The Most Dangerous Man in America or Just Another Predatory Grifter?

Is it possible that the most dangerous man in America is a Canadian college professor?

Please allow me to try and explain why that is a question worth asking.

In "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), Karl Marx wrote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."

As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Before I get to the Canadian, who seems to be a philosopher very interested in changing the world, I need to provide some background.

The potentially most dangerous man in America, likes to talk about Marxism and something he calls cultural-marxism, if he has the right audience.

Cultural marxism, as near as I can tell is a pointer to something evil.  It seems to identify some one, some group, or some idea that non-cultural marxists don't like, maybe hate and are definitely afraid of. Based on my spins around the internet I'd say "cultural marxism" is a phrase used in a lot of speech intended to "other" some group of human beings.

Marx was an important philosopher who was reacting to the changes happening to society as a result of industrialization. Based on my limited reading of his works I'd say he had some insightful things to say about industrialized society and capitalism. The BBC special Masters of Money provides a high-level overview of Marx's thinking. The Essential Writings of Karl Marx edited by David Caute is a concise look at Marx and Engles major ideas that I found educational.

Reading "The Communist Manifesto" isn't a good place to start learning about Marx. The manifesto is deliberately written as a short polemic and doesn't have nearly the nuance, insight and depth of other writings of Marx and Engles.

I'd guess very few people have read the three volumes of Marx and Engles foundational work "Das Kapital" given that each volume is over 1000 pages of challenging material. Even though most people have never read any of Marx and Engles works, many people use the words marxism, socialism, communism with little or no understanding of the philosophy underpinning them.

Taking the name of some thing and saying the name is the thing is a fools errand. Here's what I mean - saying North Korea is a democracy because it's named "The Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea" doesn't make it so. Saying Communist China is Communism (the political theory derived from Marx) makes about as much sense. How much Marx's ideas, and how much inherent human evil, greed and a will to power contributed to the terrible things that happened in China or the USSR - is complicated.

In the United States with a democratic form of government we saw genocide of native people and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of human beings but we don't say that happened because of democracy. It's complicated.

When the working class is ready to take over the means of production here in the USA you'll know socialism has arrived. I expect that to happen - never, but maybe I'm wrong.

I think it's not impossible that we will slide into some sort of totalitarian fascist state. When the economy tanks or some localized Antifa vs. Proud Boys or other violence escalates - we could be in for a bit of tight spot.

As dire as the prediction may sound I'm not worried. We are a strong people who've been though a lot and I am 100% confident that whatever comes along we'll ride it out. We all are able to choose our own response to whatever comes our way - so have fun, hug your friends and family and make the most of your one singular beautiful life.

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Which brings me to Jordan Peterson, a super smart guy and philosopher (or something) who seems to be popular on the internet. I haven't looked at everything he has on the web (there's a lot) but I've looked at enough to say he's found something. The video that made me think he may be inciting people to violence, perhaps unwittingly, has been viewed by over 2 million people.

What he's found is a group of people unsatisfied with their lives and looking for answers, or at least someone or some group to blame.

What he's found is not completely unlike the "something" Donald Trump found that propelled him to the presidency.

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Before considering my concern with Jordan Peterson please watch this short video discussing identity politics. Olly the young philosophy teacher in the video isn't talking about what some in the popular media, and professors like Jordan Peterson, refer to as "identity politics" so you might learn something you didn't know.

I'd also suggest viewing Olly's video discussing the only true fan of Jordan Peterson in the entire world. Spoiler alert - it involves what appear to be live snakes crawling on Olly's semi-naked body ;-)

Listening to Jordan Peterson preach about philosophers and philosophical ideas I wondered where he was getting his ideas from, because many of them seem misguided. It appeared that he had not read the works of many of the philosophers he characterizes. Cuck Philosophy has a video explaining the book that Jordan Peterson recommends his disciples read to understand some thing he calls post-modernism. You'll understand why Jordan and his devotees are so confused about some things after watching the video.

I was musing if it might be worthwhile to request that Jordan submit a paper for peer review outlining his theory of "post-modernism" or "cultural-marxists" or Derrida or Foucalt's ideas. I suppose not since in the radical right view - academia is corrupted. The idea that higher education is corrupt, going to hell in a hand basket or being taken over by radical feminists, social justice warriors or leftists isn't a new one in the United States. William F. Buckley was making noises like that back in the 1950's. The aristocrats fear that providing an education to the common man would make him ungovernable, goes back much further than the 1950's.

Another video that is a good corrective to some of Jordan Peterson's philosophical confusion is Derrida - The Father of Deconstruction. It's an interview with Paul Patton a professor of philosophy at the University of New South Wales from the Australian Broadcasting Company. I listened to him explain deconstruction about five times and couldn't make it out but it's an interesting video nonetheless.

Rick Roderick talks about deconstruction here in a lecture about Heidegger. He says that Heidegger introduced the term "the deconstruction of philosophy." Roderick equates deconstruction to - clearing away a pile of junk, to get to what might be called it's archaeological roots, to see if there's anything there that will help us in this project of understanding what it means to be in the world.

Wesley Cecil  has a lecture on Derrida here. Early on in his lecture he says, Derrida wrote over 50 books in his lifetime - none of which are readable.

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To understand why I think Jordan Peterson is dangerous you'll need to look closely at the video of a talk he gave to a group of young people in Vancouver B.C. The video has a nice clickbaity and rather nonsensical title "Identity Politics and the Marxist Lie of White Privilege". It's over 2 1/2 hours long, but you only have to look at a couple of spots where young men are asking questions to understand what I'm getting at.

Jordan Peterson has an aura of authority and legitimacy because he is a professor. Many people assume he knows what he's talking about because of his status and because what he says sounds credible. He has some advice for young people that I agree with but the value of what he's saying doesn't in any way make up for the violence he may incite in impressionable people.

The thing that makes him most dangerous may be that he's identifying things in our society that many people see as problematic. He's got some points, but he's mixing it all up in a toxic stew which seems to incite rather than calm the passions of impressionable students and others. He has a trait you see in some politicians where what he is doing is precisely the bad thing he accuses "them" of doing. He preaches a gospel opposed to identity politics while practicing the most extreme forms of identity politics himself.

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He rails on a lot about "post-modernism", "cultural marxism", Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucalt. The fact that neither he nor most regular people have the slightest clue what the phrases "post-modernism" or "cultural marxism", might mean in an intellectual sense, if they mean anything at all, never really enters into the picture. Those terms do seem to have an emotional meaning that resonates with some people. 

A similar situation exists when he refers to the French philosophers Foucalt and Derrida. At least they were real people, but who knows what they were talking about? People a lot smarter than I am will tell you that the writing of Derrida and Foucalt is difficult, sometimes deliberately obscure, at times enlightening, and very challenging to understand. That's why some philosophers and thinkers like reading and discussing their works.

Jordan Peterson preaches about "post-modernism", "cultural marxism", "Derrida" and "Foucalt". He can interpret these concepts and thinkers, because most likely you won't have any frame of reference with which to judge the accuracy of what he's saying. His spiel basically boils down to - you should be angry at, and afraid of, a group of people....in fact so afraid that you might think they are going to kill you as you will see in the video.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

LEWIS CARROLL (Charles L. Dodgson), Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 6, p. 205 (1934). First published in 1872.

The first part of the video that is concerning is at 2:06:37 where the young man asks a question about ideologies that students may be attracted to that "in the end will get them killed will get them hurt." Jordan Peterson gives an answer about the horrors of the Soviet Union.

The problem is, if you listened to the 2 plus hours of his talk up to that point he had been conflating the horrors of the Soviet Union, Communist China and Nazi Germany with some group of people in the United States and Canada. The group is a bit hard to define but seems to include college professors, "leftists", "cultural marxists", maybe "liberals" and "post-modernists?"

The conclusion the student can draw is that since these ideologies may get "them" killed, may get them hurt, then whatever means he chooses to resist "them" are justified by the ends (saving lives).

Jordan Peterson has some valid points but he (at least in this video) mixes those valid points up with rhetoric appealing to desires and prejudices like any demagogue.

What he says sounds like a rational argument mixed in at times with emotional pleading which I imagine is quite appealing to some young (and not so young) people.

What young person doesn't want to save the world? Here's a guy who's telling you the leftists and cultural marxists want to ruin the world - better do something and whatever you do it will be justified...since you are saving the world.

The second part of the video that is concerning is at 2:20:08. The student says "the left has pushed for total control of our society for twenty years...", "the mass red pilling of the conservative movement", "this is the answer to defeat the leftist stranglehold on our society"..etc.

At this point Jordan Peterson seems to realize that something is dangerous about how the student interpreted what he has been preaching for the previous 2 1/2 hours. He gives an answer calling for non-violence and suggests not thinking one side has to "win".

We can only hope his followers will listen.

Saying there's no need to "win" seems sort of disingenuous considering he'd been preaching that there are groups of people afoot wanting to take away all you hold dear in this world...again not unlike Trump.

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Miscellaneous critiques..

Being somewhat interested in theology I was confused by Professor Peterson's interpretation of the old testament story of Cain and Abel starting at 38:36. Jordan tells us that God tells us in that myth that, "sin  crouches at your door like a sexually aroused cat...that's basically the metaphor God uses." An unusual interpretation and somewhat bizarre statement but myths can have many meanings.

He goes on to preach that Cain killed Abel because Cain was resentful (like the "cultural marxists" etc. are resentful today). It's a strange and potentially dangerous sermon Jordan is preaching. If I wanted advice on how to interpret the story of Cain and Abel I'd consult a Jewish scholar, a priest or a minister; not a psychology professor.

Jordan Peterson makes a mistake I make all the time. He thinks because he's smart, and knows a lot about something, he knows a lot about everything. I don't really have a problem with that provided it's localized, but when you have a pretty big pulpit and people think you know what you are talking about - it becomes problematic.

Jordan Peterson preaches against making straw man arguments while creating a city of straw men to battle. A good example of this is when he says something like postmodernists or Derrida or some one holds the belief that "any idea is as good as any other."

As one actual professor of Philosophy said, not only did Derrida never make such a claim, but "no one ever said this."

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One of the challenges of understanding if Jordan Peterson is stoking a dangerous level of polarization is that it depends on which of his videos you watch. I watched most of three long videos of him and Sam Harris (a liberal of some sort) talking and it was like a different guy showed up - he didn't say anything about cultural marxists, post-modernists, college professors, or liberals.

Finally I'm going to make a supposition about what I think drives the freak out you get from "conservative" or the "right" figureheads when they talk about post-modernism, Derrida or Foucalt. It's the concept of "deconstruction" which may be a way of saying lets look closely at the text to trace where a particular idea, norm or "fact" originated. Once you start asking those sorts of questions you are quite threatening to some people who have power. It's in a way, an argument of whether to accept authority of those with power to define acceptable ideas, or to question that authority.

Not all authority is bad and not all hierarchies are bad - it's hard to see how humans could accomplish much without them in some form. The flip side to that is that unquestioned obedience to those in power has led to some very bad things in the history of humanity.

The preacher Jordan Peterson is, to use a phrase from the late West Texan philosophy professor Rick Roderick, the Pharaoh's enabler whether he realizes it or not. Hopefully he has the insight, self-awareness and a moral compass that will allow him to see that although some of what he is doing may be valuable, some of what he is doing is morally reprehensible and potentially dangerous.

Eric Hoffer wrote about mass movements. He tells us that in any mass movement the intellectuals play a key role in inciting the true believers. Intellectuals cannot move their ideology into the world directly. Implementing the ideology is done by men of action - through local mob violence and eventually by the iron boot of the state. Unlike Donald Trump who has lots of visible warts - Peterson is smooth, sounds credible and is charged with emotion. He's also a chameleon who changes his color depending on his surroundings. He's admired by the alt-right proto fascists and that is a bit worrisome.

Disclaimer: To be honest I don't really care about any of this other than in an abstract sort of way. I like to think and make notes to myself. It's not my reality. I'm happy, healthy and thankful for the life I have. I have truly been blessed with my life, my family and friends. I hope whatever reality you live in is equally as good. 

She Said, He Said, I Said

Dialectic is a pretty highfalutin word but when described in simple terms shows us a valuable lesson for how to operate in the world.

Dialectic describes a way of thinking.

The dialectical method consists of a thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

The Wikipedia entry on dialectic contains this description,

The dialectical method, is at base a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments.

Dialectic comprises three stages of development: first, a thesis or statement of an idea, which gives rise to a second step, a reaction or antithesis that contradicts or negates the thesis, and third, the synthesis, a statement through which the differences between the two points are resolved. 

This description of the dialectical method is pretty dry. Let's say you are interested in finding an answer to the question - should people be allowed to smoke?

You could read some stuff from the tobacco industry and those with a libertarian bent, then read some stuff from doctors and other worry warts ;-) then decide what you think.

To know what "you" think you have to be open to examining both sides of the argument.

Here's another example using the "she said, he said, I said" idea...

She said immigrants are dangerous.

He said immigrants are valuable

I said - (whatever you think after doing your own research and considering both sides of the argument)

It all ties back to the idea that for a "you" to exist you have to know what you think - not just what someone else tells you to think.

Cool Story Bro

Narcissism has been a topic of discussion in some circles for the last few years with some people claiming the occupant of the White House is some type of narcissist. I don't care to argue that point. I'm more interested in the concept of narcissism and how prevalent it is in our country.

The current popular discussion of narcissism isn't new. Christopher Lasch wrote a fascinating, and somewhat difficult, book in 1979 called the "The Culture of Narcissism". The New York Times obituary for Christopher Lasch said, "he described postwar America as a society of dangerously self-absorbed individuals, fixated on personal goals, fearful of their impulses and easily controlled by power elites."

The description of Yale historian Elizabeth Lunbeck's 2014 book "The Americanization of Narcissism" makes a counterpoint to Lasch's negative portrayal of narcissism as consumption,

"Psychoanalysts had clashed over narcissism from the moment Freud introduced it in 1914, and they had long been split on its defining aspects: How much self-love, self-esteem, and self-indulgence was normal and desirable?"

In this short video Elizabeth Lunbeck talks about how complicated the topic of narcissism is.

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After reading "The Culture of Narcissism", I wanted to learn more about the origin of the concept of narcissism which meant digging a little deeper than the usual children's stories of Narcissus.

I've never been that interested in Greek mythology. I've been more interested in Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist mythology since these myths inform the religious beliefs of people in modern society. As I've become a tiny bit familiar with the works of Freud and Jung (and listened to Joseph Campbell talk about Greek mythology) I find Greek mythology of more interest; lately focusing on the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus.

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There are any number of people who will decode a Greek myth for you just as there are any number of people who would be happy to decode the Christian biblical myths for you. I'm not picking on Christianity you can choose any religion and there will be lots of decoders telling you what the myths of that religious belief mean.

Myths mean whatever you want them to mean. That's why they're called myths. They aren't the facts or the truth but rather an allegory, story or metaphor that helped (and help) people at a point in history cope with the difficulties of living in this world.

Myths and fables serve as a means of moral instruction for children.

Myths maybe above all else serve as a springboard for further discussion and thought.

Of course I wouldn't say myths mean whatever you want them to mean to a priest or a minister or a childlike person with simple (beautiful) faith. If I lived not that many centuries ago I'd be burned at the stake for heresy for talking like that.

On the other hand sometimes when you're lost it's good to ask someone for directions. If someone spent years studying something you need help with and you trust them, or if you just trust their advice, then by all means ask for guidance.

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Anyway...here's the cool story bro. The three links below are for a reading of Ovid's story of Echo and Narcissus. I don't know why the reading was split into three parts since the whole story only takes about 17 minutes.

Echo and Narcissus (Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid) 1/3

Echo and Narcissus (Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid) 2/3

Echo and Narcissus (Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid) 3/3

The reading is from the book Tales From Ovid by the English poet, translator, and children's book author Ted Hughes. Here are a few stanzas from near the beginning of the story -

The boy she bore, even in his cradle, 
Had a beauty that broke hearts.
She named the child Narcissus.

Gossips came to Tiresias: "Can her boy live long
With such perfect beauty?" The seer replied:
"Yes unless he learns to know himself."

All regarded these words as a riddle-
Till time solved them with a peculiar madness.
A stranger death completed the explanation.

Narcissus radiiflorus

Constructing Your Self III

The project of creating your authentic self can appear to be, and actually may be, just another form of navel gazing, culturally-defined self improvement or narcissism.

In addition to those negative aspects of our self construction project we also need to consider that a human who becomes, and operates as, a free individual may be ungovernable by the state resulting in anarchy as more and more people become "individuals".

The word anarchy has at least two definitions, "a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority" or "absence of a government and absolute freedom as an ideal". The first is frightening and how we usually think of anarchy. The second is interesting to think about as we consider ways humans might create a better world.

Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, Chris Hedges and Jesus Christ, propose a form of christian anarchism where humans receive authority from God not the state.

According to Wikipedia, Leo Tolstoy's book "The Kingdom of God is Within You" is a key text for Tolstoyan proponents of nonviolence, of nonviolent resistance, and of the Christian anarchist movement." Gandhi wrote that the book The Kingdom of God is Within You "overwhelmed him" and "left an abiding impression". 

Nothing in excess - we all know that a theocratic state or other forms of theocratic hierarchy (the Church) can lead to all sorts of badness.

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Navel gazing can be defined as, "self-indulgent or excessive contemplation of oneself or a single issue, at the expense of a wider view."

In your project to construct your self you can avoid being a navel gazer by having a higher good (an end) other than simply becoming who you are or finding your self. Without a higher good we end up with cases where who you really are may be a thief, a sadist, or a murderer.

It's possible to use religion and philosophy to find this higher good. Of course it's also possible to use religion and philosophy to justify all sorts of terrible things.

In picking religion(s) or philosophy(s) to help you find the higher purpose for your life it's best if you have a foundation from your parents to help you choose. You may also find a particular minister, rabbi, teacher, coach or friend you trust who could help you choose some possible paths. You could also start by reading Plato, arrive at your own conceptions of goodness, truth, beauty and then use those conceptions to guide your further investigations.

Societies, families, organizations and most types of work require that humans cooperate with one another. The human species survived through cooperation. Cooperation requires empathy, listening, speaking, suppression of the self at times, forgiveness at times and above all trust. Investigating religions (or parts of religions) and philosophies (or parts of philosophies) that adhere to these basic ideas that allow people to live together should keep you on a fairly good trajectory. 

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Culturally-defined self improvement vs. constructing a self.

Culturally defined self improvement is a multi-billion dollar industry, where some one wants to sell you some thing to improve your self. Some of what they sell is useful, some of it useless, and some harmful. None of it resolves the existential anxiety all humans must confront, in their short time here on earth, if their project to construct an authentic self is to succeed.

Authentic selves are constructed not purchased. It's a hard DIY project...nobody sells a pre-assembled version.

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Isn't constructing a self just another type of narcissism?

That's a good question, and as a good liberal I'd answer - it depends. 

First we need to decide what narcissism means and then what a narcissist is. The word narcissism has it's origins in the myth of the Greek hunter Narcissus who fell in love with his own image in a pool of water. It wasn't quite that simple though. Narcissus fell in love with his own image in the water mistakenly believing the image he saw was someone else. 

If we think of a narcissist as someone who is in love with their self we have it all wrong.

A narcissist is someone who looks outward for justification, definition, and affirmation of their self. A narcissist has no self other than the self defined by how others view him.

The narcissist looks in the mirror not because he loves himself but because he fears others don't.

Even if others view him as beautiful and strong he fears the day when he will lose his beauty and strength. Rather than acknowledging this anxiety, and constructing his own "firm foundation", he suppresses the dread with trivial pursuits and magic elixirs.

To summarize - being a narcissist isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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Christopher Lasch in his book The Culture of Narcissism writes,

"This irrational fear of old age and death is closely associated with the emergence of the narcissistic personality as the dominant type of personality structure in contemporary society. Because the narcissist has so few inner resources, he looks to others too validate his sense of self. He needs to be admired for his beauty, charm, celebrity, or power - attributes that usually fade with time. Unable to achieve satisfying sublimations in the form of love and work, he finds that he has little to sustain him when youth passes him by. He takes no interest in the future and does nothing to provide himself with the traditional consolations of old age, the most important of which is the belief that future generations will in some sense carry on his life's work. Love and work unite in a concern for posterity, and specifically in an attempt to equip the younger generation to carry on the tasks of the older. The thought that we live on vicariously in our children (more broadly in future generations) reconciles us to our own supersession - the central sorrow of old age, more harrowing even than frailty and loneliness. When the generational link begins to fray, such consolations no longer apply."

This New York Times article says, "In Lasch’s definition (drawn from Freud), the narcissist, driven by repressed rage and self-hatred, escapes into a grandiose self-conception, using other people as instruments of gratification even while craving their love and approval."

This Kansas State University professor's site Political Philosophy has several lectures on Christopher Lasch and his books.

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BBC Radio 4 In Our Time has a wide range of thoughtful podcasts on culture, philosophy, history, religion and science.

I was particularly interested in this podcast on authenticity This is the BBC Radio 4 description of the discussion -

"Melvyn Bragg and guests dicuss what it means to be oneself, a question explored by philosophers from Aristotle to the present day, including St Augustine, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre. In Hamlet, Polonius said 'To thine own self be true', but what is the self, and what does it mean to be true to it, and why should you be true? To Polonius, if you are true to yourself, ‘thou canst not be false to any man’ - but with the rise of the individual, authenticity became a goal in itself, regardless of how that affected others. Is authenticity about creating yourself throughout your life, or fulfilling the potential with which you were born, connecting with your inner child, or something else entirely? What are the risks to society if people value authenticity more than morality - that is, if the two are incompatible?"

Participants in the discussion include -
Sarah Richmond
Associate Professor in Philosophy at University College London
Denis McManus
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and
Irene McMullin
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex

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It's always sort of odd to think about putting a lot of work into constructing a self or becoming a good Christian, when we meet someone who never read or thought about either and yet is the best of both. We've all met people who are characters in the best sense, sometimes a bit of a force of nature - people who definitely have a "self" but didn't learn it from a book. Many of the most Christian (in the sense of following the golden rule) people I've met, thought very little, if at all, about Christian theology.

Fifteen years ago I was pondering if Van Gogh might of been close to the truth when he said,

"The best way to know God is to love many things." 

Vincent Van Gogh

Maybe all the wisdom we need is in some good old country music...

Constructing Your Self II

We have all seen bumper stickers that let us know the car owner is a native of some place - for example a Montana Native. It's understandable that a person would have some sense of pride regarding where they came from. What is less understandable is why a person would think the state they were born in was somehow of enough importance that they wanted to announce it to the world via a bumper sticker on their vehicle.

I'd propose that having a great deal of pride in something you had nothing to do with is indicative of a self, and therefore a life, without meaning.

Taking that previous statement more broadly you can see there are other examples of someone having pride in something they have no control over. Shirts with sports teams names or hats with a beer brand on them, come to mind. George Carlin said it a bit differently -

“Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or obtain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth.” 

The pride you have in something you have no control over can be benign or pathological. Like so many things in life it's a matter of degree and context. Certainly being a proud Seahawk fan or member of the Sons of Norway is not some sort of pathology. This can be fun, a way to connect to other people and a way to honor and appreciate your heritage. 

The pathology comes about when that pride becomes excessive and  becomes a, or possibly the, defining characteristic of a human being. A person without an independent sense of self - who you are, will be blown about by the winds of culture and society. True Believers in all mass movements are those without a foundational sense of who they are. As the Country Western song goes "You've Got to Stand for Something - Or You'll Fall for Anything" 

Before you take the country western singer's advice "that you've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything" it would be wise to take heed of Nietzsche's thoughts on conviction -

"A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions!”  

"The countless people who sacrificed themselves for their convictions thought they were doing it for absolute truth. All of them were wrong: probably no man has ever sacrificed himself for truth... It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions. If only all those people who thought so highly of their conviction, who sacrificed all sorts of things to it and spared neither their honor, body nor life in its service, had devoted only half of their strength to investigating by what right they clung to this or that conviction, how they had arrived at it, then how peaceable the history of mankind would appear! How much more would be known! (Human, all too Human)"

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Who are these persons without a self?

I'd break them into two groups one exciting and normal the other sad and sometime dangerous.

Who's looking for a self might be another way to ask the question.

The first group is of course young people. They don't know enough about the world to have an idea of who they are or who they want to become so they try on all sorts of different identities. That's exciting and normal.

The second group is made up of people who never tried on multiple identities or explored different ways of looking at the world.  They may have been raised in an authoritarian fundamentalist type family where anything other than "the" accepted identity was punished or discouraged. They may, in their search for meaning have happened upon some person, group or ideology that was so compelling that they formed an attachment without understanding why. This group is sad and sometimes dangerous. Sad because being a cleverly constructed automaton (not having a self defined by your self) is the waste of a perfectly good life, and dangerous because of the historical record of some mass movements and cults.

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In ancient Greece, the temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription Meden Agan (μηδὲν ἄγαν) - 'Nothing in excess'.

I pulled that quote off Wikipedia but I remember sixty some years ago or so my mom saying nothing in excess all things in moderation. My mom was a bit of dreamer I suppose. My actions and ideas in the sixties and seventies growing up were probably more from culture than mom. 

But I digress. The point I wanted to make was that pride in your city, country, race, sexual orientation, religion, ancestry or any number of things you didn't make happen may be okay in moderation but becomes problematic in the extremes. All those things can be a part of your self - but none of those things can be who you are, your self. If you think they are who you are - then "you" don't exist and that is a shame.

In general it's probably advisable to not have a lot of pride in yourself. For one thing it will make you not all that likeable (for example see Donald J. Trump) and because pride is one of the seven deadly sins. I'm not trying to thump anyone with my bible - but you can find wisdom literature in various places.

Being sort of a scold I'd say that many people sacrificed to allow us the freedom available to us in our great (and sometimes not great) country. Sacrificing your self, your ability to think independently - to the mass movement, mass culture or cult and therefore giving up your freedom, you dishonor those people who fought and died so you could have freedom.

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Discussing and thinking about why people choose not to be free (not to have an independent self) is an abstraction if you are referring to anyone other than yourself. You might gain some understanding for why people become possessed by an ideology but you can only change yourself.

Erich Fromm a German Jew who escaped the Nazis wrote the book Escape From Freedom in 1941. In this book he outlines three ways in which man escapes from freedom - authoritarianism, destructiveness and conformity. If you are interested in Erich Fromm this 1958 interview with Mike Wallace provides some of his thinking. Aside from the validity of the ideas Erich Fromm is talking about it may be somewhat instructive to consider that network television carried shows with this sort of intellectual depth for popular consumption decades ago and compare that with television content today.

Eric Hoffer's book True Believer - Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is another good source for this sort of investigation. Eric Hoffer was sometimes called the longshoreman philosopher because he was a dock worker in San Francisco. He had no formal education but was a highly educated man. One of my heroes.

Philosophy is great and all that but what practical advice is there for developing your best self?

You could turn to a fictional work like Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Road". The authors page describes the book as follows -

"Through encounters with other survivors brutal, desperate or pathetic, the father and son are both hardened and sustained by their will, their hard-won survivalist savvy, and most of all by their love for each other. They struggle over mountains, navigate perilous roads and forests reduced to ash and cinders, endure killing cold and freezing rainfall. Passing through charred ghost towns and ransacking abandoned markets for meager provisions, the pair battle to remain hopeful. They seek the most rudimentary sort of salvation. However, in The Road, such redemption as might be permitted by their circumstances depends on the boy’s ability to sustain his own instincts for compassion and empathy in opposition to his father’s insistence upon their mutual self-interest and survival at all physical and moral costs."

This part of the book, where the father and son are having a conversation stood out to me -

He [The Boy] sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
[The Man:] Yes. We're still the good guys.
[The Boy:] And we always will be.
[The Man:] Yes. We always will be.
[The Boy:] Okay.

So that's it - make sure you are one of the good guys.

You could also turn to music and listen to Crosby Stills Nash and Young sing about it...

Constructing Your Self

In the end it comes down to you.

Not your society.

Not your political party.

Not your religious belief.

Not your race or class or gender.

Not your job.

Not your country.

Not your school.

Not who you love or who you hate

To be a human the you that is "you" will have to find meaning in this transitory, sometimes cruel occasionally sublime experience of being alive.  To be a human you will realize that the flower fades, the grass withers, people die - but that's what makes life so beautiful so precious in the here and now. The Stoic philosophers knew this and encouraged the practice of momento mori literally meaning "remember that you have to die."To be a human you must at some point come face to face with the perfectly democratic fact of human mortality.

Or not.

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Questioning your life's meaning assumes you have a "you" and aren't a cleverly constructed automaton created by a commodified culture in which case rather than having any sense of despair or anxiety you can buy a Coke. Coke is "it" you don't need anything else. If Coke turns out not to be your "it" there are many ideologies, products, processes, and parties available to give you the impression you are somebody, that you have a self. This is both reassuring and dehumanizing.

It's reassuring because it's soothing to be part of the group - the tribe - the party - the church - the state - the nation.

It's dehumanizing because the only freedom humans have at our core is freedom to choose. Being free to choose requires you have freedom to think, learn, debate, ponder and ultimately choose - what constitutes a good life.

Ideologies - alt-right, conservatism, liberalism, left wing, democratic socialist, Christianity etc. etc. are soothing to the true believers since they mask the existential dread that would result from an examined or partially-examined life.

This leaves us in quite a dilemma. The 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard has a potential answer that rejects the theological, the church, the dogma - in search of an individual means of salvation. He doesn't tell you how to eliminate the dread, despair or anxiety of human life but rather how to recognize these feelings as being part of what makes us human and an essential part of what gives us a "self". Negating that dread, despair and anxiety with widespread use of anti-depressants  makes us more comfortable and less human. I don't want to be cruel on that point so I'd also quote one of my drill instructors from Navy boot camp who said, "Whatever gets you through the night." We all have our crutches.

If you have an interest in Kierkegaard's thinking this lecture by Rick Roderick is informative. Rick Roderick was from Texas and liked to smoke and drink. In one of his lectures he says his mother was a beautician and his father was a conman - so he's an interesting character and in my opinion the kind of philosophy professor most students would love to have.

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Given the variability of humans and the complexity of life on this planet any system that claims to be the one answer is absurd, and potentially dangerous. If someone or some group tells you they have all the right answers and someone (group/stereotype/tribe) has all the wrong answers - run far and fast.

Products may be purchased to provide you with a life if you believe the advertisers and the culture. Products may be purchased to provide you with a salve that masks how empty and dehumanized life can be in a post-religious, post-industrial capitalist society if you believe some post-modern thinkers. In any event if you can keep watching the commercials and buying the trinkets you can sort of ignore the homeless people, the burning planet, the hatred and violence.

If you are curious about post-modern philosophy, this channel is interesting. If you are curious about philosophy in general this channel is one of the better ones I've found. You need hours and hours of free time to delve into this stuff so it all becomes somewhat abstract outside a small circle of devotees. Intellectuals in all times have constructed beautiful theories in their ivory towers.

On the far end of the spectrum - the inability to construct a satisfying self may lead to opioid addiction, suicide, joining a cult, becoming a mass shooter or any other of a number of pathologies.

Processes may be purchased to provide you with a life. You can reshape your face to look younger, suck fat out of your body to be thinner, inject some collagen into your boobs to make them bigger, buy some teeth implants to be more attractive and get some hair implants to make you look younger. At the end of the day you are going to lose your hair, maybe your teeth, and your boobs your face and your neck will all sag.

Parties are available to provide you with a life. You can join the Republicans or the Democrats or the Communists or the Fascists and become a partisan who either (a) has a foolish and dangerous belief in an uber-ideology (b) is simply a partisan tribe member with no understanding of the ideological basis for the party. The GOP is only a party of partisan tribe members (a cult) at this point since it has no ideological basis or certainly no consistent ideological basis.

By the time Bill Clinton came along in the 1990's the Democratic party had lost most of the ideological moorings it had when FDR led the party of the working class, so we ended up with two parties that represented a version of classical liberalism with an irrational faith in unfettered capitalism and mythical free markets. One completely representing the interests of the .1% and one representing the interests of the other 10%....leaving the vast majority of people with no representation.

The idea that unregulated markets lead to freedom was inculcated into the populace in the Reagan era (the 1980's) through popular means such as having the economist Milton Friedman (who's either a narrow minded ideologue or a genius depending on your point of view) espouse the infallibility of the market on popular daytime shows like Phil Donahue.

Karl Marx said something like, "In all historical periods the acceptable ideas are the ideas of the ruling class."

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Depending on your religious background you may see a similarity between what I'm writing and what you've heard a minister or priest preach. Christianity in the United States did (and does in some denominations) teach the gospel of Jesus. Jesus was about the Good Samaritan helping the stranger, overturning the money-changers tables in the temple, and striving to love our enemies.


In the 20th century the ruling class decided that the old style Christian beliefs put a crimp in their project to acquire power and wealth so a new acceptable idea was formed - the prosperity gospel. This wasn't a unique event - mankind has modified theology throughout history to bring theology into agreement with economic, social, and governmental systems in place in a particular society.

People who claim that of all the ideologies only capitalism has provided the most wealth and freedom for the most people must first define what they mean by wealth and freedom. Does wealth mean accumulation of money and material goods or is wealth something else like health, friends, learning, family, faith and spirituality? Perhaps providing a hospitable planet for future generations could be considered the ultimate form of inter-generational wealth?

When freedom degrades to mean that in the richest country on earth we are all free to live under a bridge or on the sidewalk, or live with the pain of an abscessed tooth, or go bankrupt because of a medical issue then it becomes a cruel and cynical hoax.

We desensitize our selves, create myths and modify our ideologies to absolve ourselves from the part we play in the system. How else could members of the GOP find something in their parties ideology that justifies taking children from parents hoping for a better life and locking those children in cages?

Aristocrats and their court jesters make up stories to tell themselves about why things are the way they are. "They" poor people - are lazy, ignorant, dishonest, insane, confused and in need of a good strong police state to keep "them" in check. Or if not that they at least just need to try harder, which is a slap in the face of all those hard working poor people considering 60% of today's wealth is inherited. This video from Bill Moyers on Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century is informative if you want to learn more.

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So finally what is the good life? What does it mean to live a good life? Only you can answer that question, with fear and trembling as you kneel before the God or Gods you choose to worship.

You know the problem with that statement though right?

It's broad enough that I could use it to justify being - a Nazi, a mass murderer, or a slave owner. I could justify exterminating native populations, subjugating women, hating and killing all sorts of people.

That wraps around to what I started with - what you are not. You are not your society, political party, religious belief, race, class, gender, job, country, school, who you love or who you hate. You are certainly influenced and constrained by those things but they aren't you. If you think they are you and define your self by one or all of them - then "you" don't exist and you may very well die never having lived at all.

The you that is you when you talk to your self is influenced by all those things -  but the precious one of a kind you is realized though the (hopefully) self-created project you call your life.

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People, this life, this planet will all pass "all those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain" but...paradoxically as sad as that fact is - it is also what makes life so beautiful.

Which State Has the Most Regressive Tax System?

Drum roll please.

The state with the most regressive tax system in the United States is....

Washington state.

If you live in Washington state you may have already suspected that was the case.

This July 20, 2019 New York Times editorial "State and Local Taxes are Worsening Inequality" and this 2018 study Who Pays? by the non-partisan Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy discuss the regressive/progressive state taxes for each state.

What does it mean to say a tax is regressive?

In a regressive tax system a low income tax payer pays a higher proportion of their income in taxes then a high income tax payer. Some examples of regressive taxes include sales taxes, property taxes, sin taxes, user fees, gas taxes, vehicle licensing fees and the payroll social security tax.

In contrast to a regressive tax system, a progressive tax system is intended to cause higher wage earners to pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes than lower wage earners. State and Federal income taxes are structured as progressive taxes.

Why are regressive taxes a bad thing?

If we assume for discussion purposes that in order to live a person must purchase $20,000 in items annually that are subject to a 50% sales tax. In other words they pay $10,000 a year in sales taxes.  Then -

Someone earning $20,000 is paying 50% of their income in sales taxes, someone earning $50,000 is paying 20% of their income in sales taxes, someone earning $100,000 is paying 10%, someone earning $200,000 is paying 5%, and someone earning $1,000,000 is paying 1%.

The example is overly simplified and used only to illustrate the inequality of a sales tax. I chose the 50% tax rate to make the arithmetic easier. The relative difference in percentage of income paid between each income group will be the same regardless of the rate chosen.

Each of these regressive taxes and fees have their own unique set of rules but they all end up with the net effect of lower income people paying a greater share of their income in taxes and fees than higher income people.

In Washington state the effect is that the poorest 20% pay 17.8% of their income in state taxes, the middle 60% pay 10.9% and the top 1% pay 3% of their income in taxes according to the Who Pays? study.

The state with the least regressive, most progressive, tax system is California according to the paper because, "California’s overall tax system is relatively progressive largely because of graduated marginal income tax rates, additional tax on income over $1 million, and limits on tax breaks for upper-income taxpayers."

One more specific example of a regressive tax is the social security payroll tax. This description comes from Investopedia -

"Social Security tax obligations are capped at a certain level of income called a wage base—$132,900 in 2019. An individual's earnings above this base are not subject to the 6.2% Social Security tax. Therefore, the annual maximum that an individual pays in Social Security tax is capped at $8,239.80 in 2019, whether she earns $132,901 or $1 million."

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The following information comes from the 2018 study Who Pays? by the non-partisan Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy -

"The 10 states with the highest taxes on the poor are Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Six of these are also among the “terrible ten” because they are not only high-tax for the poorest, they are also low-tax for their richest residents."

There are several effects of this sort of tax inequality where poor and middle class pay high taxes while the wealthiest individuals pay low taxes.

The most obvious is that most people (since there are way more poor and middle class people than wealthy people) believe they are paying too much in taxes.

Slightly less obvious is that wealthy people who can buy lots more free speech in the popular media with their wealth, then disingenuously "help" poor people make the case that "our" taxes are too darn high.

The most insidious effect of high taxes on the poor and low taxes for the wealthy is a gradual deterioration of the ability of the government to function at all. We see this in the deterioration of public schools, public infrastructure, and the ability of our nation to care for those unable to care for themselves (the mentally ill and the addicted). We see a downward spiral where government is insufficiently funded, therefore becomes more dysfunctional and causes more people to object to paying taxes to fund a broken system. 

Under funding the government is a feature of the radical libertarian ideology implanted into our society by Ronald Reagan, Grover Norquist and the Kochtopus. If your ideology is such that all government programs and regulations are bad and you can't see any other side to the story you are a radical and also seriously misinformed or under-informed.

This should not come as a surprise since being misinformed or under-informed is a key feature to becoming a radical. If you look at any societal or governmental issue and propose there is a simple one size fits all solution (cut taxes for the wealthy/cut regulations for the polluters/Medicare for all/raise taxes for the wealthy) then you haven't looked hard enough. To put it another way if you are absolutely sure of your position regarding a complex societal or governmental issue then you don't know enough about the issue. Knowledge brings humility.

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The 2018 study Who Pays? by the non-partisan Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy is 140 some pages but the studies summary provides these seven main findings -

1. THE VAST MAJORITY OF STATE AND LOCAL TAX SYSTEMS ARE INEQUITABLE AND UPSIDE-DOWN, taking a much greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families. The absence of a graduated personal income tax in many states and an over reliance on consumption taxes contribute to this longstanding problem.

2. THE LOWER ONE’S INCOME, THE HIGHER ONE’S OVERALL EFFECTIVE STATE AND LOCAL TAX RATE. On average, the lowest-income 20 percent of taxpayers face a state and local tax rate more than 50 percent higher than the top 1 percent of households. The nationwide average effective state and local tax rate is 11.4 percent for the lowest-income 20 percent of individuals and families, 9.9 percent for the middle 20 percent, and 7.4 percent for the top 1 percent. 

3. TAX STRUCTURES IN 45 STATES EXACERBATE INCOME INEQUALITY. Most state and local tax systems worsen income inequality by making incomes more unequal after collecting state and local taxes. Five states and the District of Columbia somewhat narrow the gap between lower- and middle- income taxpayers and upper-income taxpayers, making income slightly more equitable after collecting state and local taxes. 

4. IN THE 10 STATES WITH THE MOST REGRESSIVE TAX STRUCTURES (THE TERRIBLE 10), THE LOWEST-INCOME 20 PERCENT PAY UP TO SIX TIMES AS MUCH OF THEIR INCOME IN TAXES AS THEIR WEALTHY COUNTERPARTS. Washington State is the most regressive, followed by Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. 

5. HEAVY RELIANCE ON SALES AND EXCISE TAXES ARE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MOST REGRESSIVE STATE TAX SYSTEMS. Six of the 10 most regressive states derive roughly half to two-thirds of their tax revenue from sales and excise taxes, compared to a national average of about one-third. Seven of these states do not levy a broad-based personal income tax while the remaining three have a personal income tax rate structure that is flat or virtually flat. A calculation of effective sales and excise tax rates finds that, on average, the lowest-income 20 percent pays 7.1 percent, the middle 20 percent pays 4.8 percent and the top 1 percent pays a comparatively meager 0.9 percent rate. 

6. A PROGRESSIVE GRADUATED INCOME TAX IS A CHARACTERISTIC OF THE LEAST REGRESSIVE STATE TAX SYSTEMS. States with the most equitable state and local tax systems derive, on average, more than one-third of their tax revenue from income taxes, which is above the national average of 27 percent. These states promote progressivity through the structure of their income taxes, including their rates (higher marginal rates for higher-income taxpayers), deductions, exemptions, and use of targeted refundable credits. 

7. STATES COMMENDED AS “LOW-TAX” ARE OFTEN HIGH-TAX FOR LOW AND MIDDLE-INCOME FAMILIES. The 10 states with the highest taxes on the poor are Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Six of these are also among the “terrible ten” because they are not only high-tax for the poorest, they are also low-tax for their richest residents.

Justice John Paul Stevens

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens passed away today at the age of 99. Justice Stevens served on the Supreme Court for 35 years, from 1975 until 2010. He is a reminder of the way things used to be in our political and legal systems before the GOP's decade's long slide towards radical right wing ideologies and before tribal partisanship replaced reason.

Here are a few facts about John Paul Stevens -

He served in the United States Navy during WWII.

He was a member of the Republican party.

He was appointed to the Federal Seventh Circuit Court by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970.

He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975.

He was confirmed unanimously to the Supreme Court by the Democratic-majority Senate. There were 60 Democrats in the Senate in 1975.

Even though Roe v. Wade (1973) was a recent decision, John Paul Stevens was not asked any questions about abortion or Roe v. Wade during his confirmation hearing in 1975. This was before the GOP weaponized abortion to gain political power.

John Paul Stevens was considered a moderate conservative Republican in the 1970's, but came to be considered the most liberal member of the court when he retired in 2010. When asked if he thought he'd changed or if the makeup of the court had pushed it to the right he said,

"I think primarily the court has changed," says Stevens, referring to the composition of the court. But he acknowledges that on some issues, his views have changed as he has "learned more."

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John Paul Stevens opposed the decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) which interpreted the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms to apply to individuals rather than militias. After his retirement from the court, and one  of our country's many many mass shootings, he wrote an Op-ed in the New York Times, suggesting the Second Amendment be repealed. The Second Amendment is short - I pasted it below so you can ponder for yourself what the framers intended.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

This is what John Paul Stevens wrote in the NYT Op-ed on the topic -

"Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century."

Former Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger, also a conservative, talked about the Second Amendment and the NRA, in a 1991 PBS interview -

Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative, said the idea that there was an individual right to bear arms was "a fraud." If he were writing the Bill of Rights now, he said in 1991, "There wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment." He declared on PBS that the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

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John Paul Stevens opposed the decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) which allowed for unlimited money to be donated to politicians, by equating money with speech. Speaking of the concept that money can be equated with free speech he said,

"Can you hear it talk? Can you read it? [Money is] simply not speech," he says. "And I have to confess that my own views are that there is an interest in trying to have any debate conducted according to fair rules that treat both sides with an adequate opportunity to express their view. We certainly wouldn't, in our arguments in this court, give one side a little more time because they could pay higher fees to hire their lawyers, or something like that."

John Paul Stevens opposed Bush v. Gore (2000) decision which provided the 2000 presidential election to G.W. Bush.

In October of 2018 John Paul Stevens stated that Bret Kavanaugh is not fit to be a Supreme Court Justice after Kavanauh's partisan statements in his confirmation hearing.

Propaganda, Public Education and Mass Media

I found these two short videos from the Academy of Ideas interesting. The first is about Edward Bernays, who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and is sometimes called the father of public relations. Edward Bernays wrote his book Propaganda in 1928. It's written as a defense of propaganda, the ideas are straightforward, and it's  a pretty quick read at only 168 pages. Bernays intellectual hero was Walter Lippmann who was also a propagandist and wrote about propaganda in books such as Public Opinion published in 1922.

I find Walter Lippmann's writing more interesting than Bernays. Bernays wrote propaganda extolling the benefits of propaganda in a sort of upbeat pollyannaish voice. Lippmann tends to be more critical and covers a broader range of ideas. He proposed that democracy was a myth in our country because people could not be expected to obtain the knowledge required to intelligently participate in a democracy, and therefore society would be better off governed by a committee of experts.

Jacques Ellul's book Propaganda - The Formation of Men's Attitudes published in 1973 is a look at propaganda in relation to technology and modern society. Ellul essentially says propaganda is omnipresent and necessary to allow man to live with the dehumanizing effects of technology and modern culture. Ellul's book took a fair amount of time to read and was harder to understand than either Bernays or Lippmann's books. It's worth it if you like that sort of thing though.

When Bernays book was released in 1928, propaganda didn't have the negative connotation it has today. He considered propaganda, public relations and advertising to be essentially the same. This video takes some of what he wrote and highlights it with images that sort of amp up the "scare" factor.

For me these two videos are just expressing some ideas - maybe some good and worth further thought or study, maybe some baloney that isn't worth wasting time on - but you'll have to decide that for yourself.

Humanitarian Crises on the Southern Border

Is the humanitarian crisis on our Southern border due to more people being apprehended at the border than we have seen historically?

No - the number of people apprehended at the Southern border is near a fifty year low as described here and here.

Will building fences, walls or hiring more border agents help alleviate this humanitarian crisis?

Building fences, a wall or hiring more border agents will have no impact on the number of people seeking entry at the border. Spending money on these projects takes money away from solutions that would help alleviate the crises - thereby only making matters worse.

Hiring administrative judges will help. The backlog for judges is currently at about 2000 cases per judge. There are currently almost 800,000 immigration cases on backlog. It takes more than 500 days to process an asylum case that results in an order for removal. Using our current "lock em up" strategy that means taxpayers will pay about $350,000 to keep that individual in a private detention center for 500 days. That sounds like a lot you say?

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, corporations that run for profit tent cities to house migrant minors charge $775 per person per day.

If you are an investor in private prisons these are good times. Private prison stocks rose over 100% in the four months after Donald J. Trump was elected president.

Former Chief of Staff John Kelly has an interesting personal history in the profit aspects of locking up innocent children. Prior to coming to the White House he was on the board of directors of DC Capital Partners, a Washington private equity firm behind a corporate conglomeration that operates for profit private prisons for migrant children. While at the White House he was the first White House Official to announce the government would be separating children from their families. After leaving the White House he returned to the Tiny Tots Prison Corporation (aka Caliburn International) as a member of their board of directors.

Wealth Inequality

Why should you care about how much money someone else has?

Isn't complaining about other people's wealth just a form of envy?

Why shouldn't someone who worked hard for a living enjoy the fruits of their labor?

If we start with the premise that as a regular citizen you are concerned with regular things - food, shelter, medical care, education, a living wage job - and then consider what impact wealth inequality has on your ability to obtain those things we will get an answer.

The main problem with wealth inequality is that it allows multi-billionaires to avoid contributing to the general welfare in the form of taxes. One could argue, and many do, that the government doesn't contribute to the general welfare and should be starved. No one would openly promote the government wasting money. So why do we see so much waste in government? Why does someone like our current prez end up paying nothing in taxes for 8 out of 10 years? The answer leads us to a chicken or egg sort of debate.

What came first -

A government that forces high taxes on it's citizens and then wastes those tax dollars to subsidize the defense, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, medical, insurance, finance and banking industries?

or

A government that was captured by the defense, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, medical, insurance, finance and banking industries and then forces  some of it's citizens to pay taxes and then wastes those tax dollars to subsidize those industries, their wealthy owners and shareholders?

I think the latter and once that capture was complete, free speech (money) was used to indoctrinate people into believing that lowering taxes on the plutocrats, increasing wealth redistribution from the lower/middle/working classes to the elite and eliminating or curtailing government programs that might aid those lower/middle/working classes was somehow in the best interest of regular citizens.

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There are highly paid and highly ideological people exercising their free speech rights to convince regular citizens that the tax man is ripping them off. In a sense this is true - regular citizens generally pay their taxes while the uber-wealthy often don't. If you can afford to off-shore your wealth, or employ smart tax attorneys and accountants you can take full advantage of the many tax breaks and loopholes that have been put in the tax code to benefit the rich. Because of this disparity in the way the tax laws were written and are enforced middle and working class people pay a disproportionate share of their income in taxes....while a stable genius does the "smart thing" and pays no income tax for years.

It's not a complete rebuttal to the "woe is me the tax man taking all my money" point of view, but a look at historical top marginal tax rates is illustrative of how disingenuous or ill-informed the arguments can be.

Throughout our history the top marginal tax rate has been higher (much higher) that it is today. The top marginal tax rate from 1954 to 1963 was 91% - today it's 37%. From 1932 to 1980 the top marginal tax rate varied between 63% and 94%.

Since 1980, when the "Reagan Revolution" began, the top marginal tax rates have declined as well as the ability of our government to serve the  majority of it's citizens. Declining tax revenues explain part of government's dysfunction but competition for government resources between those with money and power and those without led us to a corporate welfare state where according to one study in 1990 the federal government gave away 170 billion dollars in corporate welfare while spending 8.4 billion on primary and secondary education.

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Marginal tax rates are not totally, but fairly close to being, meaningless unless we can "look under the hood" and see what the tax laws actually are. What loopholes, special conditions, deductions, depreciation schemes reside in the tax code? Who knows?

Years ago I was looking at the tax codes for some reason and was amazed at what a lucrative enterprise (from a tax standpoint) owning race or show horses can be. Something didn't smell right about that given the connection between the horsey set and extreme wealth. If you own a race or show horse this article from The Horse may be useful in figuring out your tax strategy.

Having even a simple understanding of how and why changes to tax laws are made is "challenging" by design. Congressional discussions that led to the tax changes Congress made in 2017 were done in secret. This article compares what how tax laws were debated and discussed by Congress in 1985/1986 compared to the secret process used in 2017 -

"Unlike in 1985-1986, when bi-partisan tax bill drafters held 89 hearings with more than 2,600 witnesses, the House Ways and Means Committee in 2017 held no hearings on the specifics of the bill it was drafting."

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So lets return to the original questions...

Why should a regular citizen care about how much money someone else has? Well they shouldn't unless that persons accumulation of wealth impinges on the rights of other citizens. As citizens of the US we have the right to a representative democracy and to live according to the rule of law applied equally to all. Extreme (often inherited) wealth undermines both those rights by corrupting the political and legal processes.

Isn't complaining about other people's wealth just a form of envy? Maybe. If you buy into the lifestyles of the rich and famous as something to aspire to, then yes. If you can't afford to take your kid to the doctor then no, it's a request to be treated as a human being. My own experience has been that some of the most dysfunctional people I've known were "beneficiaries" of inherited wealth.

Our current President demonstrates what can happen to a person's character when they are given their fortune. Contrary to the lie that he started with a million dollar loan from his father Donald Trump inherited at least 413 million dollars. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have said they will not pass their fortunes to their children. Each of Warren Buffett's three kids will have a 2 billion dollar trust fund which still leaves about 60 billion of his fortune to go to charity.

Why shouldn't someone who worked hard for a living enjoy the fruits of their labor? Exactly! If you worked hard for a living by all means enjoy what you earned. Perhaps we could debate whether enjoying the fruits of your labor means having five luxury homes instead of six like Mitt?

If you are a recipient of massive inherited wealth purely by accident of birth how much of that wealth you are "entitled" to is a different question. Most people don't understand the inheritance tax given the success of the uber-wealthy funded indoctrination campaign to define the estate tax as a death tax which negatively impacts many people. Here's some facts from the Washington Post article I linked to -

• The estate tax impacts less than .1% of estates. 

• The estate tax effects those with an estate worth more than 5 million dollars (see below for update). 

• Most of the wealth (about 60%) in the US is not earned, but inherited. 

• In 2010 the bottom 60 percent of people in the U.S. controlled 1 percent of the countries wealth.

Those figures are out of date if we consider what the GOP did in the dead of night with the Tax Act of 2017 which increased the cut in point for the estate tax from 5 million to a whopping 22.4 million dollars.

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Finally to wrap up - if we start with the premise that as a regular citizen you are concerned with regular things - food, shelter, medical care, education and a job that allows you to support yourself and your family. If we then consider what impact wealth inequality has on your ability to obtain those items we will get an answer.

So what is the answer? Whether you believe it or not government has significant influence on how society meets those basic human needs - food, shelter, medical care, education and living wage work. How do I know this?

Well....like the folks who want to make America great again I think things used to be better in our country for working class people. I ask myself what changed in our country to allow for the proliferation of unhealthy food and subsequent health problems, unaffordable housing, unaffordable medical care and expensive and declining educational opportunites?

Did the American people change?

Did government policy change?

I think people were just as caring, honest, and hard working 40 years ago as they are today. People wanted the same things - a job that allowed them to support their family, a better life for their children and a country they could be proud of. The government pulled the rug out from under those people with policies like NAFTA . lax monopoly laws that allowed Walmart to decimate so many small business owners, immigration laws allowing for a low wage easily oppressed supply of labor, refusal to enforce then gutting the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, etc. etc. etc.

Wealth inequality has consolidated money (power, speech) into the hands of a few who are then able to buy our government and much of our media. This wealth was used to capture the government and enact policies that hurt those caring, honest and hard working people while helping the entitled .1% That same consolidated wealth controls a large share of the media so we see disinformation, useless information, and cherry picked facts - while topics outside the Overton window are not covered at all. Thankfully that window is adjustable as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are showing us.

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Religious doctrine is not of much help when false prophets rip off their followers and help enrich themselves and their cronies by preaching a gospel of greed not grace. The more successful televangelists can rip off poor people and buy a private jet so they don't have to fly commercial in a tube filled with demons.

Talking about televangelists reminds me of a guy I knew about 45 years ago when I was working, taking some college classes and going to cooking school in Billings Montana. His name was Steve Brown and he happened to be black which was quite unusual for Billings. Anyway I liked him and thought he was pretty funny. One day he told me he'd had a dream the night before and Jim Baker (a corrupt televangelist) had appeared. Then he took a long pause and said....you know what he told me Jack?

Send money.

It is and always has been a fight between greed and compassion.

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Disrespecting the Demos

The word demos means the people. I used it in the title of this post because I like the alliterative property and rhythm of the phrase "disrespecting the demos".

Forty some years ago I was driving through South Dakota on my way from Chicago to San Diego. I stopped for lunch at a diner in a small farming town. There was a group of farmers and local business people having coffee and conversation at a table near where I was sitting. They were talking about a variety of things - commodity prices, crops, the weather, but mostly about political affairs.  What struck me was how informed they were and how willing they were to engage in debate with each other.

Forty years later we have lost the public spaces, public education and media outlets that allowed for that type of civilized public discussion.

Public spaces, notably coffee houses, have played a key role in allowing for the exchange of ideas for hundreds of years. Speaking with others allows for a type of sanity check on whatever ideas a person may propose. Having a friendly conversation and defending a position using facts and logic, helps instill a sense of humility. Articulating and defending our positions in the real world with real people may lead us to question our own firmly held beliefs, see that we are not consistent, admit we are hypocrites and hold it.....actually learn something.

Coffee shops today serve as a means to access WiFi so atomized individuals can work or otherwise interact in a virtual world that may have little or no relationship to the non-virtual world. In this virtual world there is no need for civility, nuance or disagreement. If someone disagrees with you, or says something you find offensive, you can unfriend them or block them - no need to listen to them. We see this attitude move from the virtual world to the real world when a controversial (sometimes despicable) person is invited to speak on a college campus and rather than being debated or ignored is shouted down or otherwise prevented from speaking.

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Public education seems to be lacking in providing students with a civic education. We can't have a functioning democracy without an active and informed citizenry, being passive and uninformed we therefore have a government controlled by the few for the few.

Schools and society as a whole, don't generate a wide interest in politics, political systems or history therefore many people ignore those topics. Things that society deems important - sports, cars, clothing, recreation, technology, celebrity, etc. result in large numbers of people discussing and sharing quite detailed information about their favorite topic.

Schools have turned into a machine for making good workers; that is people who can show up, follow orders, and not cause a disturbance by questioning the status quo.

So we lost public spaces to the internet, and public education to the corporate overlords - what happened to the media to allow a civil conversation between farmers, workers and business people with differing views to occur forty years ago - but not today?

CNN was founded just about forty years ago in 1980. This had a profound effect on how the news was covered since before that news departments were public service non-profit entities (other than the one or two short commercials aired during the 30 minute evening news). After the institution of the 24 hour news cycle the news departments became revenue generators jockeying for market share by providing what people wanted.

People wanted lots of faux fighting, false equivalence, good guy/bad guy stories, good group/bad group stories, colorful graphics, scrolling chyrons, someone to blame other than themselves, and BREAKING NEWS! Embedded in this infotainment is pervasive propaganda supporting the goals of the wealthiest, the .1 percent, to retain and amass obscene amounts of wealth (power).

The FCC Fairness Doctrine was abolished in 1987 which opened the doors for Fox news in 1996 to begin it's campaign to save the billionaires and defend America's aristocracy - disrespecting the demos and showing us just how stupid they think we are. The Fairness Doctrine was abolished because it was claimed to be an impediment to free speech. Whenever you hear a plutocrat or his minions talk about "free speech" just replace the the words free speech with wealth. Doing that we see the Fairness Doctrine was abolished because it was an impediment to wealth.

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Do I think there is some sort of secret cabal controlling cable news and national newspapers? A vast right-wing conspiracy if you will?

No - not exactly. What I do think is that the people who work in those areas tend to be elites who benefited from the status quo and are disinclined to rock the boat. If you and your families well being depends on your employment at one of these institutions it makes sense that you would adapt your behavior to the company culture.

What do I mean by elites? People who live in the super-zips who go to the "best" schools and then end up in some sort of professional position. It wouldn't be the journalist who was the "elite" in this sense but rather his boss or the owner of the enterprise.

William Barr our crime abetting AG is an "elite". He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father Donald Barr was the headmaster of the Dalton School. According to Wikipedia, The Dalton School is a private, coeducational college preparatory school on New York City's Upper East Side and a member of both the Ivy Preparatory School League and the New York Interschool. The Dalton School is routinely ranked among the top private schools in the United States. With regard to elite college admissions, Dalton ranked 5th in a 2003 Worth survey and 8th in a 2004 Wall Street Journal survey." Dalton sounds like a wonderful school provided you can cough up $50,000 a year for your K12 kid to attend. William Barr has three daughters all who have paid high ranking positions in the federal government. It appears their spouses are employed by the federal government as well.

If you think that money and power haven't corrupted our institutions - ponder the legal systems treatment of Jeffrey Epstein for a moment. The Miami Herald coverage of that case is an excellent piece of journalism that shows the incredible disparity between treatment of the ultra wealthy vs. everyone else by our legal system.

Fun Facts - the Dalton School where Donald Barr was the headmaster, hired Jeffrey Epstein as a teacher in 1974 where "his behavior towards teenage girls was noticed" according to this NYT article. This week William Barr recused himself from involvement in Epstein's case and then un-recused himself for the new charges against Epstein in the Southern District of New York. There are plausible theories that Epstein's wealth came from inviting, videotaping and then blackmailing some of the rich and famous who attended his parties in Manhattan, Palm Beach or his private islands.

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One silver lining of the Trump era is the ripping away of the curtain that slightly obscured just how corrupt our legal and governmental systems are, in large part, due to extreme wealth consolidation. The New York Times has documented how the Trump family has manipulated and cheated the system for decades. Why was this allowed to continue for decades? Why would anyone assume manipulation and corruption of our governmental and legal systems are limited to people like Epstein and Trump and not just the tip of a very large iceberg?

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If you think that what's best for corporations is best for America than maybe a pro-corporate slant within the major media outlets is all for the best. Maybe ask yourself how you came to your beliefs? You don't have to agree with him but Noam Chomsky has some thoughtful criticisms of corporations and government - decide for yourself if what he's saying is a load of manure, totally true or maybe partially true. Exercise the freedom we have to think for ourselves and say what we believe in this great country!

If you have almost three hours to watch a video, the 1992 video about Noam Chomsky titled Manufacturing Consent might be useful in forming an opinion about our government, corporations and the media. This video of Noam Chomsky debating William F Buckley in 1969 is interesting to me because both participants Noam the lefty, and Buckley the conservative, are being civil and actually debating using ideas, details and what appear to be facts.

I realize how ridiculous it is to suggest someone watch a 3 hour video from a college professor about propaganda, media and our government. Who has that kind of time? Other than the leisure class like me (retired old fogy) not many people have the time or inclination. I get that - but I'd also highly recommend exploring some alternate sources of information in whatever free time you might have to devote to personal education. Learning is fun damental :-)

If you want to live in a democracy you will need to be involved and informed. This isn't just hyperbole or a quote from some dead white guy. Look at what policies are favored by the majority of people and then look at what policies are implemented by our government.

Our government has been captured by corporate moneyed interests - we don't have a democracy we have a system that allows hoarding of inherited wealth by a small minority that then uses that wealth to retain power by dividing the working class against each other. If we divide the country by economic class there are a whole lot more poor people than rich people - hence it's best for the plutocrats to keep working class people confused, angry, afraid and most importantly - fighting each other and not their actual oppressors. Listen to this podcast about the Olin foundation for just one example of how this inherited concentrated wealth was used to impact our court system.

I want to wind around to the title of this post now - Disrespecting the Demos or alternately Disrespecting the Common People.

When I spend a few minutes watching cable news or listening to political talk radio I can't help but think how much those millionaires paid by billionaires disrespect the common man. They treat us as idiots, fools, poorly educated suckers - consumers.

One of these days maybe it will be time to say we aren't buying what you're selling.

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Never Forget

This short trailer is from the New York Times new TV Series on FX and Hulu called "The Weekly".

The New York Times describes the video as follows -

"The youngest known child taken from his parents at the U.S.-Mexico border was a 4-month-old baby named Constantin Mutu. While he was sent to Michigan to live with a foster family, his father was sent to a detention facility and ultimately deported to Romania, uncertain when he would see his son again. Caitlin Dickerson, an immigration correspondent for The Times, found Constantin, one of thousands of children separated under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” border policy. In the latest episode of “The Weekly,” she reveals how he spent five tumultuous months away from those who loved him most."

The best thing Americans can work for is to ensure we have a wave election in 2020 where the morally and ethically bankrupt GOP politicians currently in power are removed. Many people worked hard, fought and died to create a political system that champions freedom and human rights in our own country and the world. We can't let a group of absolutely corrupted politicians squander that hard won legacy.

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