Empathic Rationalist

Learn from History, Save the Democratic Party ... and the Country

2022-07-23T06:56:00.002-07:00

History is a story told by the winners.

That is an old saw. It is understood by victims of racial/ethnic discrimination and women, who have found themselves written out of history books since time immemorial. When they ask, “What about us?” they are faced with hard-headed and hard-hearted men of the more powerful tribes, who scoff at the notion that their petty little complaints – and their trivial heroes – should possibly capture equal time.

Liberal people all understand and accept this now. At least when it comes to ethnic and gender issues. But where liberals have a blind spot is when it comes to battles over the souls of political parties. If, perchance, these liberals are center-left Democrats, the ones whose preferred candidates almost invariably win the nomination and frequently the general elections, they have no compassion whatsoever for the complaints of the folks to their party’s political left. Those complaints are known simply as whining, divisiveness, and the stuff by which Republican victories are made. Strong sentiments. But that’s what happen when compassion is gone.

Look at the data. From 1992 until 2000, the Dems were led by Bill Clinton, who campaigned as a “Southern Democrat” from the political center. He was succeeded by his handpicked successor, Tennessee’s Al Gore – Gore’s nomination was frankly inevitable, but it is safe to say that he wasn’t yet Mr. “Inconvenient Truth,” he was the heir apparent from the party’s center-left wing. In 2004, John Kerry beat back more progressive challengers to take the nomination -- remember “the Scream,” not the painting, but the yell that doomed Howard Dean? In 2008, the progressives had their moment – they pushed Barack Obama, who ran a truly inspired campaign, to the finish line, only to discover that he would allow centrists Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Joe Biden to serve as his chief lieutenants, not to mention his former foe named Clinton.

And that led us to 2016. The Democrats faced a surprisingly tough challenger named Bernie Sanders, who had a singular focus against economic inequity that resonated with much of the party’s base. But when Sanders threatened Hillary Clinton’s seemingly hereditary claim to the throne, she had the party’s leadership in her back pocket and was able to summon hundreds upon hundreds of Superdelegates. The party’s largest media outlets treated those Superdelegates as fully legit, and Sanders had no chance. Clinton prevailed.

Then came 2020. At that point, the progressives in the party who had given Bernie more than 40% of the primary vote in 2016 – especially the younger voters, who voted primarily for him – were feeling like those “losers” who were left out of the history books. What they experienced was that Joe Biden, the guy the media and the party elites originally thought was “due” (i.e., the successor to B. Clinton in 1996, Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004, Obama in 2012, and H. Clinton in 2016), was failing miserably in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. And immediately after Nevada, Bernie appeared poised to lead the race. This, they thought, was their time – finally a real progressive seemed to be on top. Then what happened? The media and the party elites came down on him like a Mack Truck. I'm not referring to the other candidates, but rather the talking heads and op-ed writers. So negative. So gratuitous. Digging up stories about who he supported 40 years in the past. Just one hit after another. It was as if all the talking heads decided at the same time, "we better not nominate him or Trump will be President forever." And sure enough, he went down the tubes, Biden’s centrist competitors quickly cleared the road, and Biden drove right in to victory. All he needed was to do well in a single primary in a small state that never votes Democrat in the fall, and the race was effectively over.

To Biden’s base, aka the center-left of the party and especially the older voters, there was nothing odd about any of this. It was just the majority candidate winning a nomination and then doing what his supporters thought he was best suited to do – beating the maniacal Donald Trump in the general election. But to the party’s progressives, the folks who occupy the leftist third, or the younger third (or both), this was just another example of history being a story told by the victors. Just another example of how they don’t really belong to this political party, any more than many African-Americans living in the Jim Crow south felt that they belonged to this country.

I went through all of this to explain just how difficult it has become for a politician to unify the Democratic Party. There is not simply mutual disrespect between Dems and Republicans, there is a hell of a division within the Party – along ideological and largely age-based lines. This is why precisely one percent – that’s right, ONE percent of Democratic voters under 30 “strongly” approve of the job Joe Biden is doing. That number is as low as it is because of the above history and the resentment it creates. And Biden’s supporters are being tone deaf to this dynamic in a way that they would never allow themselves to be tone deaf to the cries of women or people of color.

It's a problem, one that takes truly inspired leadership to solve. I would love to find such a leader. Maybe my own Congressperson, Jamie Raskin, has the combo of smarts and integrity to make this happen. Does he have the temperament? The courage? I don’t know. But I’d love it if he tried. My one practical suggestion as to how to unify the party I have voiced before: a combination of ranked voting, to satisfy the centrists, and a commitment on the part of the centrist media/political leaders not to panic and turn on the progressive candidate should s/he appear poised to actually win a Democratic nomination, to satisfy the progressives. The Dems, in short, should run positive campaigns within the ranks – making their own case for themselves, rather than denigrating their opponents as commies or the alike – but it is also time for ranked voting, thereby actually making the party MORE democratic, which should be something all Democrats believe in.

And remember, all of this would be happening as part of the most righteous of causes – removing from power a party that has been taken over by Donald Trump and those who have, at one time or another, kissed his ring. Let the words of Trump’s former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham (printed in today’s NY Times), remind you of just who the Democrats are fighting: “I don’t think I can rebrand; I think this will follow me forever…. I believe that I was part of something unusually evil.” The only way to fight something unusually evil is with a force that is unified and potent. There is no time to waste.

Peace and Polarization

2021-05-23T12:57:00.003-07:00

I know I have not been regularly blogging, but I have been regularly writing. On my website, www.danielspiro.com, you can find a new page devoted to two of my obsessions -- Peace and Polarization. I recommend for your perusal two documents in particular on that page -- a statement on American Political Polarization and the diary I have been keeping recounting reflections on the recent fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Enjoy!

Dan

Spinoza on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

2020-10-23T08:07:00.001-07:00

Spinoza's political theory is a highly underrated aspect of his overall philosophy. Back in the 1930s, when Professor Harry Wolfson came up with what was then considered the most comprehensive tome on Spinoza's thought (a 795 page work called "The Philosophy of Spinoza"), only ten pages were devoted to politics. Similarly, when Oxford University recently came up with a 666 page compendium of essays by leading contemporary Spinoza scholars, only a single essay (26 pages) dealt with his politics. Yet of the seven treatises he wrote, two included the words "Political Treatise" in the title -- indeed, politics was at the heart of what Spinoza was working on at the time of his death at the age of 44. Not surprisingly, Spinoza's politics have been highly influential to a diverse set of thinkers, including John Locke, Moses Mendelssohn, and Henry Kissinger. The political theories of the Enlightenment clearly owe a substantial debt to Spinoza's views.

This past year, I have embarked on a lengthy effort to explore the foundational principles of Spinoza's politics. I was especially struck by the importance Spinoza placed on fraternity, a societal characteristic that is sorely lacking today in contemporary America. This research on Spinoza has inspired me to re-double my thinking about a topic I addressed in my first novel, "The Creed Room" -- namely, how to best build fraternity in a society that is not only polarized, but in which political leaders seem to be increasingly indifferent to retaining their credibility or honoring basic human values. Building fraternity is surely a wonderful aspiration. But these days, how to do it appropriately is easier said than done.

The result of my research into Spinoza's politics is an essay that I delivered this past week at a meeting of the Washington Spinoza Society. Here is the essay. I hope you enjoy it.

Just Say No to "One-Sentencing"

2020-07-25T08:10:00.005-07:00

One of the services I enjoy performing for my society is spreading allergies -- to certain kinds of writing.  I enjoy helping people become allergic to, for example: (a) the strawman fallacy, (b) the fallacy of the excluded middle, (c) what-aboutism, (d) the technique of pretending that one invariably has found the "golden mean" when all one has found is a position, and (e) the attitude that a person can be writing about political-economic matters with the perpetual certitude of a mathematician ("isn't it funny that I'm always right and my political opponents are always wrong?").  

So today, I would like to coin a term for a phenomenon to which I hope you will become allergic: to "one-sentence."  Let me give two examples of this unfortunate type of pseudo-persuasive writing.  Example 1: "I'd like to begin by saying that I found President Clinton's conduct with Ms. Lewinsky to be deplorable and in no way, shape or form do I condone it.  [But allow me now to spend the next 10 minutes attacking President Clinton's political enemies and by implication supporting him.]"  Example 2:  "I have spent countless time working for a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians and have seen it as the ideal way of resolving this conflict.  [But allow me now to give you that ten or fifteen reasons why I think the one-state solution is a terrific solution, is the only viable solution, and is the only solution at this point that is consistent with the basic principles of morality.  And allow me in fact to bury the two-state solution 5,000 feet underground and then spit on its coffin.]"

Honestly, whenever you see someone starting an argument with a single sentence that is supposed to show that they are NOT a one-sided, unsubtle thinker but are rather sympathetic to the other side ... they are either insulting your intelligence or they really are a one-sided, unsubtle thinker.  Because if someone, to return to the Clinton example, really did find his conduct to be deplorable, they wouldn't have taken precisely 1% of their speech criticizing it.  

So there you have "one-sentencing."  Next time someone tries to "one-sentence" you, protect yourself.  Don't be "had" by that kind of rhetoric.

Steve Curless

My Response to Peter Beinart

2020-07-12T08:48:00.002-07:00

I am happy that the N.Y. Times published Peter Beinart's opinion piece calling for the end of the Jewish State. Beinart does a relatively nice job of making the argument for what is in essence a "United States of the Middle East" (my words, not his) in which pre-‘48 Palestine would be populated by Jews and Palestinians alike, living in complete equality and moving about freely, much as we in the USA move about from Florida to Maine, Alaska to Arizona. Beinart says that the Jewish State would be replaced by a "Jewish home that is also, equally, a Palestinian home" and that this home would provide "refuge and rejuvenation for Jews across the world."

Now lest this sound like a utopian piece, Beinart does admit at one point that the "process of achieving equality would be long and difficult," adding that it "would most likely meet resistance from both Palestinians and Jewish hard liners." But, he argues, if the Irish and South Africans can largely reconcile, so can the people of Israel/Palestine.

When I was at a yeshiva, I was told once by an Orthodox rabbi that each Jew should wake up every morning questioning the existence of God. Well I would add in a similar spirit that every Zionist should wake up every morning questioning the virtues of Zionism. Particularly for those of us Americans who love our nation's purported commitment to pluralism and equality, if it's right for us, why wouldn't it be right for the people of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Hebron, Nablus and Jerusalem? The thing is, though, when I ask that question about God, I still come up with "yes" and when I ask that question about the "United States of the Middle East," I still come up with "no."

You see, when I have visited England, Japan or Italy, I see a country devoted to the language, history, and culture of a particular people. I see nations with a special relationship to the ancestral faiths and holidays of that people. And I see that culture shine and develop in a way that goes far beyond mere "refuge and rejuvenation" -- I see it grow organically. The world is filled with countries like that. My Arab cousins have enjoyed a number of them. It is no coincidence that my beloved Spinoza, for example, has taken root far better in Israel, as a Jewish State, than in the pluralistic salad bar known as the United States -- countries with a dominant ethnic flavor polish the gems that their group has given us, and whether you love him or hate him, it was the Jewish world that gave us Spinoza so it is the Jewish world that tends to be most interested in what he has to offer.

It is no coincidence that the Jewish-Islamic Dialogue Society of Washington was founded by two Americans who fell in love with their ancestral faiths in Israel and Saudi Arabia, respectively. America can be a "Jewish home" -- but there are homes, and then there are HOMES -- and if you are a Mexican American, an African American or yes, a Jewish American, you know the difference.

In yesterday's New York Times, the deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League asked a rhetorical question, responding to Beinart's piece: "Where else on earth would the idea of an independent sovereign state disappearing from the map be acceptable except in the case of Israel?" Nowhere, of course -- or everywhere, because we live in a time of deep polarization, tribalization, and alienation from the "other," in which for example more and more Americans are wishing that Lincoln had allowed the South to leave the Union so that we can have our politicians and they can have theirs.

Fortunately, though, Lincoln did preserve the Union and slavery was abolished. And there are plenty of things in Israel that should be abolished, including the notion that the Jewish People can arrive in large numbers around the end of the 19th century and boot the Arabs in the region into what Beinart correctly calls "an archipelago of Palestinian towns, scattered across as little as 70 percent of the West Bank, under Israeli control." No, just like the United States during the first century of its existence, Israel has a lot of growing up to do, and leaders like Bibi Netanyahu are part of the problem, not the solution. So, too, are those American Jews who claim to oppose Bibi but invariably oppose any efforts to put pressure on his expansionist dreams. But Zionism does not entail expansionism. The two-state solution makes room for a robust Palestinian state next to a robust Jewish state -- not robust by expansionist standards, but rather based on the goal that both sides deserve a "peace of earth" in which to grow their own gardens in peace.

As the child of leftist parents, I understand better than most the dreams of absolute equality. I understand the corruptibility of private property in all its forms. And I appreciate that to a degree, choosing a “Jewish State” and a “Palestinian State” over a “United States of the Middle East” is choosing to privatize land more than it needs to be privatized. But as an individual, I have also come to appreciate the extent to which human autonomy and self-expression – in other words, freedom in the positive sense of that term – are fostered by some degree of privatization. And we all must recognize that in our world, the vast majority of useful land is divided into nation-states in which certain ethnic groups tend to hold a permanent majority and use that majority to express themselves as a people – linguistically, historically, religiously, philosophically, aesthetically …. The list is endless.

If you speak to Jewish anti-Zionists, you will note that the one thing that they can least abide is when someone mentions the Holocaust (or other pogroms) in connection with the raison d’etre for Israel. As soon as that happens, they will reflexively start calling the Zionist dream one that is grounded in PTSD, and refer to Zionists as “emotionally-based” people who fail to see that the “United States of the Middle East” (or some similarly “egalitarian” approach) is the only fair, rational solution to the fact that two peoples occupy the same land. The truth is, though, that events like the Holocaust and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492 are significant in part because they tell us what life can be like in societies that truly appeared to be welcoming environments for thriving Jewish communities. We in America have offered another such environment – and yet we have also seen Jewish people banned from hotels, placed on a quota system in colleges, and sent back to die in Europe when they arrived in ships off of American shores seeking refuge. Beinart ignores all of this history when he glibly assumes that a society in the Middle East that starts out as 50% Jewish (that is how he described what a one-state solution would look like on his CNN appearance today) would remain a “Jewish society.”

The truth is that most Jews are attached to Israel because it is more than just a place of temporary hospitality to Jews. It is a place where Jews live as a permanent majority. It is a place where the Jewish culture flourishes to the max. It is a place where Jewish history isn’t marginalized, and the Hebrew language isn’t marginalized, and where – if there is to be a movement to rejuvenate the language of Yiddish on a large scale, it will almost certainly happen there. Most Jews are attached to Israel just as we are attached to our spouses, our children, and our oldest friends. You are darned right that these are deep emotional attachments, and we’re not likely to choose the kind of pot-luck that Beinart has to offer if we can instead hold what we currently have. After all, if the Germans, the Dutch, the English, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans … and the Arabs can have their countries, why can’t we?

But we are at a crossroads, we Zionists. We see a leader of Israel who seems to have washed his hands of the fate of our Abrahamic cousins from Palestine. And we see this leader getting re-elected over and over again by an electorate who is moving further and further to the right politically. Particularly here in America, Jews and allies who have fought for Zionism must make a choice. Either we call for a United States of the Middle East, as Beinart has. Or we start calling for the United States to put real pressure on Israel to treat the Arabs in pre-‘48 Palestine like full-fledged members of the moral community who have the same natural rights as any other people, including the right of self-determination. If that means putting a stop to the extent of the United States’ financial and military support for Israel, so be it. We need to mean business that it is time for both sides to work hard for the two-state solution that we have been advocating for so long. Yes, the Palestinians have hardly demonstrated a deep desire for that solution. But frankly, the leadership of Israel hasn’t demonstrated one either, at least not lately. It’s time for us to take a stand that two states isn’t a request, it’s a demand.

Either that, or go with Beinart. Because as wrong as he is (from my perspective), there are worse solutions than advocating for another United States.

Dr. Strangetimes: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Coronavirus

2020-03-28T08:12:00.004-07:00

When growing up, I often focused on two era-defining phenomena from the previous generation: The New Deal and the Holocaust. How could the members of my society, one shaped by a faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand and a love for the gadgets that result from Smithian economic competition, have so thoroughly embraced a program in which the federal government took such a prominent role over the means of production? And how could the members of another great society, one associated with some of the finest composers, philosophers and writers who ever lived, have so thoroughly close their eyes, ears and hearts, while their soldiers dehumanized, terrorized, and pulverized nearly an entire ethnic group, which happened to be my own?

The answers, I decided, include the following: Circumstances define character. Needs take precedence over wants. Human beings, like other animals, are inherently self-interested, and our interests begin with self-preservation. Accordingly, we are averse to risks, we don’t fix what isn't broken, and we don't rock the boat without a damned good reason … yet we are willing to take steps to protect ourselves -- and our fellows -- when we all feel a common threat is coming. Like a storm … a worsening of a major economic depression … or a deadly, global pandemic.

Bernie Sanders and some of his supporters fooled themselves into thinking that America was ready for another New Deal when he declared his candidacy in recent years. At one point, after the Nevada Caucuses, I even fooled myself into believing that he could get nominated, elected, and empowered to enact a program based on an expanded notion of "human rights." Unfortunately for Bernie, he ran and lost in the B.C. era -- Before Coronavirus. Back then (i.e., a full month ago), the majority of Democrats and left-leaning Independents thought that the only national "virus" was in the White House, and that once we are rid of the pestilence of Trumpism, we could get back to the glory days where Bill Clinton and Barack Obama presided over a society marked by prosperity, complacency, and a love for the gadgets that result from economic competition. Bernie had no chance in such a climate -- particularly not when the media was reminding us that he was trying to rock the boat at a time when the waters were rough (when Trump is President) and would continue to try to rock the boat even if the waters were to become calm (after the Trump Presidency is over, and prosperity, complacency, etc., returned to the kingdom).

Now, of course, we live in the A.C. era. And we can contemplate a period of 1-2 years where a virus comes and goes and comes again, destroying lives and jobs, and hearts and lungs. In the A.C. era, we no longer dream of an America where we as individuals can either satiate ourselves with wonderful gadgets and trips to exotic places, or at least contemplate a time when our family will have lifted themselves up to be able to enjoy such prosperity and complacency. (For yes -- complacency is itself a luxury good in this dream). Now, we realize that we live interdependently. Our health and welfare, and that of our precious loved ones, is completely tied up with the virtue and wisdom of everyone else. And now we take seriously the sanctity of human life and human health because finally, we have an agent that poses an imminent threat to the rich as well as the poor. We're not simply talking about a scourge of bullets in the inner-cities, or of treatable cancers that devastate poor, underinsured communities in the countryside. We're all in this together and -- like the soldiers in the great wars of yesteryear -- we'll be "in the shit" together for quite a while.

Now, it is possible to understand what the progressives like FDR or Sanders were talking about. Now it is possible to understand that we, for selfish reasons, might want a strong government devoted fundamentally to the protection of universal human rights. Roosevelt spoke about the four freedoms: freedom of speech/expression, of worship, from fear and from want. Now in the A.C. era, it is finally reasonable to consider that the critical mass of American voters might soon realize that their own enjoyment of these latter two freedoms cannot be preserved in a society molded with the spirit of Adam Smith and Ronald Reagan. Oh, we're not there yet, I get that. But after a round or two, or three, of the Coronavirus, I suspect that we just might be.

Jew Versus Jew: How Incomplete Visions of the Faith are Dividing the People

2020-01-05T07:08:00.001-08:00

Recently I wrote an essay for two groups: Jews and Allies (i.e., anti-Semites or people who don’t care about Jews per se shouldn’t bother to read it). The essay addresses the hatred/disrespect related to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict that threatens to undermine Jewish solidarity at a time when that solidarity is especially important. I will analyze why a schism exists among Jews concerning the Conflict and why both sides have a legitimate point to make based on authentic Jewish values. So I’m not trying to persuade anyone to “change teams,” so much as to foster mutual respect. You could say that this is an invitation to intrafaith dialogue, which sometimes is every bit as vital as interfaith dialogue. I hope you find the essay to be thought-provoking. Here it is.

http://www.danielspiro.com/uploads/3/1/0/2/31022605/jew_versus_jew.pdf

Cable Schmooze

2019-10-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

I have a brief request to make. Would everyone please stop referring to the programming on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC as "Cable News"? From now on, these programs should be referred to as "Cable Schmooze" and the guests on these shows should be thought of as Paid Schmoozers.

Think about it. Where do you get your breaking news? Newspapers? Websites? Friends who inspire you to check websites or newspapers? How often do you get it from Cable News? Almost never, I suspect. Indeed, for every minute of truly breaking news on those shows, my guess is that there would be 100 or more minutes of schmooze.

Whenever I turn the channel away from a drama or a ballgame to watch the above-referenced channels, I'm invariably treated to schmoozing on the part of Washington insiders and the hosts (aka "journalists") who talk to them. Sometimes they're all sitting around a table. Other times the people-in-the-know will be waxing eloquent from their book-laden study, the street in front of the White House, or in front of a bust inside the U.S. Capitol Building. Truth be told, if you and your friends read the newspapers or even news-oriented websites, you can have just as informative and insightful a discussion with your friends than what you'd hear on Cable TV. In that sense, it's very different from, say, watching a ball game. You can do that with your friends as well, but only at a MUCH lower level. On Cable Schmooze, by contrast, we are frequently treated to talking heads who make far less sense than the typical informed person on the street. Apparently, the powers-that-be decide that it drives ratings to hear provocative/absurd drivel. Maybe it makes us in the audience feel smart. Or maybe such drivel is crucial to building admiration for those few talking heads who consistently speak logically and at least try to be objective.

Mind you, I'm not requesting that you stop watching these programs. My request is only that you stop thinking of them as Cable News and call them what they are. As for the hosts, you can think of them as journalists if you wish, but please don't confuse their programs with journalism. Those shows are pure entertainment, and their hosts have far more in common with the more successful members of the Screen Actors Guild than they have with Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow. Who knew that Schmooze would ever be so lucrative?

How Many Democrats Were on the Stage Tuesday Night?

2019-10-20T08:40:00.003-07:00

I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the only child of two relatively old parents. My dad was born in 1912 and my mom in 1921. I’m not even 60 yet. You do the math. The thing is, though, even though they were older than my friends’ parents, my folks were always further to the left politically. Constantly, I would hear them complain about economic inequality. And when they weren’t complaining, they were schlepping me to marches -- like the May 12, 1968 “Resurrection City” rally in which tents were placed on the National Mall to fight poverty. I had yet to have my religious awakening then. In fact, inspired in part by my parents’ railing against religious hypocrisy, I didn’t trust what came out of the mouths of most clerics. But this much I did recognize: if the Abrahamic faiths stood for anything valid, it was to fight poverty in particular and injustice generally. All this “love” crap meant nothing if it wasn’t associated with working hard for the poor. I also realized for myself back in elementary school that those who think that the private sector alone will take care of the poor were no better than Mary Antoinette, whose “let ‘em eat cake” line has always, for me, defined the spirit of unbridled capitalism.

Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, my country had two political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. They still exist today, albeit with different spirits. My parents always voted Democrat because the Dems were the party of progressive taxation and using governmental programs when needed to help the poor and the working class. From 1965 – 1980, the top marginal tax rate varied from 70-77%, yet even those figures weren’t high enough for the loudest voices of the Democratic Party. They didn’t see why the richest of the rich needed all the money they had when so many people were poor. In my house, all I heard was that for the most affluent country in world history to have a high level of poverty and economic equality is a “shanda.” Whether or not you know Yiddish, you get what that means.

Fast forward now to 2019. The top marginal tax rate is no longer in the 70s. Today, depending on how you calculate it, it’s roughly 40 percent. Not coincidentally, economic equality has only gotten worse. Far worse. This was chronicled most exquisitely in a book by Thomas Piketty called “Capital,” which was published in 2014. Since then, the problem has only become more extreme, thanks to tepid leaders on the “left” and bold leaders on the right. But what do you say we look at some of Piketty’s comparisons between the situation in 1980 and the situation 30 years hence. From 1980 and 2010, the share of the top decile in national income rose from 33 to 48%, the share of the top 1% in total income rose from 10% to 20%, and the share of the top 0.1% in total income rose from 1% to nearly 8%. As for wealth inequality, the differences aren’t so dramatic. But the trend is the same – the top 1% and 10% had a significantly greater share of the nation’s wealth in 2010 than in 1980. Moreover, whereas our wealth equality in the USA was less than that of Europe from 1810 to 1960, it has well exceeded that of Europe ever since.

By today’s standards, the America of my youth thus had far more economic equality than it has today, yet it still had a far more progressive tax system. To repeat, Democrats back then didn’t think that tax system was progressive enough. But Republicans represented quite a range. There were the folks my parents referred to as “conservatives,” who liked things pretty much as they were, though they would allow for a little tinkering here and there. And then there were the folks my parents called “reactionaries,” who wanted to return things to a by-gone era – like perhaps the 1920s, when the top decile earned roughly 45 percent of national income, less than they make today, but far more than they made throughout my childhood. When I was growing up, we had Republican Senators like New York’s Jacob Javits or Maryland’s Mac Mathias. My parents thought of them as conservatives, others would have called them centrists or even liberals, but they demonstrated that the Republican Party created a home for folks who loved the status quo and wanted only to tinker around the edges. And remember – the status quo back then was FAR more economically equal, and may I say “progressive,” than today.

So let’s return to 2019 and, specifically, last Tuesday night. We had 12 “Democratic” candidates – so many that a comic on the Daily Show requested that in the future, the Party leaders should ensure that their candidates are spayed and neutered. The 12 candidates were all attempting to unseat Donald Trump, the Republican President who enjoys a 94% approval rating within his party. Two candidates on Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, were passionately arguing for the position that our tax system isn’t nearly progressive enough. They both want to dramatically increase the taxes on the top 0.1% -- and perhaps even the top 1% or 10% -- in order to raise funds that are needed for the poor, the working class and even middle-class Americans.

My father, as you imagine, has long since passed from this Earth, so I can’t ask him what he thinks of Warren or Sanders. My mom, while still alive at 98, isn’t in good enough shape cognitively to worry about the nuances of American politics. But I suspect that if I took the time to explain what happened on Tuesday, she would have been proud of Warren and Sanders for their willingness to fight for those who our capitalist system is leaving behind. In short, I saw two Democrats on that stage who would have been recognized as Democrats by any political observer of the ‘60s and ‘70s, let alone the Depression Era period that shaped my parents’ thinking.

But what about the other ten Democrats? How were they responding to the phenomenon that Piketty chronicled so extensively in his book? I was struck by the unwillingness of the other men and women on that debate stage to sound like Democrats even during a primary contest. Sanders, who had a heart attack a couple of weeks earlier, was kindly left alone by the other candidates. But Warren, who has risen to the lead in the betting markets, if not the polls, was relentlessly piled on by one Democratic candidate after another. The first wave was Biden, and Buttigieg, and Klobuchar. They were critical of the idea that Warren supported a single payor health care system and was afraid to admit that taxes might have to go up if we wanted to ensure that the poor get the same health care as the rich. Well, OK. I get why they would have wanted to press her to be more candid. But later, when Warren started talking about adding a tax on wealth in excess of $50 million and Beto O’Rourke criticized her for being “punitive,” where was Biden? Or Buttigieg? Or Klobuchar? Were they coming to Warren’s defense? Were they saying that “We’re Democrats. We believed back in the ‘60s and ‘70s that the uber-rich weren’t paying enough taxes when they were taxed a hell of lot more than they are today. We’re not going to sit back and let you bash a candidate as ‘punitive’ simply because she wants the uber-rich to shoulder a lot more of the tax burden.” They said nothing of the sort. In fact, when called upon to show their passion for economic equity, they responded with radio silence.

The loudest of Warren’s interlocutors would like us to see them, first and foremost, as “pragmatists.” This philosophy can best be summarized by a line from Amy Klobuchar, in direct response to Warren’s progressive plans: “The difference between a plan and a pipe dream is something that you can actually get done.”

And there you have it. From the time Bill Clinton took back the White House for the Dems after 12 years of GOP Rule in 1992, the idea that we would make America’s economic profile resemble that of my youth has been viewed by the Democratic establishment as a “pipe dream.” Clinton sought a “third way” – one that isn’t nearly as progressive as the approach of old Democrats, but is more compassionate than the Let ’Em Eat Cakers who served as the vanguard of the “Reagan Revolution.” In 2016, when his wife ran for President against Bernie Sanders, only a single Democratic Senator supported Sanders. Even Warren refused to commit; that was the extent of the stranglehold that the “Third Way” has had on Democratic politics.

So now that Warren has regained her progressive voice, and Bernie has gotten out of his hospital bed to resume his jeremiads, I keep asking the same question: what would my parents think of Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and the rest of them? Are they more like the Democrats of my youth? Or are they merely the second coming of Jacob Javits and Mac Mathias – centrist 60s-70s style Republicans?

My parents, being professional economists, would probably point out that Biden, Buttigieg and company may even be further to the RIGHT than Javits and Mathias, for at least the latter are not on record as essentially tolerating our pitifully non-progressive tax system. Truly, if things have moved so much further to the Republican side of the spectrum in the last 30-40 years, why do Warren and Sanders seem so damned alone on that stage? Or was that evening just another reminder that Ronald Reagan has won the soul of America, and that the two-party system is really about nothing more than nibbling around the edges of the cake that he (and Marie Antoinette) have given us?

There were times during Tuesday’s debate when both Warren and Sanders frustrated me. Most notably, neither explained very well why they supported Medicare for All. My parents would have been disgusted with how little they tried to demonstrate the downside of the so-called “public option” approach to health care or why a focus on taxes instead of COSTS as the primary metric on which to evaluate a health care system is simply a Republican talking point. Bernie and Elizabeth had a chance to speak out articulately for all progressive economists that night and their performance left something to be desired.

But at least they were recognizable as Democrats. At least I felt they represented my party. At least I felt they have absorbed the teachings of Thomas Piketty, Julius and Evelyn Spiro, and all other economists who clearly have given a damn about the poor and the working class.

You see, Senator Klobuchar, it’s not enough to join the Democratic Party, insert yourself across the aisle from Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, and vote in favor of top marginal taxes that are 40% plus rather than 40% minus. I’m not young anymore. In fact, I’m only two months and two days younger than you are. I remember when Democrats were Democrats. And if you want to act like one, you’ve got to show me that you couldn’t even abide being satisfied with the America of our youth because of its economic inequalities, let alone that you can’t satisfy yourself with mere tinkering when America has become far LESS economically equal now than it was before.

I heard you say, Senator Klobuchar, that neither you, nor Mayor Pete, nor even the billionaire on that stage Tuesday night is “standing up for billionaires.” But that’s not enough, is it? I need to see that you are standing up for the guy I saw lying on the ground late Friday night two blocks from my daughter’s row house in a part of Washington DC that most of the barons of today’s Democratic Party wouldn’t set foot in. I can see that Bernie and Elizabeth, for all their slip-ups, are standing up for that guy. One of them will get my vote in the primary.

Sabbatical

2019-05-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

With some regret, I am announcing today that the Empathic Rationalist will be taking a sabbatical. I've been keeping this blog going for 13 years without one, and that's frankly too long.

I will miss taking the opportunity to communicate with my loyal readers on a weekly basis. Thank you so much for letting me know over the years that you enjoy reading this blog; that means more to me than you know. However, due to certain events in my life, I feel the need to cut down on my so-called "extra-curricular activities," and at the moment, blogging didn't make the cut. I fully expect that this self-imposed sabbatical will be merely temporary but what I can't say is how long it will last.

All the best to each of you. Enjoy the upcoming political campaign season. And may you and your family experience the very best of health.

Dan

A Request to My Fellow Democrats: Time for Spring Fever

2019-04-28T06:44:00.002-07:00

We’re nearly two months away from the first Presidential Primary debate and yet already, liberal pundits are savaging those Democrats who’ve had the courage to enter the race. I see the criticism frequently in such on-line forums as the Huffington Post. And just yesterday, I heard an MSNBC talking head criticize Biden for daring to criticize President Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” remarks. According to this pundit, Biden would be well advised not to talk about such issues given his own track record when it comes to the topic of race.

Really? From what I can tell, Vice President Biden has been a devoted public servant for more decades than that progressive pundit has been alive, and yet the latter doesn’t think he has standing to highlight the single worst moment in the Presidency of the man Democrats are trying to defeat. Folks, can we stop eating our own? Please?

My hope is for all Democrats to spend the remainder of what I call the “pre-season” keeping our hearts and minds open about all these candidates. Let them make mistakes. Let them speak vapidly or duck difficult questions. Let them take back an ill-advised comment or policy position. And to the extent they feel compelled to speak sharply about a fellow Presidential candidate, encourage them to take on the candidate running as a Republican, not each other.

Why do I say that? Because at the end of the June, and for the next 8-12 months thereafter, some amount of intra-party conflict is inevitable and even healthy. Presumably, our candidates won’t be offering us childlike monikers such as “Lyin' Ted,” “Little Marco,” or “Low Energy Jeb,” but the ones who are hurting in the polls will owe it to their supporters to throw at least some barbs in the direction of the favorites. But for the good of the Party, can we at least enjoy an extended honeymoon period? Can we spend the next two full months building up as much affection as possible for all these candidates? Or do we have to wallow in the kind of mockery-narratives that are increasingly popping up with respect to each of Trump’s would-be challengers?

If you’re not immediately familiar with these narratives, just ask yourself which of the 20 Democratic candidates are best positioned to defeat Trump and lead the Democratic party.

The elderly, grumpy, unelectable white male socialist who scares the crap out of moderate Democrats, let alone Republicans, Bernie Sanders?

The out-of-touch, kind-of-creepy, gaffe-prone politician whose record is the antithesis of progressive, Joe Biden?

The charisma-challenged, condescending professor who reminds everyone of Hillary except that she’s even less electable, Elizabeth Warren?

The “Senator Pothole” tinkerer who claims to be Minnesota-nice but has proven to her Congressional staffers to be anything but nice, Amy Klobuchar?

The frivolous dilettante, whose Presidential campaign is fueled primarily by narcissism and a desire to have a really cool personal adventure, Beto O’Rourke?

The finger-in-the-wind pol who refuses to answer substantive questions and yet has much to answer for herself in the way she has dealt with the criminal justice system, Kamala Harris?

The inexperienced millennial who also doesn’t think voters deserve to know what he stands for but thinks he can get elected by spewing pseudo-intellectual gibberish, Pete Buttigieg?

The guy from Jersey who is pretending to run on a Kumbaya platform at a time when nobody wants to hear anyone sing Kumbaya, especially if he’s from Jersey, Corey Booker?

Or one of those other pathetic, nameless candidates whose standing in the polls is so damned low that nobody is even bothering to insult them?

Folks, mocking a politician is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. These people self-promote at the same time that they self-reveal. You show me a politician, any politician, and I’ll show you a hypocrite. It comes with the territory. But unless you want to see President Trump re-elected, I suggest you look at the above list and recognize that (a) you’ll be voting for one of those folks in the fall of ‘20, and (b) the person you’ll vote for in the general election probably won’t be the one you’d like to vote for today. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that because elections among twenty contenders is kind of a crap shoot, you’re most likely going to have to go crazy in support of a general election candidate who you voted AGAINST in your state’s primary. If that’s going to happen, you’d better figure out a way to stay as positive as possible about as many of these people as possible for as long as possible.

So what do you say we allow all these candidates the next two months to impress us with their positive characteristics – their visions, their policy proposals, and their formulas for taking on President Trump. What do you say we embrace what it means as voters to be able to wholeheartedly support ANY of the above? Maybe if that happens, the intra-party criticism that will inevitably begin to flow in July and thereafter would be a bit more measured. Then, when it does come time to nominate someone in the summer of 2020, we will have identified a person who’ll be beloved by the entire Democratic party and many of the Independents. And that candidate will not only beat Donald Trump in the next election but also grab a mandate to change the direction of government in January of 2021.

Let’s face it – the Russians weren’t the primary reason why we lost the election of 2016. Mostly, we caused ourselves to lose – by taking for granted states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and by teaching a veritable master class in how NOT to run a primary campaign. Now, we have a chance for a do-over. We have a chance to replace a crooked coronation (where a single, favored candidate was given debate questions in advance) with an honest, give-everyone-a-fair-chance celebration of democracy. We have two months to set the table for that celebration. I say, let’s call this the “Spring Fever” period. Let’s fall in love with our candidates. Let’s build them all up, so that ultimately, for the good of the country and the world, at least one of them will not fall down.

Relections After Another Netanyahu Victory

2019-04-13T09:33:00.001-07:00

Everyone who associates themselves with a religious faith surely takes pride in its “values.” In fact, we tend to identify our faith above all else with the values preached and exemplified by our greatest role models. At least that’s the case with Judaism.

My people have plenty of catch phrases to remind ourselves of what “Jewish values” mean. We speak of Rabbi Akiva and how he taught that the Torah’s fundamental principle was “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And we often cite Rabbi Hillel, who when asked to summarize the entire Torah while standing on one foot, replied “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary. Now go study.” In both cases, these rabbis place central importance on how human beings should treat one another. More than our observance of religious ritual or even our devotion to God, that’s what defines our commitment to the Jewish faith.

Whenever values are discussed, of course, there is room for ambiguity. In the above examples, a debate could center on the word “neighbor.” In theory, if a person lives in a Jewish community, their “neighbors” will tend to be fellow Jews. So, taken literally, as long as we care for our fellow Jews, we can disregard or even disdain gentiles and not run afoul of the directives to be good to our neighbors. But that’s not the way I’ve been taught. From parents and Jewish-school teachers alike, I’ve heard that the Jew is obligated to take care of ALL people, and especially the most vulnerable, regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds. Such universalism is indeed mainstream American-Jewish doctrine and has been for generations. That’s why so many of our parents and grandparents were attracted to socialism and other left-leaning ideologies.

When I grew up in the 60s, America had the largest Jewish community in the world. Our community was also known for its overarching political liberalism. In 1928, only 28 percent of Jews voted for Hoover – and that was the election he won. In 1932, Hoover’s total among Jews was 18%, and for the next four elections, the Republican candidate did even worse. Even in 1972, when Nixon won 49 states, McGovern had a +30% margin among Jews. Next year, in fact, will be the 100^th anniversary of the last time that a Republican Presidential candidate won 40% of the Jewish vote. Over the past 100 years, our community has become far more affluent, but no less politically liberal. Some might say that we’ve been willing to vote against our own pecuniary interest in order to be true to the “values” that defined our sense of identity.

As children who cleaved to our sense of Jewish values, my friends and I spoke about the nation of Israel in glowing and even heroic terms. Back then, Israel symbolized both Jewish progressivism and an antidote to Jewish victimization. This little country was started primarily by secular socialists and other leftists. They gathered together in economic collectives known as Kibbutzim and for decades, their progressive party (Labor) dominated every election. While most American Jews weren’t exactly historians, one fact we did know was that when Israel became a state, its citizens supported partitioning the land into two-states-for-two-peoples, but it was the Palestinians who fought against such an outcome. Decades after the creation of Israel, there was still no “Occupation.” And even after the Settlements began being built, we all assumed that Israel’s leaders would support the existence of a Palestinian state as soon as they had a legitimate partner for peace on the Palestinian side. The problem, we assumed, was that enough Palestinians seemed hell bent on crushing Israel and taking back the land for themselves that Israeli had no choice but to watch their backs and build walls. In one war after another, Arab States ganged up on precious little Israel, and it practically took miracles for Israel to survive, let alone to win these wars. When the Israeli army seized such strategic land as the Golan Heights, no American Jew in their right mind would have begrudged Israel’s right to keep it. But we remained passionately committed to Israel giving up the land necessary to create a viable two-state solution – one state for our own people and another for our Palestinian “neighbors” who were also victims in the arena of geopolitics and who for the most part are as innocent as the Israelis. That two-state commitment became an integral manifestation of “Jewish values,” one that I and millions of other American Jewish Zionists continue to hold dear and always will.

American-Jewish values, you see, aren’t changing so dramatically. But Israel is. Now its leaders have enacted the “Jewish Nation State Law,” which stands for the principle that Israel is a nation state ONLY for the Jewish people, rather than being a nation state for both the Jewish people and for any gentiles (i.e., Palestinians) who happen to be citizens of the nation. More significantly, its Prime Minister now stands for the principle that all the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank can legitimately be annexed by Israel – meaning that what would remain of “Palestine” would be a small chunk of swiss cheese, one that couldn’t possibly give rise to a “state” worthy of the term. Honestly, though, what’s notable about Israel these days isn’t just that it is led by people who appear to have given up on the notion of Palestinian autonomy. It’s that the citizens of Israel continue to vote for such leaders. Frankly, just as the center-right movement in America seems incapable of getting a majority of Jewish support, the center-left movement in Israel seems equally incapable of winning elections. Yes, they do just fine in and around Tel Aviv. But in the hinterland and in Jerusalem? The majorities there would rather vote in for a fifth term a Prime Minister who has completely abandoned a two-state solution and who is close to being indicted for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Better that guy than anyone who stands for the same principles that the vast majority of American Jews would select. Houston, we have a problem.

Speaking personally, I feel no modicum of alienation from the Israeli people right now. I have never had problems knowing, respecting and loving right-wing Jews. But what I’ve not had to wrap my arms around, until recently, is that the world’s largest Jewish population (Israel overtook the U.S. in that regard during my adult life) is becoming one of the most right-wing democracies in the world. I cannot possibly relate to what plan the Netanyahu voters have in mind for the Palestinians. Are they expecting the Palestinians simply to pack up and head for Jordan – sort of a Middle Eastern Trail of Tears? Or are these “majority” voters reconciled to the Palestinians remaining in Israeli-controlled areas as a stateless, impoverished underclass? Honestly, what is the vision and how do we get there? And how is this possibly consistent with Jewish values?

Actually, I can guess the answer to that last question. I’ve read the Book of Joshua. I’ve seen the single-mindedness of God’s alleged directive to the Hebrew people to seize the Promised Land by, among other things, killing its inhabitants. Compared to Joshua and his troops, Bibi Netanyahu is positively Gandhi-like in his treatment of the Palestinians. What’s more, I have heard many Jews over the years argue that the disputed land is ours because we have the prior claim to it and thus the superior legal right to it. After all, we gave the Palestinians the chance to divide it up and they chose instead to terrorize us and to fight wars over the land; they lost, we won, and to the victor goes the spoils. Some of the Jews I know who adopt that attitude are otherwise progressive people who care deeply about the poor or infirm. So I guess an argument can be made that this view is consistent with “universalist” values. But that argument would not be made by more than a small minority of non-Jews throughout the world. And it would not be made by the vast majority of American Jews either. So why, then, are most Israelis going to polls and supporting political parties who trade in that sort of reasoning? What has happened to Jewish values?

These are questions that young American Jews are surely going to ask in schools and summer camps throughout this nation. They were asking them before this recent election cycle, and now that the Jewish Nation State Law has been passed, the Prime Minister has stated his willingness to annex all the Settlements, and his alleged corruption has been exposed, young Jewish Americans will be raising these questions at a fever pitch. You’ll forgive these young people if they wonder if their progressive teachers have been feeding them a load of crap in suggesting that Jews are any more altruistic or compassionate than anyone else. You’ll forgive them if they wonder if the term “Jewish values” has any meaning at all. And you’ll forgive them if they wonder whether they have far more in common with American Episcopalians or Unitarian-Universalists – or, for that matter, the so-called “Nones” – than they have with Israeli Jews.

Such wondering is surely going to present an incredible challenge to those of us who wish to see Judaism continue to flourish in America. It’s a challenge that my Jewish friends and I didn’t have to face back in the 60s, and yet many of our cohort still gave up our Jewish identities and assimilated. I can only imagine what’s going to happen to my grandson’s generation.

Fortunately, though, I don’t have to worry about my grandson himself – his mother is a rabbi and his parents will raise him right. They will explain that in truth, the values of a religion are the values that the religion inspires in the minds of all of its inhabitants. So Jewish values are my values, they’re Netanyahu’s values, and they’re the values of everyone who identifies with the faith and is inspired by it.

It is incumbent on each of us to continue to study the great works associated with our faith, to develop our values based on that study, and to exemplify those values in our conduct. If in doing so we seem out of step with the majority of our people, so be it. There is enough wisdom in Judaism – and, for that matter, in all the world’s great religions – to inspire free-thinking individuals to find a set of values by which they can live their lives. If you’re truly religious, you should have the courage to stick to those values even when it appears you’re merely a voice in the wilderness.

So to those people in and around Tel Aviv who continue to lose one national election after another, please hold your heads high and keep on fighting. Someday, you might find yourselves in the majority again. And who knows? Maybe that’s when your country will dismantle some of these imperialist settlements and make the kind of peace that honors the Palestinians, your values, and mine.

Spring Comes to the Nation's Capital

2019-04-07T09:20:00.002-07:00

Last week’s blogpost contained a tribute to the stately live oak of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Today, I’m thinking instead about my own city and its adopted favorite tree, the cherry. Visitors to the Nation’s Capital understand early April to be the most glorious time for a visit, both because of the weather and because of the cherry blossoms. Guidebooks funnel these tourists to the Tidal Basin of the National Mall, where cherry trees majestically line the perimeter. But locals know there are better places to appreciate the blossoms without even needing to go to Japan. I am speaking of the narrow, winding streets in the suburbs where cherry trees form a canopy of blossoms that engulf anyone who is blessed to walk or drive by. I had the pleasure of taking such a stroll this morning. I was with my bichon, Benny, who was just groomed yesterday. His fur and those flowers were a perfect match – Blonde on Blonde, as Bob Dylan might say. So fresh, so restful, so bright … so un-Washington.

Forbes recently ranked Washington DC as the fourth most stressful city in the United States. But the three above us (L.A., N.Y., and Chicago) are all many times larger. So perhaps I can state the obvious – pound-for-pound, we’re number one. People come here to enhance their career. They find a job. They go to work. They stay at work – hour after hour after hour. They spend another hour or more commuting home, either on a metro train where nobody smiles or among the nation’s most congested roads. When they get home in the evening, they consume themselves with their addiction to that form of mud-wrestling otherwise known as American politics. Eventually, they start fantasizing about moving away to someplace more bucolic – like just about anywhere.

This past week was the beginning of baseball season, which is definitely a major event in Washington D.C. Gradually, we’ve been becoming a baseball city – oh, not of the caliber of St. Louis, for example, but we’re not exactly Miami either. This past Tuesday evening, we showed baseball fans all over the country that D.C. is a place to be reckoned with. Philadelphia was in town, and that means that the Phillies’ Bryce Harper – who the Washington Nationals signed to a rookie contract and who for years was the Nationals’ biggest star – was making his first return to his former home town. The Baseball Gods have ordained the etiquette that cities are supposed to follow in situations like these. First, Harper should get a video tribute from his old team, during which his former fans should cheer him in appreciation for his years of loyal and glorious service to the city. Next, in his first at bat for the visiting team, the home fans should give him one final standing ovation in recognition of his past service. And then, in his second at-bat --and for as long thereafter as the mood feels right -- his former fans should boo the roof off the stadium as soon as he enters the batter’s box. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Well, here in (arguably) America’s most stressful city, we made a little modification. From the moment the Harper video tribute began, he was booed. Relentlessly. Tens of thousands of fans stood up and called him a traitor. Then, whenever it was time for him to hit or catch a baseball, the boo-birds kept on chirping. That stadium was loud, and the people were nasty. It was one big F-U to a guy in his mid-20s whose sole offense was to manifest a desire to earn market wages, which the owner of his former team wasn’t willing to pay. And here’s the funny thing about the whole episode: everyone in D.C. loved it! It wasn’t that we begrudge Bryce Harper the right to earn $330 million in the next 13 years. It was that we enjoyed witnessing so many Washingtonians care so much about our city that they would scream bloody murder against a man whose cardinal sin was to leave it.

Does that sound strange to you? Perhaps it should. But I totally get while the local commentators are universally glowing about Tuesday’s Boo-Fest. It showed civic pride – in an odd way I admit, but it was there nonetheless. Washingtonians are sick of hearing what a gross place this is, sick of being on all the wrong lists (most stress, worst weather, most violence, etc.), and tired of watching their sports teams lose all the time. They’re also done with seeing fans in other cities go crazy about their teams while their own stadiums are filled largely with visiting fans or local transplants who continue to root for the teams they grew up with. Last year’s D.C. hockey team won the Stanley Cup, and we all watched as loyal fans finally were rewarded after decades of futility. It reminded people that Washington is as real and legit a place to be from as anywhere else. Strangely enough, that was apparent from the energy behind those boos.

Of course, it’s stressful here. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows also that our weather stinks in the summer and isn’t so great in the winter. Everyone knows that this is a one-industry town that caters to hypocrites, sycophants, and phonies who take themselves incredibly seriously. Everyone knows that what stinks about D.C. tends to be lasting and what’s great about D.C. tends to be ephemeral. (No sooner do you make a good friend then you start having to listen to them talk about moving away. Hell, even the cherry blossoms last only for two weeks a year or less.)

But for one glorious night, none of that mattered. That’s because tens of thousands of Washingtonians – and hundreds of thousands more (like me) who were watching on TV – got to express our pride in our home town. And yes, we did it in a characteristically crazy way: by booing relentlessly at the sight of a hardworking man who did nothing wrong except move away from our city. It was one hell of a primal scream. And it was truly a tribute, only it wasn’t Bryce Harper who was being celebrated, but rather having the loyalty to remain in your town, even if it’s as obviously flawed and as often disgusting as Washington D.C.

What? Do you think I’m being hyperbolic? Do you think D.C. is no more disgusting than any place else? Notwithstanding my loyalty to the old home town, I’ve got to admit that this place can get downright ugly. Only a couple of days after the Harper-booing incident, we Washingtonians were graced with a far more familiar kind of event. It took place in the “People’s House” – the chamber of the House of Representatives. There, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell addressed her colleagues on behalf of a bill that would enhance limits on guns for people who have been convicted of crimes involving domestic abuse. Who wouldn’t support such a bill, right? Who wants a man convicted of beating his wife or stalking his ex-wife to carry a gun? Well, click on this link, watch this video, and you’ll hear a bunch of faceless Congresspeople boo Dingell as if she were Bryce Harper leaving the on-deck circle. https://ijr.com/debbie-dingell-nra-speech/

I don’t know the names of the folks who did the booing. But we can all guess. They’re virtually all rich, white men whose titles begin with the term “The Honorable.” And there is nothing whatsoever appealing about their performance in booing Debbie Dingell.

Yeah, we Washingtonians know what kind of city we live in. We are even more aware of its problems than any anti-Government curmudgeon from Kansas, Kentucky or Kalamazoo. But we love our Cherry Blossoms, we love our baseball team, and we love the fact that in this city, people care about politics and public policy. That ultimately is what unites all of us boo-birds – Nationals fans, Democratic Congresspeople, Republican Congresspeople, you name it. No matter who you are, if you live in this city, the stress will get to you and some of your neighbors will at times make you sick. Yet there is also a bond here that stems from the fact that friend or foe, we’re all in this thing together. No matter what side of the aisle we occupy, we all care about the local industry – enough, in fact, that we’re generally able to cope with the stresses and keep on fighting. Every now and again, we even get to assemble and let out a primal scream – together – knowing that tomorrow we’ll be back in our respective corners fighting for our respective causes.

So let’s celebrate the baseball season of 2019. But let’s not kid ourselves – the real sporting season of Washington D.C. begins in June. For a local junkie like me, those debates can’t come soon enough.

On Dignity

2019-03-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

Nearly every year at this time, I write and deliver and essay inspired by the Jewish holiday of Purim. This year’s essay focuses on the concept of dignity and why it is both central to authentic religion and incredibly misunderstood by the society at large. I think you’ll find it interesting.

Here’s the essay: http://www.danielspiro.com/uploads/3/1/0/2/31022605/purim_2019.pdf

Other Purim essays can be found on the Other Writings/Purim Essays page of my website, www.danielspiro.com.

Six Days

2019-03-23T05:00:00.001-07:00

It took the New Zealand Prime Minister all of six days after a mass shooting incident to announce a ban on certain weapons of mass destruction. We’re talking about semi-automatic rifles, bump stocks, even high-capacity magazines. The Cabinet has already agreed to rid the country of those scourges. As soon as the Kiwi Parliament reconvenes in April, their absolute prohibition will be the law of the land.

New Zealand has endured only a single mass shooting in the last 20 years, but that one was enough to bring lawmakers together on behalf of common sense and the sanctity of human life. By contrast, in the past 20 years, we in America have seen 18 shooting sprees resulting in ten or more deaths and eight such sprees in the past four years. Yet here, except for the soon-to-be-implemented ban on bump stocks, the federal government doesn’t dare touch our guns. Semi-automatic weapons flood the landscape. High-capacity magazines rack up corpses in droves. Meanwhile, mentally-fragile residents can buy these insane killing tools without even needing to submit to a background check. And the leaders of our government? They duck and cover – much like the children at our schools during one of our increasingly common active shooter situations.

In the United States, whenever there is a mass shooting, the face of the event quickly becomes the head of the National Rifle Association – tough, macho, uncompromising, callous ... and victorious on Capitol Hill. In New Zealand, we are greeted instead by the face of a woman – equally tough, but also open-minded, empathetic, and transparent. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a mere 38 years old. Had she sought to be head of state in America, we surely would have heard a million reasons why she is unqualified. Too young. Weak. Wimpy. Unpresidential. Just imagine her grieving in public as she has done so often in the week after the recent massacre. The opposition party would mock her relentlessly for being someone foreign adversaries would never fully respect or take seriously. Instead, Americans would pine for the days of George W Bush, who after 9/11, expressed the desire to “find out who did this and kick their ass.” Ardern isn’t talking about kicking anyone’s ass. She’s simply mourning. And changing laws for the better.

What is it about America and its obsession with machismo? Is that why we love guns so much? Is that why we insist on permitting every Tom, Dick and Harry to own weapons that can take out scores of innocent people in a single spree? Why can’t we appreciate the strength behind feminine figures like Jacinda Ardern? Why can’t we appreciate that a lady who is publicly mourning is far more dignified than a cowboy bent on revenge?

I know I sound jealous of people from places like New Zealand or Scandinavia, where the values of femininity seem to be given more respect. The truth is, though, that I’m a loyal American, one who takes tremendous pride in so many aspects of American history and culture. And yet I’m also not deluded. Sometimes, you have to recognize your own flaws, or those of your country. And when you contemplate what it means to live in a place that has never elected a woman as head of state, has become the murder capital of the developed world, inures itself to hateful rhetoric from the highest levels of Government, and is so fundamentally partisan that it has trouble coming together even on common sense legislation, you find yourself saying that Houston, we have a problem.

It understates the point to say that we haven’t been electing women as President. Lately, we haven’t even been electing short men. Jimmy Carter was the last President who was 5’11” or shorter. He was elected 43 years ago, before Ronald Reagan touted the cowboy ethos and set the country on an economic path of haves and have nots. Four years after Reagan was first elected, he ran again – and this time, for the first time in history, there was a woman on the ticket (albeit in the #2 slot). That ticket came to be known, unaffectionately, as “Fritz and Tits.” They won only a single state.

In some respects, we’ve clearly made progress since 1984. In 2016, a woman ran for President and won the popular vote. Then again, when it came to the all-important Electoral College, she lost to a political novice who ran largely on a platform of tribalism and machismo, and who was caught on tape boasting that as a celebrity, he can grab women “by the pussy.” In some respects, he was perceived as the lout at the end of the bar. But his opponent was perceived as an intense, uppity woman – and in much of America, that’s the greater deal breaker.

Today in America, we have more women in political office than ever before. Many are in Congress. Some are even given a chance to win the Presidency. It’s true that none who seek the Democratic nomination is polling in the double digits (unlike two men who would become octogenarians by the end of their first term), yet I suspect that most of us believe that with the right personality, intelligence, experience, and policy chops, a woman might actually win the prize. But I also suspect that most of us believe that the lane to victory is far, far wider for a man. Stated differently, many a male American political candidate has been made of Teflon when it comes to surviving scandals, mistakes and limitations, whereas with a woman, it almost goes without saying that they’re made of Velcro.

That’s the situation here. Perhaps it is different in New Zealand. Perhaps the experience of seeing Jacinda Ardern unify her country with sympathy, rather than hatred, may remind her fellow citizens of what a wonderful choice they have made in a Prime Minister. Fortunately, the world is becoming a small place. Ardern’s compassion and courage are nearly as visible here as they are there. We might want to take note of what real leadership looks like. Now is not the time to get jealous. But it might be the time to emulate greatness when we see it.

The College-Admissions Fetish

2019-03-16T05:50:00.001-07:00

For many people, the story about college admissions that came to light this week centered on a legal scandal. The Empathic Rationalist, however, is a law-free zone, so I will have nothing to say about the scandal du jour. What I would like to talk about instead is the rat race that gave rise to this particular scandal. Specifically, I’d like to draw an analogy between the way our society approaches getting children into college and the world of sports.

Imagine for a moment that a sports league declared performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) legal. Not just some PEDs, but all PEDs. Hell, imagine that the league encouraged PED use -- for professional athletes, for college athletes, for high school athletes, you name it. You’d expect many people to refuse to partake in them, thinking that these drugs are dangerous to body and mind. But those athletes presumably would have trouble competing, because if there is one thing we sports fans have learned over the years, it’s that PEDs work.

In our hypothetical, that fact is hardly lost on the athletic community. So one by one, in town after town, athletes would go to their local pharmacies and get themselves on the juice. Quickly, they’d find themselves running faster, hitting harder, and remaining injury free (at least in the short run). It wouldn’t take long before these PED users came to dominate their sport. They’d fill the rolls of the All-Mets in high school, the All-Americans in college, and the All-Stars in the pros. By contrast, those who were drug free would end up sitting on the bench, or if they were really talented, perhaps they’d attain the status of “role player” – you know, the utility infielder, long snapper, or winger on the fourth line of a hockey team. But the Hall of Famers, they’d all be shooting up or drinking up ... at least until the point where their bodies fell apart or they started contemplating suicide. You see, in this hypo, just like in the real world, PEDs will eventually destroy the ones who use them.

Now let’s get back to the context of getting little boys and girls into college in the real world. When I look at our society, I see that process as very similar to the hypothetical I just described. In well-to-do towns like mine (Bethesda, MD), it may be the rule, rather than the exception, for parents to obsess about getting their children into the very “best” of colleges. And so they essentially give their kids a childhood on steroids, one that is encouraged by the admissions departments of the colleges themselves. Some of these kids start studying for their so-called “Aptitude” tests when they are 11 or 12, perhaps with the help of SAT tutors or prep classes. Other kids are pushed, relentlessly, into the most advanced math classes possible by parents who are practically doing their homework with them, much like Willie Shoemaker used to whip his race horse down the home stretch. These parents also become obsessed with finding “extra-curricular activities” at which their progeny can excel and which are valued by colleges. So, for example, instead of encouraging little Junior to play the guitar, an instrument he might possibly enjoy playing in rock bands, on campouts, or pretty much anywhere, they buy him a bassoon in the hope that he can become one of the best damned bassoon players of his cohort and thereby fill an elite college’s need for that rarest of musical breeds, the virtuoso orchestral bassoonist.

For the PED families, this approach to starting out in life essentially means that their kids will not have a childhood. Instead, they will become soulless rat-racers. On paper, they’ll look pristine with their 4.0s, 1600s, and demonstrated excellence at some sport, musical instrument, or other avocational vehicle. But when you talk to them, you’ll quickly realize that they’re neither interested nor interesting. They’re just unappealing machines.

And then there are the families who aren’t buying into the whole rat race and who, for one reason or another, are allowing their children to grow up ... as children. You know, normal kids. The ones who often have time on their hands to day dream, play computer games, run around the backyard with other “underachieving” friends, etc. These days, such kids might find themselves at college too. But it won’t be the “top” colleges. And they won’t come to see themselves as “top” students. They’ll be the butt of the joke when they go on the road trip to watch their college team play at one of the PED colleges, whose crowd chants “That’s alright, that’s OK, you’re gonna pump our gas someday.”

This approach to childhood is insane. It isn’t fair to the kids who tried to enjoy their childhood, only to find themselves being pushed aside as mediocrities. And it isn’t fair to the PED abusers who gain admittance to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, only to later realize that they’ve lost their humanity in the process. Is there any question that this epitomizes a negative sum game? But what in God’s name do we do about it? How do we stop the rats from running around in their mazes for one generation after another with no end in sight?

To me, the most obvious suggestion is to get rid of the standardized tests – those phony symbols of meritocracy that eat up so much of our children’s psyches. Instead, I would suggest that the college emphasize the interview process and hire interviewers who can spot genuine warmth, curiosity and courage. Secondly, colleges admissions departments need to stop rewarding over-programmed kids, who clearly are so busy building their resumes that they haven’t had the time to build their souls. Thirdly, colleges need to stop providing information about their schools to those organizations who attempt to rank colleges, like that God-forsaken U.S. News and World Report. If not for those rankings, the elitism that has fueled all this insanity wouldn’t be nearly as intense. But perhaps the most important thing is for all of us – from college admissions departments, to high school administrators, to parents, to students – to encourage kids to be just that: kids.

The truth is that you can lead a remarkably productive life with an education from a non-elite state college and a tragically unproductive life with an education from an Ivy League school. Given that fact, it makes no sense for us to destroy what ought to be some of the best years of our lives worrying about whether we’re heading to one college as opposed to another. And it’s clearly not fair to those who lack either the opportunity or the inclination to jump into this rat race to make them feel like mediocrities or losers in the so-called “meritocratic” society we claim to be creating. Anyone who thinks that merit can truly be measured by an SAT score or a child’s willingness to devote at least hours a day to practicing a musical instrument is definitely on drugs. And they’re not wisdom-enhancing drugs, I can tell you that.

Folks, this shouldn’t be difficult. The fixes to this mess are right in front of our eyes. All we have to do is wake up, smell the roses, and let our kids do the same.

Fighting for the Right to be a Religious Progressive

2019-03-09T07:53:00.002-08:00

Something very disturbing happened yesterday. It should have been a big news item. Yet since it didn’t have anything to do with Donald Trump, it was ignored on these shores. The print version of the New York Times didn’t mention it once. Nor did the Washington Post. I only know about it because it was the topic of my rabbi’s sermon last evening at synagogue. The rabbi had announced prior to the service that we would be celebrating International Women’s Day by saluting the Women of the Wall, a group that for the past three decades has struggled for the right of women to pray aloud at the Western Wall in Jerusalem holding Torah scrolls and adorned in traditional prayer attire. True to form, hundreds of these women showed up at the Wall yesterday expecting to do their thing, when they were met by mobs of literally thousands of Ultra-Orthodox teenagers and young adults who had come from all over the country to stop the outrage. Violence ensued, a couple people were injured, and the police watched with disturbing passivity. Ultimately, after the Women of the Wall left the scene in order to protect themselves, the police blamed them for the confrontation. It was the praying women’s use of loudspeakers, rather than the ultra-Orthodox’s use of violence, that was deemed especially offensive by the authorities.

Like so many things that happen in the world these days, yesterday’s skirmish in Judaism’s holiest site was shocking but not surprising. Any Israeli observer has long ago realized that Orthodox Judaism has been given a virtual monopoly over religious life, and the ultra-Orthodox in particular enjoy special privileges. To be sure, most Israelis aren’t especially religious. A 2015 Gallop Poll found that nearly two-thirds of Israelis claimed either to be “not religious” or “convinced atheists.” But to the extent Israeli Jews do partake in religion, what they’re imbibing comes almost exclusively from Orthodox rabbis. Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal Judaism are moribund in the Holy Land. So it only stood to reason that when it came time for the Women of the Wall to stake their claim to gender equality, they were met by a far greater number of Ultra-Orthodox zealots. Yeshiva rabbis could simply tell their teenage students to get on the bus, go to the Kotel (the Wall), and make sure that feminists aren’t able to violate the faith’s traditional prohibitions. These include women wearing prayer shawls, praying loudly enough to be heard by men, reading collectively from a Torah scroll and praying together with men without a physical barrier to separate them. Apparently, it isn’t enough for the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel to keep their own synagogues pure. They feel the need to ensure that nobody else practices Judaism unless they, too, follow the “rules.”

Why do fundamentalist Jews have such power in Israel? One reason is because secular leaders need support from multiple political parties to form a leading coalition in Parliament, so they make a deal with the ultra-Orthodox parties: “you join our political coalition and we’ll give you control over religious life.” But there is another, even more important reason: we live in a world where, increasingly, people are dividing into two attitudes when it comes to religion: (a) fundamentalist and (b) thoroughly apathetic. Since the apathetic people could care less what happens inside a church or a holy site, when it comes to religion these days, the energy is increasingly on the side of the fundamentalists.

Don’t believe me? Just look at another recent, underreported story. I’m referring to the decision on February 26^th of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church to pass the so-called “Traditional Plan,” which reaffirmed the prohibition of gay marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy and asserted that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” Methodism is America’s second largest Protestant denomination, with over seven million Americans, most of whom I suspect opposed the Traditional Plan. But the fateful vote of February 26^th involved representatives from all over the world. And while the American delegations may have been pretty evenly split, that wouldn’t appear to be the case for the delegations from places like Africa and the Philippines. Moreover, the victory of the Traditional Plan was made possible by the fact that the membership of the United Methodist Church in America has been shrinking substantially over time. So even if I’m right that most American Methodists voted with the minority, the overall size of the delegation was too small to defeat the more fundamentalist elements of the church in a worldwide vote of the movement.

It’s not hard to figure out what is going on. Fundamentalism offers a simple, comforting answer to all our deepest questions. Trust in the Great Supernatural Law-Maker in the Sky and the handbook of right and wrong that He graciously has bestowed upon us. Follow that handbook and you will enjoy eternal bliss. Otherwise, you will undergo a painful second-guessing process throughout your life on earth and perhaps an even worse experience in the hereafter. As for Non-Religious Secularism, it offers an alternative that is nearly as comforting. Play hard. Work hard. Do both. Or simply relax. But whatever you choose to do, you can do so guilt-free and armed with the knowledge that the entire domain of religion is just a bunch of ca-ca. So enjoy your absolute freedom!

Superficially, those paths are polar opposites. But truly, they’re quite similar. Both rest on an appeal to simplicity and a life without cognitive dissonance. Both profess to be the path to maximizing one’s own happiness and minimizing one’s own pain. And finally, both offer a path with literally billions of fellow-travelers along the way.

By contrast, the path of liberal religion -- the one preferred by those Women of the Wall or the LGBTQ rights advocates in the Methodist Church – offers none of those blessings. Liberal religious leaders can’t pretend that their path is the easy one here on earth. Nor can they pretend to be offering eternal bliss in the afterlife. For that matter, many of them refuse to preach about a God who is created in the image of the human ideal. What they can offer is a life of struggle, of meaning, and of service -- a life modelled by such figures as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel, neither of whom spent his days in the lap of luxury or lived to see his 70^th birthday.

I have no crystal ball. I can’t tell you whether recent trends will change and liberal religion will catch a second wind in the popularity department. What I can tell you, however, is that there will always remain a number of us who are devoted to it -- whether in the trappings of Judaism, Christianity or any other faith. It is not for me to proselytize my devotion to liberal religion and “convert” others to that frame of mind. But it is for me to assert the right of people to live a progressively religious life if they so choose. So here’s to those Women of the Wall who keep on fighting for gender equality in Judaism. And here’s to those gay Methodists who keep on fighting to get married and join the clergy, notwithstanding the existence of some pretty homophobic verses in Scripture. May you realize that you will never be alone. For liberal religious people may not currently number in the billions, but we still number in the millions. And I for one have no intention to get off of this path, no matter how lonely or frustrating it can be at times.

Reflections on Democracy

2019-03-02T08:33:00.001-08:00

For many people throughout the world, the idea of “Israeli Democracy” is an oxymoron. But this past week, Israel did something suggestive of a very healthy democracy – its Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, who is ideologically compatible with its Prime Minister, publicly recommended only weeks before the upcoming elections that Prime Minister Netanyahu be indicted. No indictment will be filed until after Netanyahu is given an opportunity to state his case before Mandelblit. But ultimately, Mandelblit will be the one to make the decision, and we know where he stands at present.

This is not the first time a sitting Israeli Prime Minister has been the subject of a legal scandal. It was just such a scandal that brought down the Administration of Ehud Olmert, who served as Prime Minister in 2008. Notably, Olmert ended up serving 16 months in prison for his criminal activity. Clearly, Israel is a country that takes very seriously the principle that every individual, even the heads of state, are accountable to the public and to the rule of law.

Mandelblit’s announcement this week made me think about the essence of democracy and how it can be evaluated in so many different ways. In some respects, Israel looms large as a democracy; in others, it falls far short. This past July, for example, Israel enacted its “Nation-State” law, which cemented some very profound ways in which Israel extends preferences to Jews over gentiles. The United States, my own country, has a very proud and comparatively ancient tradition of democracy, and yet this tradition is not without gaping holes. On the very same day that Mandelblit was recommending the indictment of his nation’s leader, I was touring the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture. Needless to say, I got more than a whiff of the way the leaders of my own country, while waxing eloquent about their devotion to democracy, hypocritically treated one race of people as truly sub-human – an affront that makes the worst of Israel’s abuses look benign by comparison.

As an American, when I think about the moments in which I was proudest of our own democracy, my attention inevitably turns back to the summer of 1974. I was a rising 10^th grader and deeply riveted by the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee and its consideration of whether to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon. When I look back on Elizabeth Holtzman, Peter Rodino, Father Robert Drinan, Paul Sarbanes, John Conyers and Charlie Rangel – they were truly heroes to me. That’s because they were all Democrats, that was my party, and they were leading the prosecution of a corrupt President. But now that I’ve aged a bit, I realize that the true heroes weren’t so much the Committee’s 21 Democrats but its 17 Republicans, who opened their hearts and minds to the facts of the case and ultimately voted – unanimously – to submit three articles of impeachment to the full house against their party’s leader and the nation’s President. Those Republicans put country before party -- just like Mandelblit did this past Thursday in his own country.

At some point in my life, I came to conclude that you can largely judge the health of a democracy by how willing its citizens are to buck their party’s leaders when the circumstances so warrant. To me, that is just another way of asking whether we view ourselves as Democrats and Republicans first and foremost, or whether we see ourselves as Americans. Sometimes it is critically important to be loyal to your party; I get that. If one party is playing rough, then perhaps the other needs to do the same just to maintain some semblance of equity. But that principle is hardly relevant to the situation that the House Judiciary Committee faced in 1974, or to the situation Mandelblit faced this past week. They saw abuses being perpetrated by their party’s leaders, and they could either bury their heads in the sand or honor their oaths of office. Thankfully, they chose the latter path.

Near the end of the Clinton Administration, I remember another scandal consuming my country, and this time it was associated with the leader of my own party, President Clinton. Looking back at the so-called “Monica Lewinsky Scandal,” the facts about the President’s behavior were hardly in dispute. The only question was what to make of them. On the Democratic side, everyone acknowledged that the President’s conduct was inappropriate. Yet with few exceptions, they seemed willing to condone it – or at least they appeared that way to me. For the first (and last) time in my life, I found myself watching Fox News more often than the other Cable News networks because I agreed more with what the Republicans were saying about the scandal than the Democrats. No, I didn’t support impeachment, but I had hoped the President would resign and was rather appalled by the way Democrats trivialized the significance of his misconduct. I felt, in short, like the Democrats had failed the test passed in 1974 by the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee or last week by Attorney General Mandelblit.

In early-March 1999, I gave a speech to a few dozen people that discussed precisely why I felt that the President’s behavior was so profoundly disturbing under the circumstances. You can find a transcript of the relevant comments at the following link, beginning on page 9: http://www.danielspiro.com/uploads/3/1/0/2/31022605/purim99.pdf

Was I right in being so tough on President Clinton? Should I have taken a more laissez-faire attitude about his sex life? In hindsight, I would agree that reasonable people can be found on both sides of this issue. But what’s important is not so much that Mandelblit interpreted the law correctly in recommending indictment, or that the Republicans who favored the impeachment of Nixon were right in their legal analysis, or that I was right in hoping Clinton would resign in 1999 -- what’s important is that when it comes to evaluating the conduct of our own leaders, we put party aside and country first, or at least we try to do so.

A lot had changed from 1974 to 1999 in America. This country became far more polarized during that quarter century. In the twenty years since, its polarization has become even worse. So, I ask you: how strong is our democracy? Are we an exemplar of a mature republic, with a sufficiently free and healthy public sphere as to give rise to human passions and the political factions that inevitably result from them? Or are have we instead morphed into two ideologically incompatible peoples sharing the same land and fighting our wars in the ballot box every two years, with the spoils going to whoever happens to win the most recent election? Maybe that is the situation at present, but it doesn’t have to describe our future. I look forward to the day where both parties will have plenty of free-thinking mavericks who follow the truth wherever it leads and aren’t afraid of taking on the leaders of their party, whether they are in the White House, the People’s House, or on the God-damned radio.

Taking Stock in the 2020 Presidential Campaign -- An Early Look

2019-02-23T14:09:00.003-08:00

Forty-seven percent. That’s the proportion of polled Americans, according to Nate Silver, who do not disapprove of President Donald Trump’s performance. Yes, I just committed a cardinal sin of emphasizing a double negative. But just think about what that first sentence signifies. If after 25 months of Donald Trump’s presidency, you don’t disapprove of it, the high likelihood is that you’d consider supporting him in 2020. President Trump has had one humiliating defeat after another – including most recently a 35 day Government Shutdown with nothing to show for it – yet he’s still at 47% in the “I don’t disapprove” category. And that doesn’t even account for the “guilty secret pleasure” theory that many people may be afraid to admit to pollsters that they like Trump but will nevertheless check his name in the privacy of their own voting booth. If Democrats aren’t scared, they should be.

As was demonstrated in 2016, you don’t have to approve of a candidate in order to vote for them. You can simply disapprove of the opponent more. That is why a Presidential campaign is often a war of attrition, and no institution is better at destroying the good name of its opponents than the Republicans. They couldn’t destroy the candidacies of the Democrats’ two political superstars of the past forty years – Obama and Bill Clinton – but damned if they haven’t succeeded against literally every other Democratic nominee. Just consider the facts.

The GOP turned rock-solid Walter Mondale into a dour “Eat Your Peas’ Democrat,” and he lost every state but his own. Next, they took on the architect of the so-called “Massachusetts Miracle,” Michael Dukakis, and they Willie Hortoned him into oblivion. (I especially appreciate seeing a photo of the man in a tank, which the Republicans quickly used to make Governor Dukakis look like an even more absurd version of the Great Gazoo from the Flintstones.) Then, after Bill Clinton’s two terms, the Democrats served up future Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore. He could have dramatically changed world history by doing battle with climate change. Instead, the Republicans ridiculed him as “AlGore” the fraudulent robot who took credit for other people’s work. When the laughter was over, Gore couldn’t even carry his own state. In 2004, the Dems ran a real war hero, John Kerry, against a chicken hawk who got us into an endless debacle in Iraq based on false intelligence. So what did the GOP do? They “Swift Boated” the war hero, successfully lampooned him as an effete, blue-blooded wind-surfer, and gave their own candidate the popular vote victory he lacked the first time. Finally, after two terms of Obama, we witnessed the circus known as the Presidential Campaign of 2016. That’s when everyone was treated with an endless dose of references to “Crooked Hillary” and chants of “Lock Her Up.” No, President Trump didn’t win the popular vote; he lost it by millions. But damned if he didn’t take the Electoral College by 74 votes. In baseball, the only thing that really matters are runs scored, not base runners; in Presidential Politics, the game is all about Electoral College votes, and Donald Trump won over 300 of them. He is not to be taken lightly as a candidate in 2020.

Democrats, in short, need to ensure that they don’t repeat the big mistake of 2016 and get cocky about their chances. The nominee can hardly expect a walk in the park in the fall of 2020. And we, as voters, must be aware that some nominees lose their electability because they’re viewed either as overly leftist (and hence unable to compete for the “Reagan Democrats” who showed up for Clinton and Obama) or overly centrist or corporatist (and hence, like Hillary, unappealing to those progressives who consider voting for the Green Party or simply sitting out elections).

So what we do? My current thinking is that we aim for the sweet spot. Find a person who will appeal to the progressive wing of the party, which is where the enthusiasm is centered, but won’t easily be dismissed as a socialist. Find a person who is a preacher of profound transformational reforms (not a Senator pothole) but doesn’t come across as a pie-in-the-sky idealist or a pander-to-the-progressives phony. And most importantly, find someone who is charismatic enough that s/he can survive the inevitable attacks when they do come. (Contrast Reagan and Obama, who were made of Teflon when it comes to attacks, to Dukakis and Kerry, who were made of Velcro.)

Truly, it’s impossible for a Democrat to appeal to everyone. It’s also impossible to avoid political gaffes or to have the requisite experience for this job without having taken regrettable positions in the past. So, in talking about the “sweet spot,” let’s not worry about finding perfection, because we won’t even come close to that. Let’s just look at the matter viscerally. Who does your gut tell you would make the most effective leader for our time? Who seems to have the charisma to appeal to a wide audience within the party, and won’t be as much of a laughing stock outside of it? Who is hardest to demonize? Who is easiest to like? Who is most likely to get stuff done – big stuff.

For me, I find myself asking the following: who has the potential to inspire a movement to: (a) elect the kind of Democratic majority Obama had in 2009 (which makes everything else I’m going to talk about more possible), (b) fight climate change in a huge way and not just tinker around with it, (c) bring back the level of economic equity we had before Reagan upset the apple cart, and (d) get some common sense gun laws so that we all can feel like we’re living in a sane country.

When I think about these issues at this point in time, I see Kirsten Gillibrand and Corey Booker and I don’t notice anyone talking about them; it’s as if they’re not even running. I see Amy Klobuchar doing a nice job of being inoffensive to swing voters, but I don’t see her thinking big enough to inspire the base. I look at a pair of candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and feel confident that they will take on the above causes in a sweeping away. But when I think about Kamala Harris, I think that not only will she fight hard for those same causes, but she might be more effective in doing so – and she’ll wear far more Teflon in the process. So far, at least, I think her ability to communicate stands alone. She is charismatic and figures to be likeable to pretty much everyone other than the most sexist and racist among us. She comes across on the campaign trail as intense yet joyous. She’s smart and thinks well on her feet. And, if elected, she would be both the first woman and first woman of color ever to win the Presidency. Just from a sheer ethnicity standpoint, she would appeal to African Americans, East Indian Americans and, through her husband, Jewish Americans. Oh sure, there’s plenty of time for her to put her foot in her mouth. In fact, she’s already done that up to a point with her non-nuanced comments on universal health care. Yet you can fix that problem with a bit of coaching. You can’t coach charisma and widespread appeal – or at least not successfully. Harris, from all appearances, is a natural.

During the upcoming months, Donald Trump will surely have his good weeks and his awful weeks. He’ll be counted out many times, just like everyone counted him out in 2016. Some folks simply assume he’ll be impeached and convicted; others figure he won’t bother to run again. Me? I’m assuming he’ll be a willing and “electable” candidate no matter who he faces. But right now, relative to previous election cycles, I’m liking the list of contenders on the Democratic side, and I’m especially liking the rollout of Kamala Harris. So, while I don’t plan on being cocky, I look forward to next fall’s battle royale without any fear. The stable of talented Democrats is large enough and the lessons of 2016 vivid enough that I expect my party to be ready to fight a smart campaign led by an excellent candidate. Maybe in 10 years we’ll be talking about a third political genius that the party has given us in recent decades – and this time, maybe the “genius” won’t simply be great at campaigning or triangulating but will actually implement profound progressive changes in our society and our world. Think big. I am.

Some Very Fine People on Both Sides

2019-02-17T05:39:00.001-08:00

I’m sure you recognize the title of this post. It is the infamous phrase used by President Trump in the aftermath of the August 2017 White Nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia – the one where the marchers chanted such monstrosities as “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil.” Today, the phrase is commonly used to mock the President for suggesting that not only the group that protested the march but also the marchers themselves included some “very fine people.” Many saw the President as using a dog whistle, indicating that even though he may not personally approve of all the beliefs of the White Nationalists, he sure as hell wants their votes.

In this post, I’d like to talk about two other groups. As with the folks in Charlottesville, their members flat out dislike each other. Personally, I tend to oppose the positions of both groups, but my goal in this post isn’t to mock either one, but instead to preach compassion for both. Quite literally, I’d like to suggest that these two groups, despite having plenty of closed minded bigots and hate mongers in their midst, also have some “very fine people.” Faint praise? Low bar? Perhaps. Yet for all I’ve done in the past to criticize their positions, allow me to dedicate this one post to explaining why good people can legitimately align themselves with either group. I am referring to the American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC) and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The impetus for this endeavor began with the statements by a freshman Congresswoman, Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar. First, Omar tweeted that American support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins.” Then, asked to clarify what she meant, she responded with one word: “AIPAC!”

My reaction to these tweets was visceral and negative. Reflexively, I went on Facebook and offered the following response: “To Congresswoman Ilhan Omar -- there are plenty of reasons to love Israel and Zionism that don't involve being paid by AIPAC. Many of us who are proud Zionists don't even support AIPAC, and many who do support AIPAC have legitimate concerns about Israeli security in the event it made the kind of concessions that some of us would like it to make. Sadly, constant Israel bashing from the left (see, e.g., BDS) is one of the things that fuels fears throughout Israel, thereby undermining the progressives in that country and contributing to the building of more and more settlements. Do you want a two-state solution or are you seriously expecting that the Jews will voluntarily give up their state without casualties of Biblical proportions? Why don't you talk about that issue and the basis for your opinion, instead of offering lazy, one-sided rhetoric?”

Fortunately, this freshman Congresswoman swiftly and unequivocally apologized after representatives of both parties schooled her for her comments. Whatever was in her heart and mind at the time she made the statements, it makes sense for America to accept her apology and assume (until proven otherwise) that she was sincere in learning more about the history of anti-Semitism and why she struck a chord with those comments. But what I’d like to do is to build on my own statement about AIPAC, because it is not often that I publicly seek sympathy for that organization. Omar’s tweets reminded me of how vital it is that Israel has at least some trusted allies outside of her borders. Lord knows that J-Street, for its many virtues, has spent much more time over the years criticizing Israel than praising it. AIPAC, by contrast, represents Israel’s cheerleading squad in the United States. Sometimes, that’s exactly what Israel needs ... and deserves.

Consider that outside of Israel and the United States, this world is 0.03% Jewish. That amounts to roughly one out of every 3000 people. Israel was created by the United Nations at a unique time, when all but the vilest anti-Semites felt horrified about the Nazi Holocaust and wanted to do something kind for those Jews in Europe and elsewhere who survived it. Unfortunately, U.N. backing was hardly enough to ensure its survival; the fledgling nation of Israel needed to defeat many larger nations simply in order to survive. Less than 30 years later, the Jewish State having valiantly survived one existential military crisis after another, the U.N. General Assembly voted by more than two to one that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” These facts are not lost on the members of AIPAC. Nor are AIPAC supporters unaware of the Covenant of Hamas (the organization that now controls the Gaza Strip), which calls for Islam to “obliterate” Israel, or the various hateful statements of the leadership of Iran, whose former President not only denied the Holocaust but suggested that “Israel must be wiped off the map.” That is precisely what the world had done to the Jewish State for the 1900 years prior to the creation of modern Israel. You can better believe that the members of AIPAC are far from ignorant about the centuries of anti-Semitism in Europe, where Jews were blamed for being economically rapacious, power-grubbing, murderous, and concerned only about the letter of the Biblical law rather than its spirit.

As AIPAC’s devotees can also tell you, it took fully 3 ½ decades for the Palestinian Liberation Organization to recognize Israel’s right to exist in peace and to reject the strategy of “violence and terrorism.” As recently as this decade, the Palestinian Authority operated a Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund, which paid cash to the families of Palestinians who were involved in terrorist attacks against Israel. Not surprisingly, Hamas operates a separate “pay for slay” fund of its own. Even now, I am unaware of any Palestinian organization that recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a “Jewish State.” In fact, while many Palestinians express their willingness to accept a two-state solution, I have found little enthusiasm among Palestinians for such an outcome. What’s more, I suspect that many Palestinians who would willingly accept “two states for two peoples” see that result as a temporary measure that ultimately will give way to a single, primarily-Arab state occupying all of present-day Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

When you consider all of the above, is it any wonder that so many AIPAC supporters think that the two-state solution is a pie-in-the-sky idea? They have lost faith that Israel has a partner for peace that would ensure a permanent and secure Jewish State on Israel’s side of the border. As for me, I refuse to give up the two-state dream. I think the Jewish world should be advocating far more concessions and extending many more olive branches to the Palestinians than AIPAC supporters have been willing to offer on behalf of that dream – the one known as true peace. But I’m not going to demonize all AIPAC supporters just because they’re less patient or more cynical than I am. I refuse to attribute their positions simply to anti-Arab bigotry or Jewish greed. They make legitimate points that every friend of peace needs to take seriously.

Comparatively speaking, it is more difficult for me to defend BDS. The focus of BDS is to boycott Israel (and only Israel) as well as the products of her companies, divest from any holdings in Israel, and work to persuade other countries to stop trading with Israel and expel the Jewish State from international organizations. In short, the BDS movement seeks to turn Israel into an international pariah. Clearly, the idea of singling out the Jewish State for such treatment infuriates me for the same reasons that Omar’s tweets got under my skin. For centuries, anti-Semites have unjustly singled out the Jews in discriminatory ways. But that was then, and this is now. For all my opposition to BDS, the spirit of fairness requires me to acknowledge that one doesn’t have to be an anti-Semite to support that movement.

BDS, at its worst, comes from a place of bigotry and bullying. How easy must it feel in so many countries to wage a campaign of hatred against the Jewish State and on behalf of a group of oppressed Muslims and Christians in a world where Muslims alone outnumber Jews by well over 100 to 1? Still, BDS, at its best, comes from a place of understandable desperation and an unwillingness to accept perpetual war and Palestinian statelessness. Increasingly, Israel is losing its progressive base when it comes to the Palestinian Question, and the ruling coalition there seems to have abandoned any pretense of concern for the goal of two-states-for-two-peoples. In West Jerusalem and throughout much of the nation, complacency rules the day. Just as most Americans shrug at the crisis of climate change en route to buying another gas guzzling vehicle, most Israelis shrug at the notion that anything can be done to create a viable Palestinian state without risking Israel’s security in the process. So when right-wing Israelis clamor for more territory and seek to build communities in the West Bank, Israeli leaders take the path of least resistance – they offer some amount of concessions to the settler movement and ignore the fact that each settlement makes a two-state solution more and more difficult to achieve.

Stated simply, the dominant perspective in Israel regarding the Palestinians appears to be that the status quo might not be perfect, but it’s as good as it’s going to get. That is why politicians like Netanyahu would rather turn their attention to other topics (like the Iranian threat) and treat the Palestinians more like pests than like partners.

But Palestinians are not termites or mosquitos. They are people. They have a right to a state like anyone else. And you will forgive the advocates of BDS for reacting to Israeli complacency with a sense of urgency and desperation. BDS is not a violent movement. Quite the contrary, it abhors violence. Nor does it necessarily entail Jew-bashing. In fact, in theory, BDS could even be advocated by a Zionist who has decided that the only kind of love that will shake off the complacency is tough love. The most supportable principle of BDS is that something outside-the-box needs to be done to get Israel to stop building settlements and start talking about concessions for a Palestinian State – because nothing inside-the-box seems to be working. Anti-BDS liberals can whine all they want about the settlements, but such whining hasn’t had any effects, the argument continues, so why not try BDS as a last resort? In other words, BDS advocates contend, we’ll never have Palestinian autonomy (i.e., justice) unless their Israeli overlords are forced by external pressures to get off their high horses and start negotiating like peers and not masters. These pressures can take one of two forms: violence or BDS. Of the two, BDS is infinitely preferable. Or so goes the argument.

I have already devoted an entire blogpost to all the reasons why I oppose BDS. Similarly, many of my other posts over the years signal my profound disagreements with AIPAC. But today, I’ll spare you those points. Instead, I come to you with a request. Whether you disagree with one of these groups or both, try to have a little tolerance for what the best people in these organizations are trying to say, for we are talking about a predicament that is as intellectually vexing as it is emotionally gut-wrenching. In this case, there really are very fine people on both sides of the divide. I’m not suggesting that we treat the Palestinian and Israeli narratives equivalently, let alone that we can possibly side with both AIPAC and BDS. But it behooves us to dialogue respectfully, warmly and compassionately whenever you encounter a representative of either “side” that is willing to extend the same courtesies in your direction. Who knows, maybe both of you will learn something.

Where's the Green New Deal (or Old Deal) for Civil Servants?

2019-02-09T06:57:00.002-08:00

Normally, I don’t like blogging about issues on which I have a pecuniary interest, so I should begin by saying “consider the source” when you read what follows. Still, I represent a constituency that apparently has no champions in positions of power. So if people like me don’t call out the facts, who will?

Here are the federal civilian pay increases and the corresponding CPI increases for the previous year.

Federal pay increases CPI increases for the previous year

2019 0.0 2.2%

2018 1.4% 2.1

2017 1.0 1.3

2016 1.0 0.1

2015 1.0 1.6

2014 1.0 1.5

2013 0.0 2.1

2012 0.0 3.2

2011 0.0 1.6

9-yr Avg 0.6% 1.75%

In essence, federal civil service compensation has effectively dropped well over 10% during this decade alone, and that doesn’t even count the ways in which benefits have been cut in recent years or the way inflation-adjusted salaries have been decreased in past decades. Moreover, these recent decisions to reduce Civil Servant compensation are obviously bi-partisan; just consider who was President during most of these years and the lack of outrage among the Democratic legislators who passed his budgets . We all heard no shortage of crocodile tears shed by Democratic legislators during the 2018-19 Shutdown about the plight of the federal workers. But you can thank numbers like the ones above for why so many civil servants were hurting so much in January.

The rumor is that, as we speak, the Democrats and GOP are close to a deal to avert another Shutdown. Do you think demanding a pay increase commemorate with increases in the CPI is something that the Dems are demanding as a pre-condition to do the deal? Hopefully, that’s what is happening. Yet I have seen no such reports in the media. In fact, I hear crickets on this entire topic.

The fact is that neither party has shown much concern for the drop in compensation for civil servants over the past few decades, let alone the effect of that drop on morale and recruitment. I’m not saying the two parties are equally unconcerned, but this time I’m not even going to bother to point out which one is worse. Just look at those years from 2011 to 2013, when Barack Obama was President. Where was the Democratic Party uproar then? Where is it now that there are no more political points to be scored by raising the issue?

There is no disputing that, on an aggregate basis, the average civil servant is paid more than the average non-civil servant. To some, that would make us overpaid – and indeed, many lawmakers cite the aggregate pay gap between the public and private sector as a justification for continuing to dock civil service pay relative to the rate of inflation. But you don’t have to be an astrophysicist or a brain scientist to realize that it makes zero sense to compare the salaries of, on the one hand, a NASA astro-physicist or NIH brain researcher to, on the other hand, a burger flipper at Wendy’s or a telemarketer with “your local carpet cleaning service.” The better comparison would be to compare the salaries of government astro-physicists with their analogues in the private sector, and do the same with brain scientists, economists, attorneys, or whatever. But Congress knows better than to commission that kind of comparison. It wouldn’t be “fiscally prudent.”

Clearly, there are more pressing issues in the world to think about than this one. Then again, unless the topic is climate change, that could be said about any topic. I simply felt compelled this week, now that we may be on the verge of another budget deal, to raise a concern that sticks in the craw of those “800,000 people” -- of which I am one -- that our nation’s demagogues kept talking about since Christmas. Truly, this is just a microcosm of the way the members of our media and our politicians play games with us – selecting some issues to obsess about, ignoring other important issues altogether, and constantly tossing rhetoric around as if they really care. Sadly, the American people know better. That’s one reason neither of those groups is terribly popular with either side of the political spectrum.

Dealing with Triangulators: How to Call out Their B.S.

2019-02-02T08:14:00.001-08:00

Reasonable people can disagree about who should be on the Mount Rushmore of Philosophers. But I think we all can agree on two people: Plato and Aristotle. Plato used reasoned discourse to seek out our best angels. He wrote beautifully and inspired us all to keep our heads in the clouds – or, more specifically, to leave our caves, walk into the sunlight, and open our minds to the essence of beauty, freedom, love, justice, and goodness. I, for one, could not argue with Alfred North Whitehead, who taught that the “safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” To be sure, however, Plato doesn’t stand alone. Far from being a lone wolf, he is known for having one of the world’s most brilliant philosophical teachers (Socrates) and one of the world’s most brilliant philosophical students (Aristotle).

Aristotle built on his teacher’s brilliance and grounded it in all the right ways. He equally respected common sense, empirical thought and the rigors of logic. It is difficult to know whether to praise Aristotle more for his depth of thought or his breadth of thought. If you are a lover of religion, your favorite Greek philosopher is probably Plato. But if you are a lover of western philosophy, political theory, or science, my guess is that Aristotle is your man.

So what do you say we use a little Aristotelian thinking to call out some bullshit?

Book 2 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics spoke about the “virtues” and preached the doctrine of the golden mean. The virtues are identified as being placed in between two vices – one indicating too much of some disposition and the other indicating too little. For example, one such virtue is “courage,” which is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardliness. Another is “temperance”, the mean between gluttony and self-denial or asceticism. A third is “generosity,” the mean between wastefulness and miserliness or uncharitableness. You get the idea.

But that’s only half of the point. You’ll also note that the so-called “virtues” are identified more with one side of the divide than the other. In other words, they represent a clear departure from the norm in one direction. When it comes to the quality of risk-taking, for example, we praise people for their “courage” because people generally have too little of that quality. So even though we don’t want people to be foolhardy, we’re generally more concerned that they’ll be cowardly. Similarly, when it comes to self-restraint, we praise people for their “temperance” because most of us have too little of the relevant quality. So even though we don’t want people to be completely ascetic, we’re more concerned that they’ll be gluttonous and name our virtue to guard against that outcome. In each case, one vice seems to be more directly contrary to the virtue than its corresponding vice on the other side of the divide, at least for most people.

With that as background, let’s take a look the contemporary rhetorical device – or should I just shorten that word and say “vice”? -- known as Triangulation. Triangulators claim that their position represents the voice of reason because it is situated between two extremes: namely, the respective positions of their ideological opponents. Most of us know this device from politics. Bill Clinton was associated with it when he was both a Presidential candidate in 1992 and then again when he was President. He loved to take on the “left” in his own Party and thereby represent himself as the reasonable man between crazy leftists, on the one hand, and whacko-bird Republicans on the right. Those weren’t his exact words, but they may as well have been. In fact, they convey pretty much the same picture all the political triangulators try to paint.

Personally, I see the Triangulation device used outside of politics as well. When I read books about religion, I often see writers promote their own reasonableness by contrasting their position with two so-called extremes. Maybe their extremes are represented by the religious fundamentalists, on the one hand, and the thoroughly secular (aka “amoral hedonists”), on the other. Once they set up these strawmen, our heroes, the Triangulators, swoop in right down the middle and save the day!

Thank you, Mighty Mouse. Thank all you Triangulators, or “centrists,” as you like to call yourselves, for your humor, your sanctimony and your illogic.

I find Triangulation funny because the perpetrators of it play the same pathetic card over and over again and in that sense remind me a little of the Three Stooges. I say “a little” because, as one commentator pointed out, those boys constantly turned to the same damned bits -- “slaps, eye pokes, head conks [and] nose honks.” Still, at least they had some variety. Triangulators seem to be one-trick ponies. “I’m the reasonable man. I’m the centrist. Everyone else is on one extreme or the other.” Yawn.

As for the sanctimony of the Triangulators, that should be obvious by now. Their stock in trade is to pretend that only their position is reasonable and everyone else’s is extreme. To be fair, it is common for them to claim, in essence, that they represent the silent majority, so in that sense, they don’t come across as elitist so much as thoroughly disrespectful of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, some of their ideological opponents might actually have a valid point. Almost by definition, how can an “extremist” ever have anything valid to say?

As for the illogic of the Triangulators, that is what I would like to concentrate on for the remainder of this post. You see, it is critical that all of us understand their little game and call them on it. Triangulation is similar to what logicians call the fallacy of the excluded middle. Under that fallacy, a person takes a shot at one position (call it “Z”) and says that because Z is wrong, then their position (“A”) must be right. Implicitly, they assume that there are only two possible positions that can be taken on an issue and that every other possibility (call them “B through Y”) does not exist. That’s why this is called the fallacy of the excluded middle – the proponent of the position excludes the possibility of all possible moderate or “middle” positions.

Similarly, the Triangulators, instead of suggesting that there are two possibilities, suggest that there are precisely three – one extreme position, its polar opposite, and their own. But as Aristotle pointed out, when it comes to each disposition of character, there is actually an entire continuum of possibilities. Most people tend more toward one extreme than the other, and virtue rests in moving away from the norm and toward the road less taken – but not all the way down that road. In other words, there may be a few people who represent the “Z” spot (the completely foolhardy whacko-bird who never met a risk he didn’t take) and many others who represent the “A” or “B” spots (we know them as total wimps), but virtue lies somewhere around “S” or “T” – clearly courageous, just not to the maximal degree. Triangulators would never admit to such nuance.

Let’s apply this lesson to the man that so many people are talking about right now, Howard Schultz. He wants to be President despite having no political experience and an unwillingness to run for the nomination of either mainstream party. He is claiming that both parties have become extreme, the one on the right and the other on the left, and the nation needs a voice of reason like his, who represents the silent majority. Only a “centrist” like Schultz, the argument goes, can provide the common sense reform that America needs, as is demonstrated by his willingness to take on the heartless economic inequalities perpetrated by the Republicans without embracing the socialist, pie-in-the-sky proposals of the Democrats.

Clearly, Mr. Schultz has not read his Aristotle. If he had, he would have addressed a fundamental question: is our society’s central problem from an economic standpoint that wealth is distributed too unequally or that people are overly willing to threaten the hallowed market mechanisms that should be left well enough alone? If Schultz believes that the problem is the latter, he should say so. He might even want to become a Republican and challenge the incumbent President based on the argument that even though laissez-faire economics generally works best, there are a few market failures that this Administration is failing to address and needs to. If, by contrast, Schultz believes that we have an economic inequality crisis, than damn it, say so! Stop straw-manning all the efforts on the political left to try to rectify that inequality by labeling them extremist. Praise these Democrats’ goals, and promote whatever approach to those goals makes the most economic sense. I guarantee you that the Democratic voters will take you seriously ... and that you would fit in well within the Democratic tent.

By running as an Independent, Schultz is making the statement that he is indifferent to whether Trump (and his feed-the-rich economics) or some Democratic progressive (with their emphasis on equality of outcomes and not merely equality of opportunity) is elected. Ralph Nader essentially admitted as much when he ran for President in 2000, and he purported to be guilt-free when his candidacy threw the election to George W. Bush and gave us the Iraq War and a generation of indifference toward climate change. So far, from what I can tell, Schultz has been unwilling to declare his preferences between the two political parties, or even to state his indifference. He would prefer instead to play the Triangulation Game and to repeat over and over again that he won’t be a spoiler, he’ll be the winner.

Honestly, if you truly think Howard Schultz has a chance to win the election, you should go to the E.R. and tell the medics that you’ve had a stroke. But what Schultz and his Triangulation Logic might accomplish is to give Donald Trump a second term as a minority President. Try to imagine six more years like the last two. Or better yet, just ask yourself, if Aristotle had a ballot, what do you think he would he do with it? I am planning to vote with him, not with Schultz or with Trump.

Remembering the Holocaust

2019-01-26T08:06:00.000-08:00

In Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day is set for May 2nd this year. But this weekend, in various other parts of the world, the day set aside to commemorate the Holocaust will come this weekend. Tomorrow, January 27th, marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the most infamous concentration camp of Nazi Germany. Of the roughly 1.3 million people who were forced to enter the camp, more than 1.1 million died, roughly 90 percent of them Jews. In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27th as International Holocaust Memorial Day, and this is the primary date that the European Union marks to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust. Those who mark this date also use this opportunity as a day to remember other genocides across the world.

The Jewish-Islamic Dialogue Society of Washington (JIDS), an interfaith group over which I preside, is one of many organizations around the world that will be holding an event tomorrow to remember the Holocaust and other genocides. I don’t normally speak at JIDS events, but this time I couldn’t resist the temptation. The Holocaust is, quite simply, the seminal historical event of my life, cutting to the heart of both my religious and political views. If you have read my most recent book, “Liberating the Holy Name: A Free-Thinker Grapples with the Meaning of Divinity,” you would have seen just how early in life I was exposed to information about the Nazi atrocities and how profoundly it would affect my thinking about God and humankind.

When reflecting on the Holocaust, different people have different focal points. There are those who think primarily about Hitler, arguably the most evil figure in world history. We all can understand why he is such a focus – people love to personalize situations. That’s why so much attention is paid to individual athletes, entertainers or for that matter serial killers, and why the media can’t stop talking about all things Donald Trump despite the fact that he derives most of his power from his followers in Congress and throughout the country. Another common focus of the Holocaust is the heroes. Hollywood loves to make movies about the “righteous gentiles” who saved lives during that period of history, or the way many of the victims of the Nazi atrocities (like Anne Frank) were able to live dignified lives despite the most trying of circumstances. Clearly, those are compelling stories that need to be told.

For me, however, the primary focal points are neither heroes nor villains. One of them is God. Where was God in Auschwitz? I refuse to stop asking that question. To those who want to know why I am so enamored with the conception of God associated with the philosopher Spinoza, a big part of my answer is Auschwitz. Spinoza’s theology anticipated the horrors of Auschwitz without sounding escapist or Pollyannaish. Personally, I simply cannot attribute that house of horrors, and the infinite number of other examples of “natural” and man-made suffering, to an omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator of all existence. My passion for the truth calls out for a more philosophical God than that, and no God more epitomizes the so-called “God of the Philosophers” than Spinoza’s. In short, Auschwitz hasn’t caused me to deny God’s existence any more than it made Spinoza an atheist, but my conception and the traditional conception of God are hardly the same thing. You can attribute that fact above all else to the Holocaust.

My other primary focal point when it comes to the Holocaust is the millions of people who didn’t die, didn’t murder, but rather enabled. They lived in Germany, Poland, and much of Europe. Some of them lived in America too. For the most part, they kept their heads down, went about their lives and minded their own business. And while they tended to their own gardens, they surely assumed little if any responsibility for the slaughter that was taking place. But believe me, they knew what was going on was horrific.

These people weren’t “evil” under any conventional understanding of that word. I assume that only a minority of them had hatred in their hearts for Jews, homosexuals, Roma or other victims of this genocide. They simply weren’t heroes, that’s all. They didn’t want to make sacrifices on behalf of strangers. Nobody told them that such sacrifices were truly their “duty” – and it was left up to them as to whether to engage in supererogatory acts of heroism.

For me, one of the two greatest lessons of the Holocaust is that, when push comes to shove, we have no choice but to be heroes or enablers. You see, suffering and injustice didn’t end in 1945. And until the proverbial “Moshiach” comes (or returns, under the Christian interpretation), suffering and injustice are bound to continue indefinitely. We can either make personal sacrifices to confront them. Or we can tend to our own gardens, disavow responsibility, and enable their seeds to grow once again. There is no third option. As for that other great lesson of the Holocaust, it’s that when developments truly go off the rails, the number of heroes pale in comparison to the number we need to stop the bleeding.

As I write this, America’s Government Shutdown has just ended and those of us who have been furloughed are about to dig out from the damage done over the past several weeks. This is a great time to be thankful that nobody died in a recent plane crash, no epidemics of food poisoning were reported, and no other out-and-out calamities have occurred as a direct result of the Shutdown. But let’s not kid ourselves – we have put ourselves in the line of fire because our political system is not working the way the framers of our Constitution intended. For me, the Holocaust provides plenty of lessons of what can happen if we don’t seize this moment and stand up for our principles and against those who threaten them. You see, we can hardly count on the ability of any people to save the day once a society reaches a certain tipping point. Our Founding Fathers understood that, and they didn’t even have the benefit of Auschwitz to use as a laboratory.

Time to Step up to the Plate

2019-01-19T06:58:00.001-08:00

It is easy to be a member of a minority party. All you have to do is throw mud. You can channel Senator Mitch McConnell and, in essence, announce that you’re going to oppose everything the President does so your own party can take over the Presidency (even if it means hurting the country in the short run). Hell, you can even channel Groucho Marx as Quincy Adams Wagstaff and say, “I don’t care what they have to say. It makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I’m against it!”

It worked for the Republicans in 2010. It worked for the Democrats in 2018.

But this is 2019. It won’t work nearly so well for anybody now, because each side has some power and will be held accountable for how it wields it. Accountability is critical to the functioning of society, both in the political and the business context. Unfortunately, with accountability comes pressure, tough decisions and, yes, the risk of demonstrable failure.

This afternoon, the world will watch as President Donald Trump tries to hold the Democrats accountable. His team has leaked that he will make a proposal to end the Government shutdown that will not remove funding for his cherished Wall/Barrier but will include other concessions to the Democrats. His goal, presumably, is to include enough concessions so as to cause the nation’s attention to shift to the House Democrats. Are they willing to find a reasonable way to end this national stalemate for the good of the country? Or are they simply playing the role of Professor Wagstaff? To date, nobody has been holding the Democrats accountable for this shutdown. And why would you, given the famous meeting among Pelosi, Schumer and Trump in which the President announced that “I’ll take it. Yes, if we don’t get what we want one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call — I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government. I will take the mantle.” Today, the President’s job is to pass that mantle – or at least be perceived that way.

So let’s say he succeeds and sweetens the pot sufficiently to make the Democrats look bad if they don’t enter into negotiations to end the Shutdown without jettisoning the Wall. And let’s say the Dems bite the bullet, fund the Wall, and re-open the government. We would finally see something we haven’t seen in the past two years – vocal divisions within that party. Some people might fear that development. Personally, I’d welcome it. You see, I feel a desperate need to have the Democratic Party consciously redefine itself, even if it means tightening up the breadth of its coalition.

The last time the Party of the Donkey redefined itself was in 1992, when the Governor of Arkansas and a Senator from Tennessee convinced the membership that they had moved too far to the left to be electable and needed to chart a “Third Way” between the path of the “old” Democrats and the majority (Republican) party. That resulted in eight years of Clinton Gore Triangulation, followed by eight more years of Republican Rule, followed by an Obama Administration that campaigned on something as nebulous as “hope and change” and never really could define what it was about (other than saving the economy from collapse and implementing Romneycare), followed by two more years of Republican Rule. As for the Party of FDR, Truman and LBJ, we haven’t seen them in power for so long that if we attempted a New Deal or a Great Society today, it would probably be viewed as an act of socialism rather than a Democratic Party initiative. To me, that must change. A conscious re-definition is called for. That starts with the willingness to tackle tough decisions and not shy away from public disagreements in doing so. The Democrats might even lose a few points in the polls as such a family feud plays out in the press, but they also might just gain a soul in the process. Do you have the guts to do that, my fellow Democrats?

On a local level, we’re seeing this kind of internal battle play out within my own community – the non-Orthodox Jewish community of Washington, D.C. The vast majority of us are progressive Democrats. But we’re totally split on the issue of whether to attend the Women’s March, which will be happening at the same time that President Trump makes his announcement.

In what can only be described as an “unforced error,” Tamika Mallory, one of the leaders of the Women’s March, turns out to be a big fan of Louis Farrakhan, the celebrated Jew-hater. For reasons known only to God and Satan, Mallory won’t renounce Farrakhan’s hateful words, and to some degree appears to have endorsed them. Now I think it’s safe to say that nobody in my local Jewish community sympathizes with Farrakhan or even Mallory. The question is whether her conduct, and the lack of a stronger rebuke by the other leaders of the march, warrants a decision to avoid the march altogether. Area rabbis are giving speeches or writing letters to their congregations, weighing in on one side or the other.

Personally, I’m in the “Hell no, I won’t go,” camp. But I have no inclination to bore you with the details of my reasoning. What’s most important to me is not whether to attend the march, but how we can best build a center-left movement that will effectively meet the needs of our society and our planet. It starts with the courage to frame the issues publicly, even if it means we air our disagreements. It includes a deep desire to identify leaders who have distinguished themselves based on the righteousness of their values, rather than simply their opportunism and ambition. And it involves the willingness to engage in civil, respectful dialogue whenever you disagree with members of the coalition.

Now, in including that last sentence, I am aware that I violated that principle in the way that I discussed Farrakhan and Mallory. I did so consciously to make a point. It is vital that the members of this movement I’m discussing figure out just how big a tent it wants to create. Should it include people like Farrakhan who have done plenty of good things for lower-income communities but who also have outed themselves as rank anti-Semites? (I say no.) Should it include people who strongly disagree with the progressives on hot-button issues like abortion rights but who nevertheless side with them on most other issues and support the Democratic Party? (I say yes.) Again, however, the important thing to me is not where we as individuals fall on these specific questions. It’s that we embrace this kind of conscious, soul-searching process so that the movement we create is built carefully and wisely.

In short, this is a crucial time in our history. You can see that every time you turn on the news. Clearly, the party in power is failing us. Our challenge is how to replace it – and if we want to do this well, this will require soul-searching, courage, and some growing pains. Are you ready to do your part? Stay informed and stay active. Please.

A Breath of Fresh Air

2019-01-12T07:16:00.003-08:00

Politicians frequently spin. But they don’t often dance. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) does both. It drives the Republicans crazy. And now even the Democrats are turning against her.

I’m with them on the spinning thing. When politicians speak, I want them to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I realize I won’t hear the whole truth. But please, can we at least hear nothing but the truth? AOC does herself no favors when she uses false analogies to understate the expenses of Medicare-for-All. And when she makes a mistake, she should own it, rather than adding that “there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

Honestly, being factually correct IS a way to be morally right. And being loose with facts is, sad to say, the opposite moral.

But damn it, I still love AOC. I like her unbridled enthusiasm, her striking boldness, her authentic progressivism, her media savvy, and her willingness to take on the Democratic establishment. In fact, I like that last characteristic the best of all.

In case you haven’t noticed, AOC is ruffling more than a few feathers with her Democratic colleagues. She is committing the capital crime of -- gasp – supporting primary challengers to Democratic party incumbents. She is looking for people who are deeply concerned about climate change, racial justice, and economic equity, and she is willing to fight for those candidates whenever they are running against conservatives, even if those conservatives are Democratic incumbents. (Note to my readers: a “conservative” is a proponent of the status quo, and these days, as many conservatives are Democrats as Republicans.) Unfortunately, to the powers-that-be in Congress, taking on a party incumbent is practically a form of treason. “I’m sure Ms. Cortez means well, but there’s almost an outstanding rule: Don’t attack your own people,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “We just don’t need sniping in our Democratic Caucus.” And then we have the reported comments of an unidentified Democratic Congressperson who is considered a fellow progressive: “She needs to decide: Does she want to be an effective legislator or just continue being a Twitter star? There’s a difference between being an activist and a lawmaker in Congress.”

Indeed there is. Activists, you see, reflect a wide range of political views. They think for themselves. They don’t feel straightjacketed by party discipline. They may even make people like me proud to be Democrats. But lawmakers? Not so much.

Consider the primary campaign for President in 2016. We had two candidates who basically split the members and the activists of the Democratic Party down the middle. Personally, I’d say that roughly half of the Democrats I know were for Bernie, and half for Hillary. Nationally, Bernie won roughly 3/7^th of all Democratic Primary votes. Pretty close, right? But now consider the lawmakers and other power-brokers. Bernie won the endorsement of only a single U.S. Senator (Jeff Merkley). He also won the endorsement of only a single individual who had ever served as a Cabinet Member (Robert Reich). In the House, you can count the number of Bernie’s endorsements on both hands. As for sitting Governors, Bernie didn’t get a single endorsement. When it came to the powers-that-be, Hillary cleaned his clock.

How did that all work out, America?

Believe me, AOC was watching. She supported Bernie at the time, notwithstanding former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s comment (in reference to the Sanders/Clinton competition) that “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” AOC would have also seen what happened when the Democratic Party controlled the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate (at one point, having 60 members of that body). It failed to pass any meaningful gun control measure. It failed to implement substantial progressive reforms to the tax system. It failed to implement transformative climate change legislation. And while it did succeed in implementing the same health care program that Mitt Romney once brought to Massachusetts (which, from a progressive standpoint, is a positive step toward universal health care), it failed to implement the public option, let alone Medicare-for-all – and now even our Romney Care is in jeopardy.

In short, once we move beyond the ancien regime, with its Great Societies and its New Deals, the Democratic Party hasn’t done much to satisfy the needs of the working class, and not since Richard Nixon have we seen a massive governmental boost to help the environment. AOC isn’t satisfied with those results. Can you blame her?

At 29, AOC still has a lot to learn about Washington. Most critically, she needs to guard her credibility like a hawk and recognize that a commitment to “truth” is every bit as important as a commitment to justice and compassion. Empathic Rationalism demands that our politicians refrain from B.S., no matter what broader principles they are trying to serve. But when it comes to fighting for high marginal tax rates, Green New Deals, or politicians whose greatest loyalties are to the needy, I am 100 percent behind her. We’ve seen what happens when the old guard runs the party. It’s time for AOC and others like her to assume the mantle.

So keep dancing, AOC. I’ve got your back.