when there were two of them, the third largest political force dollar wise in this country, just behind the two major political parties—let that register for a moment.
That buys a lot of cooption of education and other human services. As do the ties to fossil fuel in Cabinet posts such as Sonny Perdu at Agriculture and the soon-to-go Rick Perry.
That chart is out of date, though still pretty accurate. But, just for instance, here are the latest estimates of the costs of trade wars to Nebraska’s farmers:
Alfalfa–$2.81 per ton, $9.6 million
Corn–.14 per bushel, $251.3 million (not counting the effect of cutting back on bio-fuels)
Dairy–.20 per hundred weight, $2.9 million
Dried beans–$8.22 per hundred weight, $2 million
Pork–$11 per head, $39.6 million
Sorghum–$1.69 per bushel, $26.2 million
Soybeans–$2.05 per bushel, $588.5 million
Wheat–.41 per bushel, $23.1 million
In my little county alone, that is over $14 million. And this is just the initial cost to farmers at market, not the cost to ag-dependent industries and businesses. And none of this includes the cost due to extensive flood damage to fields, buildings, and roads—no little part of it due to deferred maintenance on levees, dams, and roads, certainly the case in Nebraska. Oh, yeah: this also doesn’t include the beef ranchers’ losses. (One more: not the cost to the taxpayers of the increased subsidy Trump finagled to smooth over his loss with these major constituents, or the benefit of the Japanese agreement mostly negotiated by others.)
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Those were the facts for us as we lived through the first debates for the Democrat candidates. As the debates first loomed ahead, my son emailed me saying that every one of the candidates should begin by stating their belief that any one of the people in the debate would make a better president than the current occupant of the White House.
Surely one of the grounds for that is the potential each candidate has for restoring a moral high ground, a return to civility and honesty. This is the call that David Brooks has urged upon our political parties, and it is call that plays well with audiences wherever Brooks speaks, as he did this year in my old home town, McCook, Nebraska.
Subsequently, I found myself in a Facebook conversation with Duane Clinker. I don’t doubt either his sincerity or intelligence. In fact, on issue after issue it seems we find ourselves in agreement—which means, of course, that he’s smart as all get out! But I took the comments to which I was responding to be of the sort so often heard among disillusioned and sometimes disenfranchised voters, the notion that both parties are guilty.
Well, spoiler alert: it doesn’t take very much searching to find ways in which that is true—the so-called “Wall Street” support that both parties enjoy might be a case in point.
And disillusionment, from both political wings, is inevitable in a system where, to gain a nomination in either party, you have to appeal to its more radical elements—they are the ones who show up in the polls and vote in the primaries—while to win the election, you have to appeal to a wider cross section of voters. Then, if elected, many realities force you to govern from the middle, at least if you really want to govern.
But it doesn’t take much searching, either, to find ways it is decidedly not true that each party shares in our collective guilt even nearly equally.
I suspect every child left without a family, without medical care, without hope in a border detention center would be able to tell you that any one of the democrat candidates would be light years away from Donald Trump and the creatures who are to be found in his Cabinet after he “drained the swamp.”
And, despite many sincerely held political opinions, I suspect a great many Americans might feel that the quality of the comments in the first rounds of debates, while not all in agreement, not all even entirely judicious, did not create the crisis fatigue that the daily Twitter barrage has created for us all.
One other factor seems relevant to all this. I often hear that what we need to do is build grass root coalitions over issues where we have common interests and what we don’t need to do is ask for or expect the majority of Trump supporters to ever admit they were wrong and change their minds. I can see a lot of wisdom in the grass roots argument, but I don’t think it necessarily calls for giving up on the moral goodness of those we disagree with.
I know too many fine ranchers, farmers, and business people
who, sadly, gave Trump their whole-hearted support, many of them even now
continuing to do so. But I know that they are people capable of admitting when
they are wrong. I don’t think we should sell them short.
In fact, before I changed my own mind, this was my principle objection to
impeachment: the voters got us into this and, if America is to regain any moral
trajectory, it is that same electorate who has to get us out of it. (Impeachment,
however, does not prevent that from taking place, and the polls now suggest
impeaching is “trending.”)
Changes of mind have happened before, sometimes spurred by facts that impeachment hearings uncovered. A lot of formerly staunch Republicans put FDR in office and kept him there. A lot of people who liked Ike voted for JFK. Many union workers for varieties of reasons voted for Reagan. Lots of southern Democrats were swayed to become Republicans when Republicans played the race card.
I’m not claiming that all those changes were wise or beneficial—or moral. I only point out that electorates change their minds and often that entails admitting they had been wrong on some fundamental point, or that facts and circumstances had come to mind that called for a change.
So, right now, let the impeachment hearings be vigorous because facts are what will sway the public, and lets dispel the lie that only our candidate is pure enough to vote for—there are real differences between all the Democrat candidates and Trump, and the most important of these are moral, that is deserving of support for more than partisan political reasons.
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As to the moral realm—and I think I have at least a little credential for addressing this—here is a passage that stuck with me and informed my years of writing about and teaching ethics, a passage from what I’ve always regarded as Solzhenitsyn’s finest work, his Cancer Ward (I’m using the Noonday Press edition, pp. 381-383).
In that novel, one scene casts together three characters: Vadim, Kostoglotov, and Shulubin. Because he considers himself enlightened, believing that unlike the others, his consciousness has been raised in true Marxist fashion, Vadim suffered from thinking “how much more important it was for him to survive than for the others.” He is in the midst of defending the works he reads as “the most interesting thing that there is?”
Shulubin asks him, “Here in hospital? Or in general”
“In general,” comes the answer.
“If that is the premise you start from,” Shulubin challenges him, “you’ll never create anything that’s ethically good.”
Shulubin presses his point: “You used the word ‘interesting.’ Have you ever spent five minutes inside a collective farm chickenhouse?”
“No,” admits Vadim.
“Well, just imagine—a long, low barn, dark because the windows are only slits and covered with netting to stop the hens flying out. There are two thousand five hundred hens per poultry maid. The floor’s made of earth, the hens scratch it all the time, and the air’s so full of dust you need a gas mask. And all the time the girls steaming stale sprats in an open at—you can imagine the stink. She works without a break. In summer her working day lasts from three in the morning till twilight. When she’s thirty she looks like fifty. What do you think? Do you think this girl finds her work interesting?
Vadim was taken aback. He moved his eyebrows. “Why should I ask myself the question?” he said.
Shulubin pointed his finger at Vadim. “That’s a businessman’s answer,” he said.
“What she suffers from is an underdevelopment of science,” said Vadim. He had found himself a strong argument. “When science advances, all chickenhouses will be clean and decent.”
“But until science advances you’ll go on cracking three eggs into your frying pan every morning, will you?” said Shulubin. He closed on eye, making the other’s one’s stare even more baleful. “Wouldn’t you like to work in a chickenhouse for a bit, while science advances?”
“He’s not interested in that?” came the gruff voice of Kostoglotov.
Solzhenitsyn captures precisely the moral focus we need to recover, for ourselves and our country. It isn’t found in bemoaning what some group or party we don’t like happens to be doing. It is found in our sense of being responsible to a community whose values we share.
Just as an addendum here, however, moral compass does not mean being ignorant of political facts and their implications.
I suppose that the recent meme about buying back the USA from Russia may have contributed to why I would think of a Russian text. Similar to the meme about buying back Congress from the NRA, these memes keep alive a conversation we need to have, in part about why Hillary lost the last election.
How do you win the next one if you don’t know how you lost the last one?
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There were, obviously, many factors, many even beyond the issues of the Electoral College. A change in any two or three of them might have delivered a different election result, especially given Hillary’s convincing win in the popular vote. Among those factors were most certainly these:
- Absolutely, yes, Russian interference in favor or Trump. The chief vehicle for spreading outright lies about Clinton in social media—Russian bots. Where are the old Republicans who would have been the first to bristle about Russian interference? One of the lies they spread was in essence “no matter how bad you think we are, she is worse” or (here we go again) “both parties are equally guilty”
- Long range drawing of political maps to gerrymander districts (which the “packed” court have upheld)—so it is very encouraging to see all-out efforts (Stacy Abrams, “this time fair maps” signs, etc.) to get fairly drawn districts
- Big Money! Another bad Supreme Court ruling. Corporations/Corporate money does not get a vote! Mad that people boycott places like Olive Garden because of their support for Trump? Then get Olive Garden and others out of the game!
- National Democrat Party attempts to stack the nomination process in Hillary’s favor, which went on to lose her a lot of Sanders supporters’ votes
- We’re not ready for a woman to be President. Oh, yes, in the resurgence of dead ideas that Trump has spurred, just as he’s spurred violent behaviors, the fact that Hillary is female was indeed a factor…and not just female but a female with ambition
- Bad campaign strategy on her part…which her? Hillary? Or Donna Brazille? I’m not sure. The fact is, Hillary’s campaign never really went where the dissent was greatest and never addressed some of the real concerns those who have felt threatened and disenfranchised (as opposed to those who really are threatened and disenfranchised). It was in fact a bad campaign—forgetting the down-ticket races, counting out the “red” states, stressing only policy with little about addressing the American people with facts
- Lester Holt and the precedent of his terrible mishandling of the first Clinton-Trump debate. Perhaps it is unfair to single him out, but he was the first to fail in his job—granting that in general the journalists have not been able to stop putting first what gets them readers/viewers in favor of a smarter policy about covering Trump…they share blame with him for “crisis fatigue”
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I’ll close with a word about the major political variables, first about the progressives in the Democrat party.
Yes, of course, the Democrats, as a party, can be just as venal and just as self-serving and just as stupid as the Republicans can be and these days usually are. (A recent funeral here revealed for how long Republicans have been lying to win Nebraska elections!) It is wise to support candidates rather than any party apparatus. But, as the passage from Cancer Ward reminds us, not every foundation can uphold an ethical imperative. Thanks to the current occupant of the White House and his legions, those imperatives are pretty obvious and grow more imperative every day if we aren’t to lose our souls as a nation.
Yes, the good can be the enemy of the better but this is not an election where that means very much. Now, the better can very much be the enemy of the good. Don’t sit this one out, don’t waste time on “feel good” issues when there are more important moral mandates and social concerns to be addressed. Even “impeachment,” now surely a moral mandate, is nevertheless not what voters need to see us busy about and even if articles are passed may come too late to curtail Trump 2020. If, for all its creative ideas, the left decides that paying back party moderates for 2016 is more important, we will lose in 2020. All of us.
About the moderates: moderation is, of necessity, how you govern and how you earn broad trust from voters. It is not how you tackle issues or generate ideas. The excitement that generates support comes from bold ideas about how we tackle our problems. Don’t help the right wing to denigrate ideas like the Green New Deal. Of course, just as it sits on the page without further discussion and refinement, it would not make good policy. Yet! But it is the kind of discussion that can end in better policy and better long-term shepherding of our resources. The sight of moderates taking part in the discussion would be encouraging to voters and especially to younger voters. Your role, as it has always been, is not so much for you to win as for all of us not to lose.
And, finally, about people on the political right. I’m sorry to have to resort to such a convoluted label, but I don’t see how they can be any longer addressed as Republicans or Conservatives. Running up the national debt to give billionaires a tax cut is not conservative and running rough-shod over Supreme Court nomination processes is not Republican. Neither are meanness and bigotry. Obstructionists like Mitch McConnell are neither Republican or Conservative. But by whatever label fits, the political right needs to know that, like all of us when we make a mistake, our mistakes leave us a lot of hypocrisy to answer for.
I don’t expect that there will be a veritable fountain of public mea culpas, nor expect any to reject whatever elements of real Republican or Conservative philosophy may have played a role in the 2016 mistake. Still, for anyone who made that mistake, admitting to yourself that you backed the wrong horse is important. Remembering that the end does not justify the means—that is important, and such a Soviet philosophy was never part of Republican or Conservative thinking. Sooner or later, if the Republic is to survive, the vehicle of the State has to move forward. Bannon’s Leninist nihilism and chaos and the Koch “wealth for the wealthy”/Nordquist “no new taxes” kind of self-serving are not the way forward.
The right questions about government are not its size but its purpose and integrity, and the right questions about taxes are not whether they are new or old but whether they are fair and effective. The Constitution clearly addresses the powers (plural) of government, not so clearly the power to carry out its legitimate functions. Stalemate has not solved a single problem. Instead, it has increased the power of those who resist the legitimate purpose of government. We simply have to show the Right where it has been wrong.
And about voters and candidates in general:
In the main, you may or may not be drawn to one faction or one party’s ideas. But here is a good test. Do parties and their candidates believe in their ideas—believe they are good for our country—enough to run on those ideas? Or do they have to pretend to run on other ideas just to get the votes to implement ideas they know very few of us would like. Believe it or not, on a lot of pretty crucial issues, there is a fair degree of agreement on the behalf of the majority of voters. I think the party, the candidate who best speaks to that broad agreement can win elections without running a bait and switch campaign and without finally resorting to an appeal to votes based on being “less terrible” than the other guy. Or gal!
So far, I’m pretty encouraged by the calm reasonableness of Mayor Pete and Minnesota Amy—and by the Elizabeth and Bernie’s plans to redress our current ills—and by Kamala and Beto’s challenge to see things from outside the box. But I’m not terribly discouraged by anyone at this point and Trump just handed Joe a big opportunity.
My biggest disappointment in the Democrat debates—how candidates seem to waste their precious debate time taking jabs at other candidates. Sure, argue policy differences if you must, but there is little evidence so far that the “attack mode” has changed minds.
I’ll just end with my original point: every one of you would be a vast improvement—so act like it!
Some of the opening quotes come from Anu Garg’s feature: A THOUGHT FOR TODAY
Some of the cartoons came from Funny Times, the charts from Facebook posts
Kearney, Nebraska
October 2019
P.S. Happy Indigenous Peoples celebration. Happy Columbus Day. Don’t like one or the other? Live with it!
Upcoming November blog: Who’s Right and What’s Left? Or Some Trump supporters thought they were voting for things we all want. Or What happened when you stepped on the brakes! Or this recent headline: DC Rawstory.com – rural Nebraska county that supported Trump now has to turn to GoFundMe for clean water. Or, having in October alienated all my friends on the right, I’ll do my best next time to alienate my friends on the left.
capeek 