American Republican Socialists

Response to Charlie Sykes re his March 3, 2020 Bulwark podcast “Heath Mayo on #PrinciplesFirst”

In the US almost ¾ (three quarters!) of dairy farmers’ expenses were paid by government during the 2005 – 20015 period BEFORE Trump’s additional massive increase of subsidies pushed it above 80%. (https://www.realagriculture.com/2018/02/u-s-dairy-subsidies-equal-73-percent-of-producer-returns-says-new-report/)

In Canada dairy farmers restrict supply to match a formula for anticipated demand. Farmers bid for quota amounts, competing with each other on price. No subsidies, none, zero, are paid to farmers by the Canadian government.

American dairy GOP “conservatives” are hard-core socialists when they are on the receiving end, but believe in sink-or-swim unregulated capitalism for others. Both Democrats and Republicans pander to the fantasy that there is some infinite market for dairy out there. Pump those cows full of hormones! Open up another facility! Vote for me!

I have just been listening to your podcast saying that there are principled intellectual disagreements in the conservative movement about a free market economy as if one had existed in Wisconsin prior to Trump.

Heath Mayo nods to truth by calling out Trumpist pandering to Appalachian white labourers, but carefully avoids naming either local Wisconsin dairy or the vast make-work project that is the American military. You, Charlie, use “conservative” as a synonym for membership in the Republican party.

Republican dairy farmers are subsidized more heavily than dairy farmers in the European countries you blithely call socialist for goodness sake. Your own use of the term “conservative” is clearly not connected to any kind of capitalism.

Mayo warns of philosophical erosion “once conservatism starts catering to interest groups” Starts? Starts!? This did not start with Trump. He doesn’t bother with the inane “Atlas Shrugged” fig-leaf, but the intellectual void that is Trumpism simply reflects back the same set of beliefs and attitudes that they found in the GOP.

The Republican party during my lifetime has been about nothing more than the fantasy that having European roots automatically makes you smarter and more industrious. This supposedly explains your own financial position relative to disadvantaged Americans and excuses you from any need to change the system. You wonder why anything other than blind team loyalty upsets “conservatives” so much. It is because what they want to conserve is not capitalism; It is the playing field tilted in their own favour.

Free Speech De-Toxifies Dissent; Suppression Intensifies It

Trump just gave his first foreign speech. Standing in Riyadh before an assembly of Sunni political leaders, Trump urged them to crack down on extremists and to “drive them from this earth”. He implied that domestic dissent in Sunni countries was due to the malign influence of Iran, a Shia nation. He implied Iran was somehow responsible for ISIS, on the face of it an absurd notion.

Trump had started his speech with a description of a massive arms deal between Saudi Arabia and the United States, followed by a rambling assertion that killing was evil, therefore they should kill more killers. Or something. Anyway that the key to a more peaceful, prosperous and glorious future was more killing. And definitely more arms sales.

He gloated that this arms deal would create jobs. At no point in his speech did he draw a link between 'extremism' and any domestic policies where these acts occur. Lack of jobs there? None of his business. Lack of free speech? He didn't say.

Republican convention nominates Trump

Trump and his most ardent followers do not recognize soft power.  They seem to be saying their plan is to increase the already supremely mighty US military to the point that 5% of the world’s population can hold a gun to the heads of the other 95%. Then they will ‘negotiate from strength’. This is not negotiation. It is Mob-style extortion.

Moral issues aside, Trump underestimates the much vaster scope of soft power and what it does and can do for America. Just as many underestimate the power of slow-moving flood water that nonetheless removes houses from their foundations and sweeps away large vehicles, so Trump mistakes slow and complex multilateralism as weakness. He thinks that inspiring fear gives him more influence than inspiring hope and offering win-win solutions. It is a naïve mistake.

Clinton has only a short time to educate the undecideds. She made a good start Monday with her Charlie Rose interview. She was clear, informed and intelligent but best of all she showed real passion. Anyone who sees it will come away trusting her more than they ever have before. I certainly did.

True Capitalism is Not Racist

Like most Canadians I live up against the American border, have relatives and clients in the States, work and socialize with Americans and am inundated with American media. It is no surprise that American political conversation affects Canadian philosophies and politics.

  

Because we actually admit to our Socialist institutions (schools, laws, roads, water management...) we are just slightly less liable to fall into false dichotomies, but only slightly.
  
It is time to start calling American Republican "Capitalism" by it's true name: Feudalism. This is why it is so comfortable for racists to be Republican; It is inherently tribal and elitist. It champions win-lose economic interactions and coercive social institutions.
  
The American Democrats advocate a Canadian style Capitalism- One which believes in removing barriers to participation in the marketplace, in creating an environment where win-win solutions thrive. 
  
This more modern style of Capitalism empowers individuals to express their own creative energy. It is the future.

How torture works: In defense of America

When Americans were practicing torture after 9/11 up until 2006, the horrors inflicted upon captives usually did not include concurrent questioning. It was done not to extract information at that moment but to deliberately to traumatize the victim in the hope that a particular mental transformation would take place.  We have a self-preserving instinct that can generate a genuinely submissive, passive mindset. This likely evolved in order that we not inadvertently provoke our tormentor.

Pain is not required. Fear alone will produce the Stockholm syndrome of willing compliance. All that is required is the deep understanding that we are helpless in the power of another.

Although practitioners of fgm cite suppression of female sexuality as its only purpose,  I believe the actual function of female genital mutilation is to cause trauma. The pain of having one’s clitoris sliced off must be horrible beyond words. When your own mother holds you down during this it amplifies the message that you have no refuge.

The function of this trauma is to convert women into slaves; To deny them the use of their own talents and energies or possession of personal ambitions. ..To render them compliant as providers of obedient sexual access and passive labour to whatever ends their masters desire.

Putting out an eye or cutting off their feet would have the same effect, but would be disabling. Further, if you have a cultural reverence for wisdom and abilities magically conferred by the phallus the effects of the process are given an explanation.

Before we condemn the long-halted American torture program, let us reflect on the fact that Egypt, besides ‘disappearing’ thousands of its own citizens, also slices the clitorises of over ninety percent of its women. This is still happening.

Contrast this with the American culture that made it possible to bring even shameful practices into the light, to reflect and to self-correct.

UNICEF Data: Monitoring the Situation of Children and Women  

FGM/C   (female genital mutilation and cutting)

October 2014
Country	FGM/C prevalence among girls and women (%)
Benin	7
Burkina Faso	76
Cameroon	1
Central African Republic	24
Chad	44
Côte d'Ivoire	38
Djibouti	93
Egypt	91
Eritrea	83
Ethiopia	74
Gambia	76
Ghana	4
Guinea	97
Guinea-Bissau	50
Iraq	8
Kenya	27
Liberia	66
Mali	89
Mauritania	69
Niger	2
Nigeria	25
Senegal	26
Sierra Leone	90
Somalia	98
Sudan	88
Togo	4
Uganda	1
United Republic of Tanzania	15
Yemen	19
Sub-Saharan Africa	39
Eastern and Southern Africa	44
West and Central Africa	31

Klinghoffer Komments

... getting caught up before we lose the light on 2014-
Here is something I posted elsewhere on Oct 24

Just saw `The Death of Klinghoffer’ interview on Charlie Rose (10/24)

“Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- On “Charlie Rose,” a discussion about "The Death of Klinghoffer." The opera opened on Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and is surrounded by controversy. We are joined by two First Amendment lawyers on opposite sides of this controversy: Martin Garbus and Floyd Abrams.” (Source: Bloomberg)

http://www.bloomberg.com/…/-the-death-of-klinghoffer-charli…

Floyd Abrams ‘accuses’ this opera of “Romanticizing” a Palestinian character, as if to dramatize a flawed human in a tragedy is to advocate or defend their point of view. He confuses understanding with sympathy.

Does he believe that productions of ‘Sweeney Todd’ encourage barbers to slit their clients’ throats? Does he believe that listening to the glorious music of Gounod’s ‘Faust’ will encourage members of the audience to make their own pacts with the devil? Does he think ‘MacBeath’ advocates violent usurpation? These are tragedies because humans are making the kind of horrible mistakes that humans make when we let our own anger, greed, lust or fear blind us (‘us’, not ‘them’) to the ultimate consequences of our own deeds. Passion can destroy compassion. This is the sorrow of the human condition.

Mr. Abrams is offended that a Palestinian murderer should be portrayed as human. But villains ARE human.

In the meantime those, who like Floyd Abrams let their own fears distort reason and rob them of compassion, argue that the only portrayal of villains that should be allowed is a kind of hostile caricature. This is the essence of censorship.

Justin Davidson says it better than I can:http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/trouble-with-klinghoffer.html

Democracy vs American Feudalists

The American Republican party is dedicated to exalting the power of owners at the expense of citizens. It advocates neo-Feudalism and calls it democracy.

Democracy elsewhere, including so far in Canada, instead defines the relationship between citizen and state. Rights and obligations fall to the individual in their role as citizen. I owe the wider community a share of whatever resources I momentarily control in order to sustain the environment that makes acquisition of those resources possible. Everyone benefits, me most of all, and I am free of control by any other individual, including my employer. The work I do is contractual and consensual, not coerced.

Taxes pay a pre-existing debt; They were never mine. Their delivery is just a matter of bookkeeping, not a choice I make to ‘give away’ anything that was ever ‘mine’. I know that everyone around me is also paying their share. The political system is just and open to anyone to participate.

Besides providing rule of law and freeing me from personal domination, the state also fulfills a larger public safety role. My food has been inspected. My roads are safe. I have access to good medical care. Universities are sustained.

Americans, on the other hand, seem to be recreating Feudalism. All rights belong to owners; None to the penniless. Medical care is a favour that an employer might or might not bestow on his powerless serfs. They have no alternative but to obey a master who has this power of life and death over them, for that is what medical care is.

People who can’t afford lawyers end up in jail on arbitrary charges. Conviction not only results in ridiculous lengths of incarceration, it also disenfranchises citizens of their vote.

The rich amplify their power election by election. The more the federal state is weakened the more the rights of Americans as citizens are weakened.

This is not a joke. It is the precursor to revolution. Republicans will inevitably discover that no one rides the populist beast and that Feudal control is not a sustainable system. Until the revolution that will sweep it away, Feudalism will progressively starve the commonweal of resources, impoverishing skills and opportunities, reducing the marketplace.

Feudalism is not Capitalism. It is at least as corrosive to markets as Socialism.

Finding your strength

Today Fareed Zakaria interviewed Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, 'David And Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, And The Art Of Battling Giants’. They discussed underestimated 'underdogs' including dyslexics.

The autobiographical anecdote told by one of Gladwell’s successful dyslexics fits a pattern I recognized decades ago while reading an essay about his own youth by Yousuf Karsh. A young person, usually just prior to entering adolescence, who has been struggling with rejection has a small, skill-based triumph. This triumph becomes core to their identity for the rest of their lives. It gives them the ability to tell themselves that "I can do this. I have this strength". For Karsh it was having the best snapshot among those submitted by two dozen others in his seventh grade classroom. It was one of his first uses of a camera and launched a passion and a career. He knew it was a good picture; This was not false praise, and it was the best among a group he identified as his peers.

This is why it is important for young people to make genuine efforts and receive honest feedback. Giving everyone an automatic pass or false praise does not have the desired effect. Recognition of a true success, even a very small one, lays a foundation for the rest of their lives.

A good alternative for action on Syria

Obama seems to have painted himself into a corner by drawing a "red line" last year promising dire consequences for chemical use in Syria. Horribly, escalation of the conflict seems inevitable.

Is there anything that can be done for the Syrian people or, failing that, to contain and limit the conflict? I think there may be.

Everybody says there is no good choice between Assad and the jihadists. Everybody is right. But these two extremes are not the only alternatives.

Sensible, responsible Syrians are not inside the country, fighting; They took their families and fled. Look for reasonable Syrian alternatives among the refugees.

The refugees are not just in UN camps; In fact, most are not. But wherever situated these people are in desperate need of material support. This support should be massively increased with a mandate to form self administered civil institutions: boards to arrange education and recreation for children; boards to administer health services; civic planning for temporary community infrastructure, to manage housing, sanitation, refrigeration, food and water, electricity and internet access.

Positions on the various boards should be filled by votes, not appointments. Those who prove capable and constructive would have a kind of legitimacy that no-one inside Syria currently has. The world would finally have a "good alternative for Syria".

Justice, Freedom and Iraq

I’ve been reading ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’ by Steven Pinker.

He marshals facts clearly and with authority. He makes many powerful arguments including, above all, this:  EVERY party in a dispute genuinely feels themselves to be the more aggrieved, to be the greater victim.

The only way to avoid escalating “retaliation” is to cede resolution to a neutral third party. Pinker names the growing authority of the state and with it state-mediated justice; He credits this with the global decline in violence over the last century or two.

On this, the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, it is worth applying this lesson to what happened there (Pinker’s book does not talk about politics. These are my opinions now).

When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003 they could have removed specific individuals at the heads of institutions and left those institutions of state intact. Instead, driven by a naïve belief that their own civil society was somehow the default if government just “got out of the way”, they destroyed not only Saddam’s administration, but the very state itself.

When you turn “justice” over to gun-toting, inherently self-interested individuals this is what you get: a crippled economy, rampant corruption and, always, greater violence. Anarchy is not democratic. Anarchy is not freedom. Anarchy resolves itself into tribalism and feudal society.

Even the least inhibited (they would call themselves the “strongest”) do not have the opportunities afforded by a controlled environment; Even they are not free as they crouch, armed and trapped in their own defensive postures.

Meanwhile, the civilized cannot function in the absence of functioning civil institutions.

The state does not impede commerce and freedom, it ENABLES them. The state does not, as John Boehner recently would have it, “steal” money from its citizens.

The state delivers back tenfold and more every tax dollar gathered: By creating choices and opportunities that would otherwise not exist; By delivering peace and prosperity, safety and justice.

Fascism is too much state control; Anarchy is too little. Both defeat individual initiative. In the vast space dividing these two extremes we have many, many examples of democratic states that work well for the benefit of their people. Robust institutions legitimatized by democracy, honoring democratically formulated laws, are not enemies of freedom but the very source of freedom itself.

American guns

The best kept stats seem to be for lethal gun use. Using these as a rough proxy for the ratio of times that guns are used in a non-lethal way we find that defense counts for less than 1 in a thousand times that guns are used. For example, here are some numbers from 2010:

    

There were 30,470 deaths by firearm in USA in 2010

• 19,392 suicides  and
• 11,078 homicides, including:
• 1,923 instances of killing during the commission of a felony, of which a mere 236 were the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen

You are 14 times more likely to use your gun to kill someone you know during an argument than you are to use it to defend your home.

 

A child in your house is more likely to use that gun to kill himself or another child than you are to use it defensively.

 

And you are about a hundred times more likely to use it to kill yourself during a bad moment than you are to use it against an intruder.

 

Over the last week I've been checking the claims that gun proliferation reduces violent crime and find them to be unfounded; The reductions in violent crime following introduction of "right-to-carry" and other state laws to encourage gun presence are no greater (actually marginally less) than year-by-year reductions in crime that had already been occurring everywhere in the US since 1990. More guns are not correlated with less crime.

 

Civilization "would be a good idea" but cannot stop massacres. That can only come from limiting civilian access to weapons of extraordinary destructive power.

 

Tweeting guns

So I finally broke down and posted my first tweet just now.

I wanted to encourage the excellent reporting by DonLemonCNN. He is at the site of the Sandy Hook school massacre and is holding the line against the "Guns don't kill people..." bullshit. Good for him.

I cannot just wrap Christmas presents while this is going on. I challenge myself to find the stats (FBI?) and discover the ratio of crimes committed with a gun to "self defense" (if such a thing actually exists) using a gun.
 
This is especially real to me because my personnal ancestry investigations turned up birth registries for ancestors of mine in Sandy Hook hundreds of years ago, along with expense claims for militia call-up of other ancestors. We are a records-keeping people! It should be possible to introduce some facts to the guns control "debate" about to happen.

Cut-and-paste lies did not work!!

Why the next four years would be different

because the next four years would not start with the economy in free-fall

If only Obama

From the transcript, about a quarter of the way through the Presidential debate October 3rd:

MR. ROMNEY: Number two, let's look at history. My plan is not like anything that's been tried before. My plan is to bring down rates but also bring down deductions and exemptions and credits at the same time so the revenue stays in, but that we bring down rates to get more people working.

 

If only Obama had pointed out that Romney's plan to "bring down rates to get more people working" HAS in fact been tried before. Regan tried it (remember the 'Laffer curve'?) and Bush tried it. They have also tried it in recent years in Britain and elsewhere.

Every time it has been tried, the policy of cutting taxes or tax rates has resulted in ballooning deficits.  Even when accompanied by savagely reduced government spending, as in Britain, reducing taxes DOES NOT result in compensating higher growth of the economy. This is supply-side "fairy dust" and it does not work.

If the new wrinkle is that the existing "revenue stays in" then how, exactly, is that supposed to put more money in people's pockets to create the predicted economic growth? How does that "get more people working"? It doesn't !
 
How can you cut rates by 20 percent and keep the same revenue anyway? Eliminating deductions can't do it. There simply are not enough deductions available to compensate for a 20 percent drop. Deficits increase,  rolling into an INCREASINGLY inflated debt.
 
 

Rep vs Dem model of how economy works

The pending American election poses one big question:

How to strengthen the economy ?

The answer depends on how you think the economy works.


***

Republicans think it all comes down to motivation: They believe that many people will work hard and be productive if, and only if, the alternative is starvation. According to this world view BOTH eventual success AND opportunity in the first place are created by effort alone.

In this model of the world the Haitian economy is a mess because people have found a way to subsist with minimal effort. Stop enabling this and everyone will get up off their ass and get to work.

Romney’s magic formula for economic recovery is to make real the threat that your children will starve if you don’t hustle; In his worldview, that hustle is the ONLY missing element for economic recovery.

  

***

Democrats have a different model: They believe that effort, though necessary, is not sufficient. Building a business also requires access to consumers, to a workforce with relevant skills, to affordable credit, to usable public infrastructure and to physical security.

Most of all it requires a functional education.
 
Democrats believe that government has a unique role to play in removing barriers to entry to the world of productive activity. Locked doors stand between many people and the marketplace; Government unlocks them.

 

Reince Priebus

Perhaps the GOP's Reince Priebus is trying to hide an uncomfortable truth... He is a secret greenie!


Reince Priebus
=
Prince Rebus [i.e.
 I b Prince ReUse]

 

or
maybe he actually is cold hearted...

Reince Priebus
=
Brine super ice

Justice and Mercy

By the end of his book Haight was representing Liberals as believers in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. He did not acknowledge the change in his position, though, so I wonder if the chapter 7 statements reflected an overlooked residual, pre-edit state ?

Anyway I still disagree with the author about a few points. He contrasts what he describes as a liberal lack of some kinds of moral measurement with more numerous conservative dimensions of morality as if these were opposing responses. I actually believe that mercy is often applied by liberals only after they have gone through the same justice calculations as conservatives. In the courts, 'sentencing' follows 'conviction', it is not an alternative to conviction.
 
This is not just a metaphor; Conservatives are much more likely to favour mandatory sentencing for crimes. Liberals can also believe an act is wrong, but ask that before we condemn the actor let us remember that the guilty are sometimes confused by complexity, mistaken about missing information or constrained by the power of others. These conditions do not make an act less wrong, but they may mitigate punishment.

For liberals guilt and knowledge are matters of degree. For conservatives, these are absolutes. Haight is mistaken when he describes Liberals as less complex or less nuanced than Conservatives.

Jonathan Haidt and the Righteous Mind

I am about halfway through "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt. So far it has been quite persuasive, but I just stubbed my toe on chapter 7: The moral foundation of politics.
Haight says:

“Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality – people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarentees unequal outcomes.”

  
I myself have NOT observed that “On the left, fairness often implies equality” of outcomes. Perhaps a handfull of communists believed that generations ago, far away across the planet but no-one I’ve ever met thinks it would be a good idea.
 

My left-leaning friends are just fine with unequal outcomes. What they do want to see is widely available opportunity… access… having a chance.

 

What anyone does with opportunity is up to the individual. We benefit from rewards earned by our own effort and skill. It is, however, profoundly unfair to condemn to eternal misery someone who was never allowed to compete in the first place, or who ran handicapped by illiteracy, bigotry, malnutrition or illness.

  
Taxation is NOT about redistribution of wealth.
It IS about removing barriers to competition and supporting a democratically designed institutional framework of opportunity and accountability for everyone. It is about public health and safety. It is about maintaining the system that made your own acheivements possible.  

   

Haight claims to have been raised a liberal, then he says things like this. It is not the first time in this book that I have questioned his statements, but this one is outrageous.

Hyperbolic Discounting

Hyperbolic Discounting is the act of over-weighting short term pain and under-weighting any resulting long term gain.

For an explanation of the term 'hyperbolic discounting' see the book review page of this blog. In 'Filthy Lucre' Joseph Heath writes in great detail about public policy implementation and the ways that details can derail intent.

In this post I had intended to share a few thoughts about how this concept resonnates with personnal freedom and commitment. I will, however, demonstrate it instead by going to a scheduled class at the gym.