I was on “Stateside” on the Israeli global news network i24 on March 20, 2019 to talk about the “inappropriate touching” allegations against Joe Biden.
What Makes a Life-Changing Teacher
Kamala Harris is doing a nice thing on Twitter, asking people to share stories of teachers who changed their lives. Here’s one of several I can think of right away: Kenneth Clegg, the chemistry teacher at Warwick Academy in Bermuda. He made us all love to be in his class because he so clearly loved all of us.
My dad, David Critchley, who knew what he was talking about, would have said Mr. Clegg was an example of what really matters in good teachers — more even than how well they know their subject (although Mr. Clegg knew his very, very well). Quoting Charles Truax, Dad said three simple things make the difference: empathy, warmth, and genuineness.
The trouble is, those are hard to turn into checklist items in a teacher training curriculum. You don’t so much learn them as you’re given them, usually in childhood, by your parents or other mentors — or, if you’re not so lucky, through the hard work of clearing away all the junk that gets built up in their place.
Democratic Socialist or Social Democrat? There’s a Difference — and It Matters a Lot.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Words matter. And if Democrats aren’t careful, they’ll use them to lose the 2020 election.
Led by popular figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, some on the left are calling themselves Democratic Socialists.
Are they really? I hope not. I hope what they really are is Social Democrats, and what we have here is just a confusion in terms. But either way, it hands Trump and his re-election campaign one of the best weapons he could hope for, and one of the only effective ones he’ll have.
Here’s the difference between “Social Democrat” and “Democratic Socialist,” and why it matters.
A Social Democrat is basically what we’ve traditionally thought of as a progressive: someone at the left edge of the mainstream of American politics, and closer to the center in many other Western democracies — familiar, friendly, and prosperous places like Canada and Britain. They favor more regulation and higher taxes than do many Americans, but like most Americans, Social Democrats believe in free markets. Meanwhile, nearly all Americans support some degree of socialism along with their free market, in the form of services like Medicare, Social Security, public roads, or a taxpayer-funded military.
So what’s a Democratic Socialist? I suspect many of those who think they are one assume it’s about the same thing. But no. Democratic Socialists are, as the name states, actual, full-on socialists.
They believe in centralized control of the economy, as Marquette University sociologist Michael McCarthy explains (approvingly) in the Jacobin: “Democratic socialism, on the other hand, should involve public ownership over the vast majority of the productive assets of society,”
Given the rampant inequality generated by the last few decades of deregulated capitalism, apparently this sounds like a pretty cool idea to a lot of people now. The trouble is, it turns out to be really bad policy.
Whole-hog, centralized-control socialism is an experiment that has been run, and it’s an experiment that has failed. Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the formerly socialist countries who’ve abandoned it — like, say, Russia and China — or the Nordic countries, which went part of the way there and chose to stop.
The reason has little to do with whether or not we think wealth should be shared more fairly. It has everything to do with complexity.
Karl Marx
The idea that a modern, complex economy could be run under centralized control is an artifact of the 19th Century. It was born out of the rise of science and the Industrial Revolution. Karl Marx based his economic analysis in large part on the new mechanical technologies he saw transforming the world around him, for good — for capitalists — and for bad — for workers, like those he saw suffering in the nightmarish slums and factories of England.
Marx, also drawing on Hegel and other sources, thought he had discovered the science of history, and therefore that history could be predicted. What he couldn’t see was that the linear processes of machinery — this switch trips that lever, which releases that blast of steam — don’t begin to encompass the nearly infinite complexity of the interactions of millions of humans.
And since Lenin established the first one, in the Soviet Union, centrally planned economies have failed to control complexity, five-year plan after five-year plan. It turns out reality refuses to play ideological ball, unless it’s forced to.
And that leads me to the second big problem with full socialism: if we really want the government taking over most of the economy, we’re going to have to accept a lot of coercion — and we’ll need to cut back the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
None of that is likely to be popular with most Americans.
And that’s why Republicans, and Trump in particular, are so delighted when they hear Democrats calling themselves socialists, instead of leaving that to GOP attack ads.
We can only hope it doesn’t become any more fashionable.
As the historian and socialist-turned-Social Democrat Tony Judt said towards the end of his life, in “Thinking the 20th Century,” the biggest story of that era was “how so many smart people could have told themselves such stories with all the terrible consequences that ensued.”
What the Feinstein-Kids Video Teaches About Effective—And Ineffective—Advocacy
About the kids and Dianne Feinstein. I understand why some people feel outraged by what they think they’re seeing in the video, but I’d like to ask them to step back for a moment and try something that may feel unnatural: exercise some empathy for a politician.
Feinstein could have expressed it better, but if the group, especially the adults who organized it, had been able to listen to what she was saying, they might have learned some things about being effective in advocating for change.
Like not starting off by attacking an ally, in public. The full video, which provides much more context than the widely circulated two-minute edit, is here:
Senator Dianne Feinstein with a delegation of schoolchildren. Video by Sunrise Movement Bay Area via Storyful and the Sacramento Bee
Feinstein has a 100% 2017 rating from the League of Conservation Voters, and a 90% lifetime rating. She probably doesn’t need to be lectured about the danger of inaction on climate change. And, as a powerful ally, she just might be able to help move solutions forward.
Also: if an elected official who’s already on your side isn’t giving you everything you want right away, it may not be because that hasn’t occurred to them, or because they don’t want to do it. It may be because they can’t. They have to try to make things work in a democracy, where one person or group doesn’t have all the power.
Instead, people who disagree with you have power too — sometimes more than you, like when you’re in the minority in the Senate. So you’re forced to try to find paths forward other than the obvious one of just telling people what to do.
And that’s the hard part, which people in Feinstein’s position have to wrestle with every day: not what to do, but how to get it done.
So she could have been more polite, but her visitors could have been a little less focused on making demands, and a little more focused on making progress.
The “Innocent Mistake” Defense for Racism
Slavery was repugnant to many Americans long before America was a country — the Germantown Quakers denounced it in 1688. It was outlawed in the British Empire in 1833. We fought a Civil War over it from 1861-65. Still, injustice and violence against black people continued, and that has been an issue every minimally educated person has known about ever since, through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the rise of the KKK, the 1909 founding of the NAACP, “Strange Fruit” (1939), the civil rights movement, landmark legislation, assassinations, the Southern Strategy, birtherism, voter suppression, and Charlottesville.
When the movie “Birth of a Nation” was released, it sparked widespread protests over its celebration of the KKK and demeaning depictions of black people. That was in 1915. More than a hundred years ago.
Harry Truman was born in 1884 and raised as a racist in a pro-Confederate family in rural Missouri. But he, like many white Americans of his time, was able to learn, to feel compassion, and to change. In 1947 he said, “If this freedom is to be more than a dream, each man must be guaranteed equality of opportunity. The only limit to an American’s achievement should be his ability, his industry and his character.” And the next year he desegregated the military.
That was more than 70 years ago — and even then, it was a common belief that what progress had been made had taken far too long.
Also in 1947, Frank Sinatra, who had been raised in a working class family and never finished high school, said this: “We’ve got a hell of a way to go in this racial situation. As long as most white men think of a Negro as a Negro first and a man second, we’re in trouble. I don’t know why we can’t grow up.”
Every American alive today has the benefit of centuries of thinking on civil rights, and centuries of examples of people who managed to choose respect and kindness over bigotry and cruelty. All the information about this that anyone could ever need has long been available easily and for free.
So maybe, by 2019, the “innocent mistake” defense is done?
Beyond a certain point, ignorance becomes a choice, and “innocence” is just a cloak.
How We Won—And Then Lost—The Cold War
It’s been hitting me hard lately how so much of the agony we’re living through now originates in our bungling response, or lack of response, to the fall of the Soviet Union.
When the USSR collapsed in on itself under the weight of its own illogic and corruption, we could have recalled the lesson of the stunningly successful Marshall Plan, then only four decades in the past: Do not let a defeated enemy sink into despair and humiliation. In your own self-interest, help the foe succeed, and become a friend.
But no, as the Russian empire fell, America and the West stood back, trusting that freedom and free markets would be enough.. But instead, oligarchs and gangsters used their new liberty to set about looting their own country.
And the horrors of communism were replaced with the horrors of thugocracy.
So? Maybe we didn’t care so much, since there was money to be made by us as well.
But the corruption spread. And it breached the borders of the West as Soviet aggression never could.
Ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin and his gang didn’t need to invade Britain with an army. They did it by buying up luxury real estate with their looted billions, or by parking their money in British banks, or by negotiating joint ventures with British corporations.
And it turned out they they could do the same to the United States — except that even better, in an incredible stroke of luck, they apparently were able to make a partner of America’s future president. When no reputable American bank would lend to him, they bailed him out of his bankruptcies and, by the evidence, hired him as a money launderer, converting their cash into condos.
We humiliated Germany after World War I and got World War II. But we learned, and got it right with Germany and Japan after World War II. They became two of our strongest allies.
And then, after the Cold War, we made the same, old, terrible mistake again.
And here we are.
Thugocracy
Erasing the difference between America and a thugocracy like Russia may be this presidency’s most tragic effect.
Millions of Americans are being held hostage by a leader who can’t get what he wants through the legitimate legislative process. Count 800,000 federal employees, with let’s say the average two children per family — that’s 2.4 million Americans. And then there are all those who depend on federal services — in some cases, with their lives at stake.
Millions.
And while he’s taking hostages, he’s also running a protection racket: he does damage and then negotiates a price to make him stop. Like creating a humanitarian crisis at the border, or throwing Dreamers’ lives into turmoil, and then offering to stop in exchange for his extortionate demands.
And then there’s the long list of his other mob-boss behaviors: intimidating witnesses, obstructing investigations, self-dealing, concealing financial information, constantly and flagrantly lying, attacking law enforcement, and years of business dealings with gangsters — Russian and American. How much more obvious could it be? Innocent people don’t behave this way.
America has never been perfect, as other countries have always been ready to point out. But other countries have also trusted that America was much, much better than Russia, or any of the other alternatives as the world’s leading nation — and that, not money or weapons, was why America could have so much power, for so long.
But now, they can’t be so sure. As the president himself said when challenged to — just once — criticize Vladimir Putin: “You think our country is so innocent?”
Not any more.
Branding and Incantation
One thing that President Trump understands is branding, although with “steel slats” I really think he’s losing his touch (panic will do that to you).
His more successful efforts have included MAGA, Crooked Hillary, Fake News, and, of course the Big, Beautiful Wall, compared to which Steel Slats is New Coke.
Branding is perfect for Trump, whose name is itself a brand, because a brand doesn’t require facts, logic, or any argument at all: just an impression.
This might be a lesson for corporations that have invested so much in creating and building their brands — not least by backing them up with actual goods and services.
Trump sees the power of a brand as pure incantation: simply say the right words the right way, and, as the ancient Irish filid could tell you, the human mind can be ensorceled into believing nearly anything.
Try it: Crooked Hillary. Or Nancy Pelosi.
Do people really know why they’re supposed to hate them? No — unless it’s to recite other powerful though empty incantations, like Benghazi, Uranium One, or (shudder) San Francisco.
In TrumpWorld, it’s brands all the way down.
Posted in Communication, Politics & Society
Tagged branding, communication, Donald Trump, influence, rhetoric
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Trump Isn’t Getting Better, America Is Getting Worse
[Also published at Medium.] After the shock of Donald Trump winning the presidency, the hope many of us clung to was that he would grow in office.
Instead, America has shrunk.
There was some reassurance at the beginning, as his poll numbers fell — especially once they reached the low 30s, because 30 percent might as well be zero. As pollsters will tell you, it’s the noise floor of politics: there are always about that many voters who are uninformed, careless, or crazy.
But lately, support for Trump has been rising, at times approaching 50 percent.
This after the Muslim ban, Charlottesville, the attacks on our institutions, the attacks on our allies, the children in cages, the thousands of lies, and on, and on, and on.
Nearly half the country is OK with all that. And a small but growing number of violent extremists are emboldened by it.
We shouldn’t be surprised that Trump isn’t getting better. He really doesn’t seem able to.
But neither should we be surprised that instead, America is getting worse.
We like to say “This is not who we are,” and “We’re better than this.” Normally, those assertions are true.
And yet with the wrong leadership, it is who we are. Yes, America is exceptional. It’s the first country to be founded not on an ethnicity but on an idea, and that idea, freedom and equality for all, is a glorious one.
But Americans are human beings, and human beings are creatures of light and dark, of hope and fear. If a leader constantly summons the worst in us, it will come forth.
History has shown, over and over and around the world, what can happen. Still, we think it couldn’t happen here. Instead we ask, “What was wrong with those people?”
The answer is, they were people. There was nothing wrong with them that isn’t also wrong with us — as a nation of immigrants, we literally are them.
Leadership matters.
But in a democracy, so does citizenship.
We have chosen a terrible leader.
If we want better, we must be better.
Vote.
Posted in Leadership & Management, Politics & Society
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After Trump, Prepare for the Shame: A Warning for Americans From Occupied France
General Charles de Gaulle and his entourage set off from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame for a service of thanksgiving following the city’s liberation in August 1944. Photo: British Ministry of Information / Imperial War Museum, via Wikimedia Commons
[Also published at Medium.] With the Liberation of France in 1944 came a miraculous discovery: the entire nation had resisted the German occupation.
“Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France!” proclaimed General DeGaulle in his victory speech.
It was an inspiring story of courage and resolve. If only it had been true.
But no. The story of universal resistance was a comforting fiction, hiding a complicated and painful reality: while there certainly had been heroic resisters, most of the French had silently cooperated with their occupiers and the puppet Vichy regime. Many had actively collaborated.
What story will we tell, when our time comes? Because the Trump presidency will end, and for many, that will be a time of shame.
Not, of course, the ones who have no shame. But those who see Trump for what he is, and yet remain silent. They mimic the French attentistes, who privately deplored the occupation, but chose to “wait and see.”
When the wait was over, though, it turned out they couldn‘t bear to see.
So they turned to an alternate reality, in which courage was redefined. In an essay for The Atlantic at the end of 1944, existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre hailed the heroes of the “Silent Republic.” Their contribution? They could have informed on actual Resistance members, but didn’t.
Some tried to puncture the nation’s self-delusion. In 1947, novelist Jean-Louis Curtis published “The Forests of the Night,” a portrayal of wartime life in a typical French village. As Curtis wrote, resistance was the “rather blurred background” to a far less noble foreground: acquiescence, collaboration, and betrayal.
Curtis’ book won France’s top literary honor, the Prix Goncourt. But it failed to displace the more less realistic fiction his compatriots preferred.
Poster for “The Sorrow and the Pity,” via Wikimedia Commons
A full reckoning with the truth didn’t begin until 1969. That was when film-maker Marcel Ophüls made the French face themselves, in his
quietly harrowing documentary “The Sorrow and the Pity,” or “Le Chagrin et La Pitié.” The full meaning of that title, which in French also means “regret and shame,” is revealed through the first-person accounts of a few brave resisters—and many others who struggle to explain their wartime behavior even to themselves.
“There was one value that we all shared, and that was caution,” offers one.
“I’m trying to remember, but I can’t,” says another.
But the archives did remember. Historian Thomas Paxton studied them exhaustively and, two years after “The Sorrow and the Pity,” he published his findings in “Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order” (1971): most people, some of them eagerly, had aligned with whomever was in power.
A crude graph of French public opinion from 1940 to 1944 would show nearly universal acceptance of Marshal Pétain [head of the collaborationist Vichy government] in June 1940 and nearly universal acceptance of General de Gaulle in August 1944, with the two lines, one declining and the other rising, intersecting some time after… November 1942 [when the Germans occupied the former “Free Zone” of southern France following the Allied landing in French North Africa].
After Paxton, assessments of the true strength of French resistance would shift this way and that. But the current judgment of history incorporates the pain of that very uncertainty. As Ronald C. Rosbottom writes in “When Paris Went Dark” (2014):
Even today, the French endeavor both to remember and to find ways to forget their country’s trials during World War II; their ambivalence stems from the cunning and original arrangement they devised with the Nazis, which was approved by Hitler and assented to by Philippe Pétain, the
recently appointed head of the Third Republic, that had ended the Battle of France in June of 1940. This treaty—known by all as the Armistice—had entangled France and the French in a web of cooperation, resistance, accommodation, and, later, of defensiveness, forgetfulness, and guilt from which they are still trying to escape.
This web waits for us.
It’s popular to scorn and mock the wartime French. A supposed French propensity for surrender has become a stock joke (one that ignores World War I and much other history).
“Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order,” Columbia University Press
But who are we—especially the silent ones among us—to laugh?
To speak out against the German occupation was to risk torture and death.
To speak out against Trump—so far at least—is to risk only embarrassment, strained relationships, or perhaps the loss of some business.
Before we judge the French of World War II, we must ask ourselves if we can honestly say we would have done better. With that in question, their warning should sound all the louder in our ears.
If they felt such shame, how will it be for those of us who find mere inconvenience an excuse to forsake democracy?
And make no mistake, that is what it means to stay silent now, as Yale historian Timothy Snyder, for one, argues so persuasively and concisely in “On Tyranny.”
When the institutions and norms of democracy are strong, they protect us. But when they are threatened, as elections, the judiciary, law enforcement, the press—and even the truth itself—are threatened now, we are called to protect them.
For most of us, most of the time, democracy is easy. Maybe too easy. We’ve grown awfully comfortable letting a tiny minority serve as its guardians, out of sight, out of mind.
But ultimately, each of us is democracy’s last line of defense. And silence, unavoidably, becomes betrayal.
It’s that hard knowledge which met the attentistes of post-war France. So too the attentistes of post-Trump America.
Speak out, now.
Posted in Politics & Society
Tagged authoritarianism, democracy, Donald Trump, World War 2
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