Tom's Musings

I just finished listening to An Unfinished Love Affair, a memoir by the renowned American Presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. On one level, it touches on her deep affection and respect for her late husband Richard Goodwin, a man who played an instrumental role in the political events of the turbulent 1960s. On another level, the work is a memoir about that troubled and yet unforgettable decade, the last in which the progressive impulses within our American political fabric held prominent sway.

I sometimes have mused about whose life I would have preferred to live as opposed to my own which, I must admit, hasn’t been all that bad. As a young man, my choices drifted toward athletes. You know, it would have been nice to trade places with Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest baseball hitter of his generation. A bit later in life, I aspired to trade places with Hugh Hefner of Playboy magazine fame. For sure, no young man bursting with excess testosterone would pass on the chance to enjoy his libertine lifestyle. On reading this memoir, however, I’m convinced Richard Goodwin had a near perfect life, at least now that I enjoy the gentle wisdom of some maturity. That is, now that I’m older than dirt.

‘Dick’ Goodwin was there at the side of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, and Robert Kennedy during many of the salient moments when America redeemed the unfulfilled promises made at its founding. It was a time when universal suffrage became a possibility, and when legal apartheid was rendered an anathema in public policy. The graceful and uplifting words of Dick Goodwin, as expressed through a host of memorable speeches back then, amplified the heartening possibilities that were spawned during those irreplaceable times. Just one of Dick’s oratorical creations, Lyndon Johnson’s We Shall Overcome speech given to the nation to commemorate passage of the Voting Rights Bill, has stood the test of time as a testimony to human freedom and dignity. The message in Johnson’s address resonated across the subsequent decades despite the fact that Goodwin cobbled it together in a few hours just before its scheduled delivery. His heroic efforts were necessary when Johnson rejected a prior draft done by others.

That was an era, a decade, when words and ideas mattered. Our leaders would uplift their audiences with grandiloquent oratory that oft would evoke or recall the great sentiments and ideals of past genius. It was a time when perfectability seemed plausible because our national icons preferred to lift our thoughts and aspirations rather than debase our public rhetoric with short-term, self-serving swill. The greater men of that era chose to elevate the public, not appeal to their darker sides.

The words of Dick Goodwin supported the optimism and energy of those brief shining moments in the 1960s. They helped launch a War on Poverty and inspire a vision for a Great Society in which all might realize their potential to be what they could. That spirit enabled a rough, working-class kid like me to work in a hospital and with poor kids before trekking halfway across the world to help impoverished farmers in India as a Peace Corps Volunteer. On returning, I could easily work my way to a doctorate and a career as a respected policy-wonk and academic. Reaching for your dreams was easier then. The times, along with the words and ideas that flowed from them, inspired so many in my generation to be more than their humble beginnings warranted.

Those times and words spawned a host of new movements and inspired greater dreams. They liberated the shackles that ensnared women and other disenfranchised groups. Soon, they would address a growing ecological catastrophe, among other critical issues. Wealth inequality and poverty reached historic lows as policies bent finally toward the needs of average families. The 89th Congress, in particular, witnessed huge investments in health, education, and cities that lifted the potential of those oft left behind in our political discourse.

As we well know, the decade was not without its dark side. Addressing racial oppression ripped open raw, festering wounds that released deeper emotions through riots and violence. An ill-considered conflict halfway around the world sapped our treasury and diverted our energies from the domestic challenges being addressed in Johnson’s vision of Great Society. That war tore our social fabric apart in raw and desperate ways. Fearing where this national tragedy was taking the nation, Dick Goodwin took his oratorical skills from Lyndon Johnson to first work with antiwar Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and then to John Kennedy’s younger brother Robert or ‘Bobbie.’ As much as he loved what Johnson had done on the domestic side, he saw (like a younger version of me also did) the Greek tragedy aspect of the President’s war in Vietnam. It was a conflict that ultimately destroyed so much in southeast Asia as well as so many hopes and possibilities at home.

Violence and rage were endemic by the end of the 1960s. There were escalating protests against the war along with bombings and periodic eruptions of violence, including a few fatal bombings. The apogee of the insanity might well have been the bombing of Sterling Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus, the Physics building that was located a block from where I would soon spend most of my professional life. The bombing had taken place because research for the Department of Defense presumably was being carried out there. The spouse of a graduate student killed in that bombing eventually worked at the research entity I helped manage later in my career

That was the sad side of the era. Inchoate rage and internal divisions erupted periodically to tear at our social fabric. I sat in a remote Indian town in Rajasthan, India at the end of the 60s. From that remote perspective, it seemed as if the country was imploding. We seemed destined to succumb to our worst instincts. There was a poignant moment in the book as Doris and her (then) dying husband poured over boxes and boxes of memorabilia from his days as an advisor to those great men. They found a message from Jackie (Onasses) Kennedy to Dick when he was working with Robert Kennedy as the liberal Senator from New York labored to secure the 1968 Presidential candidacy. Her message was something along these lines … “You know, Dick, Robert will end up like my husband did. There is just too much hate in this country.“ Sadly, she proved to be prescient.

The lessons embedded in that book, and from the teachings emanating from that tortured decade, are similar. Life is a continuing battle between our better angels and the other side. We saw both in the 1960s. Today, our lesser angels dominate, flooding our political discourse with greed, oppression, division, and hate. Our lesser angels seem dominant today. They appear unlikely to diminish their hold on the apparatus of government and the media again in my lifetime. Still, I had those moments of hope so long ago, even if only for a few moments.

Those precious days of Camelot, when dreams seemed authentic and aspirations possible, are unforgettable. The memories of Doris about her late husband and about those times bring a warmth to my worn-out soul. That feels good. It is a feeling I need so much in these discouraging times

While I rather like my boiling water metaphor for capturing our contemporary political landscape (introduced in my prior blog), something must be said about a more primitive dualistic approach. There have been many binary visions of both society and the world. One of the more recognizable is Manicheanism, a system that emerged in the 3rd century CE. As developed by Mani, a Persian philosopher, this view focused on the essential duality of existence, what might be considered as a fundamental conflict between good and evil. Though other early religious traditions incorporated elements of this philosophy, Manicheanism was considered heretical by its main competitors, including Christianity. Still, it attracted many adherents.

Hegelian philosophic forms of duality sit at the core of many world views. Marx certainly developed an evolutionary view of competing governance modalities over time in which capitalism and communism represented competing visions in his era. As is the want of many thinkers dominated by a preferred outcome, this grand socio-economic clash would (in his eyes) soon end with the triumph of Communism. Fortunately, he was wrong.

Still, such clashes of ‘good versus evil’ have a certain plausibility about them. After all, they typically are the foundational basis of many religious belief systems. Some historians (Eric Foner for instance) have grounded the essential tensions within our own American history to a primal contest between the reconstruction versus the redemption frameworks for looking at society.

Let’s explore this particular tension for the moment. The United States surely had a flawed concept of democracy right at the beginning. Essentially, only white, propertied males were entitled to wield authority and political power. This certainly was true in the ante-bellum South where rich slave owners called the shots, and a good proportion of the population were held in virtually permanent legal and effective bondage. A vicious civil conflict was waged over whether such a flawed society might continue, one that cost somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 lives.

Toward the end of that horrific conflict, and in the subsequent years, what some have called America’s second founding took place. In the passage of the 13, 14, and 15th amendments to the Constitution, the U.S. segued (theoretically at least) into a nation of laws where all enjoyed protection under our legal system (once again, theoretically). It was also a time when the push to extend suffrage more broadly found its legs. It would take time, about another century, but a mature democracy would emerge. Big steps occurred with the extension of suffrage to women toward the end of the Progressive Era and with the passage of the Voting Rights Act as part of Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s. That decade also saw a broad recognition of basic rights for other disenfranchised groups and the beginnings of what would become the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) movement.

Social evolution, however, is never linear, nor is it guaranteed. We know that the entrenched, oligarchic elements of the South rallied in the post Civil War period. Through violence (the KKK) and apartheid laws, a form of ersatz bondage and rule by a white elite were reintroduced and embedded firmly into the fabric of society. Later, after legal segregation was attacked by a Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) and the civil rights legislation of the 60s, the forces of the right undertook a second, and broader, counter attack. They were dedicated to ultimate victory this time around.

These two resurgent counter -revolutions (the post- bellum and post-1960s versions) have been referred to as the redemption movements. They seek to reverse the successes of the long struggle to establish a participitory society where all have an opportunity to excel and where all are fully protected under the laws of the land. They are designed to redeem some type of lost past where people like themselves called the shots uninhibited by rules and regulations.

The reconstruction movement, on the other hand, represented a ‘second’ attempt to create a more perfect Union. While the redemption counter-revolution reacted to reestablish effective control of a Caucasian form of economic and authoritarian hegemony, the reconstruction alternative focused on full opportunity and equity for all. It drew inspiration from the high sounding words and principles articulated by the Founding fathers.

The redemption counter revolution has been underway since conservatives got their act together in the 1970s. These revolutionaries began to effectively usurp more control over the Republican Party during the Newt Gingrich era of the 1990s. The GOP continued to lurch to the right until all moderate elements were purged, and Donald Trump was able to establish a form of strongman control of the party about a decade ago. The contemporary Republican Party, now fully embracing authoritarian rule, is poised to realize the vision of the redemption cause. It is dedicated to reversing the principles of America’s second founding (e.g., eradicate DEI for example) and to reestablishing an authoritarian and hierarchical view of the social order as it was in our earlier ante-bellum era. Hard right visions, as we know, oft look to some glorious past for inspiration.

To achieve their ends, the new authoritarian leaders will need scapegoats (migrants and WOKE liberals) as well as grand visions (a Greater America). All autocrats need such chimeras. Making America Great Again is the classic misdirection ploy designed to keep the hoi poloi distracted while power is employed to advantage those at the top. Already, we see Trumpians making expansionary gestures (Panama, Canada, Greenland) to placate those who hopefully will not notice when an even greater proportion of the country’s wealth is redistributed to the top.

Most tyrants evidence some form greater whatever aspirations. Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet Union and now is bogged down in the Ukraine. In the 1990s, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic had illusions of a ‘greater Serbia.’ I recently visited the Croatian town of Vukovar which sits on the Danube River across from Serbia. When that Serbian strongman embarked on his madness, Vukovar was besieged for 80 plus days. Over 80 percent of the place was destroyed. The residents were then displaced for some 8 years. The delusions of madmen have real consequences. For Milosevic, the United Nations eventually brought him to heal, and the International Court later convicted him of crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, Trump and his minions likely will suffer no just consequences.

In sum, America is in the midst of its own internal duality. Will it redeem the original promises of equality, justice, and opportunity for all? Or will the counter-revolutionaries seeking a hierarchical society reminiscent of Hindu cast systems prevail (the Mudsill perspective). If not that, perhaps a Taliban version of religious tyranny might serve the same purpose. These titanic struggles wax and wane over time, but I’m really pessimistic in the moment. I fear that the good guys are beaten down, that greedy titans now control the levers through which society can be controlled. Again, I’m so glad I’m old and near the end.

“… an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.”

President Joseph Biden, Jan. 2025

Outgoing Presidents have long issued warnings to the country. Our first chief executive, George Washington, told us to beware of ‘foreign entanglements.’ Dwight Eisenhower pointed to the emergance of the ‘military industrial complex’ as a matter for national concern. I wonder what Abe Lincoln might have said had he not been struck down suddenly by an assassin’s bullet. He might have returned to his admonitionment about the fragility of ‘houses that are divided cannot stand,‘ a prognosis that would have much applicability to our current fractured American polity.

I read an opinion piece this morning by Dave Zweiful. Now 84, he is the editor-emeritus of the Capitol Times. For decades, he waxed eloquently on the public issues of the day for this Madison, Wisconsin based media outlet. He was the classic avuncular wise man who represented calm and reason when passions had been riled. Yet, on the eve of Trump’s second inauguration, he lamented that never in his long life of both observing and commenting on public affairs had he ever conceived that so base and disgusting a man as Trump would rise to the top position in America. He shared my perspective in that we were all raised to believe that our leaders had to be smart, competent, and (at least somewhat) ethical … all the attributes distinctly missing in the Donald. How could such a thing happen?

I look out across our social and political landscape and what comes to mind is a pot of boiling water. The liquid has been driven to a froth from which escapes steam eager to speparate from the liquid mass left behind. At times, distinct bubbles can be seen. Yet, what is most certain is that our original societal metaphor of a melting pot is no more. We now longer merge together but quickly are flying apart.

Let us look at my evolving analogy a bit more closely. The droplets escaping the liquid’s mass are individuals seeking refuge from what they perceive as a world in turmoil. If you listened to Trump’s inaugural address earlier today, you might believe we were minutes away from the apocalypse. It is the ancient Fascist tactic of scaring the crap out of people while offering them solace in a savior … the new leader.

On the other hand, the distinct bubbles we begin to see are groups of like-minded persons who aggregate around salient themes. For example, we have the ultra nationalists who focused on ethnic identity; the religious fanatics who focused on cultural passions such as abortion and gay marriage; the economic elite who obsess about the public good as being a plot to impede their ability to acquire even more wealth; the extreme ‘rights’ oriented types who see an ever increasing array of social wrongs to be addresses. The list of issues and challenges around which to structure a group identity appears somewhat limitless.

Now, these interests have always been with us. But there is a difference today. Our methods for disseminating information has disintegrated into a fractal mess. No longer do we have a common source of nightly news that is delivered in sober and relatively neutral terms. In recent decades, we have dozens of conventional and boutique social media platforms designed to curate and deliver targeted messages to specific audiences. In addition, individuals aggressively seek out affinity groups in cyber space that support their specific, if sometimes bizarre, world views.

The bottom line is that many of us live in such bubbles. These individualized worlds are separated from the population as a whole and other bubbles floating freely out there. They are self-contained in terms of possessing a coherent philosophy even if that internal world seems bizarre to outsiders. These worlds are supported and reinforced by a stream of continuous messaging that emotionally inflame the recipients and keep them bonded to their illusions. Meanwhile, communication across bubbles becomes more difficult over time, since each bubble can choose its own highly selective information sources.

As a result, belief systems increasingly are divorced from reality. The MAGA crowd really believes that Biden was a disaster for the economy as President, even as we remain the envy of the outside world. Alas, it would appear that the ties between reality and belief are irrevocably broken.

In point of fact, only 25 percent of all respondents asserted that Biden was a good or excellent chief executive. Even Trump earned a 36 percent approval rate (around the top of similar approval rates for hard-right officials across other countries) while Obama received a 52 percent up vote. Obama did bring us out of the depths of the terrible 2008-9 housing crash but, by the numbers, his economy was not nearly as good as the one Biden is leaving Trump. In addition, our most recent WH occupant leaves office without major foreign wars and a nation with a host of excellent social measures of well-bring (e.g., lower crime rates, higher rates of health coverage).

The Wisconsin experience is a case in point for this reality-belief gap, the essence of our new bubble reality. Wisconsin is a classic swing state. Biden won here by 11,000 votes in the previous election while Harris lost here by about twice as many total votes last fall. From a variety of surveys, voter sentiment was negative around the time of the November election. The prevailing negativity focused on a bad economy. The Dems, many asserted, had abandoned working people. Inflation was out-of-control. You would expect to see people starving in the streets.

The reality, of course, was radically different. Nationally, the national GDP (a measure of overall income) was growing at a robust 3.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2024. Unemployment was 4 percent, a rate considered frictional by economists. (A frictional rate is one where virtually all seeking employment can find jobs). Consumer spending continued to be robust. And inflation had settled back to a 2.5 percent annual rate, close to the target rate set by Federal Reserve governors. As I oft repeat, our economy remained a primary driving behind global growth.

Despite widespread and erroneous beliefs among the body politic, the Wisconsin economy also was going gangbusters. The state unemployment rate was less than 3 percent last fall, well below the national rate. While Wisconsin had lost almost 84,000 jobs during the Trump administration, it had gained 186,000 during the Biden years. And the Dems did much to offset hardship during their tenure. Some 300,000 Wisconsin Medicare recipients are saving $475 per year in lower drug costs after passage of one Biden initiative. The Department of Education projects that 62,000 Wisconsonites will enjoy some $2.4 billion in relief from canceled student loan debt obligations. And Federal pandemic relief funds allowed Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers to shore up schools, infrastructure, child care, and health care even as State Republicans aggressively fought all of these investments in the public good despite a large $4 billion dollar budget surplus curtousy of a robust economy.

Now, what will the champion of the common man, our Donald Trump, do after he assumes the reins of government today. His nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said the following during his hearing in Congress. Extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts is “the single most important economic issue of the day.” Those tax cuts, and the previous Republican cuts favoring the elite are primarily responsible for our national debt approaching $35 trillion dollars and the $50 trillion redistribution from the working classes to the top of the economic pyramid. Trump and the MAGA crowd are not the heroes of the working folk. They will continue the rape of those poor folk through regressive policies that began during the Reagan years.

While I struggle against blaming voters for their inability to see what is happening, they must bear some responsibility. Still, the newer communication technologies are evolving faster than the average person can comprehend. We only become aware of how deeply we are impacted until long after the fact. I remain pessimistic. Given our bubble-dominated world, I don’t see how we easily escape our private, group supported world views. I cannot see how we can claw our way back to a world based in something closer to a broader consensus about what is happening out there.

I will admit, however. I, too, am in my own personal bubble. I now belong to bluesky.com (having quit X and Facebook). Those I follow on this platform have similar leftist views to mine. My friends and followers here in Madison (and elsewhere) are highly educated (at top universities) professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, elite academics, etc.) who see the world through evidence and reason. We support one anothers values and perspectives. The materials we read, the observations we share, and general information we absorb tend to be filtered in ways that weed out contradictory input. Like all bubbles, ours is becoming less permeable over time, and perhaps more isolated. Moreover, it becomes more and more difficult to escape our private spheres. We look to it, and to one another, for comfort and support in a tempestuous world. As outgoing President Biden remarked, an oligarchy seems on the verge of taking over our political apparatus. But most of us remain impervious to that threat. Do our bubbles inure us to existential threats? Are we beyond reach?

I wish I had an answer to all this. I don’t. I’m afraid the insert below is all too true. As I keep saying. I’m so glad I’m old while the world about me spins out of control.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.”

Thomas Jefferson, 1816

Recently, Facebook announced the ending of its fact-checking initiative. Independent sources had reviewed millions of posts to weed out misinformation, disinformation, and outright fabrications. Zuckerberg, a favorite tech bro of the President-elect, complained that this institutional practice of META had proven to be politically biased. Checking accuracy is biased? I think it is more appropriate to say that the system was proving inconvenient to the richest (and most powerful) men in the world. The search for factual information surely is not easy, and certainly can be irritating to those seeking absolute power. However, it is seldom intentionally biased.

On the other hand, I must say that my personal experiences with FB’s community standards program bordered on the bizarre. I had three runs on this still popular platform, each of which ended badly. During my first, I reached 30,000 friends and followers, adding probably 50 new followers each day toward the end before they banned me for life. I snuck back on and quickly reached 7,000 plus friends and followers. Then, I was banned for life a second time, after being sentenced to their gulag (periods where my access was restricted) numerous times.

My despicable post on this occasion of my second life ban is found above … a picture of the iconic American hero Jesse Owens receiving one of his 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His Homeric performance in front of Hitler has been seen as a brave affront to one of the most despicable authoritarian regimes and philosophies in history … one based on the myth of Aryan dominance. My comment attached to the post was totally benign. I noted that FDR never invited Jesse to the White House but that was understandable (though still lamentable) given the President’s need for support from Southern Democrats to pass legislation designed to get us out of the great depression.

It is very difficult to detect why such a post would get anyone banned for life, never mind for a day. Of course, there is the German athlete giving the Nazi salute. In reality, this man wound up becoming a good friend of Owens, giving him suggestions that helped the Black athlete win gold in the long jump event, while he settled for silver much to the displeasure of Herr Hitler. And despite the salute, he was no Nazi. When his political perspective became all too clear, he was sent to the front and died fighting in the Italian campaign.

Most recently, my third forced exit, I was not banned formally. I merely found that I could no longer log into my account any longe. Neither could I change my password nor create a new account. I have become a permanent Facebook exile. And so, I have migrated to bluesky.com. I like it a lot. It seems less of a money grab and more of a place to connect intelligently with like-minded folk. And so far, they have not assigned me to social media jail, deselected any of my posts, nor banned me for life.

Facebook’s community standards program, on the other hand, has always been seen as a joke. You would be assigned to their gulag for using obvious irony, obvious to anyone with an IQ over 75 that is. I remember one clearly. I posted something along the following lines: All Democrats will vote next Tuesday, November 5. All Republicans will vote the following day, Wednesday. Any idiot would see the humor in this except for the geniuses at FB. They must have a terrible impression of just how dumb their audience might be. My legion of followers would continuously share horror stories on their incredible, almost incomprehensible, ineptness.

Their fact-finding, it should be noted, was separate from their community standards initiative and never struck me as so obviously incompetent. On occasion, I would have a post removed after being found to be suspect by independent fact checkers. That was rare, however, and it is true that I oft did repost information which I did not verify myself. On the whole, though, I did see this service as helpful since I didn’t want to become a conventional Republican who routinely distributed misinformation or, worse, disinformation.

Now, fact-checking is gone. The logic behind its removal remains suspect in my eyes … political bias? Really? Accurate information is politically biased? No! I suspect Zuckerberg’s motives are quite transparent. You cannot become a core member of the new oligarchic ruling elite if your platform is dedicated to bringing truth to the American people. Unvarnished facts are the bete noir of those who wish to exercise control over the body politic. And today, that control depends on controlling broad-based social-interaction platforms. Social media giants such as X and Facebook are essential to controlling the political narrative in a world dominated by a small elite. After all, how else can you manipulate the masses into supporting people and policies that obviously go against their self-interest.

The developing collaborative alliance between the billionaire tech bros and the new Administration assuming formal power on the 20th of January has rather deep roots. From the earliest days of political parties, newspapers oft aligned with one normative perspective or the other. They signed on as mouthpieces for Jefferson and the Democratic- Republican gang or Adams and the Federalists. Facts seldom got in the way of attacks on the enemy. Newspapers became propoganda outlets.

Times changed. The media eventually did become more neutral, professional, and fact-based during the 20th century. But mid-century, especially in the aftermath of civil rights successes and the extraordinary activism of the 89th Congress, conservatives organized to fight back at the liberal agenda. The start of this counter revolution is credited to Lewis Powell, a tobacco lawyer whom Nixon appointed to the Supreme Court in 1972. Powell saw how badly Goldwater’s conservative insurgency fared in 1964. Lyndon Johnson swept nearly all states with more than 60 percent of popular votes cast. Lewis saw a need to alter the default political narrative at the ground level.

The year before his appointment to the Court, he wrote an influential memo that became the long-term blueprint for, in his terms, saving capitalism, which he saw as being on the verge of extinction from leftist attacks. At the core of his strategic plan lay a call for conservatives to take control of key institutions … the courts, the media, and the places where ideas are formulated (e.g., think tanks and universities for example). Only in this way could the basic framework through which people saw government might be altered.

Supported by the uber- wealthy, the elements of this counter-revolution were quickly put in place. A host of organizations were established or strengthened starting in the 1970s … the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, Manhatten Institute, AEI, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Honors Trust, the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network, the Republican State Leadership Committee, Alliance Defending Freedom, the 85 Fund, the State Policy Network, and so many more. In one way or another, they were all designed to reframe the dominant political narrative in America. It was the start toward a cultural transformation of the foundational narrative established by FDR in the New Deal.

New ideas (or old ideas repackaged) were one thing. Controlling the systems for disseminating those ideas was another. Picking up steam in the 1980s, right-wing zealots began to develop new media outlets or assumed control of existing options. The Sinclair conglomerate purchased hundreds of local TV stations. The billionaire Dickey Brothers bought up scores of local radio stations. Now, some 1,500 radio stations across the country are spewing right-wing propoganda continuously. Then, of course, we have Rupert Murdoch and Fox News to be followed by Breitbart, One America, and a host of blatantly hard-right propoganda outlets. As has been noted often, you can drive from the Atlantic to the Pacific while being assaulted continuously by local, right-wing talk shows. This shower of misinformation might occasionally be interrupted in a few major cities, but not often.

The right got some things correct from the beginning. I had an academic colleague who spent a moment or two at the University of Wisconsin before returning to Washington D.C. for her first love … liberal politics. She asserted back in the 1990s that Democrats and liberals were missing the boat. Those on the left communicated with one another. They presumed that their audience was as sophisticated as they were and would be moved by logic and evidence. In their arguments, they appealed mostly to the mind.

She thought that notion to be irredeemably naive. Conservatives, she noted, were writing opinion pieces and letters to the editors of smaller newspapers, not the NYT or the Washington Post, and in simple language. They focused on appealing to emotions, not the intellect. The liberal set very often saw change as a top-down movement where you first convinced the intelligentsia of your (evidence-based) truth before it was inevitably adopted and enacted by national elites.

Conservatives, on the other hand, saw the struggle from the bottom up. Work on the fears and historic prejudices of common folk. The right saw the battle in terms of effectiveness, not correctness. They certainly did not wallow in the realms of abstract principles such as fairness, rights, or justice. Conservatives never lost sight of a traditional, well tried, tactic. Keep people scared and continually offer them up scapegoats for them to fear. Then, of course, offer them a convenient savior at the proper moment. 🙄

I can’t recall any moment in my life when the mechanisms of social control have been cornered by an ideological perspective to such an extent. In addition, the redistribution of resources from average folk to the economic elite is, if anything, accelerating. We have not seen such inequality of wealth and opportunity since just before the great crash of 1929. That grand depression turned the prevailing political narrative on its head. This combination of control over information flows with unlimited resources poses the most distinctive threat to democracy in my experience.

Thus, I’m not sanguine about our current situation. Should I wish for a collapse of the economic order? I hate the thought of such widespread suffering. Yet, what else might turn us away from the impending oligarchic regime that threatens to consume? Money will flow upward at increasing rates given the proclivities of those assuming power. And the right’s increasing control of information and news portends that dystopian world George Orwell predicted early in my life. Reason will be upended while justice and equity will become faint, elusive apparitions. War will be peace: black will be white: up will be down. Even now, we see political projection on a grand scale. Republicans accused the Dems of weaponizing the Justice Department as Trump salivates at the thought of ending a government based on the law while punishing his many real and imagined enemies.

Eliminating fact checking on one of our largest social media platforms is merely a minor skirmish in this larger war. Our ability to nurture and sustain an informed public might already have been lost. But I might luck out. After all, I might not last another four years. Perhaps I won’t see the final end of the American experiment where Trump’s promise to his Evangelical supporters will be realized. Vote for me one last time, and you won’t have to worry about voting again. At linh last, the dictatorship of the hard right will be sold as our bright and shining future, our city on the hill.

Dictatorship is Democracy!

I’ve been trying to move on from my string of political rants but that has proven difficult as the country I once admired now swirles around the metaphorical toilet bowl. But I do have good intentions.

Let’s see what today brings. Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the tech bros who circles in Trump’s orbit, is not someone with whom I would normally agree. Recently, though, he went on a rant about the decline in America’s educational/cultural standards. According to him, we coddle our kids rather than demand the best of them. We want them to be happy rather than prepared for a competitive world. We indulge our young as opposed to challenging them to achieve their potential. As a result, most are entering adulthood ill prepared for what awaits them. Presumably, our educational systems have come to reflect this tendency that enables, or even facilitates, mediocracy. According to Vivek, that is why the U.S. tech industry needs to reach out to other countries for top talent, and why Trump’s hopes to cease the import of foreign talent is counterproductive.

I fear he is on to something. I read all the stories from American teachers lamenting the poor attitudes and performances of their students. Even before Covid, kids couldn’t use cursive, could not write coherent papers, could not (would not) read entire books. In general, American kids fared poorly on international assessments of educational achievement. I was stunned when elite academics from our top universities also suggested a lack of interest in reading among the best of American undergraduates.

Perhaps it is a generation enslaved to their cell phones, tablets, and insidious forms of social media. Apparently, though, many of our youth have trouble negotiating rather simple analytical challenges. I began noting such a decline late in my academic career. The preponderance of doctoral students gradually shifted from American candidates to foreign kids who were better prepared for the demanding quantitative requirements, certainly in economics but even in the discipline of Social Welfare. During my many years on the admissions committee for the Social Work masters program, I reviewed thousands of applications. I became discouraged with the endless number of candidates with near perfect undergrad GPAs but who could not string together coherent sentences on why they wanted to pursue this career. Some of my research colleagues, particularly the economists, lamented that the newer cohorts of foreign doctoral students were advanced in their computer and statistical skills but often lacked imagination, initiative, and an understanding of American culture and institutions. They were great at complex tasks that did not demand original thinking. The problem was that American applicants could not compete with their foreign counterparts in critical technical areas. They simply were not good enough. Alas, these trends preceded the rise of Facebook, WhatsApp, Tic-Toc and all such apps.

I recall my own youth. As I’ve written elsewhere, I grew up in a struggling working class neighborhood. For the most part, my long-ago peers were not the kids headed for future leadership or for financial success. In general, they did not spend their time in libraries, but rather in the streets as we employed our imaginations to create our own forms of rough and tumble amusements. I often joke that our folks routinely kicked us out of our apartments with the admonition not to return until the street lights were on. Parenting was way more casual back then. We were not supervised 24-7 and certainly not coddled by any means. But we did develop interpersonal skills, learned to negotiate social situations, and to develop personal initiative.

My grammar and junior high schools were hardly state of the art educational facilities. My elementary school, in particular, was located in an ancient, quite decrepit, building though, in truth, neither had the advanced bells and whistles that adorn contemporary schools. Yet, my cousin and I both recall getting a marvelous educational foundation that served us well through life. We could diagram sentences, developed a love for reading, and even I (a numbers retard) learned to handle fractions, long division, and square roots with some facility. Basically, we all learned to read, write, and to do basic computations (remember multiplication tables). It simply was expected of us.

To my recollection, I did not stand out among my peers back then, though that may be my imposter syndrome speaking. At home, my father did subscribe to the Reader’s Digest condensed books series and was a committed fan of the Perry Mason mystery series by Earle Stanley Gardner. I devoured all that came into our humble abode before getting my own library card. With no smart phones and apps to distract me, a lifetime love affair with reading came into my life quite early. I even dreamed of becoming a writer one day myself … not a common aspiration on the hard scrabble streets of my youth.

As Jonathan Haidt points out in his NYT best seller, The Anxious Generation, most of today’s kids mature in an enabling bubble. Their parents hover over them constantly, chauffering them from one structured activity to another while ensuring that their precious offspring never experience anything negative or disconcerting. They blame education professionals if their darling issue seems stressed or fails to get a top mark as a student. They blame others if their child is not popular enough or happy enough. They step in to smooth the way when kids encounter the speed bumps we all do in life. Nothing reflects our excessive protectiveness of the young as the trend of parents accompanying their recent university graduates to their initial job interviews. Really? It seems to me that our parents wanted us to deal with challenges as a form of reality-testing. Adulthood was hard, they said, so get used to that early on. Got into a scrap with a neighbor kid, you dealt with it on your own. Don’t look to mom and dad to be rescued.

In my generation, as I recall, we made our own decisions and found our own way in life. In my high school, you didn’t run to your parents if one of the teaching religious brothers whacked you for acting out in class. You knew your folks would only give you another whack at home. You didn’t run to them if you got a low grade in a subject. You knew they only would push you harder to study more. Needed some spending money, get a job. I started delivering newspapers and got my first real paying job at 14 years of age. And you were taught fundamental behavioral standards like being kind to elders. I recall, as a young tyke, refusing to give up my seat on the bus to an elderly female passenger when my father asked. I was shown the error of my ways when he got me home, obviously a lesson I never forgot. There were no excuses, just expectations to do better, to achieve more, to rise above what you thought you were, and to behave decently.

Perhaps there was something to this high expectations approach to raising the next generation. Ever notice the winners of national spelling Bs. It strikes me that they are invariably immigrants from India or some part of that foreign world. A few had only been here a few years with English being a second language. I recently noticed a meme (though it may have been around a bit) that showed the U.S. math team that finally had beaten the Asian teams in annual international competitions for the first time in well over a decade. Progress, I thought, until I looked closer at the picture. Every member of the U.S. math team clearly was of an Asian ethnic background. Nothing is wrong with that, but it does reinforce one of my priors. Nurture is critical. Culture is critical. I can recall a woman who worked for my late wife at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She and her husband were Chinese immigrants (he worked in a local lab). My spouse found their approach to parenting their one son to be radically different from American norms. The kid was immersed in a range of activities (academic, musical, athletic) and expected to do very well in each. He was required to follow a 24-7 schedule. We thought it rather hard on the kid but, in the end, he was accepted at Harvard University. It simply was expected of him. That high-expectation approach seemed typical among Asian parents.

Another fact strikes me as potentially important to the dumbing down of America. Politicians used to elevate the general discourse in their public statements and speeches. They would reference great literature and sprinkle uplifting quotes in their talks. Who can forget the inspiring words of JFK or even LBJ (during passage of the civil rights bills). They relied on writers like Bill Moyers, Ted Sorenson, and Richard Goodwin. They knew that words and ideas moved people, could raise them above petty concerns and provincial perspectives. I can still hear Kennedy’s words from his Ich Bein Ein Berliner speech issued over six decades ago. Now we have a President-Elect whose public statements dwell in the gutter … that focus on divisive fear and hate.

Speaking of the Donald, is it true that he publicly stated that he might use force to take Greenland and Panama? Or that he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America? Or that windmills drive wales crazy? And his minions rage that the Dems hid Joe Biden’s decline? How hypocritical! It ought to be a very humorous, if perilous, four years.

More seriously, it cannot serve our future well when the man holding the highest office in the land cannot read or comprehend material at the level of a college freshman (at best) or who speaks with a 5th grade vocabulary. What lesson does that impart to the young of this nation? Oh look … you can be dumb as a sack of rocks, a virtual illiterate, and yet achieve fame and fortune and mass devotion? Just have no moral compass and cheat and lie your way to the top. A rather impoverished role model in my view.

Again, I am so glad I’m older than dirt. I am in a position to just bitch about things, not do anything. Even as I criticize some parents, let me be totally clear. I think it is the hardest job imaginable … way above my pay range. That’s why I avoided it like the plague.

I typically question myself when tempted to issue a ‘sky is falling‘ prophecy. Then again, hyperbole is the very essence of our national political discourse. Prior speculation on imminent ‘end days‘ often results in poor reviews, if not embarrassment, for the erstwhile prophet. How many times have we heard the claim that ‘this is the most important election in history?’ And yet, history continues on as if nothing of important took place.

Perhaps this is a mere reflection of my advanced years. However, the sense of doom floating around these days feels all too real to me. Yes, things were awful globally in 1944 when I was born. But the horrific evils of Fascism were on their last legs. The long terror of the Cold War had its cliff-hanging moments of doom (remember the Cuban Missile crisis), but rational minds always prevailed in the end. Really, who besides the war hawks believed in the domino theory (if Nam fell, then California was next). Besides, it was always clear to me (at least) that the Soviets would never conquer us, though we mutually were capable of obliterating society. Besides, it became clear early on that Communism would self-implode. And Islamic-terrorism? While 911 was jarring, it never could threaten our basic institutions. Just the opposite. The Jihadists, at best, would be irritants.

Now, things really do seem different … qualitatively different. I keep asking myself … why? My most common answer is that this threat to the nation is internal. It comes from within and, with this last election, perhaps reflects the normative sentiments of close to half of all Americans. They appear willing to abandon our democratic foundations. Worse, internal dissension is the most dangerous by far. Our Civil War had as many casualties as all our major foreign conflicts combined.

Putting Trump and his MAGA minions back in office suggests a fundamentally radical reorientation of the American political narrative. While the American experiment has been far from perfect, progress toward a true democracy prevailed during our 250 or so years of existence. Now, however, we are on the precipice of a radical reversal. Some form of authoritarianism appears to have been chosen over democracy, divisiveness over inclusion, power over the rule of law, raw competitiveness over compassion, money over equality, unsubstantiated belief over science and data, slavish devotion over merit and competence. And propoganda over expert analysis. To all appearances, we seem on the verge of a classic form of Fascism at home and an outdated shift to isolation globally even as the world moves toward greater integration. Trade wars and the disintegration of NATO? This is what a greater America promises? Really!

While I’m no Nostradamus, let us assume for a moment that my doomsday speculation has merit. What will our intermediate future look like? Stay with me for a bit while I lay out several distinct, but not mutually exclusive, paths … Authoritarianism, Kakistocracy, kleptocracy, and Theocracy.

In many ways, the Project 2025 plan is a blueprint for some kind of hierarchical pattern of leadership. It contains many elements, including savaging virtually all programs designed for the common good. But I am struck by how much damage it promises to do to the checks and balances of our system of government. If there was one dominant obsession among our founding fathers, it was a fear of an excessive centralized government. They tried to balance the needs for national action against the threat of overweening power at the center. Those taking control in two weeks intend to push the limits of a centralized authority, but exactly how. Let’s briefly touch on the threads listed above.

Authoritarianism … if you have dreams of revolution, democracy is the weakest avenue to success. The French Revolution quickly segued from noble sounding sentiments of equality and liberty to the guillotine premised on lawless terror. The early Leninist Communists abandoned worker councils (or Soviets) in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. Revolutionaries realize quickly that the masses are difficult to steer in any direction. Rather, the architects of fundamental change are seduced by the power inherent in authoritarianism, or virtual dictatorial rule. It just seems easier and more efficient.

The blueprint for an authoritarian government is laid out in Project 2025. While it has many threads (like savaging programs designed to serve the common good), their plan to impose a virtual dictatorship on our national government worries me the most. It proposes many changes that would shift the office of the President from a limited executive set of functions to one of rather unlimited imperial control. The intent, in the long run, is to ensure a continuity of control by so-called right-minded plutocrats.

I mention one aspect of the plan here. The blueprint calls for an evisceration of protections for federal civil service employees. Vast numbers would be moved from under the existing rules that harken back to the 1880s and the meritocratic reforms introduced by President Cleveland. In the new regime, these workers would become at-will employees. Their hiring and continuation of emoyment would utterly depend on their loyalty to the top. Merit would play little role in their service to the nation and the people. There would remain few ways for civil servants to question rules from the top.

Kakistocracy … a related form of governance is often called Kakistocracy or governing by the least competent. Why would anyone choose such a method of running national affairs. Well, it mostly is a default option. That is, when loyalty to the top managers trumps all else (pun intended), the number of competent candidates is dramatically reduced. Besides, they might think for themselves … Heaven forbid.

Think about this, Robert Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. I worked there for a year (and consulted with staff there over many years). They deal with enormously complex policy issues that demand the highest level of knowledge and analytical skills. The staff I worked with were knowledgeable and highly professional. Kennedy’s qualifications are that he dropped off the ballot in several states, obsequiously sucked up to the Donald, and he had a brain worm in the past. His views on medicine harken back to the days of bleeding with leeches.

And take Matt Gaetz. Yes. Someone take him. Appointing this cretin as the head of DOJ was beyond the credibility pale. Fortunately, he was so bad that his appointment collapsed immediately after his record as a pedophile and drug user became public. But surely, Trump had to know when he announced his appointment. He just didn’t care. It is as if Trump sits around contemplating who is the most ridiculous candidate for each position. The worse they are, the better they look to him. And the easier it will be for him to control them.

Kleptocracy … This is a form of governance with a rather long tradition in American history. Essentially, this approach suggests that wealth is equivalent to power. Money has always played a big role in government, especially during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and the roaring twenties of the decade preceding the great depression. There have been many attempts at redressing the oversized role of money in politics, the McCain-Feingold legislation being an important example. All failed in the end.

Now, it seems impossible to turn back the tide of riches dominating principles in our public life. Inequality has reached levels reminiscent of the late 1920s, or just before our most dramatic economic collapse. Such a concentration of treasure among the privileged few bequeethes enormous possibilities for increasing political control on to them. The MAGA crowd does not even bother to conceal that they are in bed with a few wealthy oligarchs. The Dems struggle to maintain some independence, but that becomes increasingly difficult as political fortunes become increasingly dependent on money.

It has been widely accepted that the supply-side tilt of federal policies since Reagan has resulted in a $50 trillion dollar shift of wealth from average folk to elite. At the same time, the so called middle class has been hollowed out … falling by some 11 percentage points since 1980. It strikes me that Trump’s DOGE, the department of government efficiency, will be a transparent effort to savage outlays in most programs helping average or struggling folk. Under Musk and Ramaswamy, these program recissions will be exploited to justify new tax cuts favoring the ultra wealthy. And that is just the beginning. The bottom line is this … the next four years will witness an unabashed raid on the public treasury unlike any we have seen in history. The spiral will accelerate … more money, more power to the elite. Heaven help us.

Theocracy … the final directional option for the future of our government is a well-known variant called theocracy. This is where we jettison all pretense to a secular government in favor of one based on religious beliefs and authority. If you need an example, simply look at Iran or Afghanistan. In such places, secular laws have been replaced by the Sharia where the views and pronouncements of Mullahs outweigh those of experts and elected officials. The interpretation of divine will overshadows all secular considerations.

Of course, the big question is which God and which representatives of that God will dictate divine will in public life. Obviously, the Bible as an arbiter of public policy is a very rough and inexact tool. I mean, do we really want to reimpose slavery, as endorsed in the Old Testament, or stone to death female adulterors … probably a bit harsh for contemporary tastes. I’m sure that the Evangelicals waiting for the anointing of their political hero have other, more favorable, thoughts on these matters.

In my opinion, the theocratic option has never been a serious alternative. It has been a convenient misdirection tactic to be employed by the plutocrats while redirecting vast sums up the fiscal pyramid. The ploy is simple. Confuse and distract the victims with contentious normative issues so they don’t notice the ongoing theft bankrupting them. Things like abortion, alleged attacks on Christians and (unbelievably) Christmas, and threats to Christian cultural hegemony are enough to keep the pot boiling and the sheep distracted. So far, I have not seen any evangelical luminaries ascending into real positions of authority, but the scam undoubtedly will continue, if not increase.

Which of these strategic threads will dominate? All to some degree. The kleptocratic (or oligarchic) alternative likely has the advantage (to my eyes at least). Money talks while bullshit walks, as the old saying goes. But each approach plays a role in the entire scheme of things. And so, each will be featured from time to time, depending on circumstances. For example, if the economy sours, expect a resurgence of theocratic concerns and issues.

Unfortunately, we cannot escape one disturbing reality. The man at the center of this circus is, without question, the least competent and the most damaged public figure in my lifetime. I laugh every time the MAGA minions attack the Dems for hiding Biden’s cognitive decline. Really?

It is readily apparent that the MAGA crowd engages in crass projection … assigning behaviors to their opponents that they have themselves mastered all too well. But this one is over the top. Just read the exposes written by those who closely worked with Trump in the first go around (those who were not part of his cult). They all were appalled by his cognitive and ethical shortcomings. Many spent their time trying to keep the Donald from doing even more damage. You should never cast stones if you live in a glass house.

So, wither America? I have not the slightest clue. But I do feel we face the most perilous challenges in my lifetime. Worse, we are at the mercy of an unstable narcissist driven mostly by a dark and forbidding paranoia. I haven’t prayed since my late teens, but I just may start again.

This past year yielded much bitter fruit, including yet more evidence suggesting that so many of our fellow citizens are either gullible, narrow-minded, or pathologically selfish.

Yet, as I look about at the gifts provided to us by nature, I remain inspired. We at least have the artistic expressions of divinely imagined creations.

I only wish that my fellow humans might be worthy of what nature oft bequests to us.

My peripatetic mind tends to wander over many conundrums during a day, during just an hour even. In my cerebral journeys, I frequently visit the following question. What is it about the uber-wealthy that drives them to acquire ever more? Why are they never satisfied? Okay, I can see the game aspect of this competition … a race to outdo ones closest competitors. But is that it? Is life to be reduced to a shallow game of meaningless one-upmanship?

Clearly, some psychic satisfaction is attached to moving up a spot or two on the list of the richest (see the current list below). The frenetic search for ever more has been with us throughout history. That intrinsic need for more drove Genghis Khan to conquer additional territory until his empire stretched from Hungary to Korea. And I am reminded of the absentee British landlords in Ireland during the midst of the potato famine. Even as one million plus Irish peasants perished and another two million emigrated out of total desperation, food stuffs from Irish baronial manors owned by English Lords were loaded on ships to be sold for profit overseas. Greed conquered the most elemental expressions of human compassion. Then, of course, we had the unconsionable wealth of ante-bellum plantation owners in the American South. This American form of nobility lived feudal lifestyles on the backs of enslaved humans.

Not being wealthy personally, it is difficult for me to imagine the intrinsic rewards of moving from 7th to 6th place on such a list of financial winners. So freaking what! Worse still, some of these competitors for the most riches appear driven to manipulate public policy in ways that advantage them while disadvantaging ordinary folk or, perhaps worse, while seeking new methods for exploiting workers in craven ways. How much satisfaction can one get in accruing another billion at the cost of imposing further hardships on so many others.

Elon Musk is the poster child for unmitigated greed. His estimated $447 billion in accumulated wealth is the equivalent to 1.6 percent of America’s Gross Domestic Product. He has become John D. Rockefeller rich, up to this point the wealthiest American in history. But what’s the point of such greed?

Economists say that the marginal utility of acquiring more money diminishes after reaching a certain kink point. Somewhere, not far above the median income level, basic economic needs are met. Beyond that point, the meaning of each additional dollar decreases a little at first and then a lot. Eventually, the pursuit of more becomes meaningless. How many mansions can you buy, cars can you drive, sumptuous meals can you consume? Obequious display becomes a substitute form of direct satisfaction or pleasure, if that is what it can be called. Look at me! Look at the things I have, even if these material acquisitions bring me so little pleasure?

It has become fashionable to say that we are in the midst of another gilded age. At the end of the 19th century, the elite enjoyed extraordinary fortunes while most Americans labored in poverty or near poverty. The winners built mansions in New York and elaborate cottages (i.e., sumptuous mansions) along the sea in Newport Rhode Island. At the same time, so-called robber barons employed government police and militia to suppress worker demands for a living wage and to deny demands for elementary rights. Soldiers routinely were brought in to force mine and industrial workers back into dangerous and ill-paid work. Attempts to protect children from labors that stunted their growth and shortened their lives were decreed as Bolshevik or radical plots. The few enjoyed lives of unsurprised luxury, including lavish dinner parties that would cost millions today, while the many struggled in marginal lives and died prematurely as a result.

Then, there was virtually no income tax and regulations of business were weak and seldom enforced. Such inequities endured because laws typically served the wants of the elite. That changed somewhat during the progressive movement in the early 20th century and in the more dramatic reforms of the New Deal and Great Society reforms later on. In fact, the so-called era known as the great compression that took place in the several decades after WWII. That remarkable period witnessed unprecedented growth of the American middle class along with a decline in poverty and suffering. Unlike earlier times, it was a era of high taxes and an aggressive period of public investment in people and infrastructure (e.g. the Interstate Highway Bill, the G.I. Bill, federal investments in science and higher education, and so much more). The late economist Robert Lampman was fond of noting that a litmus test for domestic policy in the 1960s was what will it do for the poor? Concern about the public good was a major focus.

Starting with Reagan in 1980, all that was reversed. The elite never forgave FDR for, in their words, betraying his class, for concerning himself and the federal government with the well-being of common folk. Over time, the right seriously ramped up a counter-revolution eventually known as the Reagan Revolution. This included a return to free-market tactics, the ascendancy of trickle-down economic theories, and a reversal of much government oversight and consumer protections. It marked a return of Darwinian economic struggles and a winner take all perspective.

The result has been a return of gilded-age inequality and the usurpation of political power by an economic oligarchy. Many controls on the exercise of political moderation have been shedded, in the setting aside of the fairness doctrine and in an increase in the role of money through the Citizens United SCOTUS decision. Now, politics is money. Even judicial elections run into the tens of millions of dollars. Long gone are the days when Wisconsin Democratic Senator William Proxmire could run for reelection while spending only several hundred dollars.

The salient question is this. During the earlier gilded-age (end of the 19th century) and during the roaring 1920s, it appeared that there was little hope for wresting political control from those that held the gold. Can you recall the old saw … he who holds the gold rules? It seemed as if power would forever be located in an entrenched economic oligarchy, a kleptocracy if you will … perhaps forever. But circumstances permitted change to happen. Reform was not only feasible, it happened even when unanticipated. Can it happen again, perhaps in what remains of my lifetime, which cannot be all that far in the future given my current age?

With working class Americans now siding with the very political forces dedicated to exploiting them, it is impossible to expect any substantive reforms in the next generation or so. But that’s the wondrous thing about life. Predictions of the future are a perilous preoccupation. One never knows. Hopelessness can turn to hope when least expected.

I am a dark cloud person by instinct. Fortunately, I am also far from omniscient. Perhaps people will realize that the acquisition of unthinkable amounts of treasure is not the ultimate end in life. Perhaps there is a point when people say enough is enough, that greed is not a moral good but little more than exquisite selfishness. I just hope I am here to see that day.

Recently, I was told of the passing of Gerard Wilson. The news caused me pause, to reflect on some earlier moments in my life. I suddenly felt a need to examine the deeper and more fundamental meaning of things. Of course, once you enter your ninth decade (turn 80), most of your total life’s moments are in the past. Memories, not hopes, suddenly are what constitutes one’s personal narrative. And reflection on what might be important substitutes for the frantic pursuit of what typically is considered success.

So, who is this Gerard Wilson, you might ask? He was no one important on the public stage, gaining neither fame nor notoriety in any larger sense. But I suspect he touched many without even being aware of that fact. He represents, I sense as I think about him and so many others like him, one of those anonymous persons who leave a distinct footprint in life without much ado and certainly absent a full appreciation of what they had done. That, in truth, is the fate of most of us. Hopefully, we can leave small footprints without acclaim nor credit.

He was known as George to those of us who knew him back in the 1960s. He was a member of India 44-B, a rather ill-fated Peace Corps group who served as so-called agricultural ‘experts’ in rural Rajasthan, India, a northwest desert province bordering on Pakistan. India was a tough PC assignment, made more difficult by virtue of the fact that we in India 44-B were urban college graduates who knew nothing about farming. Let me assert that a little bit of training does not make you an expert. Of the large assembly of eager college volunteers on day 1 of training in 1966, only about a dozen completed two years of service. This placement was not for the faint of heart.

We all went our separate ways when our tour finished in 1969. I only saw George once after that … in 2011. Those who served in India 44-B (and India 44-A with whom we trained) had gathered in Washington D.C. for the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Peace Corps by executive order of President Kennedy in 1961. In fact, thousands of ex-volunteers had gathered in the Capitol to celebrate the program and what it meant to them. The Embassy of India feted those who had served on the sub-continent, and a celebratory march of thousands of former volunteers was held at the Lincoln memorial. On that march, George held the banner for our group and those who had served in India.

In some ways, George represented us perfectly. He was idealistic and tried to give back to society. Before volunteering for India, George was raised in New York and graduated from Fordam University. On finishing his PC service, he earned a masters degree from the University of Southern California in diplomatic studies before embarking upon a career with the U.S. State Department. He served in places like Senegal and Iran, assignments for which India might have been good preparation. Though he never talked about it, he was rotated out of Tehran just before the 1979 hostage takeover by radical Islamic students. That would have earned him 15 minutes of fame in a horrific way.

In some ways, George was like many (virtually all) in my group. We were all exceptionally smart, highly educated, and instilled with a sense of duty to others. Yet, even among this group of high achievers, George was special. He had a quiet authority about him, seldom seeking the limelight yet impacting others when he did speak. Upon hearing the news of his passing, another volunteer (Mike) shared the following vignette. I did my final training in an Indian village with George and Bill. The reality of India was getting to me, and my eagerness to serve was seriously flagging. I asked George, ‘do you think this is worth it?’ His response was immediate … ‘absolutely, this is an incedible adventure.’ Mike decided to stay and subsequently served his two years.

And there lies the epiphany I associate with the news of his passing, especially as others commented on what he meant to them. He touched others in a quiet manner and without fanfare. In the end, you don’t need 15 minutes of fame to make a mark. You simply need to be genuine and to care. George was and did. And he is remembered.

I am moved to write a short (I hope) addendum to my recent treatise on America’s circular spiral into the toilet bowl of history. Thing is, I always start out believing these rants will be short and then find myself getting carried away.

President Lyndon Johnson is credited with capturing the essence of American politics back in the 1960s. Paraphrasing his actual words, his pithy observation goes something like this … tell a (white) man that he can look down on his black neighbor and he will let you rob him blind. In fact, he will open his pockets and give you everything he has. What Lyndon was describing is the oldest misdirection play in the book. Distract your target audience with an emotional side issue so that they will not notice what is going on right in front of them. Self-interest fades when you can misdirect the average Joe with something irrelevant but rage-inducing.

There are several momentous questions facing the American public … climate change, the mounting national debt, and the unknowns associated with the AI revolution to cite just a few. But let’s focus on a longer-term issue I have occasionally touched upon in the past … the redistribution of income and wealth to the top of the pyramid and the resulting hyper-inequality that threatens participatory democracy.

Normally, one might anticipate that the rape of the middle class for the benefit of the super-rich would evoke rage and a revolutionary fervor among the losers in our ongoing class war. But there has been hardly a peep within the ranks of working class America. If anything, they have drifted into the arms of those ripping them off. Shockingly, working class males voted for Trump in this last election. On the surface, that hardly makes sense. In fact, it borders on the absurd, sort of like Jews for Hitler.

The hollowing out of the middle class is a well-known story. Starting with the Reagan revolution, decades of progress toward a generally affluent and more inclusive society were reversed. The most quoted trend involves the share of income wealth going to those at the very top. The proportion of national income being captured by the top 1 percent grew from less than 10 percent in 1979 to almost one-quarter of the total pie in recent years. That, as economists would agree, is a galactic shift. Similar trends were found in wealth. The top decile (10 percent) of the population enjoy a typical nest egg of about $7 million dollars and (as a group) control two-thirds of all wealth. On the other hand, the bottom half of all households struggle along with an average nest egg of about $50 thousand while commanding a mere 2.5 percent of the national pie.

Through a variety of tactics (regressive tax changes, a restrictive safety net, attacks on labor, etc), I noted in my last post that some $50 trillion dollars has been transferred from average and struggling Americans to the uber-wealthy in recent decades. Democratic administrations attempted to reverse these trends in some marginal ways, but the default position in American politics has become a kind of Darwinian struggle where the winners are permitted to take as much as they possibly can. Despite a widespread consensus to the contrary, Democrats do a better job with the economy.

Between 1970 and 2018, the middle class saw their share of income drop from 62 percent of the total to 43 percent, a tectonic shift by historical standards. The share enjoyed by the upper crust grew from less than 30 percent to about half over the same period. Meanwhile, the CEOs of top American corporations now often command 300 times what the average worker in their firm makes. That is dramatically higher than what top managers in overseas competitive firms make (in Japan, 5 example, top managers take home perhaps 15 to 20 times what workers make).

Even more egregiously, top executives often take much of their compensation in stock shares. They then can use that equity as collateral to take personal loans. Neither the stocks (unrealized income) nor the loans (considered debt) are taxed. Since any interest payments on a loan is much lower than any tax on ordinary income, the super wealthy wind up with an income stream that largely avoids paying their share for the public good. No wonder the wealth of business icons has exploded over the past two decades. With Trump and Musk running things, the rape of the working class will explode even more in the coming years.

So, here’s the question. Why aren’t average Americans outraged. Okay, Luigi Mangione gunned down an insurance executive in New York City. By any rational standard, that executive was a serial murderer, consigning untold thousands to suffering and avoidable deaths in the name of quarterly profits. However, law enforcement went into overdrive to capture the man responsible for meting out this form of rough justice. When Mangione did his perp walk the other day, even the Mayor of New York participated (presumably as a publicity stunt). The death of one rich man of highly dubious ethics sparks national outrage. But who speaks for the untold thousands and millions enduring anxiety and suffering due to our unconscionable health care system (which bankrupts hundreds of thousands annually).

Let me return to my original conundrum. Why are Americans willing, so eager, to ignore their obvious exploitation, even lending support to those who exploit them. Is it ignorance? Is that why Trump has said he loves the ‘less educated.’ We can say one thing for sure. The origins of this puzzle go far back in our past. In our catastrophic Civil War, most of the white South fought and died to preserve a social and economic system that benefited a small elite. Only 2 percent (at most) Southerners owned enough fellow humans to benefit economically from the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery. The majority of people in the Confederacy were economically struggling whites who were disadvantaged by the prevailing system of free labor and an autocratic approach to governance in Southern states. Yet most white males willingly suffered and died to preserve this most recent version of exploitive serfdom. How odd?

One explanation is that core societal divisions (separation by skin color, nationality, culture) are deeply embedded in our psyches. As President Johnson realized three generations ago, any feeling of superiority will drive individuals to sacrifice economic self-interest to preserve traditional racial myths relying on inherent states of natural hierarchy. Some groups, it is argued, are demonstrably inferior. The mudsill theory prevalent in the mid-19th century suggested that some were destined to lead society and others to follow obediently while laboring in hard, dirty jobs … a caste system for America. That primal instinct is dramatically increased if supported by prevailing norms embedded in institutionalized belief systems.

In much of America, many sought guidance by asking ‘what would Jesus do?’ For tens of millions, Jesus apparently would do the very opposite of our conventional understanding of Christ’s message. He would sanction the exploitation and oppression of some people by others based on assigned attributes, which the individual can not always alter and sometimes can not easily mask. This is the bedrock assumption of Christian Nationalism, a plague that has infected our country.

Let us begin by noting that our understanding of Jesus (or any similar spiritual guru) grows out of our collective projection of what we want from a god-type figure. In short, we create our gods for good or bad. Historical analyses of early Christian communities reveal that there were many, many different views of the Jesus figure in the beginning. These disparate perceptions of a great teacher (though of somewhat apochryphal authenticity) were recorded in early writings and gospels, most of which have been lost to us (or consciously ignored by religious authorities).

By the 4th century (CE), church leaders moved to create a single, coherent version of Christ and his teachings, or at least come close. Many early gospels were branded heretical, their believers being considered heretics. Many of these were persecuted, if not killed in unspeakable ways. In 382, Pope Damasus I called together the Council of Rome to select and codify an agreed upon set of writings that were agreeable to the institutional church. Up to that time, Christ was depicted in wildly different ways. In one lost gospel by Thomas, the youthful Chist was far from the saintly figure that was ultimately chosen. He struck out, even slew, those who opposed him as a young man.

Who was this Jesus that found institutional approval. Essentially, he was the version about whom I was taught in my youth. This Jesus advocated love, acceptance of all no matter their background, and urged his followers to do good works and avoid the temptations of the world. This is the Jesus that drove the money changers from the temple and asserted that it would be easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. In fact, Jesus asked his original followers to practice a form of communal poverty … what amounted to a primitive form of Communism. He was the total opposite of the Jesus associated with today’s version of the Gospel of Wealth. He was a Jesus I admired greatly, even entering a Catholic seminary to (somewhat briefly) study for the Priesthood.

This compassionate image of Jesus, however, was at odds with the emegance of a robust form of capitalism in the West, especially the United States. As is done with most deities, believers projected their wishes on to what they worshipped. For example, in 1926, a man named Bruce Barton wrote what became an influential book during an era when laissez-faire business dominated economic and political thinking. Titled The Man Nobody Knows: A discovery of the real Jesus, this work repositioned the great teacher of simplicity and sacrifice as a contemporary capitalist who glorified wealth and sanctioned personal success.

A whole series of subsequent religious authorities followed (e.g. Billie Graham, Jerry Fallwell, Jimmy Swaggert). They wrote and preached in ways that would wed God (or God’s presuned son) to mammon. Watch evangelist Joel Osteen one of these days. His preaching the Gospel of Wealth enables him to enjoy huge mansions, a fleet of private jets, and a lavish lifestyle.

The evangelical church of Osteen and others has become a key arm in the ever growing threat of a plutocratic theocracy. These religious charlatans essentially use a twisted image of Christ to keep typical believers enraged at misdirected emotional targets while the economic elite continues on their rapacious ways. Believe in Jesus and get rich, or so the faithful are told. Such bastardized religious beliefs (Evangelical slight of hand) keep lower educated voters preoccupied with abortion, aliens, transgenders and the like while additional schemes are enacted that permit the elite to take ever more and more of the national treasure as well as political power.

The other critical arm in this unholy alliance are some (not all) of the economic elite. George Soros and Warren Buffet (among others) recognize what is happening and speak out against growing injustices. On the other hand, take Elon Musk for example. (Please, take him anywhere)! His most recent actions are both illiminating and disturbing. He scared Republicans into turning down the proposed debt ceiling deal (thereby ending public borrowing and thus risking a government shutdown) by threatening to finance primary challenges to resistant Congressional Republicans when they ran again for office.

Did Elon want to shut the government down on principle? I doubt that. The more convincing argument is that he wanted to renegotiate the deal to eliminate certain provisions he didn’t like. Namely, there were restrictions on American investments in China that would hurt his economic position. Elon has companies frantically investing and building on cutting- edge Chinese technologies. His China interests (and wealth) were more important than America’s interest. So much for Making America Great Again.

Once again, my simple point has led to diarrhea of the brain. My apology. The original point, and my fundamental fear, is that an alliance between extreme wealth and evangelical manipulation make needed political and economic reforms nearly impossible. In the past, we had periods of self correction … the progressive era at the start of the 20th century, the New Deal after the Great Depression, and the Great Society in the 1960s. It is more difficult to see how we can reverse today’s trends. America is flirting with authoritarian rule under the guise of creating a theocratic plutocracy. The American experiment in participatory democracy is on shaky grounds, extremely shaky grounds.

While I remain cynical and pessimistic, perhaps two rays of hope exist. Religiosity is in decline in the U.S. In a recent pole, the majority of respondents told interviewers that they did not belong to a formal church, a first since such polling began. Does this foreshadow a decline in morality. Not in the least. It is most ironic that the message of Jesus is more prevalent in ordinary lives among those nations where formal religiosity has already declined the most. (Also, a host of metrics tapping social dysfunction are highest in the Bible Belt). What may disappear is the institutional bigotry embedded in too many rigid, authoritarian religions.

Second, we could see a major economic recession. The Biden economy has spurred a long period of growth. The claim that America is driving the global economy is not without merit. However, a positive future depends upon a mature handling of a complex economic system. Trump and his sycophants could easily wreck everything. Savaging public programs, initiating additional tax cuts skewed to the wealthy, imposing tarrifs on imported goods, and seeking enormous private gains through their public offices could quickly unravel our strong recovery from both the Bush housing collapse and Trump’s mismanagement of Covid. As in the 1930s, out of chaos and fear might come a realization that change is necessary.

But I have no crystal ball. Time to buckle up and wait. Just so glad I’m old.

I once again failed in one matter, though. I have been afflicted by yet another serious case of diarrhea of the brain and mouth (or the written word at least). Please forgive me.