A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one’s compatriots than be mocked and detested by them.
– James Baldwin
Author Archives: Chris
Cognitive scientist George Lakoff on Trump’s and, more generally, Republicans’ moral challenge to liberals.
Watch and learn. I’d did. See also his book, Moral Politics.
Reading material – August 26, 2017
Reading material from the past 4+ months:
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
- Joel Berg, It’s Policy, Stupid: Why Progressives Need Real Solutions to Real Problems:
Stopping the other side from taking disastrous actions is necessary and empowering, but concretely improving the everyday lives of Americans is the best way to both win and govern. Progressives should aim for nothing less.
- Jack Meserve, Keep It Simple and Take Credit
- Sam Adler-Bell, A Tough-Love Letter to the Left: A new book urges activists to avoid insularity and purism—and to focus on winning.
- George Lakoff on Trump’s moral challenge to liberals [“To many, [Trump’s] lying doesn’t matter.” That sounds hard to get past but I believe we can.]
- May Naomi Blank, Fights We Can Win
- Graham Vyse, How to Sell “Medicare for All” to All Americans
- Matt Bruenig, A Foundation, Not a Net
- James Kwak, The Importance of Fairness: A New Economic Vision for the Democratic Party
Discourses on fairness from fifty years ago:
- Howard Axelrod, CEOs Have No Business Being Commencement Speakers
Thought for the Day – August 17, 2017
This 40 year old commentary aged well:
Sometimes I think we were more eloquent 40, 50, 60 or more years ago.
Thought for the Day – August 15, 2017
Remember that time LGBTQ people got together and plunged America into bloody civil war so they could own straight people as property? https://t.co/JTlKJGzIeC
— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) August 15, 2017
No, I don’t either.
We can be an egalitarian party or a party of the socially-liberal aristocracy
Corey Robin on evaluating presidential candidates – emphasis mine:
I think a lot of the discussion of various candidates for the Democratic Party would be significantly advanced if, rather than focusing on some problematic or terrible policy they adopted in the past (which is going to be true of any viable presidential candidate; Bernie’s record was hardly perfect, after all), we focused on who is backing these candidates, pushing for them, and the money that is behind them: that really is much more central to the crux of the matter, it seems to me. When we focus on specific policies, we do sound like we’re adopting litmus tests and focusing too much on individual personalities. Much more important to attend to the coalition of interests behind these people, and who in those coalitions will have the upper hand.
I remember within days after Obama’s election, a very senior US historian sat me down and said, basically, it’s all over. He pointed to all the finance people Obama had installed either formally or informally as his advisers and cabinet. I didn’t pay attention, focusing instead on all the inspirational rhetoric and very real victories of representation (which I continue to believe were super important). He (the historian) was right, though. And it was a point anyone could have seen from the very beginning when so much of Wall Street rallied behind Obama.
Thought for the Day – August 8, 2017
It’s remarkable to consider that there was a time not too long ago when the Grand Old Party was known for being serious, sober, a little boring, but above all, responsible. They were conservative in the traditional sense: wanting to conserve what they thought was good and fearful of rapid change. You might not have agreed with them, but there were limits to the damage they could do. The devolution from that Republican Party to the one we see today took a couple of decades and had many sources, but its fullest expression was reached with the lifting up of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, this contemptible buffoon who may have been literally the single worst prominent American they could have chosen to be their standard-bearer. I mean that seriously. Can you think of a single person who might have run for president who is more ignorant, more impulsive, more vindictive and more generally dangerous than Donald Trump? And yet they rallied around him with near-unanimity, a worried shake of the head to his endless stream of atrocious statements and actions the strongest dissent most of them could muster.
This week’s must read: Corey Robin’s Twitter exchange with Chelsea Clinton
The exchange itself is funny and more than a bit silly but there are some serious things to take away from it. Robin has two posts describing and summarizing the exchange:
- Yesterday, I got into an argument with Chelsea Clinton. On Twitter. About Hannah Arendt.
- Chelsea and Me: On the politics—or non-politics or pseudo-politics—of engaging a power player on Twitter
Robin’s first post describes the exchange it. Unless you’re actually interested in the details, you can skip it. The significant takeaway from my perspective is in his second post (emphasis mine):
The Freedom Agenda
I’m underwhelmed by the (rumored) new Democratic party slogan “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future”. Yes, I want a better future for my kids, my neighbors, and all of my fellow citizens and better jobs and wages will almost certainly be a key element of that but, taken in total, the slogan feels timid. It sounds like something George Carlin would savage mercilessly. Timidity has been the calling card of the Democratic Party for the past couple decades so I’m not surprised, but it’s still a let down.
The other week I was re-reading Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In it King registers his disappointment with “white moderates” who “[are] more devoted to “order” than to justice; who [prefer] a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”. “A Better Deal” has ‘negative peace’ tattooed all over it. Think about it: Not great deal but a better deal. Nothing too drastic. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone… Really, that’s the best we’ve got? (Snark aside, “A Better Future:…” might be a workable starting point. That is, after all, the desired end state.)
For the past day or so I’ve been thinking we should go with
The Freedom Agenda:
Freedom of speech.
Freedom of worship.
Freedom from want.
Freedom from fear.
Think anyone would go for it? Who doesn’t love freedom?
I go back to the first question from Heilmeier’s Catechism:
What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon. What is the problem? Why is it hard?
The Party slogan needs to address the first two sentences and should allude to the third and fourth.
UPDATE:
Get the details of A Better Deal here and here. The substance of it is fine but the ‘branding’ is awful.
Thought for the Day – July 18, 2017
I read a piece in the NYT today on “pragmatic” Democratic governors. (The NYT reporter uses “pragmatic” and “pro-corporate” interchangeably where I don’t believe it’s justified, but I digress.) One of the governors interviewed was Steve Bulloch of Montana. I have a favorable impression of him but that’s beside the point. In the article, Bulloch was touting apprenticeships as an alternative to free college. I have a favorable view of paid apprenticeships as well as tuition- and fee-free public college. Vocational training is a good thing and it’s a good thing when people can use their college education to obtain gainful employment. That stated, it’s important not to regard college as high-level vocational training. The greatest value of higher education isn’t that it enables better employment opportunities, it’s that it advances Enlightenment values. Paraphrasing what I think is a spot-on description: The purpose of education is to help people to learn on their own. It’s the learner who is going to achieve in the course of education and it’s really up to them to determine how they’re going to master and use it. The greatest value of an education is that it fosters the impulse to challenge authority, think critically, and to create alternatives to the status quo. (I suspect that’s why so many Republicans don’t view college favorably.) Is college the only place where you can get that kind of education? No, but it’s a great opportunity for you to do so if you’re so inclined. Compared to life in the rest of the world, the barriers are low.