Guess Again--It Ain't Tribalism

The latest trope being used to explain political America is "tribalism."  Close but no cigar.  Keep looking for an appropriate hook because this one isn't it.  It is only partially accurate, even as a metaphor, and partially offensive.

"Tribalism" has been used before as shorthand for a closed society, intolerant of others and their views.  It's even been applied to corporations.  But only recently has it become a more elaborate idea applied to politics, even as it has seemingly become the fashionable replacement for the previous lazy buzzword, "polarization."

The brief evolution of this trope is interesting, for things mutate fast in cyberspace.  The latest round probably started with Lee Drutman at Vox about hyperpartisanship in today's politics, positing two mutually exclusive positions held by two mutually exclusive segments of the electorate, each informed by contrary and rigid ideologies, and by closed information loops to the point that anything said by the other side is automatically dismissed as, at best, untrue.

Fine, not a lot new there, until this sentence: "But for years now, we’ve been retreating into our separate tribal epistemologies, each with their own increasingly incompatible set of facts and first premises."  The term 'tribal epistemologies' was hot linked to a piece by David Roberts published in May called Donald Trump and the rise of tribal epistemology, in which he quotes Rush Limbaugh:

"We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that’s where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap."

Roberts goes on to say "It is well known that Americans have been sorting themselves into like-minded communities by race, class, and ideology, creating more in-group homogeneity and cultural “bubbles.”' That it's well known doesn't stop him from adding some social science research showing that Americans have been "sorting themselves" by personality as well as the usual other categories.  All of this results in the US being split into "two increasingly polarized cultures" or even "two countries."

Drutman's piece adds more social science observations, such as "As political scientist Lilliana Mason convincingly argues, 'The more sorted we become, the more emotionally we react to normal political events.'”

The justifications for these generalities or categorizations aside, both pieces use the term "tribal epistemologies" without defining it or even ever again referring to the term.

However, the tribalism motif goes into high gear with Andrew Sullivan's long mid-September essay "America Wasn’t Built for Humans," with the explanatory subtitle: "Tribalism was an urge our Founding Fathers assumed we could overcome. And so it has become our greatest vulnerability."

This time Sullivan is explicit about what he means by tribalism, if mostly through examples:

"Tribal loyalties turned Beirut, Lebanon’s beautiful, cosmopolitan capital, into an urban wasteland in the 1970s; they caused close to a million deaths in a few months in Rwanda in the 1990s; they are turning Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, into an enabler of ethnic cleansing right now in Myanmar." 

Other examples are Scots and Catalans.

All these are ethnic/religious groups within artificially constructed countries. Sullivan mentions Sebastian Junger's book Tribes, which posits that humans most naturally bond into small groups, as they have since the beginning of human society. So Sullivan (following Junger one assumes) includes Dead Heads, Packers fans, and members of Facebook groups within the definition of tribes.

 African Americans, brought forcibly to America as slaves, constitute a tribe, as do Mormons.  Today the political tribes are called Democrats and Republicans, with distinct geographical distribution, socioeconomic status, educational attainment and so on, in addition to race.

Despite their differences (some of which Sullivan acknowledges), he calls all of these groups tribes.  His contemporary analysis of America however does not include the one group that defines itself as living in tribes: Native Americans, American Indians (known by different names in Canada, Mexico and Central America.)

In my work with American Indian organizations I learned a number of things, the first of which is that non-Indians like me should never presume to speak for Indians, because they can speak for themselves.  But my recollection as well as my educated guess is that the appropriation of the term "tribes" is generally offensive to them, as it does not comport with either their contemporary realities nor their history and traditions. Nor does it, in my view, with other surviving indigenous societies.

Sullivan's essay appeared in New York Magazine online, as did a subsequent video The Psychology of Tribalism which in images as well as words takes the next step of linking political polarization to the history of tribes.

While the voice of an academic psychologist talks about the "normative value" of "following the crowd" fostered by tribal societies, the apparently contemporary video shows a group of girls in what appears to be Northwest Coast Native regalia, following each other to presumably participate in a ceremony or an exhibition of a traditional--that is, religious--dance.  

This combination of words and images I am pretty certain is specifically offensive.  This is the point where the distortions of a sloppy metaphor become ignorant and dismissive.

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It is more than ironic that the only American societies with the name of tribes, legally recognized as such, largely do not fit the stereotypes of the tribe in these analyses.  Moreover, the history and traditions of existing Indian tribes contravene many of these stereotypes.

Even historically, the basis of American democracy and of the union of the United States can both be found in prior American Indian concepts and practices.  The tribal council was the first Congress on this continent.  The Iroquois Confederacy was the first union.

Today's tribes are heterogeneous, and blood relationship is usually just one of the factors required for membership, and may not be considered at all.  This pertains to small tribes (though some of them don't use the term), and the few large ones.  But in other ways, size matters.

Anthropologists say that humans banded together in small groups--sometimes only a dozen or so--for hundreds of thousands of years before history began.  This is the basis for the idea of tribes.  Small groups were often isolated, and sometimes hostile to one another.  But this was not always the case.  In fact, mating or marriage within the group--even if it were possible, with a group so small--was often frowned upon, or forbidden.  Marriages among tribes were important even when not necessary, as extending relationships helped keep the peace.

Tribal beliefs--including an origin story, ceremonies, etc.--might be different, but often they were similar among neighboring tribes.  There was enmity and stereotyping and fear, but there was also exchange of knowledge and ideas as well as goods.  Often there had to be, for survival.  Kim Stanley Robinson's Ice Age novel Shaman captures this very well.  There are also documented traditions among tribal groups (in Africa for instance) that required that one group help another that might be experiencing food shortages or drought, with the understanding that they were be aided in return when they were in similar straits.

How any of this applies to either Cheeseheads or 35% of the American electorate eludes me.

Moreover, these tribal traditions cannot be understood without the basis that none of these analyses consider.  They are all about the relationship of these human societies to the natural world.

When Andrew Sullivan mentions Native American tribes, he quotes Junger as noting that in colonial times many whites joined Indian tribes (including captives who refused to return to white society) while the reverse did not voluntarily occur.  Sullivan and Junger conclude that this was because of the strength of tribal bonds and relationships.

But that's a simplistic and deceptive explanation, according to the reading and research I did on the so-called "white Indian" phenomenon, specifically in colonial Pennsylvania.  It was the way of life derived from the relationship to the natural world that attracted many.  Indeed, they rebelled against the constraints and enforced conformity of white society (especially the women), which were more "tribal" in the sense these analysts seem to use the term.

That they were embedded in the natural world, physically and spiritually, informed all the social and religious traditions of indigenous peoples in America and elsewhere in the world.  That relationship is so essential to early humanity that no analysis of their social organization can be separated from it.

This is also the basis for the revival of traditions within contemporary tribes, such as ceremonies by Northwest and North Coast peoples.  These ceremonies as well as languages and other cultural elements were forbidden by white governments for generations and many were partially or wholly lost.  American Indians suffered their own physical and cultural holocaust over centuries, and these revivals are ways of reclaiming identity and self-respect as well as tribal wisdom that's increasingly useful to the world at large as it faces the consequences of destroying its natural world context.

These are some of the reasons why American Indians might be sensitive about the appropriation of some distorted notion of tribe, not to mention specific expressions of what in many cases has been a hard won and nearly miraculous cultural revival.

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So tribes reflect our primordial roots in small face-to-face groups.  Then how can a tribe be comprised of millions of people who don't know each other?  And if this is a tribal divide, why just two sides?  If we were subdividing on this basis, wouldn't we have many tribes?   The word starts to lose its meaning fast.

The application of the tribal model to this debate is questionable on other grounds, often due to the distortions of human societies caused by capitalism, as well as other factors such as urbanization and the dominance of the desert religions.

Capitalism as a social organizer means that a person's behavior and expressed beliefs are often determined by how they make their money.  Entire societies depend on that context.  A lot of our current division may as well--as income inequality becomes extreme.

A lot of what the tribal epistemology is supposed to represent depends on how you make your money (which also means who is paying you for what, and how much.)  The enforced sameness within a group seems tribal only when it is smaller in scale.  Sometimes it's been pretty big. Does anyone remember the 1950s?

The 1950s, as analyzed in the early 1960s, were characterized by what at the time was called conformity, and it was a force across American society.  There was one way to think and behave, modified by other factors such as ethnic groups and class.  The operative metaphor was the assembly line.

Conformity was so strong that apart from rebellion by some crazy artists and intellectuals, the only opposition was generational.  With those crazy artists and intellectuals as touchstones, the younger generation--first the teenagers and juvenile delinquents of the 50s, and then the Vietnam/hippie generation of the late 60s--diverged.

  It was a worldwide phenomenon, the generation gap, and though the hippies were drawn to Native traditions and emulated aspects of tribes, the dividing line was between a portion of the Baby Boom generation and the majority of their parents' generation.  The lockstep conformity was broken.  And now that's apparently considered a bad thing, because it led to "tribalism."

Certainly there are merits to the analysis that sees strong political divergence according to cultural differences rooted in geography and history (the South, as the most vivid example) and socioeconomics.  These differences are abetted by a breakdown in common sources and standards of information , fostered by a number of factors, most prominent among them being new information sources made possible and accessible by the Internet and related hardware, but also by partisan political opportunists and what must be a really shitty educational system.

So if you posit two sides, as all these folks basically do, then you have two sets of facts.  Unfortunately for the theory, actual tribal societies could not afford two sets of facts.

They might have different beliefs about why things happen or what to do about them. (And the reasons thing happened did not, as Sullivan asserts, always depend on gods, especially not in our cut-off-from-nature sense of the term.)   But their constant dependence on the realities of the natural world meant that its facts could not be ignored.  Close observation and accurate memory over generations were crucial.  In this sense, what we need is precisely a lot more tribal thinking.

There have been other objections made to Sullivan's essay.  I've previously noted my agreement with Jonathan Chiat's point disputing the equivalence given to the two sides' contentions in the Drutman piece.  People from the left are fully capable of asserting and believing stuff that isn't true, but by and large, it is the folks from the right that do not respect facts and the process of ascertaining facts.  Some people are capable of being persuaded they are wrong, based on the application of scientific, scholarly and journalistic standards as well as logic and debate, and some people are not.

You have to accept the absurd right wing notion of a complete conspiracy not only of people but of process to make this equivalence. Similarly you have to bend the concepts of tolerance and intolerance a long way to the right to make that equivalence. A sense of security and belonging of course pertain to the tenacious hold on views by both sides, but probably a lot more strongly on the right, which may have to do with the common fear and sense of threat implied by exclusionary beliefs (racism, misogyny etc.) and the particulars of a common and absolutist set of religious tenets.

Everyone makes assumptions and can be blind to them, although some can learn from having them pointed out. The difference finally is between those who are dogmatic (or entirely opportunistic) and those who are not.  Dogmatism is not an intrinsic quality of tribes or tribal knowledge.  Nor is shameless opportunism.  The metaphor fails.

Speaking of Sports

This week's Sports Illustrated cover

Emergency: Real Now, Real Later

Provocation, response, let's move on from NFL protests before any more people suffer and die in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and other islands devastated by Hurricane Maria.

Only relentless media coverage will force this administration to pay attention to the brown people out in the ocean.

Multiple reports say that due to inadequate federal response, things are getting desperate in Puerto Rico.  Philip Carter at Slate:

"Only the most rudimentary military support is now on the ground. This is inadequate and calls to mind the lethargic response by the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The U.S. military has a unique expeditionary capability to deliver humanitarian support, logistics, and security anywhere in the world, far above what FEMA or any other civilian agency can muster. American citizens are suffering and dying and need all their government can do for them (including the military). Unfortunately, their president and the military at his command appear focused elsewhere. Unless this changes, more Americans will die."

Some troops and resources are there and have met some emergency needs for water and food.  But it's not enough:

"Make no mistake: These troops have already saved lives and will save more in the weeks to come. Delivering 1.1 million liters of water is no small task. But Puerto Rico has 3.4 million residents, and another 100,000 live in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Clean water is a basic daily necessity. These islands’ residents will need orders of magnitude more—plus food, fuel, electricity, housing, medicine, and more—in the months to come until local capacity is restored."

The size of the human resources and quantity of other resources needed, plus the length of time this will remain an emergency, is just a preview of the climate crisis future.  For the sake of the victims, it's time to pay attention.

As for official response from the top, it has been--what else?--lunatic and provocative.  The Guardian:

"It took Donald Trump five full days to respond to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria on the lives of 3.5 million Americans in Puerto Rico, and when he finally did so his comments on Twitter were so devoid of empathy it threatened to spark a new controversy.

Hot on the heels of the billowing dispute he single-handedly provoked over African-American sporting figures protesting racial inequality during the national anthem, Trump launched another provocation on Monday night with a belated and lacklustre response to the Puerto Rican disaster. In a series of three tweets he effectively blamed the islanders – all of whom are American citizens – for their own misfortune."

He blamed Puerto Rico for an old electrical grid and for being in debt to Wall Street.  Juliette Kayyem, a former senior official in the department of homeland security under President Obama, said that Trump’s response to the Puerto Rico disaster showed “a lack of empathy of epic proportions”.

Provocations (with Updates)

Update (one of two, see below): Couldn't pass up passing along the concluding paragraph of Jelani Cobb's piece in the New Yorker about some of the topics in this post:

"Amid Trump’s nuclear brinksmanship and social-media provocation toward North Korea, amid the swollen gorges of water streaming through Puerto Rico, amid the craven and indefensible attempts to gut health care, amid the slower-moving crises of voting access, economic inequality, and climate change—amid all these things, Trump yet again found a novel way to diminish the nation he purportedly leads. He has authored danger in more ways than there are novel ways to denounce it. This is his singular genius. When this moment has elapsed, when some inevitably unsatisfactory punctuation has concluded the Trump era, we will be left with an infinitude of questions. But Trump, we will assuredly understand, is a small man with a fetish for the symbols of democracy and a bottomless hostility for the actual practice of it."

A weekend of taking sides is also a weekend of parsing meaning, a process of defining terms carefully and precisely in response to events and to the incumbent in the White House.  Because of the dangers that lurk if we don't.

I begin with a quote from a perceptive essay by James Fallows at the Atlantic entitled "Donald Trump's Shocking Recklessness":

"Who Donald Trump was, and is, was absolutely clear by election day: ignorant, biased, narcissistic, dishonest."  Fallows notes that Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that "everyone who voted for him did so with ample evidence about the kind of person they considered the “better” choice, or even as a minimally acceptable choice for president."  An argument I've made here since election day.  Fallows point however is this:

 "Almost nothing Trump has done since taking office should come as a surprise.
But numerous things Trump has done are objectively shocking, in the sense of further violating the norms of the office and the historic standards the previous 44 incumbents have observed. (Among the things the Trump era has taught us: the difference in nuance between shock and surprise. Donald Trump in office has delivered a nonstop series of shocks, no one of which can really be considered a surprise.)

Many of us out here understand this as our reaction, but it is a very useful distinction in judging other effects.  Shocks by definition galvanize attention, and that's the game that our apprentice dictator has been playing, consciously and not, all along.  In this case, it takes attention away from ongoing Russia investigation news, his new travel ban, collapse of the unhealthcare bill and especially the delicious revelation that Jared Kushner used private email to conduct White House business.  All of it dropped lower or off the news pages thanks to this shocking behavior regarding professional sports figures.

The weekend's shock was over-the-top criticism of NFL players who protest during the national anthem and the NFL for not punishing them (as well as having rules limiting on field violence,) At the same time, naming Steph Curry and the NBA champion Golden State Warriors and cancelling their invitation to the White House because Curry and other players had answered reporters' questions and said they weren't inclined to go because of his racial divisiveness.  Fallows essay showed that past presidents (namely LBJ and Nixon) said nothing about prominent racial protests by sports figures.

NBA players responded in anger on the Internet, with LeBron James Tweet calling the a.d. a bum breaking a Twitter record for retweets.  On Sunday, well over a hundred NFL players protested during the national anthem.  As did others at these games--including two people who sang the national anthem.  To make things perfectly clear, players protested during the US national anthem at a game played in London, England, but stood for "God Save the Queen."

The NFL protests were various.  Some followed the example of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and took a knee.  Others linked arms in solidarity, a somewhat ambiguous protest.  Others remained off the field during the national anthem, which in the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers reportedly indicated they couldn't agree on what the team should do.  That might indicate a lack of unity that might help to account for losing a game they were favored to win.

Personally, I'll believe in the sincerity of NFL teams and their management when somebody actually hires Colin Kaepernick, a capable player who has been blacklisted because of his protest.

Still, the rebuke was interpreted as widespread, and there will be more.  These are responses to provocation, which is what Fallows essay is about.  Sure, the whole thing is beneath the office of the President, but so is the incumbent, what do you expect?  It's a shock but not a surprise.

Fallows however links this tendency with the a.d.'s continuing to provoke the leader of North Korea, to the point where they have both promised to destroy the other, which would in practice mean that millions of others would die or suffer and the Earth further damaged, though those two would probably survive.

  This is such unprecedented and above all irresponsible behavior that it is itself an impeachable offense, in my view.  (These offenses can be general, with specific instances to confirm them.)

Which brings us to two other sets of definitions.  The first is sanity, as yet another story--or book review-- on the subject finds a growing alarm among psychologists that the a.d. is addled in the head in a a dangerous way.  Although according to one book reviewed, so is the entire country that elected him.

What does this mean in practical terms?  That the man with the nuclear codes cannot control his behavior, that what he tells himself are reasons really arise from his unconscious,  and he is convinced by them because there is something wrong with him akin to a disease.  (Many of today's psychologists would put it more strongly--he is mentally ill, it is a disease.  If only they could agree which ones.)

The concepts here are so new to the political system that the chance of this "mental derangement" triggering a constitutional process to remove him seems vanishingly small.  However, the idea that he may be incapable of not acting irresponsibly could factor into a congressional process of impeachment.  Although since by any prior standards the Republican party is itself acting irresponsibly (especially with their shameful unhealthcare bill) chances are not all that much better.

Finally, we've come to this pretty pass: many can easily agree that the a.d. is a functionally a racist and a racist demagogue, but is he a white supremacist? Jonathan Chiat posted a careful analysis of the term "white supremacist" as it has traditionally been used in political discourse, and argues that it does not apply, and further, that it might be dangerous and needlessly provocative to make this charge--as several responsible commentators he names recently have.

Update: Without naming Chiat, WPost columnist Eugene Robinson responded with a column titled "If Trump's not a white supremacist, he does a good impression."  Michael Gerson uses the other term in his WPost column, "America has a racial demagogue for a president."  The New Yorker published three articles under the general heading, "Trump's Racial Demagoguery" beginning with this one.

I am not sure where I come down in this specific debate, although I am usually in favor of precision, and in maintaining as many words with shades of meaning as possible.  But I do want to comment on one of his other observations.  He goes after those who in some sense equate the a.d. with Hitler. "The equation of Trump with Hitler is a way of using history that treats American democracy as a failed experiment. All its procedural niceties, like freedom of speech even for those with the most heinous beliefs, are suddenly unaffordable luxuries."   

I certainly do not agree that in highlighting the warning signs that historically characterized the rise and reign of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy implies that "freedom of speech" is a "suddenly unaffordable" luxury.  Nor do I condone so-called antifa violence.

Those signs need to be highlighted because the idea that "it can't happen here" is too entrenched.  Yes, "Homegrown Hitler" is a provocation--meant to provoke considering the likelihood that his intent is dictatorial or authoritarian, and his methods and some of his ideology are very close.

  Clearly a lot of things that conventional wisdom believed couldn't happen here have happened, and exhibit A is currently in the White House, or the White Tower as it should be called now.  That does not imply that lawful and democratic means can't prevent the worst.  Indeed, they must.

Chiat is notable for being a liberal who worries about intolerance from the left, as well he should.  But in judging disruptive protests, I argue for more nuance.  What are the basis for specific protests?  The content of speech or the misuse of funds to pay the speaker?  Here I'm dipping my foot in waters where I shouldn't, since I don't care to get involved in such debates.  I've had my day, paid my dues.  But I suggest the need for nuance hasn't been exhausted.  Though in general I suppose we all have been.  Some weekend.

Washington Week: Unhealthcare on Life Support

Many people, including Republicans, may have forgotten that Senator John McCain was once their candidate for President.  I don't think McCain has forgotten it.

Senator McCain announced his opposition to the latest GOP unhealthcare bill, which likely has doomed it.  Although this particular zombie proposal has come back to life so many times, nobody will count on its death until the September 30 deadline drives a stake into its heart.

McCain is again one of the heroes of the opposition.  The other--which I'm sure no Republicans nor anyone else saw coming--was talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel.  This description/analysis of his series of devastating monologues and their influence is the best I've run across.

As for the unhealthcare bill itself, the best single description of its nature I've seen is in the New Yorker, by Atul Gawande, a staff writer and cancer surgeon.  It begins:

"The fundamental thing to understand about Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal Obamacare is that the bill under consideration would not just undo the Affordable Care Act—it would also end Medicaid as we know it and our federal government’s half-century commitment to closing the country’s yawning gaps in health coverage. And it would do so without putting in place any credible resources or policies to replace the system it is overturning. If our country enacts this bill, it would be an act of mass suicide."

Why would congressional Republicans insist on a such an extreme, lunatic and suicidal bill opposed by nearly every healthcare institution and organization, and a majority of the citizenry?  The usual excuse that Republican voters demand an end to Obamacare doesn't wash (since the numbers don't bear it out), according to Eric Levitz in New York Magazine.  Only a small number of people actively support the bill, and nearly all of them are billionaire GOP donors--principally the Koch brothers.  This whole exercise is further evidence that 48 United States Senators are bought on a continuing basis.

Such is one result of extreme income inequality.  Another was quantified this week in how much income most people have lost so that the very few can become horribly wealthy.

The unhealthcare bill fight dominated this week's Washington frenzy but there were notable additions to what's known about the progress of the Russian interference investigation, helpfully summarized by Ryan Lizza.

The Test

A portion of President Obama's speech on working for a better future focuses on the latest unhealthcare bill the Senate is gearing up to consider next week.  The test of working to make things better he says is when you encounter resistance, when reversal is threatened.  Hey kids, it's test time.

Below is the full address, because it's always time to hear this voice, not only for good sense but optimism, inspiration and hope.  Remember those?

Apprentice Dictator's Progress

“Demagogues find it easier to gain control of societies that once enjoyed, but lost, a position of respect or power," wrote eminent psychologist Jerome Kagan in his book On Being Human: Why Mind Matters, published in 2016 months before the election. "The yearning for a return to the earlier period of greatness helps to explain why Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were able to gain despotic control of their societies, and why Putin enjoys popularity among Russians."

There's obvious application to the US election of 2016--and to the stated position of one of the candidates, the one now in power.  However there was always a problem--there is little real evidence that the United States had lost a position of respect or power, and plenty of evidence that it had not.  Indeed, the Obama administration restored at least some of the nation's standing, tarnished by the humiliating excesses of the Bush years.

Rather there are socioeconomic groups within the US that have lost their access to an identification with greatness as a mirror image of themselves, their values and projections.

Characters within the category of white male to begin with.  Then it breaks down into groups united by anger.  The rich who are always angry, perhaps a byproduct of greed and avarice. Then those with more actual grievances, like the industrial lower to middle middle class, joined by increasing numbers of small town and small city whites including those in clean-hands occupations who find themselves losing the ability to maintain a middle class life at all, victims of an increasing economic inequality in which fewer get more, and many get less.  This inequality affects other races and groups even more severely, but they as yet do not identify with this group, especially as they are regarded as the enemy.

 Then those with generations of twisted grievance, like southern white racists, like intolerant adherents of religious sects that mock the principles of their supposed object of worship.

All of these are ripe for demagoguery, and just enough apparently voted for the demagogue to bring him to power.  They are not looking to make America great again--in fact, everything that their hero has done has diminished America in the eyes of the world, and has begun to erode its actual power and resilience.  They are looking for someone to remake the world as they wish to see it.

Failing that--and this will always fail--they live in an entirely invented world, a virtual reality created and maintained by lies.  (That these are highly obvious lies adds to the cognitive dissonance, which our system is flummoxed by.)  Politically they are determined to impose that vision on the real world, blind to the disasters they are creating.


So how fares our apprentice dictator and his dictatorial dreams?  So far he has turned out to be politically weaker than feared.  And he has inspired a fierce resistance of an amazing proportion.  He is openly mocked and disbelieved by everyone and every institution except among his core supporters--no more than a quarter of the electorate--and the institutions (including and especially media) of the rabid right.

But the authoritarian danger is far from over.  He has more than three years left in his term, and for all the sound and fury of investigations, it remains likely he will remain there.  His defeat after that seems likely now but is not assured,  if only because there is a lot of time to the next election.

The nightmare scenario of the Mueller investigations is that after all the frenzy and the likely indictments of associates and underlings, the apprentice dictator himself is untouched.  This could suddenly make him stronger.

Apart from starting a war or declaring a national emergency because of a terrorist attack, his slower path to dictatorship lies with the erosion of the rule of law.  He's well on the way there.  His conflicts of interest and violations of the emolument clause are multiple and open, yet no one seems willing or able to do anything about them.

In addition to flouting application of the law to himself, his administration continues attacking laws by fiat and in the courts on everything from environmental law to immigration law to election law.  The courts have by and large stood firm so far, but it's a long game, and the Supreme Court stacked with perhaps just enough rabid right ideologues is at the end of it.  For example, as our stellar Member of Congress Jared Huffman predicted here in Arcata months ago, courts have ruled that the policy of punishing cities for sanctuary policies is unlawful.  But the Supremes have yet to rule.

In terms of law, the most important indication will be the courts' reaction to the repugnant abuse of power of the Arpaio pardon.  There are legal challenges to the pardon itself but the emboldened Arpaio is petitioning to get the actual court decision rescinded.  If a court reverses its own conclusion--especially on a matter this fraught with constitutional significance apart from the pardon--on the order of the chief executive, it would be the first brick in the edifice of legal dictatorship.


In terms of the resistance, it has yet to be truly tested.  It hasn't cost anybody anything and has apparently gotten some folks some awards (check the Emmys coverage anywhere.)  Those who resisted the Vietnam war paid a price, and some continue paying it to this day, as it is the one of the wounds of that war that hasn't healed.  (Another one, a truly unconscionable one, is the treatment of veterans.)

In terms of the great divide in America that everyone seems to be talking about (partly, apparently, because of the Ken Burns Vietnam docu) there are real grievances and real stories among those whose plight does not fall into easy categories of the oppressed.  But politically there is no equivalence, and it is dangerously muddled to think of them as equivalent.

Granted that progressive do not help themselves when their own approach to speech has a twisted Nineteen Eighty-Four quality.  There have always been authoritarians on the left, certainly in the antiwar movement era. They also exhibit inabilities to see their unconscious at work, as individuals and as groups.  But none of this contradicts the basic point that one side lives in a conspiracy of illusions, and the other still has some hold on respecting facts, which is the only basis for a functioning democratic society.

In this I side with Jonathan Chiat, countering a piece by political scientist Lee Drutman about the now fashionable division of Americans into two opposite and equal tribes.  A quote he isolates from Drutman and his rejoinder encapsulate my point:

Both fear each other will cheat to win and use their power to stack the voting deck. “If Republicans win in close elections, Democrats say it’s only because they cheated by making it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote; if Democrats win in close elections, Republicans say it’s only because they voted illegally.” But while it is not true that Democrats have allowed illegal voting in nontrivial levels, it is extremely true that Republicans have deliberately made voting inconvenient for Democratic-leaning constituencies. The psychology is parallel, but the underlying facts are not."

Chiat's piece is entitled "The Only Problem in American Politics is the Republican Party."  Of course it's not the only problem, but Chiat makes a solid case for why it is the major problem.

Here, too, the news has been mixed.  Congressional weakness has been the most recent theme, but again that could turn around with the latest last minute unhealthcare bill--worse than the last one--which is allegedly very close to having the votes to pass the Senate.  Any chaos in the states--as will eventually result if this bill becomes law--will add mightily and immediately to this administration's few effective efforts to warp us into a weaker, more divided and more volatile nation. By making America less great in reality, the dictator apprentice creates internal conditions ripe for his graduation to full dictatorship.

Emerson for the Day

"Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them...There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, not a grain more."

Thoreau

Sad

This is the New Yorker's new cover, which it originally was going to use to mark the election of Hillary Clinton as the first woman to become U.S. President.

Now Hillary is on tour with her new book about the campaign, and interviews are appearing (including with the New Yorker.)  Again she is the center of controversies.  Everyone has an opinion on why she lost, most of them, in my view, being predictable ex post facto nonsense, each feeding on the other with false premises and lazy conclusions.

 A combination of coincidences and a nefarious plot by a foreign enemy state with the knowledge and collusion of the other candidate, fed currents deep in this country's collective unconscious, and too many American responded by doing something it takes very little intelligence to know was stupid to the point of crazy.

She was not the greatest candidate running the best campaign.  But that is essentially meaningless.  Everybody gets one vote, and they're supposed to figure it out.  My view today is the same that it was on election night: this is on you, America.  You broke it.  Now you're paying for it.  Along with the rest of the world and the future.

The same media system, the same culture that wants to apportion blame, deserves their own seldom acknowledged piece of it.  Did anybody learn anything?

Meanwhile, this country without question would be better off right now if she had won.  And so we can for a moment imagine what it would have meant to the present and the future if in 2016 America could have had the moment imagined in this cover.

Happy Birthday

A Climate Change?

As Hurricane Irma spun through the sea towards Florida, writers Dexter Filkin (for the New Yorker) and Michael Grunwald (for Politico) wrote about the dangers that the state had created for itself.  The strikingly similar titles to these pieces (Elegy for the Sunshine State, A Requiem for Florida) suggested that Irma was going to be a turning point.  But neither offered evidence of that.

Nor did a New York Times piece by Ashley Dawson that concluded: "One way or another, Florida is due for a reckoning. We can only hope that it will not be too grievous, and that whatever happens it will help transform the political culture of a state whose governor is a climate-change denier despite Florida’s extreme vulnerability to natural disasters, a place where solar power is essentially banned despite its fame as the Sunshine State."

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, author of the climate crisis piece that broke readership records at New York Magazine, now apparently writing for the New Yorker, has an article called The Change Hurricane Irma Brings. "Across Florida this week, the stress of an approaching hurricane has been accompanied by a feeling that things will not simply reset afterward, that the storm is not a one-off," he asserts.

But he then quotes the Mayor of Miami saying, "This is a lesson that we need protection from nature....”  The author notes that nature may also need protection from Floridians, which is the major conclusion of the three pieces previously noted: the people of Florida (and Texas) have created more and longer-lasting dangers by destroying, subverting and ignoring "nature."  Including of course ignoring and denying the climate crisis.

Ignoring and denying the climate crisis is the state government of Florida's official stance, led by its governor Rick Scott, who famously said that Irma could "catastrophically devastate" Florida, along with the English language.

Will Florida and Texas change?  Will they stop overbuilding and building on flood plains, destroying protective marshland, and so on?  Will Florida embrace solar power instead of vulnerable nuclear power plants, or Texas regulate chemical plants for safety let alone pollution?  Will they take measures to protect themselves against the effects of the climate crisis, and join the planet in addressing the causes?

History says they won't.  Too much money yet to be made by people who've made enough money to buy politicians and government.  But maybe they will, to some degree.  Maybe the experiences of these storms will change people.  But not necessarily in the ways you think: by providing the horrific reality, and scaring them straight.

Here's one of the great failures of the climate crisis debate that has contributed to our current conflicts and confusion: we have not admitted and freely discussed that climate crisis deniers and climate crisis accepters have one important thing in common.  The climate crisis scares us all to death.

The two opposite reactions to fear are, at their extremes, panic and complete denial.  Yet people on both sides of the question experience fear for the future that can edge into at least momentary panic.  And while one side lives within a nervous and defensive culture of denial, the other lives in emotional denial most of the time to stay sane.

My thesis is controversial, for the deniers will forcefully deny that they are afraid, because there's nothing to be afraid of.  But those who have studied nuclear fear in the Cold War decades can see the signs.  Nobody denied the existence of atomic bombs, but plenty denied they were all that bad.

Strong denial in the face of so much evidence of all kinds is pretty clearly a product of strong fear.  Apocalyptic fears are everywhere, expressed in many forms of popular culture as well as religious beliefs.  Seeing the power of hurricanes and storm surges can open some eyes to the climate crisis as an apocalyptic source.  But like the reaction to the thermonuclear arms race, it induces a sense of helplessness.

But experience with these storms also shows that all life does not immediately end.  The storm results in a series of problems to be solved, from preparations to rescues to recovery.  The storm changes life dramatically.  Its effects become a way of life, at least for awhile.

That's what the climate crisis future will be like.  It will become a different way of life.  If that way of life includes addressing the causes of even worse climate change in the farther future, humanity may yet live through it.

We must govern our fear, not be governed by it.  What can we do? always has an answer.

Library Days: The Hardy Boys

This is one of a series of posts on childhood reading and the origins of my relationships with books, inspired by Larry McMurtry's reflections in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.  Earlier posts are here (The Book House books) and here (Library Days.)

I was a little too old for The Mickey Mouse Club television program.  All that singing and dancing was girl stuff anyway.  But my younger sisters watched it on our only TV set, in the living room.  So one afternoon I chanced to see something that caught my eye: a filmed story about two young detectives, small town brothers investigating a mystery, the Hardy Boys.

It was the fall of 1956. The story was told in a series of fifteen minute segments every day.  I got involved enough to learn (and remember) the names of the actors: Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk (both of whom would show up in a number of Disney TV and film stories.)

I was 10, and had begun going to the Greensburg public library on my own.  Browsing books in the children's room I came upon this now familiar name: the Hardy Boys.  Soon I learned to look for the light brown volumes with dark brown titles, and the silhouette of two figures--one with a hat and a scarf--against a jagged background. They must have been among the first books from the library I read all the way through.

In the novels, Frank and Joe Hardy were in their mid to late teens--not early teens as in the Disney series.  They rode motorcycles, drove cars and boats and occasionally carried revolvers.  They got into fights with adult men, and didn't always win them.  But they mostly used their heads, and were old enough to act on their lines of inquiry.  They were in some ways the perfect age for me to read about--older boys at the barely imaginable threshold of adulthood, so old enough to be models but not too old to identify with.

Their father, Fenton Hardy, was a highly respected private detective, which also added to the appeal.  Their relationship to him and his work, and the way he treated them, were fascinating to boys whose fathers disappeared all day at their unromantic jobs and behind the newspaper in the evening.

The first three Hardy Boys novels were originally published in 1927.  The first ten books had been published by 1929, and they then were released at the rate of one a year--for the next 50 years.  The author's name emblazoned on all these books was Franklin W. Dixon, though the first 16 and several more later were written by Leslie McFarlane, with other writers between and afterwards.  They were writers for hire, with the premise and stories outlined by publisher Edward Stratemeyer, who also came up with Nancy Drew and Tom Swift.  He probably also did some rewriting before publication.

There would be new versions of the Hardy Boys over the years since, just as there have been other Hardy Boys on television.  There are more than 500 Hardy Boys stories now.  But the first 59 volumes are considered the classic series.

Some 36 titles had been published by the time I discovered them. In fact, the first Disney series I saw that adapted the first novel (The Tower Treasure) seems to have borrowed an element from the 36th (The Secret of Pirate Hill.)

I'm not sure how many volumes the Greensburg Library had.  I just know I read several, and would eagerly search through what was in the library when I visited. But there was competition--other boys were reading them (and perhaps girls, too, though I didn't know of any) and I knew only one school friend who claimed his older brother actually owned a number of these books.  They were only in hardback.

I don't remember which Hardy Boys books I read.  I do remember, however, which Hardy Boys book I started writing.

It was "The Creaking Stairs Mystery."  I wrote a couple of pages, and was working on them at school in fifth grade.  Our regular teacher wasn't there, and a parish priest, Father M., was more or less babysitting.  We were supposed to be "working silently" on our own at our desks.  He walked up and down the aisles.  I was startled when he stopped at my desk and picked up my notebook.  He read some of it to himself and then announced the title to the class (getting it wrong.) He also read out loud a sentence about someone driving a "roadster."  He mocked being impressed.

I was more than a little sensitive about that word, because in fact I did not know what "roadster" meant.  Not knowing precisely what a word meant was not uncommon, either in my reading or in listening to television, or to adults talking, etc.  I would know roughly what it meant from context.  In this case I knew it meant a kind of car.  To me it was a mysterious, romantic word, part of the mysterious world I entered in these books. But to have this ignorance possibly exposed and mocked was embarrassing.

Anyway, as a result of this exposure,  I became too self-conscious to continue writing my Hardy Boys story.  But I did keep on reading them.  I had followed stories told in serial form on television, and loosely so in our school readers, but the Hardy Boys were among the first books I read with a single story developed over its length.  These books were deliciously different because I was in charge of reading the story--I could stop at any point, or read chapter after chapter, and just stay in that world.  The books contained funny dialogue and characters, simple descriptions of a party or an afternoon at the beach, but mostly they were exciting, one event or clue, one question, leading to another.

I could linger over a scene and ponder it, or go back to something that happened earlier, or re-read something I didn't understand.  But as I absorbed the book's world, I read fervently, eager to know what happened next, and to test my impressions and guesses.  I sustained attention, and learned the particular delights of doing so.

In 1959, the publishers started revising and shortening the earlier titles, and these versions are the more easily available now.  In those books, the roadsters have become jalopies (though more technically roadsters were early two-door convertibles), the "touring cars" are sedans.  The revisions were made partly to update such references (and eliminate offensive racial and ethnic stereotypes) so new readers could recognize their world and identify with the young characters.  Later novels with entirely new stories would continue this updating, so in the more recent paperbacks, the Hardy Boys say things like "As if."

The irony of course is that by now a 1959 revision is almost as arcane and unfamiliar as the 1929 original. The later versions in turn will become obsolete.  Personally I wouldn't give up the magic that still adheres to the word "roadster."

In fact, I'm glad I read the unrevised originals for a number of reasons.  For one thing, in later books the Boys got increasingly sophisticated and unreal, acting more like combinations of Tom Swift and James Bond.  This trend started in the 1959 revisions.

According to the indispensable The Hardy Boys unofficial home page, these revisions to the originals are disappointing. "Although the stories were given the same titles and some of the plots remained basically the same, many books were given new plots and are unrecognizable from the originals. Unfortunately, the quality of the writing was nowhere near as high as in the unrevised versions and the resulting stories lost much of their original charm."

A little later, the opinion is more strongly stated: "The quality of the revised stories is generally so far below that of the originals that it can only be considered as an act of literary vandalism."

Strong words, so I compared a few volumes to their originals.  The originals were revised over 15 years beginning in 1959.  The HBUHP categorizes them as "slightly altered" (generally the later books, which often had been written by the same people doing the revisions) "altered," "drastically altered" and "completely different."   I read both versions of  The Tower Treasure (#1, marked Altered), The House on the Cliff (#2, Altered),The Shore Road Mystery (#6, Completely Different) and What Happened At Midnight (#10, Drastically Altered.)

The original Hardy Boy: Leslie McFarlane

I'll make some general remarks and conclusions here, and follow with more about each book for those who might be interested.  All four of these were written by the first Franklin W. Dixon: a newspaper reporter who later became a filmmaker, Leslie McFarlane.  He is generally considered the best writer who contributed to the series.

The literary quality of these books is not high, but McFarlane has a way with dialogue in several of these books, and a humorous and satirical Dickensian flair here and there.  The revisions get into action quicker, though those action sequences are often absurd.  Even given arcane language, cliches and some awkwardness, there is more life and interest in the originals.  The stories are generally more realistic, and better paced.

One notable difference (so others have noticed it, too) is that in the originals, the Hardys relationship to authority, particular to the official police, is strained and even hostile.  In the revisions they are much more respectful and the police are much more efficient and cooperative.  Maybe it was all that "juvenile delinquency" stuff in the 1950s, plus J. Edgar Hoover and commie subversion that scared the revisers.

The revisions vary in quality from not terrible (The Tower Treasure) to so carelessly written as to be insulting (What Happened At Midnight.)  Though I picked up a bunch of the revised novels in a picture cover format at a thrift store, my future reading wherever possible is going to be the originals, especially the McFarlane originals.  In that regard, I've found some used originals with something I never would have seen at the library: dust jackets.  (The above photo is not of my collection.  I have only two with dust jackets.  Needless to say, there are serious collectors.)

So here are my observations on the originals versus the revised:

The Tower Treasure (#1)

The original version of this first novel in the series begins with exposition, while the revised starts with an action scene.  This appears to be one item of the brief for the revisions--hook the reader with action.  This time it works, in others I read the action is absurd by the standards set in the original series--of realism, especially of the Hardy Boys as normal or at least believable boys.

Another item in the brief was to shorten the books to the same length of about 180 pages.  So what took two chapters and 17 pages in the original is reduced to one chapter and 8 pages in the revised.

Some arcane language in the original is a bit disruptive, though funny, cf. "I'm going to ask these chaps if they saw him pass."  But the revision goes further than updating words and eliding the story--it unaccountably adds incidents and characters, to no better effect than the originals.  Plus it doesn't actually eliminate all ethnic stereotypes--just the ones people were more sensitive to in 1959.

It isn't long before the losses become obvious.  The original has a comic set piece involving a group of farmers; the human comedy is entirely lost in the revision. Similarly a scene involving the small town police chief and his detective is derisively funny.  That such scenes reminded me of Dickens is reinforced a few pages later by a reference to a character habitually carrying Dickens' novels (naming three.)  (The original also throws in a sly Hamlet reference.)

But the loss of a certain literary quality is more telling in a line Fenton Hardy says to his sons on page 76 of the original, when he tells them they can help "by keeping your eyes and ears open, and by using your wits.  That's all there is to detective work."  Later, when the boys accidentally find themselves in a location no one had considered and realize it may be the key to the mystery that has puzzled everyone (including their father), they solve it by finding the treasure.  Afterwards they conclude that "The main thing is that we've proved to dad that we know how to keep our eyes and ears open." (209)

 The symmetry of these lines more than anything else starts off this series of books.  They are entirely absent from the revision.

The revision has the good sense to keep the subplot of the father of one of the Hardy Boys' school friends who is unjustly accused of a crime (a similar situation will be repeated in a subsequent book), even keeping most of the dialogue.  But for every arcane line the revision eliminates ("Brace up, old chap," he advised; p67) it seems to lose one of delicate feeling or meaning: "Frank and Joe, their hearts too full for utterance, withdrew softly from the room." (68)

This being the first novel, it has the first instances of official police incompetence, and Fenton Hardy's disdain for the local police.  In the revision this is gone, though the comic futility of the chief and his detective Snuff is replaced by a comic Snuff, now an aspiring private detective, and his self-importance, ambition and incompetence.

The climactic scene in the revision suddenly adds a character to increase threat and action (the Disney teleplay has its own version of this character though he appears early, and interestingly represents a seeming friendly but ultimately untrustworthy and violent adult) but it adds little to the scene.  The ending of the original is longer and more satisfying.    

The House on the Cliff (#2)

The original story begins with the Hardy Boys and their pals (or "chums") exploring a haunted house (which is also the beginning of the second and final Hardy Boys adventure on Mickey Mouse Club, though that story quickly diverged. It notably took place in mostly one location.)  Frank and Joe Hardy discover tools were stolen from their motorcycles, and then witness an attempted murder and rescue the victim from drowning.

The revised version begins with Fenton Hardy letting the boys in on a case in progress.  This is another odd trend in the revisions: the boys are less independent.

The original story involves Fenton Hardy kidnapped by drug smugglers, the boys putting together the pieces of the puzzle involving the "haunted" house on the cliff and hidden tunnels.  They rescue their father, though they are almost immediately captured. There's a lot of action, including fist fights but they are believable.  Some believe this is the best written novel in the series.

The revision has some sloppy writing and makes inexplicable changes in scenes but basically follows the same story.

The Shore Road Mystery (#6)

The HBUHP calls the revision "completely different" but it basically reassembles elements of the original plot in a less coherent way.

The original is more vivid in its scene-setting, and is pretty good at the effect on the town as a series of car thefts continue without a clue. There a nice school scene that's a kind of interlude.  Scenes of the Boys in the caves where the thieves have hidden the cars are exciting, even if their handling of "revolvers" comes out of nowhere.

The revision again starts with a big action scene--the Hardys have more technology now, like police radios on their motorcycles--but the plot seems more contrived.

 In both stories, it's a school friend who is unjustly arrested for the thefts, but the revision adds a buried treasure mystery for some reason.  Also the thieves aren't just stealing cars but smuggling in "foreign" arms for "subversives" in the US.  Hello, 1950s!

In the original, the Hardy Boys solve the mystery, and catch the bad guys in the act.  But in the revision, they gets their butts saved by Dad, who incidentally has "an iron fist."  What's up with that? as the Hardys wouldn't say.  Also the revision suggests that the Boys' hometown of Bayport is in New England.  Which, as we will now see, contradicts one of the originals.

What Happened At Midnight (#10)

This is my favorite of the originals I've read as an adult, but I don't think that's entirely why I'm contemptuous of the revision, which HBUHP calls "drastically altered."

The original is well-paced and balanced, as each increment of the mystery is pursued with activity, such as the Boys trip to New York City.  But most of all, it has a real sense of high school boys doing the investigating, their normal life integrated with the mystery.

It's also a great 1930s story, starting with the opening scene at Bayport's newest innovation, the Automat.  Joe is kidnapped,  Frank and his chums find him, but that's just the beginning. The brothers impulsively follow a suspect on the train to New York, lose their money to a pickpocket, sleep on park benches safely, prepare to hitchhike back to Bayport and earn a meal by washing dishes at a diner. (The diner owner is right out of a movie by Frank Capra or Preston Sturges.) They get a key clue overhearing a hotel switchboard operator, and learn of the existence of the collect call!

As obsolete and therefore nostalgic as all this seems now, none of it was so arcane in the 1950s when I might have first read this book. The telephone system was basically the same, and I remember going to an automat restaurant in Manhattan in the 1960s.  But the revision dumps pretty much all of it anyway. (Though I thought for sure the revision would drop a key scene of the boys in a biplane that loses power- they have parachutes and go out on a wing to bail out.  But the revision makes the plane an antique reconstruction, and the scene happens in a different part of the story.)

Bayport, by the way, in this novel is about 200 miles south of New York City, which suggests New Jersey.

The mystery is solved through a combination of legwork, deduction, serendipity and coincidence. (Which fulfills Fenton Hardy's definition of a detective as someone who basically pays attention.)   Some may object to the coincidences, such as the clues supplied by the clueless Aunt Gertrude.  But it sure makes for a good story that keeps moving forward.

A coincidence puts the Boys in touch with a couple of FBI agents, and so the big finish is more believable with the adult agents doing the shooting and fighting during the capture, though Frank manages to chase and wrestle down the ringleader of the diamond thieves gang.  (The Boys relationship with the local police is also better than in previous originals.)

Other elements of the story are kept, but there are inexplicable changes.  This time the gang is stealing diamonds and "electronics." (What kind of electronics?  Why are they valuable?  It doesn't say.)  Again another needless and basically useless if not confusing plot element is added, a secret invention.

 The revision begins with a completely outlandish fight between the brothers and adult thieves.  In general, the revision is haphazard and careless--literally in the sense that it seems to be written by someone who doesn't care. For dialogue that sounds somewhat formal, it substitutes dialogue that sounds entirely wooden.  As for updating arcane expressions etc., the revision actually has one of the boys say "Gadzooks!"--a word from the 17th century that barely made it into the 19th, mostly in genre fiction.

Finally, let me point out something else that's apparently obsolete.  Especially in the originals, I did not find a typo or a grammatical error.  These boys books, written quickly and expected to be read by teenagers or younger and then to disappear, are immaculately edited, copyedited and proofread.  So 20th century, right?