I write this on the morn of election day, in the Year of Our Lord 2020 (and what a fraught phrase that is!).
These past few weeks, I have noticed increasingly tense private comments and media commentary from those NOB. People cast this election as Good versus Evil. They question any outcome other than the one they want as fixed or fraudulent. They ascribe the worst of intentions to the other side: Racism or Communism, Fascism or Lawlessness, Theocracy or Enforced Atheism. Major media sources have articles about ‘how to survive election day’ or ‘how to prevent an election-induced panic attack’ or ‘how to deal with them,’ the loathsome other.
I don’t see it. First off, hyperbole sells papers (or ratings), so to speak. And people naturally engage in it. But do you really believe it? Imagine this: thirty years from now, your great-great grandchildren ask you: “what did you do in the great battle of good versus evil, Gramps?” You take a deep breath and intone, “Well, I liked a bunch of FaceBook posts, I shared some disparaging pictures on Instagram, I did a mess of re-tweets, and I voted!” Harrumph. No, if you really believe this is a metaphysical contest of Good versus Evil, you would be cleaning your rifle and organizing for battle. But you’re not. Because it isn’t.
I continue to suggest this election is simply, well, another vote. That the trends which led to the Trump Presidency remain in effect, and that President Trump is more a symptom of those trends than the cause (although I admit he contributes, oh, does he contribute!). What are those trends?
The coarsening of our culture. It is now acceptable to use public vulgarity to refer to elected officials. People attack one another not as “wrong” but as racist or anti-American. Those with whom you disagree must be hounded out of restaurants, or off social media, or out of jobs.
The acceptability of violence. Have a traffic dispute? Shoot it out. Police default to escalation, again and again and again. Looting is either promoted or defended as the associated protests are mostly peaceful (a wonderful euphemism, that).
The reliance on emotion or feeling over facts. Masks work, people. The Y chromosome is real, folks. The climate is changing, y’all. Everybody was once an embryo (and vice versa). One can argue with how we put those facts into perspective for public policy, but now we simply choose to ignore the ones we don’t like.
And that’s just off the top of my head. So we’re doomed, right? Nope, not at all. History provides a clue, for those willing to study and learn from it.
The 1864 election looked to be a cliff hanger until Generals Grant and Sherman provided military victories and the resulting enthusiasm carried Abraham Lincoln in a landslide to a second term. You want a Good versus Evil election? Lincoln versus McClellan, who wanted an amicable peace permitting the continuation of slavery in the South. You think it’s violent now? How about an election during a civil war!
What’s the lesson for today? Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is a masterpiece of brevity and grace. In the face of hundreds of thousands dead, facing more violence to come, he spoke only of reconciliation:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln put his policies where his words led, clearly articulating that mercy–not retribution–would be the defining characteristic of the reunited Union. His stand was so powerful that when he was assassinated by the very enemies he welcomed as fellow citizens, his Cabinet continued his merciful policies amidst cries for general vengeance. If Lincoln could forgive the South, how can we claim to be more aggrieved?
So take a few deep breaths and enjoy Fall today. Have a glass of wine or bourbon and go to bed early tonight. Wake up tomorrow to a new day, whoever is President-elect. Make a commitment to be more merciful to those with whom you disagree. It’s a great start.
“For the measure with which you measure shall be measured out to you.”
They are funny things, those words. Anyone who travels to faraway places and has to live by gesturing instantly recognizes how critical they are. Sign language aside, words are critical to communication. It’s one thing to travel to Lithuania and see a sign you can’t quite understand; it’s something else to see a sign whose characters are not of your ken! Words are important. Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote “the pen is mightier than the sword” and we nod, because a man armed with the latter can kill only one at a time, but a man armed with the former can kill en masse.
At the same time, words are so commonplace we take them for granted. Writing well takes time and effort, while writing a lot is easy. The French polymath Blaise Paschal once ended a letter thus: “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” We downplay the effect of words: “Sticks & stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is a great children’s rhyme and terrible psychology. “Deeds not words” clearly places the active life as more important. Any police detective (or teacher, or priest, or . . .) can tell you that when we want to dissemble, we become voluble. That is, our lies involve more words than our truths. “Let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no’; anything more is from the Evil One.”–Matthew 5:34.
Modern technology even fills in words for us–mostly wrong ones, to much hilarity. The Internet is a source of unending streams of words, including this blog. Twitter will test whether the natural process of evolution continues. It has reduced communication to cue-less, clueless tweets, where words are replaced by emojis, and emotions are more highly-prized than thoughts. It remains to be seen whether this particular advance in communication will be naturally selected to survive.
The power of words depends upon their meaning. After all, words are just collections of letters representing sounds. If we agree what a word means, we can use that understanding to accomplish much: to barter, to pray, to argue, to convince, to plead, to congratulate, to joke, to love. But only if we understand the words themselves, and they–the words–are not static. I think I first realized I was a conservative of sorts when I felt the keen desire to stand athwart the highway of progress and say “No further!” to ever-worse grammar and usage. The other day, I saw a reference to the enormity of a baseball stadium (“Why, was it Yankee stadium?” I mused). But awful used to mean “worthy of awe” and to fathom was to measure (the distance of one’s arms outstretched).
Some suggest that the hidden power of the English language is its ability to adapt: to change meaning as necessary, to borrow words and phrases from other languages, to make new words easily. I agree. Yet in the end all the flexibility and nuance and versatility must yield to one thing: meaning. And the meaning of words is a two-party action; are you inferring what I’m implying? I have never forgotten the Washington DC story about a guy who lost his District government job for using the word “niggardly” which a co-worker thought was a racial slur. The there’s this New York Times piece (a very interesting one about the Defund the Police effort in Minneapolis) that ends quoting an activist who uses they/their pronouns: as a result, it is impossible to understand what they meant or to whom they were referring!
It goes way beyond simple homonyms or even words with new, changed meanings. We give words meaning based on how we feel about who says them. Check out these quotes:
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
FDR, First Inaugural address
“We are at war, . . . I ask you to be responsible all together and not to give in to any panic”
Emmanuel Macron
“Don’t panic, but don’t think for a moment that he or she doesn’t really matter. No one is expendable. Everyone counts, it takes all our efforts.”
Angela Merkel
“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.”
Donald Trump
“Don’t Fear the Reaper”
Blue Oyster Cult
Okay the last one was just an excuse for a video, but hey, oddly appropriate, no?
In the cold spacing of text on the page, the quotes are quite similar. But how we interpret those quotes comes through a lens of exactly who said just what and when. The words matter, but just so. When the meaning of words becomes a point of contention, democratic discussion becomes difficult. If we can’t communicate, we can’t argue, we can’t even discuss, and we can’t ever agree.
I noticed this recently in a social media discussion spurred on by the Amy Coney Barrett nomination for the Supreme Court. And it bears on the meaning of the word “handmaid.” Some of my friends knew the word primarily from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and they inferred a negative connotation of feminine submission. Which is accurate IF your point of view stems from Atwood’s dystopian novel. But the word has a historical association which is positive, connoting agency demonstrated by willingness to align one’s will with God’s Will (To be concise, Adams’s sin was to place his will over God’s, while Mary’s fiat reordered mankind’s relationship with God back to what He originally intended). I’m not asking you to believe any of that, but you must acknowledge this other interpretation was the primary understanding of the term handmaid from antiquity until, oh, say 1985. If you hear the word handmaid and recoil, while I hear it and mutter “thanks be to God,” we’ll have trouble discussing it further.
Words matter. They can inspire people to do amazing things, or strike fear into the innocent heart. But only if we know what they mean. “I do” is a memorable phrase only if it means something more than “I do, mostly.” I wonder: is our societal stress caused by misunderstanding (willful or unintentional), or is the lack of agreement over meaning the symptom of that stress?
There was a news item the other day you might have missed, in all the to’ing and fro’ing over the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. By the by, I found the trolling over the death of this great American to be in bad taste. People on both sides immediately began arguing over her Supreme Court seat like greedy relatives clutching at jewelry. How about a moment of silent reflection or a prayer, in place of politics, calls for violence or virtue signalling?
But this is not about that. It’s about the news you missed. Seems they discovered the first automobile ever created. Intact. And still functioning, if by functioning you mean capable of moving its passengers forward under its own power, which was/is not much. Which is pretty amazing for a two-hundred and thirty-one year old piece of equipment.
This is a really old car. Really.
Now most cars don’t last a decade, but back in the day, they built them to last. Its longevity stems from the fact the owning family kept up with the maintenance, periodically making small changes here and there, but mostly because the family still had the original owner’s manual–on parchment!
The car ran on burning logs, but was eventually upgraded to charcoal & steam. There was that time a nephew decided to pour ethanol into the water pipes in a misguided attempt to “supercharge” performance. That explosion precipitated a replacement, gas-powered engine for the car and a trip to reform school for the nephew.
The family likes to tell the story about the odd shaped device near the driver’s seat: it easily held a Big Gulp, so it must be a cup-holder, or so they thought. But upon consulting the manual, they realized it was originally a spitoon which had transformed into an ashtray before settling on its current usage.
Of course the car had to change with the times: pulling into a gas station and asking for fireplace logs is a drag. Replacing the solid tires with inflatable ones was very popular, but then there were those annoying flats. But the family kept returning to the manual to see what was what, and why things were the way they were. And to understand how all the various moving parts worked together to create a functioning . . . car.
When Uncle Rico got a little tipsy and tried to drive it into the lake, claiming it would float, the car did not behave like a boat, because it was a car. The manual helped explain how to dry it out, and if the family had wanted, they could have used the manual to figure out how to seal the undercarriage and make it float. But then it would be a floating car, not a boat.
What’s the point, you ask (if you haven’t been checking the links above)? Well, obviously, it pays to know something about a device, a vehicle, heck even a recipe before changing it. Not just what it says, but what did the people who originally designed it mean when they wrote the manual. If you’ve stayed with me this far, but still haven’t caught on, you just received a brief parable on the judicial concept of originalism.
Why? That goes back to my original lede, about the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When I heard she had lost her battle with cancer, the first thing (after a brief prayer) I thought of was how happy she would be to see her good friend Antonin Scalia again. When I first mentioned their friendship (upon Scalia’s death), I was scolded by some progressive friends saying “the notorious RBG” was only being polite if she did indeed say anything nice about Scalia. Au contraire, they were close friends whose families spent New Year’s Eve together.
Scalia was the chief proponent of originalism, and he was so successful that he changed the nature of the argument over constitutional law. Justice Elena Kagan, no conservative herself, famously said “we are all textualists now” (textualism being almost identical to originalism), not suggesting she agreed with Scalia but that because of the Scalia’s influence, all justices had to contend with this judicial philosophy in the future. And they do. Which is a good reason to understand the concept–even if you don’t agree–and even at the cost of reading my tongue-in-cheek car story. And no, there was no “oldest car” found.
Finally, if there was anybody Justice Ginsburg should have loathed, it was Antonin Scalia. He skewered her opinions and reasoning, and she returned the favor. I imagine their debates in the afterlife would be standing room only, except they must agree on everything now. Few of us can aspire to the greatness of these two figures, but in their personal friendship despite professional differences, we can see a model to emulate, and one sadly in great need today.
We’re told this year’s American election is “the most important in our lifetime” and the electorate is divided like never before. A literal plague stalks the land, ravaging the old, the ill, and the weak. Life’s little pleasures (whether a block party, a child’s birthday, a student’s graduation, or a football game) are cancelled. Unprecedented (ooooh, that word) fires burn out of control in the west, hurricanes hammer the Gulf, and derechos bear down upon the heartland. You aren’t safe at home, but going out means more risk, and no one wants you to visit, anyway. Jobs are uncertain, schools are uncertain, and no one know when certainty will be a thing again. *Sigh*
When you see someone on the corner with a sandwich board proclaiming “The End Is Near” it’s enough to make you say “welcome the the party, pal!”
There are glimmers of hope and moments of grace all around us, if we want to see them.
Organized religion found itself off the list of essential activities, and this most likely accelerated the trend toward fewer faithful in the future. Yet the pandemic presented numerous opportunities for the faithful to witness their vocations and tend to the sick or feed the hungry, even if they could not attend to worship. Churches may be more empty, but for those returning, there is a palpable relief at what was lost and now is found.
America’s endless racial discussion has returned with a vengeance, but at least the current round has focused attention on our police forces: the ridiculous tasks we give them, the cynicism of the courts, the corrosive effects of dealing with mindless violence every day, the inapplicability of military-style solutions. Perhaps when the race-baiting recedes, local leaders will spark the reforms desperately needed.
Everybody I knew in my working life agreed that we all spent too much time and effort at work and not enough at home. My oh my, how that chicken has come home to roost! It might make even a committed atheist wonder about the Lord’s “mysterious ways” when suddenly everybody is forced to “work” from home. And when all the distractions (sports, parties, shopping, etc.) are removed, what we have left are ourselves and our families. What matters most becomes pretty clear, no?
Those same parents are learning what a difficult job teachers have; perhaps they’ll also realize how much parental responsibilities have been shuffled off to schools. Teaching the difference between numerators and denominators is hard enough; make schools responsible for ethics and morals and you’ll get the least common denominator.
Random acts of kindness abound: kids raising money to feed the homeless, landlords telling renters not to worry, parents organizing drive-by birthday parties. There is a great story to be told about how everyday people took action to help each other in the face of a pandemic which stalled our globally-connected economy while politics paralyzed our governments.
Polls suggest political divisiveness will lead to a surge in voting: talk about a silver lining to a storm cloud! I would prefer a surge in voter education about the issues leading to a surge in voting, but let’s keep to the positive side of the equation.
Science and the medical arts have shined. Oh, not for those who forget why it’s called a medical “practice,” or for those who confuse science with scientism (the latter a term for those who believe–note that word–science can explain all things). In the end, the worst predictions will prove exaggerated, and the researchers, doctors and nurses on the front line will be exonerated and honored.
There seems to be a resurgence in interest in healthy lifestyles. Exercise equipment flies off the shelves and people seek ways to shed those few extra pounds that came with enforced inactivity. Perhaps the spectre of obesity as comorbidity can–like the ghost of Christmas future–spur us to change.
Speaking of change, pets are getting unforseen amounts of attention. More people are seeking them and spending time with time; what else is there to do? It is not all good news: my daughter’s dog had a bout of nervous hair-loss resulting from not being alone all day! And animal behaviorists (yes, there are such things) say pets will undergo more stress when schedules return to normal.
But who’s to say what’s normal? Why should we accept the sixty-hour work weeks, the hours-long daily commutes, the absences from home or games or family? As a God-fearing man, I’m always looking for signs of what God’s will for me is. All should consider the challenge: is this all there is? Like a bicycle racer churning up a steep hill, we pedal ever harder and faster, afraid of stalling and sliding back down. This pandemic, this election, these climate events, like all the other “important” things going on right now, are an invitation to just stop . . . and realize we aren’t on a steep hill. We’re on level ground, and it is only our endless list of wants and needs which makes it appear to be an ascent.
Politics will not make you happy. Change will not make you happy. Success will not make you happy. I had to learn long ago that I am not responsible for anyone else’s happiness: just my own. You can be happy. It’s a choice. Need proof? Happiness can be found among the poor, the deprived, even the suddenly afflicted by disease or catastrophe. You can tell those who have learned this lesson: they are the ones smiling.
I don’t recall ever hearing this threat from my parents (correct me if I’m wrong, Dad). But it was commonplace back when, what you’d call a meme today. And I think it’s a good self-admonition, due to the growth and increasing acceptance of polemic language. Polemic language degrades communication, demeans both the speaker and recipient, and generally poisons the atmosphere. You may infer that I don’t like it.
What, you say, is polemic language? Let’s consider a hypothetical example rather than a cold definition. Imagine you’re sitting in a bar and strike up a conversation with the person on the next stool. After a few (too many) drinks, you’re debating religion, and your drinking buddy says “God? Oh, I don’t believe in God.”
As a Christian, this is an opportunity to spread the Good News; there are so many ways the conversation could go! You might ask whether your friend EVER believed, or what do they believe now, or even were they familiar with the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche (an atheist who hasn’t read Nietzsche is like a Christian who hasn’t read the Bible). But imagine the same situation, only this time your drinking buddy says “religion is just the opiate of the masses.” This phrase, which doubtless rings some bells, is a bit of Marxist drivel, and is polemic language. It marks the speaker as someone not interested in discourse, only domination. You can argue religion with an atheist influenced by Nietzsche, but not a Marxist.
What does polemic language do? It replaces thought with slogans, and not only slogans, but slogans designed to enforce an orthodoxy of belief. George Orwell’s 1984 captured the nature of polemic language in slogans like “War is Peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”
In today’s America, polemic language exists all along the political spectrum. On the right it is superficial and less well-developed, mostly revolving around invoking the terms “deep-state” and “swamp.” Even the latter term is borrowed, as it long predates the Trump administration, and was earlier invoked by Ronald Reagan to identify the cozy relationship between publicly antagonistic Washington politicians, who (along with their families and friends) seemed to thrive despite animosity or even the economic conditions of the country writ large. Progressives originated the term decades earlier as “drain the swamp of capitalism.” Since I previously remonstrated on the deep-state, let’s look at the other side.
Polemic language on the left is far more well-developed, primarily due to decades of work in academia. Theories of race, power, and sex developed into academic studies which generated an alternate language. And as any linguist will tell you, language in turn constrains thought. All this goes back to post-World War II academic debates over post-modernism: the notion that there are no moral certainties — or even truth–and that what we believe to be modern morals or systems are just the remnants of past power struggles. These debates matured into current theories of patriarchy, intersectionality, heteronormativity, anti-racism and the like. Click on the links if you’re unfamiliar, but be warned: like Alice, you may find yourself “through the looking glass.”
So what’s the problem with using such language? Don’t you (I) respect academic theory? Of course, I am a big fan of the theory of gravity, for example, because it has proven itself a useful way to look at how objects behave everywhere and always (except at the quantum level!). But these other theories are not proven, and in some cases are unprovable. Their polemic language blurs the discussion, and that is never good. Let’s take a recent example.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) opined on the statue of Father Damien in the Capitol building, tweeting this is “what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks [sic] like.” The statue is one of two representing the state of Hawaii (the other is King Kamehameha). Now it is true Father Damien was a Belgian, a man, and a white one to boot. By the theories of patriarchy, colonization, and white supremacy, he is guilty as AOC charged.
Father Damien seems unconcerned about the controversy
Unfortunately for the theories, the Hawaiian people chose to put his statue there, because this white, Belgian, Catholic priest chose to come to minister to the Hawaiian lepers in their colony on Molokai. He lived among them, cared for them, caught their (then) incurable disease and died among them. To Hawaiians, he was more Hawaiian than Haole.
AOC later amended her complaint to say she objected to the fact that Hawaii has no female memorialized in Capitol statuary. Assuming this is what she originally meant, she is correct. But that is not what she said. She used polemic language that was inaccurate and unfortunate. Had she tweeted, rather, “why doesn’t Hawaii have Queen Lili’uokalani as one of its statues in DC?” she might have initiated an interesting debate.
Now, if I were a Hawaiian, I might thank the Representative for her interest in Hawaiian affairs, and point out her own great state of New York has two dead white males (Robert Livingston and George Clinton) as its statuary representatives, and suggest she should perhaps turn her attention to getting her own house in order, so to speak.
But I am not Hawaiian. And this is not about statues.
If you see famous people using polemic language, beware. Don’t use it. If you think there are not enough statues of women, say so. Or that police stop too many African-americans. Or that television doesn’t show enough same-sex relationships. Those are arguments to be made. Slipping into polemic language doesn’t help. It marks the speaker as uninterested in the truth. Or maybe just as uninteresting.
And it gives credence to academic theories of little weight.
I haven’t been writing much about the coronavirus or Covid19 lately, as there is not much new to say.
What about the upsurge in cases in the US? Predictable, and in fact predicted by all the relevant authorities. Remember that the lockdown was designed to flatten the curve, meaning everybody is eventually exposed, just not at the same time. It worked, but that didn’t mean there would not be a continuing series of local outbreaks as the virus continued its unrelenting spread.
No breakthrough on a treatment or vaccine? Plasma is the latest hope, but it is likely not a miracle treatment. And a vaccine will come in due time, if at all. Yes, a nation like Russia can rush to announce a vaccine, but that doesn’t make it so. The world record time for vaccine development (for mumps) was four years; we’ll break that if (big if) we find one for the coronavirus.
Immunity remains unproven but real. A recent report from Hong Kong apparently confirmed the first case of re-infection. So while we don’t understand the virus very well, the millions of infected and recovered and the highly infectious nature of the virus point to only one conclusion: there is sustained immunity.
Media continue to play the “which nation is doing better or worse” game. Partisan media only grab select stories and feed them like red meat to the gullible. The EU is currently trending worse, the US better, and their lines will probably soon cross. South Korea has another outbreak, as does New Zealand. Germany restarted schools and is stopping them as each new outbreak occurs. France is on the edge, again. It’s a pandemic people, without significant treatment or a vaccine. It will continue to spread, until everyone has had it or is vaccinated. Those are the only two outcomes.
The latest from the Financial Times
So really not much new here, despite all the breathless news coverage. After my recent visit to the States, I will go out on a limb and make one prediction. When the history of this event is written, historians will point out how uniquely suited this virus was to attack the United States. Now put down your tinfoil hats; I am making no conspiracy argument here, just an observation. Based on . . .
This virus leaves most healthy people unscathed, but ravages vulnerable populations. According to the best data, eighty percent of Americans who contract Covid19 will suffer no symptoms (forty percent) or flu-like (another forty percent) symptoms. The elderly and overweight and otherwise sickly are endangered; the healthy and young not so much. This strikes directly at America’s libertarian streak, meaning we were never going to keep people locked down or under quarantine or even wearing masks for very long. With predictable results.
America is a world leader in the comorbidities which lead to death from the coronavirus. Not to mention, our fragmented healthcare system meant those with the worst or no care–and no paid sick leave–were most likely to have to work, either to put food on the table, avoid being fired, or because they were essential to the rest.
As a nation, we are more likely to place our elderly or infirm in institutional settings (whether old-age homes, nursing homes, or continuing-care facilities). Yet the staff work at multiple locations for profit-seeking firms unwilling to spend on personal protective gear, meaning we built giant petri dishes of infection for the most vulnerable.
Our politics were already so poisoned that simple health matters became political red lines. Some people take pride in not wearing a mask, others try to excuse participation in large protests. Expert medical opinion is solicited or rejected based on how it comports with previous political positions. Early on, the virus hit blue states on both coasts, and you didn’t need to search hard to find people blaming it on their politics. When the virus moved to the red state heartland, it was just as easy to find the reverse. AND . . .
Our constitutional republic meant persuading states to behave in a coordinated fashion, which wasn’t going to happen as long as political leaders treated this as another red/blue state issue. Democratic nominee Joe Biden just said if he is President and the virus breaks out again, he will “shut the country down.” Amazingly, the press didn’t ask how he would do that or with what authority. Were that it was so easy. BUT . . .
President Trump bears special responsibility for the debacle that is national messaging during this crisis. One role for the President in such events is to be reassuring, calm, consistent, and authoritative. He was 0 for 4 in that regard.
Despite good messaging, a quick response, and bipartisan support, the US experienced the greatest number of deaths (worldwide) during the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic. We didn’t do very well during the 1918 Spanish flu, either. Maybe some things never change. We appear to be somewhat more vulnerable-as a society and polity–than other nations. And the coronavirus hit the sweet spot.
Back when I was a supervisor of analysts (last millennium, when dinosaurs roamed the National Mall), I had a weathered, paper copy of a Washington Post article in my desk drawer. The article was a summary of data developed about income percentiles in America (who makes how much, from the 1990s). There was little dispute about the data itself, and the article appeared with little fanfare and quickly passed into oblivion except for my faded copy. Sometimes when I wanted to test a potential (or aspiring) analyst, I would pass them the chart and ask them what were the strongest analytic judgments they could draw from it. I made it clear “just use this data, don’t try to add to it or fight it.”
The Brookings Institute has kindly updated that data (here), and the Washington Post covered it again. Here’s the key chart:
If you want to go back to the commentary or data, please do so, but go ahead and take this test (mentally): what judgments can you draw from this data? Again, don’t fight it; the answer is staring at you!
Middling analysts would focus on the point that the middle class is disappearing. Well, the median segment did drop from 47% down to 36%. Yet all three “middle class” segments went from 84% to 85%. Some analysts wanted to argue inequality was growing since the rich segment rose from 0% to 2%; while inequality may be growing (Brookings suggests it is), it is not evident from just this chart. The lowest two segments fell from 47% down to 29%. The bottom three fell from 94% to 65%. The best analysts honed in on the most dramatic change in any single group: the 450% rise in the upper middle class, from 6% up to 33%. So the most telling analytic line is: more Americans moved from the poor, lower, or middle class into the upper middle class.
The data can tell no other story. Why? Simply put, for every person who fell from a higher category, more than one person had to rise, in order for the numbers to hold up.
Three additional points. First, this data is longitudinal, that is, it covers the same people over an extended period of time. This eliminates the possibility the changes in outcome resulted from different people in the study at different times. Second, it does not include government transfers such as welfare, family assistance, etc., so it underreports the actual level of income for the poorest segment. Also, other charts displaying the data in the same study point out that the number of people moving from one income group to another increased (both up and down), meaning these groups are not static. While movement down the income chart grew more, movement up by more than one level also increased. Which is a long-winded way of saying there is still considerable movement between the income groups, and more variability with smaller numbers of big winners.
This does not mean there are not people who have suffered economically over this same time period: by sex, race, ethnicity, undereducation, technology change, and a myriad other reasons. But for every such case, the overall data still improved, which is quite remarkable. Brookings made much of the loss of the middle/middle class, the growth (as they see it) in inequality, and the increased number of people moving “down” the spectrum. But the overall movement into the upper middle class is just as telling. And that’s a little good news.
The United States Postal Service (USPS): where to begin? A national treasure founded by the legendary Benjamin Franklin. A lifeline which literally delivered life-changing news: college acceptance (or denial), love letters between spouses separated by work or travel, family updates and sweetheart encouragements from home to distant soldiers. Calls to mind dedicated civil servants, deterred by “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.” A path to the middle class and the American dream for millions of employees, many veterans, all over the country.
And dead on its feet. A veritable “dead (post)man walking.” Or in the dry language of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), “unsustainable.”
The sad truth is the USPS as it is today can not long survive. Some seek to kill it and privatize its work. Others want to solve the problem by simply giving it more money. I favor neither. But before we jump to solutions, let’s understand the problem.
Everybody “knows” the Postal Service, but what do you really know about it? It has 600,000 employees (100,000 veterans) and 600,000 retirees and is an independent agency of the executive branch. As a civilian, it looks like a government outfit; as a federal retiree, I can say it looks that way to me, too. But it is very different. It receives no annual federal funding (some say “no tax dollars” but that is a mistake). Both Congress and the Executive Branch influence its day-to-day operations in numerous ways (just try to close a post office building and see how). Its employees have the same job security and nonpartisan rules (Hatch Act) as other federal employees, and get the same generous retirement and health benefits. They run a retail network larger than McDonalds/Starbucks/WalMart combined, own and operate over 200,000 vehicles and deliver almost half of the world’s mail (more on this curious fact later).
USPS was helped by its status as a government monopoly, but technology has proven to be a grave danger. Once upon a time, it was the only reliable way to get something from here to there. Over time, the mandate to provide daily delivery to every home and business in America changed from blessing to curse. New, more nimble rivals (UPS, FedEx, DHL) could run the numbers and start winning the more lucrative routes, and leave the less desirable ones to the Post Office. And then along came e-mail, e-commerce, e-business.
Is there any other kind?
The USPS has run a deficit every year since 2007. Wait, if USPS does not receive annual federal appropriations, but they run short of money, who pays the bill? They can’t borrow from a bank, nor do they have investors like a private business. Sometimes they use funds they should set aside to fund pensions. Also, the Federal government gives USPS a line of credit to spend on things like new infrastructure or life-cycle replacement of vehicles/computers. And USPS has been dipping into it to do all that, and to cover operating expenses. Well, someone has to pay the postman, too. And you do.
But wait, some say, isn’t the cause of the annual USPS operating deficit the fact that the government makes it ‘prepay 75 years of retiree benefits in advance, a rule no other government agency of private business has to comply with (sic)‘? What this Tweet refers to is the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, passed without objection by both Houses of Congress and signed by President Bush (43). Prior to this law, USPS made its own rules on how it pre-funded pensions, and set aside no funding for retiree health benefits. Private companies can always cut benefits or simply go bankrupt and default on pension and health benefits. The federal government recognized if the Post Office ever failed, someone would have to keep paying its retirees’ pensions and health plans, and that would be (again): you.
This was not unusual, since the federal government was likewise concerned about generous federal pensions and health benefits and started trying to raise contributions and reduce benefits at the same time. But now the USPS suddenly had to account for its large funding shortfall; they tried for three years, then decided to stop paying the pre-funding requirement for health benefits. So since 2010, they have defaulted on this obligation every year, and since they paid no money, it can not have affected their annual deficits. The USPS unfunded liabilities are now double their annual revenues. If they were a business, they would be defunct.
The real reason for the USPS deficit is one you already know: who mails a letter anymore? The USPS infrastructure was built for a time when they were the main way to get goods and info to the last mile (your mailbox). That is no longer the case. USPS total mail volumes started declining in 2007 (due to competition, technology, and the Great Recession) and haven’t stopped, generating losses every year. Marketing (aka junk) mail has grown to one-half of Post Office deliveries, even though its cheap rates mean it generates only one-quarter of revenues. Yes, the USPS delivers half of the world’s mail because it delivers the tons (literal) of trash you (like I once did) throw directly into the trashcan next to your mailbox.
The Post Office tries to reduce operating expenses, but as I pointed out earlier, there are both political and labor (union) issues with doing so. USPS has improved productivity almost every year, but improving a failing business model will not succeed. Somewhere the world’s best buggy whip maker can explain why that is so.
However, unsustainable is not the same thing as hopeless. If the USPS keeps operating as is, or simply relies on an infusion of federal dollars (or a relaxation of its unfunded liabilities, which must eventually be paid), it will ultimately fail. What needs to be done? I do have ideas about this.
End six days a week delivery. Who needs daily mail delivery? Only one percent of Social Security recipients get checks by mail, and that’s once a month. Even those vulnerable, at-home seniors don’t get drugs delivered every day. Splitting delivery into three-days-a-week zones (Mon/Wed/Fri, Tue/Thu/Sat) would halve the delivery burden.
Return to postal boxes where appropriate. Way back when, USPS only delivered mail to local post offices in cities, then people walked to the post office to get mail when they wanted it. Add in mandatory electronic notification (they already have this as an option) when you have mail (and what it is).
Consolidate postal offices. Like military bases, start a commision which decides what stays and what goes. Sometimes it is more cost effective to keep a remote site, sometimes not. Let a nonpartisan, business-oriented commission make the call. Perhaps the USPS could generate one-time revenue by the sales of some choice locations.
Encourage retirement. USPS does this occasionally, and it’s time again. Offering early retirement and retirement bonuses can help. In the end, a retiree costs less than an employee, and if you reduce service, you need fewer employees.
Double the price of junk mail. By the rules of price elasticity, this might decrease the volume by half, which would be a good thing. If the volume reduction is less, it would actually increase net revenue!
Publish data on package delivery costs. Post Office public data cites how much package volume they deliver and the revenue, but not the associated costs. It’s true they are often the lowest cost option for packages, but if they are losing money on every package, well then, the punchline to the old joke is “they’ll make up for it in volume.”
Invest pension/health funds in other instruments. Currently these USPS funds can only invest in ultra-safe Treasury funds. Like the Federal Thrift Savings Program (TSP), let USPS invest in other safe, but far more lucrative funds.
All of the above are in the category of putting out the fire, pumping out the water, and keeping the USPS afloat. But the most important issue is: What is the purpose of the United States Postal Service? If it’s to deliver what those younger than forty sneeringly call “snail-mail” to everybody’s home, it will go away. They don’t write letters, they expect Amazon or WalMart to deliver packages, they do all their business and meet all important deadlines online.
I wish I knew what the answer to this is, but I don’t. Japan’s Post Office is a monster in banking and insurance, and was once the world’s largest financial institution. Germany’s BundesPost was heavy into telecommunications before it divested into separate organizations. Perhaps there is a business model for lots of small locations and vehicles and delivery personnel that will work in today’s environment (and the future). I hope for the Post Office’s sake (and all their employees and retirees) they figure it out.
There is one thing that MAGA-hat wearers, Never Trumpers, and the Progressive resistance agree upon: everything–and I mean EVERYTHING– revolves around President Trump. Nothing better represents this delusional state of affairs than the debate over mail-in voting. To wit:
Supporters of the President are sounding the alarm that rampant fraud will accompany mail-in voting. President Trump himself has stated he opposes liberalizing mail-in voting because he believes it will only favor the Democratic Party; some Progressives apparently agree and have seized upon the pandemic quarantine as a reason to support only mail-in voting. For the record, there is no data that mail-in voting favors either party, and little evidence of widespread mail-in voting fraud. Perhaps your own view about mail-in voting is driven by these same factors. Please permit me to explain why it’s wrong to do so.
First, mail-in voting is a necessity: not everyone can make it to a polling place on election day. As an expat, mail-in voting is the only way I can participate. However, mail-in voting is an exception, not the norm. Why? While all voting methods are vulnerable to fraud, mail-in voting is more vulnerable (I’ll explain why below). Thus when the number of mail-in voters is small (as an exception), the risk of fraud changing the election results is also small, so mail-in voting poses an acceptable risk.
Second, mail-in voting poses a vulnerability even if there is no evidence of fraud. Several states use only mail-in voting, and cite their success as proof there is no issue here. However, who is interested in interfering in the state elections of Washington, Oregon, or Colorado (places relying on mail-in voting)? There are several nations (e.g., Russia and China) capable of and interested in influencing, undermining, or corrupting US federal elections. Moving to large-scale, mail-in voting changes the calculus for such nations and thus the vulnerability becomes a real threat.
Third, while the 2020 election is a federal one, everyone should know that it is run as fifty distinct state elections, with different rules in each case. Asking states to make sudden changes within months of an election, while their employees are furloughed or working from home, is a recipe for disaster, especially when both political parties are primed to cry “foul” at any suspicious instance. Wisconsin conducted an in-person election in the teeth of the pandemic and had outrageous, unfounded claims of vote tampering by both sides. States would find it difficult to make big changes now, and errors they make would only compound the confusion.
Fourth, massive mail-in voting results in a much greater time lag between election day and when the results are announced. In some cases in the past, mail-in votes weren’t even counted if their total was less than the difference between candidates established by in-person voting (i.e., the outcome could not change). If the mail-in vote total is large, all must be counted, and each mail-in vote requires additional scrutiny and verification.
Fifth, that verification process is also a point of dispute. Anyone old enough to remember the “hanging-chads” debacle in Florida in 2000 knows that the authentication of votes is subjective. Imagine the public debates, protests and the like as days lead into weeks after the election without a final result (and with constant leaks and charges of corruption)!
Sixth, current security for mail-in voting is adequate for optional, small-scale use, but not for widespread use. Every state is different, but let me use my voting experience in Ohio as a example. I am currently registered to vote there, a process that required only a government ID and a banking document with an Ohio address. I mailed in my federal postcard application for a ballot: it contained nothing more than part of my social security number and signature. I opted for an e-mail ballot, which I will fill out and e-mail back to Ohio with my signature. So the security involved is (1) my social security number, (2) my signature, (3) any government issued ID, and (4) some paper documents with my Ohio address. Let’s look at those in turn:
Throw out number four (documents with an address), as any nitwit could have forged and printed those out.
Social security numbers were commonly (and wrongly) used for identification, so the many data breaches out there mean it is likely your SSN has been compromised.
Signatures? More difficult to find, but easy to copy/forge once found.
Government ID? An American passport is incredibly secure, but your state driver’s license not so much. Yet both count.
The bottom line here is it’s not easy for you to pretend to be me and vote in Ohio, but it’s also not impossible. The real problem is not you or me, but . . .
Russia. Seventh, what may be difficult for you is easy for Russia. Or China. Or even North Korea. Remember when the Chinese hacked the US Office of Personnel Management database and made off with the Personal Identifying Information of hundreds of thousands of federal employees? What about the routine credit card data breaches; all that data is available on the dark web for pennies. When Russia was hacking into state voting systems before the 2016 election, they often accessed voter registration rolls. Those could not change votes, but they would provide the Russians with the means to affect future elections. All a foreign actor needs to do is submit the same federal postcard I used and have the absentee ballot sent to a different e-mail or physical address. Whether they may or may not have the ability to forge a signature, they could submit a vote, meaning some voters showing up at the polls would be told they had already voted, and some mail-in voters would have two ballots submitted. All this could be sorted out in time, but at what cost to the credibility of the election process?
Finally, remember that the motivation for a foreign actor need not be changing votes. As the Intelligence Community pointed out in the 2016 report on Russian interference, Russia sought to “undermine public faith in the US democratic process.” The partisan divide in the United States has made this Russian operation one of the highest pay-off influence operations in history. Intelligence officers will be studying that one for decades. And the last straw would be a drawn out, contested, post-election series of public political and legal battles as states deal with a backlog of mail-in votes.
And I won’t even go into the challenge to the US Postal Service. I know you will breathlessly await my review of the USPS in a future blog post (if you’re still in quarantine and desperately bored).
What about the risk of contracting the coronavirus while voting in-person? This is indeed a quandry. I support allowing those who are at risk (e.g., aged, suffering comorbidities, immunocompromised) to get a doctor’s note and vote by mail. But for the vast majority of voters, there is nothing especially dangerous about in-person voting, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. People gather and stand in lines for all kinds of reasons during the quarantine. And we make some people (grocery store employees, truck drivers) work despite the dangers because what they do is essential. So is voting.
I continue to support mail-in voting, as an exception, not the norm. I contend it could be expanded and secured, but not quickly or painlessly. Voting is so important, and in-person voting has many advantages in terms of preventing fraud. Please consider this issue with the seriousness it deserves, not as yet another simple Trump-driven dynamic.
One might assume (based on my criticism of BLM, “defund the police,” “the talk,” and arguing whether data proves racial disparities in policing) that I don’t think race matters in the States. One would be wrong. I have always stated racism is evil and evident across the globe yesterday, today, and sadly tomorrow. Which does not counsel passivity, but cold realism in approaching solutions. Solutions will never be total, only partial, and we must focus on continuous progress to avoid backsliding. But soldier on, we must.
If you have ever met a real racist–not someone just #hashtagged as one–you know that there is little one can do to change his mind. The repentant racist is a rare breed: not exactly extinct, but always on the endangered list. One can, however, conform a racist’s behavior. Even a committed racist gets tired of constantly having to defend himself from public scorn. Thus society made public use of the n-word so offensive it changed from acceptable (among many) to unacceptable (excepting rappers). What a racist mutters under his breath in his own home? Another story.
This is a work everyone can undertake: identifying the small acts of racism that occur everyday (ask any person of color) and stand against them. No need to be boorish: simply pointing them out as unacceptable will do. This is solidarity in action, and we all need to spend time thinking about how we enact it. Whom security guards follow in stores, when people assume skin-color automatically denotes wealth, why some people seem suspicious in some neighborhoods: examples where we need to check our personal biases and those around us. But this is no small thing. We can never ask people of color to stop thinking constantly about race if they are constantly reminded of it!
So much for atmospherics; what about policies?
You’re probably unsurprised I oppose reparations. If the sums were small and symbolic, I could probably be convinced, but then why bother? If you are in favor of the larger amounts being considered, I ask you to also consider the data on what happens when average people receive a financial windfall. It rarely turns out well. Not to mention, reparations involve all kinds of messy moral questions. Who is black, and how black does one need to be? This is the kind of racist genotyping the Confederacy engaged in! Why should the sons of Vietnamese refugees, the granddaughters of Irish indentured servants, or the great-grandchildren of Union soldiers killed at Gettysburg pay?
Racially-tinged policies are always a double-edged sword. Where there is a clear and proven case of racial discrimination, it may be just (and constitutional) overtly to consider race in the solution. Thus if a college or institution has a track-record of excluding a race, they may make a conscious choice to hire or promote people of that race for a time. But there is always a cost. As people of color so chosen will tell you, they suffer a stigma that they did not merit selection, but for the color of their skin.
Thus I strongly adhere to the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, who said “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” I mention this to note that the policies I propose are never tied to race directly, and thus avoid the stigma of racialist policies. Still, these policies would directly affect black Americans, the subject of our recent strife. I propose two policies. The local policy could be implemented immediately and make an immediate difference. The national one is long-term, designed to address historic imbalances.
At the local level:
It is amusing that big city mayors (almost always Democrats and often Progressives, to boot) rail on about segregation while maintaining the racist zoning policies that created that condition. There is a reason there are no affordable housing options in Georgetown, DC: zoning regulations. Before you finish reading this paragraph, Mayor Muriel Bowser could propose and the DC Council could approve the construction of small, tasteful, affordable family-housing in Georgetown. Mutatis mutandis, Chicago, New York and hipster Seattle.
You don’t need a legend to see what’s wrong with this picture.
Rather than trying to remake DC Ward 8 (the poorest, most crime-ridden section of the District), the local government could start integrating wealthy neighborhoods by (1) allowing affordable housing to be built there, (2) subsidizing the development and the movement of people to those areas, and (3) where necessary, using the powers of eminent domain (at fair market price, naturally) to obtain land. Why don’t they do it? Politically powerful and wealthy benefactors oppose it: NIMBYism at its racially-tinged finest. Despite decades of Democratic governance, most of America’s largest cities are more segregated than they were in the 1960s!
Is this important? Growing data sources show that one’s zip code at birth/childhood is a better predictor of health, wealth, and success than any other factor! We’ve tried for several generations a weird experiment in separate-but-equal: keeping poor people–mostly minorities–segregated but pouring money into schools, policing, and social services, with little to show for it (according to the protestors in the streets). Good neighborhoods already have less crime, better schools, more grocery stores and parks and enrichment activities. Integrating appropriate numbers of the poorer into such locations would involve little overall change to the neighborhood while reaping huge rewards. But don’t hold your breath.
At the national level:
Much is made of the relative distribution of wealth in America, including the racial imbalances. While some of the more exaggerated claims have been called into question, America has greater wealth imbalance than most advanced industrialized nations (and thus has it ever been, by the way). Furthermore, the net worth of a white family ($170,000) was almost ten times that of black family. Even accounting for the fact that the median white family was two parents with some college, while the median black family was a single mother with a high school education, this is astounding.
While I believe the breakdown in the family–specifically the two parent, nuclear family of yore–is the culprit, I would suggest the federal government focus its efforts on the children. Politicians who propose “baby bonds” are on the right track. Paid by the federal government to children when they reach adulthood, these transfer payments would help reduce the wealth imbalance at the critical juncture when youth either go to college or join the workforce (i.e., the exact time when some capital makes a huge difference).
The bonds should not be based on race but the financial status of the parent/s at birth: if below a certain cut-off, the federal government starts investing US savings bonds in a numbered account for that child, accessible somewhere between their eighteenth and twenty-first birthdays, payable only to the child (not his parents, nor his beneficiaries). The amount is open to debate, but should certainly cover a degree at community college. The money should be paid against receipts for things like tuition, vocational training, new job expenses or starting a business: not simply disbursed to be spent on tattoos or avocado toast (or a tattoo of avocado toast, even). Such a program has predictable costs (not all immediate) and could even be prorated to cover (grandfather, so to speak) some children already born.
Both of these programs are expensive, but we’ve spent trillions getting nowhere, apparently. Neither program guarantees success: for example, there is some evidence that racial segregation in housing is also a result of conscious choices by racial minorities. Both policies tackle root causes (lack of opportunity) while avoiding racially-associated pitfalls. These programs benefit from the fact they acknowledge the federal-state structure inherent to our system of government. They are eminently “do-able.”
Let me end where I began. Policies are all well and good, but remember, despite equal opportunity there will always be unequal outcomes. What we should strive for is the day when–even at first glance–we judge the other ‘by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.’ This is an unending task (in this world), but one which requires no political leadership or legal change, just personal commitment. Let us begin.
