We Hold These Truths

Regardless of Trump's actual chances to be elected President of the United States, his candidacy offers an opportunity to revisit and restate certain values implicit in the American form of government--or more accurately, forces such an effort.  In particular, it's an opportunity to reclaim from the rabid right a living connection to the Founders and the founding documents of the US.  That connection was eloquently and meaningfully expressed for example, at the end of 1941.

On December 15, 1941, all the radio networks in the US carried an original drama called "We Hold These Truths," to mark the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. The program had been commissioned by the Office of Education and scheduled some time before, but its air date turned out to be just 8 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and a week after the US officially entered World War II.

All four radio networks carried it simultaneously--the first time that had happened-- probably in part because President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke at the end of it. It was heard by an estimated 63 million Americans:the largest radio audience on record, almost half the US population at the time.

This one-hour program, included above, is as alive and compelling today as it was in 1941.  Not only because of its excellent production values, but because it speaks to us today, especially in the fog of Trump.

 The on-air talent included Jimmy Stewart (already in uniform), Walter Huston, Lionel Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson and other stars of the day.  New music was written for the program, played by an orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

But the most important participant was Norman Corwin, its producer and writer.  His name is not much remembered, though he influenced many younger writers and journalists, and was a major influence on these times. Working for CBS radio, he wrote and produced at least 60 programs during the war years, most of them dealing one way or another with the moral issues of the war.  He was called the poet laureate of radio drama for his powers of expression, in a medium that lived on words.

Corwin later recalled the freedom he had working for CBS.  Once a topic was agreed upon, he never had to describe the approach he would take or submit a script in advance.  One assumes this was the case with "We Hold These Truths."

Corwin's work was so esteemed and so popular that several series of his programs bore his name.  His scripts were reprinted in magazines, and his radio plays were adapted into stage plays across America.

In his wartime dramas Corwin returned, over and over, to two primary issues that were on a lot of minds during World War II.  The first had to do with the reasons that soldiers (American and Allies) were fighting and dying..  The second was related--the conviction that this war could not end up being a repeat of World War I in leading to an even worse war in a generation, that it had to end by establishing a lasting peace through universal rights and global cooperation.

In this broadcast, Corwin was connecting the ideas behind the Bill of Rights with the primary aims for Americans fighting World War II.

Despite the fact that a few Founders had speaking parts, "We Hold These Truths" was not a mealy-mouthed historical pageant for radio.  When some of the 13 states refused to ratify the Constitution until a Bill of Rights was added, Congress assembled to produce those ten amendments.  Corwin did not express the reasons for these amendments through the voices of statesmen, let alone lawyers.  He didn't present arguments, explanations, abstractions.  Some of those reasons were expressed in common sense terms by ordinary people, as they did their jobs.  But some weren't expressed in words at all.

They were expressed in cries of pain, moans and screams.  They were expressed on behalf of people garroted, guillotined, lynched, hanged, burned, shot and slaughtered for suspicions and allegiances based on religious belief, political activities, ethnicity and race. In perhaps his boldest move, Corwin included Jesus Christ among these victims, crucified "because rulers didn't allow free speech, executed over an issue of the rights of man."

The most impassioned speech of the program--not at all in the magisterial tones for which he would later be known--was delivered by the young Orson Welles, describing the final result: the Bill of Rights.  In part (uncertainly transcribed from the broadcast) :

"The Congress of the 13 states, instructed by the people of the 13 states, threw up a bulwark, wrote the hope and made a sign for their posterity against the bigots, the fanatics, bullies, lynchers, race haters, the cruel men, the spiteful men, the sneaking men, the pessimists, the men who give up fights that have just begun.  The Congress wrote a ten part epic of amendments."   

This obviously contains contemporary 1941 issues that the Founders wouldn't have expressed in this way. Corwin often railed against the "America First" Nazi sympathizers who saw the Nazis as the wave of the future and opposed the US entering the war (just as he would defend the 'premature anti-Fascists' targeted by Ray Cohn and the 1950s blacklisters), and some of the language is directed at them.  But a lot of it pertains to contemporary 2016 issues, too.

It is well to remember that for all the other reasons and motives unpacked by historians of our age, a guiding impulse in the Bill of Rights was to protect all by protecting everyone against tyranny, and that the "everyone" these rights apply to has broadened to include, by now, just about everyone-- in law if not in practice--225 years after the Bill of Rights.

That broadening process was well underway in 1941, and so it was broadly believed--from FDR to soldiers that Corwin met in the US and abroad--that the US was fighting to defeat tyranny, and the rule of bigotry, race-hating, fanaticism, state bullying and cruelty.  In the modern world, these were represented as the ideology and machinery of Fascism.

In 1941 the US was a country made up largely of immigrants and especially the children and grandchildren of immigrants. There were wide differences between the richest and poorest, urban and rural, and according to regions.  Though the cultures and ethnicities prevalent then didn't include many well represented in 2016, the country was still "multi-cultural," if only because European countries and cultures were more distinct in 1941, with many religious denominations etc. within them.  So universal rights resonated. Equality was crucial.  At the end of this broadcast, FDR used the word "liberty" over and over.

The titanic effort--beyond what most Americans today can even imagine-- to defeat Hitler and Mussolini in World War II was to defeat what they did and would do, to prevent them from imposing racism, state censorship and dictatorship on a conquered America but also to rid the rest of at least western civilization from these threats and this rule.  This was understood as patriotism in 1941, as coming directly from the Founders and the Bill of Rights.

(Of course, it was not understood that way by everyone.  In an essay that accompanies the script of a later program, Corwin references a Republican "smear campaign with nonaccidental anti-Semitic overtones" conducted against a union leader who supported FDR, during World War II.)

So when Trump is likened to Hitler and Mussolini, this is why.  These truths may not be so self-evident these days, but there does seem to be a residual instinct that overrides some political polarization and partisanship when these rights are overtly threatened, by "a racist bully."

Opposition to such Trumpeting is often expressed in political  terms (it offends certain segments of the electorate), or because it's said too bluntly in a socially unacceptable vocabulary and tone.  But the threat behind these words is the same as presented by Fascist governments with their armies in 1941, and the same as policies inflicted on people through the ages by kings and warlords, churches and governments, which motivated the Bill of Rights.  The threat is to human liberty for each and therefore all, and to the commonwealth and the nation as established in the Constitution and its ten epic amendments.

Guaranteed Income 2016 Update

Added to my post on the Guaranteed Income 2016 is reference to a new column in the New Yorker that takes a positive view of proposals for what the author calls the Universal Basic Income.

Shadows

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," was the historic line by Barry Goldwater that inflamed the 1964 Republican convention.  But his widow says that even Barry would be appalled by the Donald.

What would be his reaction? she was asked.  "Yuck," was her reply.

Barry would be appalled by Mr. Trump’s behavior — the unintelligent and unfiltered and crude communications style. And he’s shallow — so, so shallow.’”

Levine said she generally finds Trump’s candidacy “crazy and inappropriate”: “I can't believe we are doing this as a country," she said of Trump.

Other Republicans were also running the other way, and there was some noise again about trying to deny him the nomination at the Republican convention in two weeks.  Some of it driven by disgust but much of it by Trump's ocean-floor negatives in recent polls. As a Politico story began: In 2016’s race to the bottom, Donald Trump is going to find out if you can become president when two-thirds of Americans don’t like you — and a majority can’t stand you.  

Another day, another fantastic revelation about Trump's greed--this time a Washington Post story about his financial ties to Russia.  So the Republican party candidate is not only involved in a mutual admiration society with the dictator of an historic and growing adversary, he's financially in bed with their oligarchs and their likely criminal enterprises.

The WAPost also details Trump's relationship with mentor Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's right hand man and pretty much the personification of twisted evil in the darkest days of the 1950s. "Cohn also showed Trump how to exploit power and instill fear through a simple formula: attack, counterattack and never apologize."

In his NY Times column entitled A Week for All Time, Timothy Egan writes:"They will remember, a century from now, who stood up to the tyrant Donald Trump and who found it expedient to throw out the most basic American values — the “Vichy Republicans,” as the historian Ken Burns called them in his Stanford commencement speech."

Another dark political shadow passes over the western world with the murder of Jo Cox, a prominent young British MP and leader, an advocate for humanitarian causes and immigration, by a man who--it was revealed today--has direct and long-standing ties to a US neo-Nazi organization.  In this murder he may even have used a gun that he made himself from instructions obtained from this group.

It is widely reported that he shouted "Britain First!" as he shot and stabbed this 41 year old woman outside a library.  It is the slogan of a far right group that stages anti-Muslim demonstrations, adopted by some opponents of the UK's membership in the European Union, which is up for a vote next week.

It is of course echoed in Donald Trump's new slogan, "America First!" which itself was first used by Nazi sympathizers in the US in the late 1930s.

And while Trump's latest inflammatory and racist statements have been met with almost universal condemnation from even Republican politicians,  polls show that a bare majority of the public disapproves, and by a slight margin, Trump is preferred over Clinton to handle an "Orlando-like attack."

The Guaranteed Income 2016

For the past 40 years, nobody wanted to hear from the Guaranteed Income, which was once a live proposal and even a live possibility in the 1960s, as a way of circumventing the social disaster in the likely future of large numbers of people losing their jobs and income, because of what was then called automation.

But some folks--mostly academics and Europeans--kept up the conversation, though it could also be uncharitably characterized as a lot of academic noise with some signal.  Then this year, somewhat in response to growing wealth disparity, the idea resurfaced.

There are various names for it--Basic Income Guarantee (BIG, which holds an annual conference and has a website), Universal Basic Income, Guaranteed Income, etc.

One version of it actually made it onto the ballot in Switzerland, not because politicians proposed it but because the idea got 100,000 Swiss signatures.  The proposal was soundly rejected, though the vagueness of the proposal as well as its novelty probably didn't help.  But pilot project versions are proposed or in the works elsewhere in Europe.  There's also a pilot project for the very poor in Kenya and Uganda.

The Swiss debate did recycle basic arguments for the idea--the impact of automation, the economic consequences of large drops in consumer demand due to lost incomes.

In many ways it is still such a novel idea that the New York Times got the topic of the Swiss measure wrong, and it's a good bet that even well-informed Swiss citizens didn't fully understand it.  It is however getting some hearing in the US.

Though initially proposed by economists with no particular political ax to grind, it has usually been supported from the left, most notably by Martin Luther King, Jr. From the right the objection was easy: it's money for nothing, sapping initiative, etc.  (Although the actual objection might be closer to making wage slavery and almost free labor a thing of the past.)  But certain rightists, such as Charles Murray, are now behind their own version.  However, his proposal is basically an efficiency measure aimed at replacing all existing social programs, including Social Security.  No hidden agenda there.

There are Libertarian versions, and the idea is reportedly percolating in Silicon Valley.  But once again, it depends on what's actually being discussed.  In the NY Times, columnist Eduardo Porter argues against a "universal" income proposal--i.e. giving everybody in the country a set amount --regardless of their current wealth.  Which is the easiest proposal to destroy, so it's almost a straw man.   (His other objections are in this dialogue.)

What the idea originally meant I believe was a guaranteed minimum income--that is, a guarantee that annual income won't be less that a certain amount.  Billionaires wouldn't get it, or at least wouldn't get to keep it.

So it seems a long way to go to something practical.  But as a basic idea, it has a certain elegance as a solution to real and growing problems.

First, there's current need.  The stupidities of the Consumer Price Index apparently says that the cost of living is not increasing (at least, that's how Social Security interprets it--no cost of living increase this year.)  But a new study says what people outside the wealth bubble already know--the costs of everyday purchases are rising, and taking more of small and fixed incomes.  Fixed costs, like higher and higher rent, that don't make a dent in big budgets, soak up a perilously greater percentage of the small.

Second, the reason the guaranteed minimum income was first proposed is already a reality, and is likely to get worse.  While certain politicians want to blame the economic troubles of a former working class growing into an underclass on immigration and bad trade deals, the reality is more complex--and apart from things like corporate greed taking jobs to countries where near- or actual slave labor is available, a big cause is robots.  And the trend is "engineering the labor out of the product"--i.e. more robots, and automation of tasks performed not only by factory workers and clerks but skilled office, medical and even professional occupations.  So the future those 60s folks envisioned is getting here fast, and for a growing number of people, already here.

There is the somewhat different problem of the virtual economy--the online centers of wealth--employing relatively few people, and putting a lot of other people out of work (like freelance print journalists I could name.)  In Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford notes that General Motors peak earnings were $11 billion in 1979, when it employed 840,000 (union) workers.  In 2012 Google cleared $14 billion, with fewer than 38,000 (mostly nonunion) workers--some of them very well paid, and a lot not so much.  That's a lot of purchasing power gone from the economy, as well as a lot of waste.

In terms of the economy, there's the worry that in the event of a new recession, the usual fiscal tools aren't available (you can't reduce 0% interest rates) and the current support programs aren't going to be sufficient to prevent a steep rise in poverty and further wounds to the economy from less consumer spending.  So something that doesn't exist now will be needed.

Even without steep recession, some economists argue that we can't depend on technology to continue to fuel economic growth, for society at large and certainly not for a great many people.

The guaranteed income idea was always meant to fulfill a social as well as economic need, and indeed, an opportunity for an affluent society to free humans from the increasingly unnecessary and coercive burdens of working for the money to live.  The benefits in human freedom and creativity to make the choice to pursue work and ideas without being forced to serve the self-interests of people in power  might also mean great benefits to human society, and even the economy.

There's also the idea of a revived WPA, supported by the likes of economist Robert Reich, as government employment for public works, which often goes by the name of infrastructure.  There might even be some combination of guaranteed minimum income with public service.

Taking it from a different direction, the time may come fairly soon, under the pressure of the climate crisis and its effects, that the idea of a guaranteed minimum income will seem  like a sensible transition to a radically different economic order in the future.

Update:James Surowiecki's column in the New Yorker summarizes in better depth the history and current status of Guaranteed Income (which he calls the Universal Basic Income or UBI) proposals and concludes: "If the U.B.I. comes to be seen as a kind of insurance against a radically changing job market, rather than simply as a handout, the politics around it will change. When this happens, it’s easy to imagine a basic income going overnight from completely improbable to totally necessary." He starts the column with a real world successful experiment in Canada in the 1970s I wasn't aware of.

The Bigot Who Would Be President

The spectacle of Donald Trump's attempt to become President of the United States continues to boggle the mind as well as chill the blood.

 He now faces an apparently unrelentingly hostile news media, which is not only finally reporting more fully on his incessant river of lies, but is doing so without the traditional patina of respect.

His latest pronouncements on terrorism and immigration have joined nearly all of his recent mouthings in being roundly condemned by Democrats (with President Obama winning particular praise for his latest dismemberment of Trump's positions, without ever naming him) but also Republicans who are actually supporting him for the office he seeks.  It's political surrealism every day.

Recent investigative reporting by the New York Times and USA Today reveal some further dimensions of dishonesty and sleaze in his business dealings, including stiffing small businesses and possibly using real estate projects to pay his personal debts.  Trump responds, not with any factual defense, but by accusing the media outlets and banning them from covering his campaign events.

Trump jumped on the Orlando massacre as an opportunity, plainly saying that his numbers always go up after a terrorist attack.  But this time he appears to have overplayed his hand. "For months, some progressives have worried that a terrorist attack could tip the election to Trump, because he might be seen as an avatar of strength," wrote Benjamin Wallace-Wells in the New Yorker. "That attack came on Sunday, and, after Trump’s scapegoating reply, those worries have eased. A Bloomberg poll released Tuesday showed Clinton leading her Republican rival by twelve percentage points; fifty-five per cent of likely voters polled swore that they would “never” vote for the casino mogul. It’s hard for Trump to be seen as a protector when it isn’t clear whom he would be willing to protect."

The poll he cites was taken half before Orlando and half afterwards.  (Wallace-Wells also makes the point that the killer's motives aren't limited to foreign terrorists. "Mateen’s bigotry, in the descriptions collated in the news reports, belonged to a familiar American strain, sometimes animated by religion but sometimes not."  He appears to have been a bigot, just as Trump expresses his own bigotry.)

A Washington Post poll (taken before Orlando) affirms the disdain with which many many Americans view Trump's candidacy.  "There is no equivalence" as the Plum Line puts it, between Hillary's relatively high negatives and Trump's stratospheric negatives.  Fewer than one-third of all Americans have a favorable view of him.  "Trump is viewed unfavorably by 73 percent of moderates; 77 percent of women; 89 percent of Hispanics; 88 percent of nonwhites; 75 percent of voters under 40; 59 percent of whites; 71 percent of white college graduates, 67 percent of white women, and even 52 percent of white men and 53 percent of non-college whites."  The only group that gives him a slight edge of favor is non-college white men.

Another poll in California suggests that Bernie voters are sufficiently motivated by the rise of Trump to come home to vote for the Democratic nominee, and this is even before Sanders gives his public support.

Yet every day brings news that renews the sentiments of a Jonathan Chiat column headline from way back a week or more ago: A Trump Presidency Just Got a Lot Less Likely — and a Lot More Terrifying.

Common Sense, Common Good

The weariness in the voice and demeanor of President Obama when he first talked about the Orlando gun massacre illustrated what he has often called his biggest disappointment in office, the failure of the federal government to enact the most basic controls over deadly rapid-fire semi-automatic guns, or access to them.

On Wednesday Senate Democrats began an old-fashioned talking filibuster on guns while actual negotiations were going on about a bill that would at least prevent those on terrorist watch lists from buying these guns so easily. For awhile it seemed the dimensions of this massacre finally broke some common sense loose from the political rigidity--the polaritics--of Washington.  Even Donald Trump and the NRA made encouraging noises on this subject, but at least by Wednesday's end, actual effective legislature looked almost as far from reality.  (Although a late report suggests that Republicans will allow some unspecified gun control bills to be voted on.)

But as on so many other problems that more local officials must deal with, states have led on banning assault weapons, especially since Newtown.

While the Orlando massacre has again dramatized divisions on this and other issues, it also has revealed some soul searching on homophobia and on how the media glorifies mass killers (just as this one checked the Internet during the standoff inside the club to see how his mass murders were being covered.)  It also evoked a sense of community beyond just the various geographical, identity and ideological "communities" in response to the victims.  Common sense for the common good may still be on the other side of polaritics, but empathy at least is evoked and alive when specific human beings are the focus.

An American Tragedy

In the wake of the mass killings in Orlando and the twisted response by Donald Trump, President Obama's widely quoted remarks on Tuesday were sometimes characterized as a tirade.

But those impassioned words were a fraction of what he said, and came at the end of a report on a National Security Council meeting on the progress of counter-ISIL efforts.  The meeting had long been on the schedule, but as President Obama said, inevitably the available information on the Orlando shootings dominated the discussion.

No current information suggests that the American-born shooter was directed by any foreign group, though he was apparently familiar with the ideology of ISIL and other terrorist organizations principally from Internet sites.  This comports with the information news media are reporting, of a very tangled state of affair with this particular man.

The full remarks (transcript here; video here) catalog efforts, many of them successful, to destroy ISIL where it lives.  But ISIL prospers from the sense of oppression, and President Obama was justifiably angry with Trump's policies that would oppress Muslim Americans as well as deny immigration on the basis of a religion--enacting precisely the policies that ISIL could use as evidence of oppression, to stir many new converts.  (This was his focus, rather than Trump's less that subtle implication that the President is an ISIL sympathizer if not co-conspirator.)  Hillary Clinton in Pittsburgh made similar points in her direct refutation of Trump's speech (I haven't read it, but here's the Times report.)

Trump, very Republican-like, needs everyone not to know the strenuous efforts the Obama administration has made and its many successes in weakening ISIL, or else his implications would appear ridiculous.  Their charges insult not only Obama but the entire US national security apparatus, our armed forces and our global allies.

As for mass shootings that include those perpetrated by self-styled political terrorists,  there is something that can be done to substantially reduce the risk of these events.  It's something supported by police and military leaders.  From President Obama's statement:

"Enough talking about being tough on terrorism. Actually be tough on terrorism, and stop making it easy as possible for terrorists to buy assault weapons. Reinstate the assault weapons ban. Make it harder for terrorists to use these weapons to kill us. Otherwise, despite extraordinary efforts across our government by local law enforcement, by our intelligence agencies, by our military, despite all the sacrifices that folks make, these kinds of events are going to keep on happening. And the weapons are only going to get more powerful."

Whether the potential perpetrator is a political terrorist or a person with heavy psychological problems or both, reducing easy access to weapons that one person can use to kill and severely wound 100 people in minutes is an obvious and fairly simple move.  As was painfully obvious in President Obama's first statement on the Orlando gun slaughter, the continuing failure to do this continues to be an American tragedy.

Cosmos Thoughts

It's been a mostly gray week on the North Coast, not unusual for summer, at least until recent years.  This time the high gray of the marine layer (a more precise name for high uniform fog) was joined by darker and lower clouds that threatened rain but produced only a brief night shower.  On another night the combination also led to the light moisture in the air that accumulated wet touches on the leaves, barely discernible on the street, that's also characteristic of this place.

Today however was bright and windy--days like this seem more frequent.  And since it is the weekend, it was noisy with leaf blowers and lawn mowers, as well as two young men blasting around in what now is called a vintage car, but in the past was known as a hot rod.

Last night the sky was clear enough for me to see the moon and some stars, and a bright pin of red that I knew must be Mars.  It is particularly close now, though receding from its closest point this time around, in May.  Its orbit swings it nearer to Earth once or twice every 15 years or so (though its very closest pass which happened in 2003 won't be repeated until 2287.)

Interest in Mars perked up during a few such close encounters in the late 19th century, when more powerful telescopes picked up surface features, mis-reported as "canals," which were then aided by imagination in suggesting a civilization on that planet.  When Mars came close again in the late 1890s, England and America in particular were in the grip of Mars Mania, and more than 50 novels about Mars and Martians were published, including the one that is still read today: H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

That these novels were popular when Mars was big and red in the sky was not coincidence, but that I was watching episodes of Carl Sagan's 1980 Cosmos series was.  Sagan was a working scientist as well as an inspiring writer and personality, and he was heavily involved in the Viking missions, which landed the first spacecraft on Mars and sent back the first photos of the Martian surface.

His episode on Mars ("Blues for a Red Planet," also a chapter in the book version) begins with the opening of the H.G. Wells story, as emblematic of the hold Mars has had on imaginations.  Since then we've had the Martian rovers, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy that chronicles terraforming the planet and the first generations of Martians from Earth, the hit movie The Martian, and Internet billionaires who are fixated on going to Mars in their lifetime.

Sagan also had that dream of human habitation and some form of terraforming, but he prioritized saving the one planet still known to be "graced by life," the Earth.  I'm not sure the same can be said about some scientists and Internet billionaires.

In another episode, "The Backbone of Night," Sagan tells of being a child in Brooklyn who occasionally saw the stars and wondered what they were.  He went to the nearest library and asked for a book on stars.  At first he was given a picture book of Hollywood luminaries.  But then he got the one he wanted and learned for the first time that "stars were suns, only very far away.  The Sun was a star, but close up."

(You might wonder why he didn't learn this in school.  What he doesn't say is that when he made this first trip to the library he was five years old.  Precocious Carl even had vivid specific memories of being taken to the famous 1939 World's Fair in New York, when he was four.)

"The Backbone of Night" refers to the Milky Way, which is the point of departure for this episode. The particular coincidence of seeing this episode was that, on the same day, I read the melancholy finding that 80% of  North Americans can no longer see the Milky Way due to light pollution.  Almost everyone in the US looks into a light polluted sky.

One of the scientists involved in the study commented: "There are still people that can remember when they used to be able to see the Milky Way when they would walk outside at night, but those are becoming fewer and fewer."  I guess I'm one of the few, though it seems so unusual now that I can hardly believe that the Milky Way was a commonplace sight in my early childhood, as I lived on a hill of a neighborhood that didn't have streetlights, outside a small town.

I probably had a better view than young Carl in Brooklyn, who might not have seen much more of the night sky as I do now, when on clear nights there are only a scattering of stars visible from my backyard.  Carl Sagan, who believed he got his analytical skills and skepticism from his mother but his sense of wonder from his father, combined them as no one else has.  Maybe some of the science in Cosmos is outdated (and there is a more recent series that follows in his footsteps: the 3 minutes of the video above with Sagan's narration from another of his books is from that series) but his voice remains eloquent in expressing this necessary combination.

Polaritics and Trickle-Down Racism

The extremes represented by Donald Trump make the upcoming election a stark choice between evil and sort of good.  In a binary choice, the politics of polarization--polaritics--becomes inevitable.  Both sides will promote their visions of the Good while mostly bombarding us with the alleged Evil of the other one.  Of course, one of them is Evil, which complicates any argument against polaritics.

But what is usually and somewhat bloodlessly called the polarization of politics and of the American electorate is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy.  And it only takes one example to suggest why: In South Carolina last month, a tow truck driver refused to tow the car of a disabled woman because her car carried a Bernie Sanders sticker.  He left her stranded on the side of the road.

Polls show up to 90% unanimity on many issues according to party.  That's a bit troubling but more important is the lack of tolerance for divergent views.  Internet trolls may be leading the extreme abuse heaped upon people of another opinion, moving quickly to personal threats and violence, but it's becoming widespread.

When it begins to affect the basic social contract, more than symbolized by a tow truck driver whose job it is to render aid to fellow citizens, then society is in danger of falling apart.  Our society might agree that the owner-operator in this instance might be justified in refusing service because of inability to pay him, and in times and places (like South Carolina), such services would routinely be refused because of race.  But this is saying that the political candidate a person chooses to support in a major party primary marks that person as evil, as outside society.

This is just one case, but it is worthy of attention not because of its novelty but by its possible prophecy.  It sounds like the next step, and we do get the feeling that this is happening more than this once.  And once it does happen, it becomes an example for others.

It has its origins in theocratic politics most recently promulgated by the religious right, and in the behavior of Washington politicians, particularly Republicans, who oppose and condemn every idea supported by Democrats--especially by President Obama--even if it is an idea that Republicans recently supported or even originated.  And the easy vocabulary of hate, of hating Obama, of hating Hillary, that has gone mainstream.  There was plenty of Roosevelt hating in the 1940s, but by and large it was fringe.  Now the rabid right fringe is the establishment.

Donald Trump has wakened some Republicans to the danger, basically by being Donald Trump.  In today's news there are remarkable stories about a confab in Utah where party luminaries mixed with big donors, and some of those luminaries were outspoken in their dire warnings about Trump.  Meg Whitman reportedly compared him to Hitler and Mussolini.  An informal poll of big donors showed that only 20% were ready to back Trump with bucks, with others choosing "country over party."

 And Mitt Romney, of all people, contributed to the dialogue by highlighting an effect of Trump's candidacy that others have written about, but Romney gave it a name:

"I don't want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following. Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America."

At the moment Hillary is making this a teachable moment with her "Stronger Together" theme.  But it's about more than diversity as usually defined.  Political diversity, a diversity of ideas, are also at stake.  Our American society has been through this before (as has western civilization, many times, and eastern civilizations as well), for example the enforced conformity of the 1950s, patrolled by HUAC, the Blacklist, J. Edgar Hoover and McCarthyism, with the power to end careers, livelihoods, lives.

But political polarization that affects relationships at the root of society is particularly threatening given the likely future. This climate crisis-dominated near future will provide many tests and challenges (among others not directly related to climate that we can intuit may well present themselves.)  There will be many people who need help from strangers who are also neighbors.  There will be times when trust in each other, and in government and other institutions, will be matters of life and death.

In The Absolute At Large, one of the enormously skillful science fiction novels by the early 20th century Czech writer Karel Capek, a series of catastrophes rends civilization to tatters.  But some of the same people of a small town met at the beginning of the book manage to survive to the end.  They are discussing the reasons for the apocalypse they lived through.  One of them says: "Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man.  We'll kill men, but we want to save mankind.  And that isn't right, your Reverence.  The world will be an evil place as long as people don't believe in other people."

That's part of it.  But one doesn't have to be very optimistic about other people to realize that there's a principle worth putting into action.  Some people call it decency.  It doesn't sound like much, but if you read accounts of people in Europe who sheltered Jews and helped them escape the Nazis, it seems to be the difference.  It is the very powerful ethic of "you'd do the same for me."

That principle, that assurance is a necessity, which can be a trickle-up or trickle-across phenomenon as well as a trickle-down example by leaders.  In most basic societal ways, "We're all in this together" is a statement of fact as well as a rallying cry of principle.  It's how we act on it that's important, and social norms that support common decency are the social bedrock.  Trickle-down racism etc. starts breaking that down, but polaritics is already eroding it.    

Update: Divided response to the mass killings in Orlando Saturday night might be a tragic illustration of where this polaritics leads.  Both to the murderous violence itself, and in certain responses.

Peace Time

Thursday's meeting between President Obama and Bernie Sanders went well.  In his statement, Sanders thanked Obama and v.p. Biden for keeping their word that they would stay neutral in the nomination race. “They said in the beginning that they would not put their thumb on the scales and they kept their word and I appreciate that very, very much,”Sanders said.

Sanders indicated that after the upcoming D.C. primary, he will meet with Hillary Clinton to discuss the common way forward to defeat Donald Trump in the general election.

President Obama then released his video strongly endorsing Clinton, and the two will have a joint campaign rally in Wisconsin soon.  Clinton's other primary opponent, Martin O'Malley, endorsed Clinton today, and Elizabeth Warren will endorse her tonight.

As for his meeting with Sanders, New York's acerbic voice Eric Levitz commented: "Obama may have finally earned that Nobel Peace Prize."

An additional note: Clinton and Sanders have both used concepts and vocabulary from President Obama's speeches.  But Clinton's theme in her victory speech--"Stronger Together"--may also owe something to Michelle Obama, whose slogan for the upcoming United States of Women Summit at the White House is "Together, We Are Stronger."

"We're in This Together":California Primary Conclusion

With all precincts in--but with an unknown number of mail-in votes still to be counted--Hillary Clinton has won the California Democratic presidential primary with nearly 56% of the vote, to Bernie Sanders 43.2%.  So it wasn't close.  And as Ed Kilgore worked the numbers, whatever the surprise AP announcement Tuesday that Clinton had clinched did to turnout, Clinton had enough momentum from mail-in ballots (which is most of them in CA) to win handily.  If anything, Bernie picked up late momentum.  The LA Times analyzes.

As I expected, Bernie pretty handily won Humboldt.  He did well way up here in the northern counties. But that was pretty much it.  His hopes in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley didn't work out.  Apart from a few rural counties in eastern CA, plus Santa Cruz, his southernmost county were Mendocino and Lake.  Except for Santa Barbara county (50/49), Hillary's lead was usually in the mid 50% to mid 60% range.

Apart from other factors, California is pretty comfortable with women candidates. After all, the state has been represented in the US Senate for decades by two women, and in this election, two women will contend for one of those seats, as Barbara Boxer retires.  Thanks to this new non-partisan primary system for non-presidential candidates (the top two vote-getters regardless of party face off in the general), the two women (Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez) are both Democrats.  That was much remarked on, of course, but the fact the race is between two women is too normal to mention.

Clinton earlier won New Jersey (63%-37%), New Mexico and South Dakota primaries.

Bernie Sanders spoke in Santa Monica after the close of voting, when Hillary's landslide victory in California was already obvious.  Wednesday there were conflicting reports on what he is likely to do, and on his state of mind (responding to one set of reports that he remains angry and committed to a convention fight, New Yorker satirist Borowitz posted a column claiming that: Sanders Vows to Keep Fighting For Nomination Even if Hillary is Elected President.)

Eric Levitz parsed the speech in a different way, and isolated this quote: "And tonight, I had a very gracious call from Secretary Clinton and congratulated her on her victories tonight. Our fight is to transform our country and to understand that we are in this together. To understand that all of what we believe is what the majority of the American people believe."

Though Levitz didn't note this, the phrase "we are in this together" indicates not only a common effort to defeat Trump which Sanders had begun his speech saying is the number one objective, but it is a phrase that Hillary emphasized in her victory speech.  "We are all in this together" is a major expression of her "Stronger Together" theme (which wasn't quite...together in the speech, but it's getting there.)  I notice this phrase--which again is one that President Obama uses--because I've long advocated it as the theme we need, to face the challenges of this century.

Whether and when Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are in it together is yet to be seen.  But Sanders meeting with President Obama Thursday, and Obama's endorsement of Hillary as the nominee shortly after, will suggest the shape of that eventuality.

Doozy Tuesday

It was a doozy of a Tuesday.  For Hillary Clinton, it was time to claim the Democratic party nomination for President.  She won New Jersey big, New Mexico, South Dakota and was far ahead in California, where mail-in votes will be counted for days.  That's enough votes to give her a majority, even without superdelegates.  Bernie Sanders has begun the deliberate road to the end of his candidacy.  

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was taking more fire--from Republican leaders.  Senator Paul Kirk took back his endorsement, Senator Jeff Flake decided he could never endorse Trump, Senator Graham and others suggested the party could still look elsewhere.  Even wiggly Paul Ryan said that Trump's attack on the judge presiding over a Trump U. case were textbook racist--though he still backs Trump for President, because apparently he doesn't mind racism in the White House as long as he gets a GOPer hand to sign his dumb bills into law.

Trump, facing the prospect of being head of a party without nobody in it,  tried awkwardly to reign himself in.  Not a lot of people were buying it.  There was a sense of the dimensions of Trump's potential fall in Hillary's victory speech, which was the kind of appeal that LBJ made for consensus in the face of the scary Barry Goldwater in 1964.  (Whereas in 2016, Goldwater would be way too moderate, professional, conciliatory and sensible for the GOP.)

Clinton talked about her mother, who would have been 97 and just missed seeing her daughter make history. Hillary is not my favorite candidate of all time and I'm uncomfortable with her aggressive military policies, so I was surprised that my response to the unexpected news Monday night that she had clinched the nomination as the first woman presidential candidate of a major party was so emotional.  I've voted four times for the first African American President, and today for the first woman President.  It's wonderful.

Campaign Reverb

Update: As of late Monday afternoon, the AP is reporting that Hillary Clinton has secured enough delegates to claim the Democratic nomination, becoming the first woman nominee of a major party for the presidency of the US.
As the new week begins, the import of several events last week becomes clearer, regarding the presidential campaigns.

Hillary Clinton's speech on foreign policy in which she dissected Trump's candidacy of the absurd is turning out to be her most significant, and perhaps a turning point in her candidacy as well, both within the party and in general.

As one indication of its resonance, it was amplified and praised in Washington Post columns both by liberal E.J. Dionne, and the Post's designated conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin.  Rubin's column contains the most extensive description of the speech as a whole, with quotes in more context than offered in news stories. (She followed up Monday with a lacerating column on the delusions of Republicans who think they could control a Trump in the White House.)

Rubin also reproduced a quote I hadn't seen before that's one of the best because it cuts to the core of Trump's rhetorical style: "He also said, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.” You know what? I don’t believe him."  It's the "You know what?  I don't believe him."  Trump never even attempts to back up his simple declarative statements with any facts.  Everything is an assertion, or more specifically, a boast.  This especially was a naked emperor moment.

I wrote about nuclear weapons recently, when President Obama visited  Hiroshima.  Clinton made several references to the dangers of Trump having the nuclear codes, and the casual way he discusses nuclear war.  Here's the heart of it in an extended quote:

"Making the right call takes a cool head and respect for the facts. It takes a willingness to listen to other people’s points of view with a truly open mind. It also takes humility – knowing you don’t know everything – because if you’re convinced you’re always right, you’ll never ask yourself the hard questions.

I remember being in the Situation Room with President Obama, debating the potential Bin Laden operation. The President’s advisors were divided. The intelligence was compelling but far from definitive. The risks of failure were daunting. The stakes were significant for our battle against al Qaeda and our relationship with Pakistan. Most of all, the lives of those brave SEALs and helicopter pilots hung in the balance.

It was a decision only the President could make. And when he did, it was as crisp and courageous a display of leadership as I’ve ever seen.

Now imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States. Imagine him deciding whether to send your spouses or children into battle. Imagine if he had not just his Twitter account at his disposal when he’s angry, but America’s entire arsenal.

Do we want him making those calls – someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism? Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?"

Though she was reportedly reluctant to go after Trump so directly now, and not certain of the response to this speech (she didn't pick up its themes in stump speeches right away), Clinton has reaped praise and a collective sigh of relief from Democrats.  With this speech she provided confidence in her candidacy just as she is about to cross the threshold to the nomination.   (And it's likely to help her in California Tuesday.)

Lacking only 30 pledged delegates for a majority (after weekend wins in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), Clinton will cross one numerical threshold on Tuesday.  By the end of the counting she may well also have won a majority without super delegates.  In any case, today's news is that her nomination will be affirmed by party leaders immediately, including an endorsement by President Obama, followed by very active campaigning on her behalf.

For Donald Trump, the revelations concerning Trump University hurt, but Trump made it far worse by questioning the impartiality of the judge presiding over the current Trump U. case on racial (or if you prefer ethnic) grounds.  That charge met with immediate rebuff from Republican leaders, which indicates just how beyond the pale it is, giving how much other stuff they're able to put up with or even promulgate.  These included the House Speaker Paul Ryan (just moments after it became known that Ryan was endorsing Trump) and Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

But Trump did not recant or say he misspoke and he certainly didn't apologize.  He doubled down, and added Muslims to those of Mexican heritage who would be biased judges.  On Sunday, Newt Gingrich, one of his biggest boosters who based in speculation that he might be Trump's v.p., said Trump's statements were "inexcusable."  On Monday, Trump went after Gingrich,  saying his criticism was "inappropriate."  He then tripled down by countermanding an advisory by his staff to let the issue cool off by insisting that his supporters should continue his claim that the judge is biased.  (He also reportedly insulted members of his staff, which is already so small that it may well not be adequate to conduct a general election campaign.)

All of this plays into other stories over the weekend and today, indicating that GOPer leaders are increasingly alarmed by Trump and his prospects.  We've heard those stories before, but it clearly is going to be hard for them to conduct campaigns the way they usually do with Trump trampling over everything, not only improvising but thereby at times being untrustworthy even to his allies.  On the other hand, they had plenty of warning--and aren't fooling anyone but themselves by being shocked that Trump is a racist.

These are the leaders who are supposed to go out and campaign for Trump, as his "surrogates."  These are also the people in the pool of vice-presidential candidates who can help him where he needs it: political experience, reputation, knowledge, and access to the party's billionaires.  All this makes Trump's v.p. choice really up in the air.

As for Trump's charges regarding judicial impartiality, Garrett Epps (who I had the pleasure of editing in Washington long ago) summarizes the complete lack of legal basis in the Atlantic.

At least one opinion writer sees another recent event as pivotal to this campaign: Trump's press conference where he denounced investigative reports on Trump U., calling one reporter "a sleaze" to his face.  Trump has triumphed so far mostly because of the free media he gets, because he knows how to get it.  But in the past week at least, media coverage has not been so sweet for him, as reporters no longer simply give him a forum but are following up on his falsehoods (Hillary raising this issue in her speech also gives the media reason to follow up) and on more detailed reporting.  Waldman writes:

"Put together this series of developments coming one after another, and I suspect that many journalists are deciding that the way to cover Trump is just to do it as honestly and assiduously as possible, which would itself be something almost revolutionary. If the tone of his coverage up until now has been “Wow, is this election crazy or what!” it could become much more serious — as is completely appropriate given that we’re choosing someone to hold the most powerful position on earth."

The California Primary

For awhile it seemed that the California primary might matter this year in presidential contests.  Now it looks as if, after all, it probably won't.

 Despite campaigning here anyway, Trump no longer has opponents.  And it seems that Hillary Clinton will have won enough delegates to attain the majority needed for nomination on Tuesday but before California polls even close.  (It's possible but not likely that she will obtain the delegates necessary before Tuesday. She started well this weekend by reportedly picking up all 7 Virgin Islands delegates.)

 That would blunt even a Sanders victory in California in terms of impact.  Her presumptive nomination will likely be announced in network prime time, after the New Jersey polls close.  Whatever happens in California won't be known probably before midnight Eastern, and possibly much later.  By Wednesday morning, when all the votes are counted, Hillary will likely have won an outright majority of total elected delegates this year, even absent her substantial haul of super delegates.  Even if Bernie wins California, it will likely be by a narrow margin.  It will be a story, but not the big story.

In his CA speeches, Sanders says "If there is a large voter turnout, we will win and win big."  A surge in voter registration this spring helps make that a possibility.  And if this indeed happens, it will have an impact on the 2016 race.

The possibility of a CA victory hinges on Sanders expanding his appeal beyond young white voters to young Latino, Asian and African American voters, which the last Field poll indicates is happening.  His speeches continue to gather very big audiences.  (But he would not be the first candidate to win large, enthusiastic audiences, and lose elections.  George McGovern in 1972 spoke before such large crowds even in the general election campaign, and lost every state but one.)

In Oakland for example, Sanders gave about an hour speech before tens of thousands.  He called out a corrupt campaign financing system.  He said the economy is rigged for the rich, the criminal justice system is broken.  He called for investing in young people, in "jobs and education, not jails and incarceration."

 He wants to de-militarize local police and end corporate prisons, to rethink the war on drugs, deal with the crisis in opiates and heroin, treat addiction as a health issue (not a criminal issue), expand mental health treatment, decriminalize marijuana on the federal level, and in CA legalize it.

In one of his few direct swipes at "Secretary Clinton," he said his campaign is financed by small individual contributions and not a single superpac.  He questioned whether a candidate who takes Wall Street money can stand up against Wall Street.

To further the goal of every American child being able to obtain a college education regardless of income, public college and university tuition should be free, and existing student loans re-financed at the lowest available rate.

How will this be paid for?  Middle class incomes have been redistributed upward to the 1/2 of 1%; it's time to redistribute them back to working families.  A tax on Wall Street speculation, break up the major banks.

He is favor of immigration reform and a path to citizenship, and if Congress fails to pass such a law he will do "what I can" by executive action.  No more unnecessary wars.  No more tax breaks for Wall Street. More investment in inner cities and rural poor.  He criticizes Trump for being a climate crisis denier and says we have a moral responsibility to the planet, so he supports moving from fossil fuels to clean energy. He said we need to go beyond the Affordable Care Act to guarantee health care as a right, as every other industrial country does.

His rhetorical finish was to go through various movements that changed America--union, black, women, gay.  "Let's go forward with this political revolution."

When I look at this speech--admirably honed, simply stated--I see almost nothing that President Obama hasn't said, as a candidate or President, and with the exception of breaking up the big banks, nothing that Hillary Clinton doesn't support as a principle or goal.

In fact there is so much of Obama here--the campaign financed by small donors, the agenda--that at one point, some in the audience began chanting "Si se puede" and Bernie actually said "Yes, we can!" Bernie's promise to do what he can by executive action on immigration is what President Obama has already done.

Bernie's promises are apparently more restrained now than at other points in his campaign.  He said the word "revolution" exactly twice--in his closing sentence, and earlier he called for a "revolution in mental health treatment."  There is in reality nothing revolutionary in the proposals he made in this speech, with little that progressive Democrats from Robert Kennedy to Barack Obama haven't said. Nevertheless, his young supporters seem to believe what he says is revolutionary.  (Free college tuition and legalizing pot don't exactly hurt with this demographic either.)

The political revolution Bernie calls for however is one in which, thanks to a popular uprising at the ballot box throughout the country, progressives take over Congress and pass the legislation he favors.  That is very unlikely to happen this year (even if Democrats take majorities) but presumably his election he hopes would be the beginning.

I can see the appeal, and not only to the young who perhaps haven't heard--or haven't listened--to these statements or positions before.  I can understand their strong commitment to him, but I don't share it. I don't have the confidence in him that I had in Obama as a candidate.  He has not demonstrated to me that he can be a more effective President than Hillary.  And since Republicans haven't attacked him--hoping he would be the nominee--the polls that show him beating Trump are invalid.

 But it's a long way now past simple preferences.  The maniac Trump is the other party's candidate for President of the United States, and we all have a lot to lose.

Hillary is not just coasting on her early huge majorities in primaries.  She picked up major endorsements this week--from Governor Jerry Brown, from the political arm of the National Resources Defense Council (which her campaign director John Podesta worked for, after the Clinton White House and before he started the Center for American Progress) and a major gun safety group.  More endorsements are likely before Tuesday.

More to the point, her scathing attacks on Trump this past week (what CNN writers called an "evisceration") have energized her supporters and relieved other Democrats.  The latest Reuters poll returns her to a double digit lead over Trump with likely voters nationally.  A long-awaited trend of rising wages in the Obama recovery may eventually help her as well.

Sanders now says that he is taking his candidacy to the convention, no matter the electoral outcomes.  This is a little different than his campaign has said recently, that he will reassess when all the nominating contests are over (June 14.)

Chances are that once Hillary has the majority, and especially once the primaries are all over, Democratic officials including super delegates will add their weight to support her, so Sanders candidacy will become less and less relevant to the campaign.

Sanders' campaign can still cause discord at the convention, and cause supporters to turn bitterly away from voting in November, which helps only Trump.  There is no compelling moral cause involved in this as a protest--it isn't 1964, when the party discriminated against southern African American delegates, and it isn't 1968, with the party leadership supported an immoral war.  Sanders' agenda is just not that different, while his means to attain it may be, though frankly what those means are is a mystery to me.

It's likely that a Sanders victory in California would encourage him to continue, while a defeat might cause him to re-evaluate. Since I believe the party needs to unite behind Clinton, the certain nominee, in order to defeat Trump, and Sanders must begin, as soon as possible, the work of bringing his supporters to vote for her in November,  I will be voting for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.  To bring us closer to the time that all progressives can concentrate on defeating the worst threat in generations to American democracy and to the future, including the future of Bernie's young supporters.

So maybe the California primary will play a role--in beginning the sustained and unified fight against Trump, or  delaying or even dangerously dividing it, which is risky at best.  I don't see any real reason to take that risk at this point, not with the stakes as high as they are.  

Climate Crisis Challenges: Zika and A Country Breaking Down

The Zika virus poses particular known and heartbreaking threats, mostly to pregnant women and specifically their offspring. As bad as a big outbreak might get, it so far it has not had widely lethal or debilitating effects otherwise.

Nevertheless, it is both a specific threat and a likely harbinger of things to come. It offers a kind of tryout of public health responses, and so far it's not a reassuring sight.

It is a harbinger because it is disease carried by an insect, a certain breed of mosquito (though there may be other breeds who can carry this virus.)  Mosquitoes are most prevalent in hot times and places, and as global heating expands both, mosquito-borne diseases are among those likely to also expand, even to the point of epidemic.  More communities are going to be vulnerable and affected, including many that have not experienced such a threat before.

This is only one of the public health challenges that are effects of global heating and the climate crisis.  Add to the independent or force multiplier factors that make pandemics more likely (global travel spreading infectious contact very fast, overuse of antibiotics leading to resistant mutations, etc.), and a public health system that can respond quickly with the necessary resources is one of the most important functions of communities and their governments, especially national governments and global connections among governments.

So far the US is not responding adequately to Zika, and in the process is making public health worse in general.  Congress--particularly the rabid right Republican controlled House--is not appropriating sufficient funds, and what funds are made available are being stolen from other public health programs, leading to unconscionable layoffs of public health doctors and others.

While Congress plays politics with Zika funding, gaps in state funding for public health research and preparations are exposed, including states most likely to feel the first effects of Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses.  Past federal failures to support public health has led to increased burdens on states and cities, which in turn has led to facilities being closed.

This is part of a resurgent global problem of inattention and neglect by governments, according to the World Health Organization Director-General.  With more resources and steadfast attention, there are better chances of such outbreaks being prevented as well as quickly addressed.

Public health is a vital part of a community's health care infrastructure.  National and international public health is an area that the climate crisis is going to test again and again.  Public health is essential to a community remaining an operative, democratic, peaceful society.

But public health is not the only part of vital infrastructure that's neglected, and in the US, often in the same ways.  Elizabeth Drew's detailed examination of the state of American infrastructure, "A Country Breaking Down" in the New York Review of Books begins:

It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband (if one is connected to it), and other unreliable structures. The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial. But this country has an infrastructure crisis.

The near-total failure of our political institutions to invest for the future, eschewing what doesn’t yield the quick payoff, political and physical, has left us with hopelessly clogged traffic, at risk of being on a bridge that collapses, or on a train that flies off defective rails, or with rusted pipes carrying our drinking water. Broadband is our new interstate highway system, but not everyone has access to it—a division largely based on class. Depending on the measurement used, the United States ranks from fourteenth to thirtieth among all nations in its investments in infrastructure. The wealthiest nation on earth is nowhere near the top."

Much of the infrastructure we depend on for survival was built mainly with federal government money in the 1930s (Roosevelt) and 1950s (Eisenhower.)  Many big cities, including New York, are dependent on even older water and sewage systems.  But public spending has become politically toxic, almost entirely as a rationalization for the country's rich to keep more of their riches.  (And if the dot com billionaires want to do something public spirited, they might band together and lobby Congress for a major infrastructure program to be financed by taxing them and their fellow 10%.)

What little infrastructure Congress has financed--most recently in the highway bill--was done (as Drew's piece notes) through unprecedented thievery from other government resources that are just as likely as falling infrastructure to cause future disaster.  President Obama noted that same impulse in the Congressional approach to financing Zika funds.

Infrastructure is often described as essential to the economy--that is, essential to the businesses that make people wealthy enough to hire lobbyists, lawyers and congresspeople to avoid paying taxes. Fixing and building it is also widely known as an economic stimulus.

But infrastructure is much more important than that.  It is essential to civilized life.  Infrastructure of all kinds is essential to healthy, functioning, democratic, peaceful communities.

Moreover, this infrastructure is going to be additionally stressed by the effects of the climate crisis--by flooding, by drought, by high winds in storms, by fire, by intense heat waves and intense periods of cold, and by the multiplication of such catastrophes in time and in extent.  A healthy infrastructure has a better chance to stand up against such stresses, or to be more easily repaired and restored.  By ignoring this need, we're shooting ourselves in more than the foot.

In sum, strong infrastructure--including civic infrastructure and especially public health--along with forethought and planning, can help citizens and communities in the near future deal with effects of the climate crisis.  Without strong infrastructure, our society is much more threatened.