Contrariety [sic erat scriptum]
"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." — Voltaire
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Why Nothing Persuades: A Cult of Vengeance and Vindication with a Dose of Addiction
Sunday, September 22, 2024
What Your Financial Advisor Won't Tell You
A good friend of mine this morning had a conversation recently with her financial advisor. She is a person of means, not only fortunate but beneficent, generous, and committed in her pursuit of character and spirit.
Her advisor warned her that the election of Kamala Harris would be ruinous to her financial portfolio because the Democrats would instigate a radical redistribution of wealth that would not only ruin her but likely the country.
She took this advice seriously, as well she should. This financial advisor meant to look out for her interests. He had not the slightest care for her conscience or apparently his own. The matter of character or morality never came up and that too was telling.
That he thought it irrelevant, or worse, a matter either personal or fantastical (and therefore airy-fairy, “unrealistic,” etc.) is an important part of the story. That finance has nothing to do with ethics as such, only the law, advantages and liabilities is the current ethos, it substitutes or supplants the need for a conscience or character. What’s “practical” is what serves one’s interests and that suffices the soul or, at the very least, manages us to dismiss the question as to whether we have one or need one.
In reply to this advice I assured my friend that the wealthy will never permit any redistribution of wealth in America: at this point in our history we are a transactional oligarchy. We have culturally internalized our greed, no longer concerned with any Weberian Protestant Ethic to keep in check the spirit of capitalism. “Quiet luxury” instead substitutes as another attempt to make inconspicuous self-satisfaction less troublesome to one’s conscience. It’s not that people are less generous---there’s a charity auction for nearly every cause. Rather, it’s that we cannot as a society agree that being good can be difficult if it demands moral justice that taxes; conscience is thus reduced to neither necessity nor luxury. To live in a reflective conscience is now simply irrelevant unless it serves an ideological need to go about life without others who are other.
We can in true American entrepreneurial spirit dismiss conscience as a personal matter, free just as we are in religion not to insist upon a public conversation about the good that would deprive anyone of the fruits of their labor. Everyone need only go about their own business offering occasional salves to conscience with volunteerism and generosity when those virtues seem none too intrusive. Taking care of each other, not just our families but our society is leap too far because it would insist leadership confront their own corruptions not just ours.
No doubt, Americans seem to like their Social Security and Medicare, that so many are dependent on this income and service merely to survive is not what we would like to admit. These social programs for the social good can simultaneously be demonized as “communism” with the same superficiality that makes “socialism” or “liberal” a near-profanity because it is at best determined to be mere naivete, and at worst a threat to personal liberty.
I told my friend that her financial advisor is right to try to protect her finances. Trump will protect rich guys like him (just as Romney would have though Trump may not have any such ability); they will justify their choices in the now respectable and tired claim that trickle-down economics will do its job: the rich will get richer and the middle will be satisfied with the crumbs. As for the poor, they somehow deserve their lot.
I told my friend too that I understand this middle-class privilege because I’ve also been lucky: I have a job with a steady income (that did not keep up with inflation, so like all of the middle class) and have saved from day one for my retirement. Of course, without Social Security, even when the house and cars are paid off, I will have to sell just to survive or prevent bankruptcy. The scale down necessary to live may have to be made no matter what I do.
I try to imagine what will happen to say my pal Mike, a successful contractor who paid for his kid's college, and works hard every day---he’s my age, which is to say past the age of full Social Security. He has no retirement savings, having been an independent entrepreneur (while I had the luxury of an institutional job) and so has no recourse but to work so long as he literally can stand. That the Republicans have vowed openly to dismantle Social Security and the rest of our meager commie pinko safety net is not something my friend’s financial advisor would have to concern himself with. He’s not dealing with making ends meet; he’s about securing wealth. Mike is, as he puts it, one accident away from catastrophe but until then he’ll carry on.
Our middle class situation is in reality not different from the past when the wealthy evinced no concern for middles or bottoms. To put it plainly, the wealthy control our means of production and our outcomes, and we live on what is left, the crumbs. In a transactional world where there is no moral care we can elect Trump---a person so depraved, so venal and mendacious that it is beyond any dispute.
I wondered aloud to my friend if her financial advisor had any moral education and that was no accusation---almost no one has since Vietnam taught us the big lies and the 80s enshrined individualism without any moral determinant, to wit, caring about others doesn't qualify as a moral concern when it doesn't make "financial sense."
I assured my firend that Kamala will talk a good game about reversing the wealth inequities but she will accomplish almost nothing. The money wins, that is a lesson we would be naïve to reject as mere cynicism. You might pay a bit more in taxes, I told my friend, but Kamala’s not coming for your stuff. We’ll be lucky if she can stop the Republicans from eliminating the only safety nets that middle class folk have: without Social Security, Medicare, the crumbs of the Great Society, I will end up like Mikey, just an accident or malady from selling it all to survive. That is our system.
That is also the world that will not really change if Kamala Harris is elected. If Trump wins we will have told ourselves, America, a much simpler, clearer story: that nothing matters but selfishness, that moral turpitude is excusable because we love money and need not trouble ourselves with character. I could detest people like my friend’s financial advisor who seems to have assumed this world view but I'm still too busy trying to figure out how to manage till death without going broke---having spent an entire adult life working for a living.
I have no righteousness or reason for complaint because I have no belief that Kamala or anyone is going to change the course of this transactional, morally bankrupt society that calls itself free. There's no place for me to run, no one wants an old man with modest means. If Trump wins, I don't know what my wife and I will do, empty-nesters and living in our autumn, but I think we shall see only a more violence and a more dangerous, precarious society. A Trump victory is a victory for a failed democracy if democracy ever meant something like the greater good.
We are as a society incapable of asking who we want to be because that would tax our moral character and our pocketbooks. The wealthy will find out that their choice ruined the world but not likely their finances: they will survive Trump though I doubt they will profit as much as they think. As for the survival of society, that is not in question so much as what kind of society we become.
I am not hopeful or joyful like Mrs Harris nor do I have any notion that arch of justice bends towards goodness. I will live as if those things could be true because despair won’t help and cynicism defeats every future. Everyday may America will prove with another Trump presidency that it is not worthy of its ideals.
I should like to live and die with ideals, the rest may be just survival. But as I said at the outset, I see no near end and that for now is the blessing. I think my plans, well-made as they have been, may pull us through to the end but for America I see a road already taken I am grateful I will not live to see. The future from where I sit looks far more dangerous than ever, no matter what happens to the likes of me.
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
A New Possibility--- Harris Offers the Alternative to Ignite a New Electorate
Harris rides in with an enthusiasm and possibility that we have not seen since Obama in '08. Had she gone through a grueling primary or if she were facing, say, Nicky Haley the contrast would still be important but this situation is noteworthy.
A few weeks ago she was not thinking of running for president. To take up this task now must be emotionally and intellectually challenging. Her honest loyalty and commitment to the Biden Administration made her one of his most stalwart and committed supporters. She was doing her job. Now her job is to rally the base and, quite possibily, bring new voters into this debate and conversation. She'll need help from those who can reach into that world---our media is siloed and sequestered as it has never been before. And she will need to help herself.
So far she has, at least in my humble opinion, been nothing short of brilliant. What we need to see the same maturity, thoughtfulness, and seriousness that she's so clearly shown since President Biden passed the torch. This will demonstrate vividly, unambiguously the kind of difference that will win Republican women, Never Trumpers, and others whose tribal loyalties influence their choices. But at the same time there is the opportunity to reach a generation of younger voters who have been disaffected and lamenting their choices. Well, the choice now could not be clearer. Keep dancing, laughing, being yourself, Ms Vice President: it's fetching, authentic, and convincing across the electorate.
We must not underestimate the vicious, shameless vitriol that will come from MAGA world. Those voters are, at least as I see it, unreachable. But they are also unnecessary to create a viable path to convincing victory. Harris simply will not appeal to the majority of those voters whose grievance entitlements, anger, latent and shameless racism are plain for all to see. The good news is that there are fewer of these voters than ever. How does Trump win new voters when Harris offers a serious, inviting alternative? I would expect the vaunted surge in minority men turning MAGA to flail.
Trump represents the past, both in the worst ways we have ever been Americans and in the more tangible and recent iterations. The current issues that Harris will highlight will not be lost on all voters but especially women who understand the threat that MAGA poses to their rights and the future---shall we add climate change, foreign policy, civil rights? Wherever we look the contrast in choices could not be more palpable or more stark.
The task is reach the majority, the solid 53+ or more percent of Americans who do not want the chaos and madness of another Trump Administration. Every day VP Harris and her cohort need to remind Americans of that derangement and delusion, the violence and incoherence of Trump. Do people really want to wake up everyday worrying what he will do next? What the next obscenity, stupidity, or impulse will create in our lives? VP Harris can be vital, a vision of the future that is at once stable, substantial, and reliable.
It is also possible to make this, as Obama did, a referendum on the future. We need a future emerging from a coherent present, an America that embraces change and offers perdurable truth and decency. This will appeal to those voters we must rally in the swing States. The message must draw out this contrast.
Do we really want to continue the ugly, pointless, mendacious, and chaotic conversations of the recent past? More about the phony stolen election? More about COVID and vaccines and injecting bleach? "Good people on both sides" when that means Nazi-esque nationalists?
VP Harris has a real opportunity not only to take us from this ugly past but to chart a future, a vision for all and for the middle class who she must champion to win.
I am admittedly surprised by the D establishment's solid, sober collective effort to unite and commit to a winning process. If VP Harris's performance continues as we just saw in Milwaukee and if she continues to win the battle of memes that will energize young voters, then there is a real chance. We must expect MAGA to be energized to answer to their cult leader. They will vote. Will we?
The election results could be decisive should a broad coalition of voters commit to the future and turn out. (Call me skeptical still because I prefer working the streets to wishful thinking.) We could really use such a decisive, unambiguous result. We know that the MAGA cult will accept no result but their victory, which is why a clear result for Harris in those Blue Wall States would be vital for our nation and our future.
With Biden in office, Harris the President-Elect, the next Jan 6th will be far harder to pull off---and that is not inconsequential. I think we can expect MAGA to incite violence every step of the way because that is what they have done in the past and have said they will do should they not be handed power.
But that is the future, albeit near and to be taken seriously. What is immediate is raising this threshold of enthusiasm to new levels. It is to take away the dread and despair that has, at least for me, been palpable and disabling. I confess that in recent weeks I simply could not stand the news. My tangible dread wore into my soul. I don't think I was alone in those feelings. Now, with real possibility and work to do, there is time to turn things around.
We need to put our collective best foot forward and do the right thing, day after day for the next hundred and some days. We will find out what America is about and even if that result is disaster, we will know something important, honest, real. We must rally to goodness, each of us, no matter how small it may seem. What we can do together is not small, it is a call to greatness and to a real future. To be frank, we know the alternative is ruinous, and that must not be allowed to happen. It is time to rally.
Monday, July 22, 2024
The Choice Before Us Made Clear
It's amazing what a pause and some paws can do for an aching heart. I had a long day and a longer night following Sunday afternoon's announcement that Biden was stepping down. I felt wearied, despairing, relieved too but wondering what comes next. I dove into pictures of the pup when all seemed lost. But even that was not enough. When feeling disconcerted, balled up, and woolly, I do my best to reengage reason. I think we need to be discerning. Ask the hard questions. This is no time to clutch pearls or form the circular firing squad.
We humans often need rage and the entire complexity of emotion to find our core but we always need calm to reveal its meaning. Let me be clear, I'm deeply, genuinely worried about our collective fate as a nation. I think there is also a plan unfolding for Democrats.
Since the debate I have not believed President Biden was in position to win reelection despite my belief that his presidency has been among the most effective and beneficial terms in our history. Not the least of his accomplishments has been to keep, as far as possible, the barbarians at the gate. This is no ordinary political opposition we face but instead a dangerous, likely existential threat to democracy and decency itself.
But now is the time to draw out the important real differences and choices that people need to understand. As usual, I need write to clarify in my own head what the heart feels when the turmoil is real. Sometimes a dark night of the soul and the very early morning need to meet for a good conversation.
By deciding not to run for his office in 2024, Joe Biden joins the most honorable politicians of our history. He has put country before himself and before party as a clear and unambiguous choice. This is not merely because he has been facing the very real prospect of a loss. Rather, it is because the president sees Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy. He has not been wrong about this.
I think we all agree to the latter point: I have been nothing less than distraught for our future. Biden did what he could to make his case, to recover but he has always been a savvy politician. Now all will know beyond any doubt he is both a wise and decent person. Republican responses will be as predictable as they are disingenuous but the facts speak plainly: Biden has done what is right thing, not the politically expedient or self-aggrandizing thing.
Republican responses will be as predictable as they are disingenuous but the facts speak plainly: Biden has done what is right thing, not the politically expedient or self-aggrandizing thing.
If the political calculation was that we were facing 2016 again, this time we know none of the supposed adults in the room who guided Trump during his tenure would be present. A next Trump administration would be staffed as such by the worst opportunists, cranks, and extremists. This possibility has not diminished one bit in the last 24 hours nor will it unless Trump is defeated. The courts are well-positioned to support a new, worse Trumpism. The corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court has already invited Trump to rule as king---or worse as dictator. This is what is directly before us.
Biden faced with this nightmare scenario, which he understood plainly in 2020, did the most courageous thing he could have done again. But this time he ended his candidacy rather than decided to begin it. How hard must that have been for him?
Faced with what he sees as a nightmare scenario both for his party and his nation, President Biden decided to end his candidacy.
I too hope never to become a defensive, brittle old man who cannot hear the concerned and rational voices of those around him. But I have no such burden as Joe Biden. We all must come to grips with the facts and in Biden's case that was the fact that he was the Democrat least likely to defeat Trump. Understanding this hard truth, he listened, understood, and made what is certainly a personally painful decision. (When my time comes, I hope too to hear the voices of reason and love coincide to reach the best choice.)
I don't know whether Biden’s replacement will fare better in November. But I do think there is now an actual replacement. That unknowing her fate is not mere cynicism but rather I think another fact. Having given this a lot more thought, I think Biden again made the best and wisest political choice. Rather than a repeat of 1968 he quickly and unequivocally endorsed his vice president. Democrats must coalesce to have a chance to win and Vice President Harris is not only the logical political choice but eminently qualified for the office.
What we need is a fighting chance, not a fight amongst ourselves that will leave us further fractured and incapable of rallying when our time to decide is short and requires communication and comity.
Recently, Biden said he was eager to get back to the campaign trail but now with Harris leading the ticket this kind of barnstorming and the vital messaging of policy and fact can be undertaken wholly, entirely. We know she can do this. So much will depend on how well she does over these next 100 or so days. She must project the clarity, stability, and competence we know she possesses as an experienced politician and as a person. She must be keenly aware that any stumble or gaffe will be used to declare her unfit while Trump bungles and speaks with typical incoherence. I do not underestimate her task because misogyny, racism, and history also speak plainly in America.
We should expect Republicans not only to go into culture-war overdrive but to exploit every fear, anxiety, and grievance their voters harbor. They will couch much of their criticism in typical rhetoric saying she is too Californian, too liberal while simultaneously claiming that as a former prosecutor, she is too conservative. In every breath they will imply that she is too female and too Black though they won't say that out loud---or maybe they will. Nothing is beneath them.
But be prepared for all of the dog whistles and gratuitous fakes that amp up to 11. Their constituencies will lap this up and Harris will need both to address them directly and allow important surrogates get out the message that these are wanton, indefensible attacks without merit. We're not facing anything like an ordinary election's usual vitriol. This one will be different because Kamala Harris is different in ways America must address as a feature of our history. The fate of the country is before us. Biden understood this. Harris does too and will have the determination to make clear the stakes.
Trump knows only narcissism and a personal vanity that makes him incapable of making such choices. What he does possess is an animal instinct to prey upon fear, anger, and hatred. It will take keen political skills in communication to break through such veils of delusion and disinformation. Trump has whole propoganda networks and billionaire support to shore up his base and amplify the lies.
But from today the difference between Democrats and Republicans could not be clearer. Biden's age is no longer a factor. Instead, it is unmasking Trump's increasing disabilities. Further Democrats must make clear that their younger, more vibrant, capable, and coherent candidate is not a party of one. Democrats are not a cult of personality driven by a bellowing, muddled raving lunatic. Only one political party has brought the adults to the room while the other proposes a would-be dictator. This message can reach voters in key swing states if it is presented plainly and honestly.
Virtually no Republicans called out Trump when he insulted veterans repeatedly or called the nation's war dead "losers." He has been found liable for sexual abuse, which according to a federal judge was tantamount to rape. He has been convicted of business fraud and has hoarded government secrets when he wasn't offering them up to our enemies. When he lost the election, he sent a mob to attempt a coup. Show those pictures again and again and again.
Trump is a pestilence, not a candidate for the nation's highest office. There is nothing "normal" here and that must not be understated. With Biden stepping down all false equivalency can end. Biden is not only a good man but has a record of accomplishment. That record can and must be run on, voiced with conviction for all the genuine good that it has produced. The contrast could not be plainer: Trump's presidency was an incompetent disaster led by an ignorant and selfish man---one who cost the country millions of lives when faced with pandemic. What would Trump do next time? Matters at home must be attended to before it is too late.
The choice is now between a 78-year-old habitual liar whose life offers records of shame and failure and a 59-year-old woman who has served honorably as an effective attorney general of the country's most populous State, a senator, and now vice president of the United States. The contrast could not be clearer.
I see Harris as vulnerable for reasons Americans do not like to discuss openly or honestly. But I would also not refrain from assessing her record with sober skepticism, as we must of any other politician. She may be the "natural" next in line---as of this morning nearly every one of her serious opponents has thrown their support to her---but in the end she a candidate that must rise to the occasion to win. She can draw the contrast between one who understands the gravity of the presidency and all it entails and Trump who simply does not. Let us hope for several debates.
Anyone who has been flustered or despaired an election between two old white men now has no excuses for indecision. Vice President Harris will be an experienced and capable candidate. Republicans in a fever-dream of delusions are fielding Trump. Will young people, women, veterans, people of color, all citizens of America understand the difference and the choice? That is the task of the 106 days before our election. The task is mighty and so much can happen. Let us make this happen.
Sunday, July 7, 2024
The Cliches of Hope and Faith in Our Slow Walk to Catastrophe
Thursday, June 6, 2024
Sorting Out Time, Personal Secrets, Gotta Have Some Lucky
June 6, 2024
This morning I woke up thinking about June 6, 1944. But I will leave that for another time. It's summer here. At last.
I've been sorting out time, summers are short and beautiful here in the north country. I am lucky to carve out enough to do a few worthwhile things---helping with the garden though Susan does the real work, riding the bike because age and bones are real, spending time in my study with the gods and the dead. How lucky. University life is still necessary, likely good for me since I might otherwise see no actual living beings other than the postman, but at this point the college steals time I would spend otherwise. There are five enrolled in a class that once had hundreds. Who has changed?