Conflict

Let’s End Our Fear of Wanting

~ John ~ Leave a comment

In my family mediation practice, I often encounter an inexperienced, fearful, person – frequently but not always a woman — who is trying to negotiate against someone perceived as a bully, over marital property or child support.   I will ask what her goal in the mediation is.  She will tell me, and then hopelessly shrug: “but there’s no way he’ll agree to that.”

I respond: “I’m not asking you what he will or won’t agree to.  My question is, what do YOU want?”

A light flickers in her eyes.  It seems almost a novel concept that she could WANT something, and be entitled to have it, without her desire being fundamentally limited by the boundaries set by her ex.

It’s my job to strive for fairness in the process.  That begins by each party defining what they fundamentally want, irrespective of what will “sell” in the other room.  The crucible of negotiation comes second, and it will always involve tradeoffs and compromise.  But unless each person comes to the table with at least a basic handle on themselves, then the conversation will be one-sided, and the outcome skewed.

The current debate among Democrats about whether our candidates are veering too far to the left reminds me of that person coming into mediation too scared to say what she wants.  Our concerns over “electability” are clouding our ability to have an honest discussion about more fundamental issues of income inequality, health care, immigration, the environment, and racial justice, that should drive our search for a candidate that can arouse the passions of the party.  And our hunt for a candidate palatable to a wide cross-section of voters distracts us from finding the person who, first and foremost, has a clear sense of themselves.

There’s new data to suggest that a bold agenda consistent with Democratic policy ideals has broad public support.  A New York Times/SurveyMonkey poll from early July showed majority nationwide support for a wealth tax on households worth over $50 million, Medicare for all, and free college tuition.  Of course these proposals are controversial, subject to withering attacks from the right, and endlessly mocked by you-know-who.

But that is how he sets the agenda in advance of the debate.  Trump is nearly the ideal type of what sociologist Max Weber called “charismatic” authority: “charisma is self-determined and follows its own limits. Its bearer seizes the task for which he is destined and demands that others obey and follow him by virtue of his mission. …  He does not derive his claims from the will of his followers, in the manner of an election; rather, it is their duty to follow his charisma.”

Our negotiating alternatives against this type of opponent are stark.  The most relevant historical examples are the efforts to deal with Adolf Hitler before World War II.  Neville Chamberlin attempted one approach, in which he let Hitler fundamentally define the discussion before it began.  The result came to be known as “appeasement.”  It is not fondly remembered.  Winston Churchill epitomized the other approach.  In 1938, he famously articulated the case for collective action against Nazi aggression: “You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force.  … Between submission and immediate war there is this third alternative, which gives a hope not only of peace but of justice.”  Many thought the speech reckless when he gave it.  But Churchill, who had known many failures in his professional life, also knew himself, and knew who he was dealing with.  The rest, as they say, is history.  If you want an overdramatized, but basically accurate, refresher, dial up “The Darkest Hour” on Netflix.

I’d love to say this is our darkest hour, except that it is getting darker by the day.  Now is not the time to appease, nor to allow a bully to define the agenda, nor to craft an agenda that we think will least displease the greatest number.  We must know our own minds, hew to the truth of our own traditions, speak from our own hearts, and reclaim the country — and the planet — that we want to see survive this ordeal.  Future generations, who depend on us to make it to the farther shore, will not look sympathetically upon our fear.

Yearning to Breathe Free

~ John ~ Leave a comment


photo by Hannah McKay, Reuters —

Reacting to images of US government forces tear gassing children in diapers, pundits have accused President Trump of playing to his narrow base.  But I think he’s playing to a far wider audience.

Progressives are endlessly amazed at our president’s inability to read, write, and pay attention to the basic work of governance.  But we underestimate how Trump’s intelligence exceeds our own in one key respect: the mastery of raw power, and how humans fundamentally respond to it. Not only is he smarter than we are, he is nakedly willing to use this lizard-brain intelligence to attain whatever goals he seeks.  His core belief is that the blunt use of power renders all other forms of intelligence – indeed, all objective fact – superfluous. History teaches that societies ruled this way tend steadily towards self-destruction and collapse.  But in the short run, Trump’s style of governance can be quite successful.

Thus on immigration: Trump deeply believes that high immigration flows are harmful to “America,” by which he means the immediate interests of European-American children and grandchildren of immigrants.  For those ancestors, America shone as a beacon of opportunity, a face of hope symbolized by the Statue of Liberty.  The actual deeds of the US as a global superpower may be the subject of a more complicated conversation.  But the ideal of America as the global lighthouse of freedom has persisted undimmed.

That, frankly, is a problem, because it draws people to our shores in greater numbers than our president – and the many constituents who share his views — would like.  And he knows this.  Better than most of us, he understands the power of advertising and publicity, both good and bad.  To stop immigrants from coming, he has to make America perceived as a worse option than staying where they are. And if “where they are” is a place wracked by death squads, beset by gang violence, plagued by sexual and gender violence, and unpoliced by any meaningful governmental authority, then the international face of America must fundamentally change.

The rebranding campaign began shortly after his inauguration.  Nicholas Kristof reported that the official photo in embassies around the world, that had long shown the beaming visages of many Presidents, was replaced by Trump actually scowling.   Since then Administration policy has passed through an escalation of steps and stages, from General Kelly’s initial “get tough” memo in 2017, the revocation of DACA, the infamous family separation debacle, the children’s detention camps, the militarization of the southern border, up to the tear-gassing of children in Tijuana.

But Trump’s goal, and the most enduring “face” of the new America he wants to leave as his legacy for generations to come, is the Wall.  No longer will it be the Lady with the Lamp, but a blank inhuman colossus of concrete – high, uncaring, impenetrable.  A face with no face, offering no hope.

Fox pundits express disgust that Honduran mothers would thrust their diapered children against our gates.  But we don’t get it.  These caravan parents are seeking to make good on a generations-old offer.  They persist in the belief that if they can only prove with the most persuasive evidence they have – the tender flesh of their kids — that they are in fact the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” carved on that stone tablet, that Donald Trump will reveal himself to be an American after all.  That we will open the Golden Door.  Last week, the demand to “breathe free” was answered with tear gas.  And Lady Liberty is weeping.

So when Congress meets to consider building the Wall, it will debate the merits of border security and the means to provide it.  But it should also debate what kind of new national monument we are deciding to build, and whether we will allow Donald Trump to permanently, physically deface the American brand, in a manner that no election can undo.  And we should remember that the whole world is still watching.

Are We Becoming a “Demogracy”?

~ John ~ Leave a comment

My last blog post referred to our country’s “racist fringe,” implying that its numbers are relatively small.  I guess I have to stand corrected.  A poll cited in a recent NYT Sunday Magazine puts that “fringe” at over 30 million Americans, with about twice that many responding that it’s “okay” to have white supremacist views.

As final election results trickle in and Democrats grow increasingly self-satisfied, we might think that it’s enough to repudiate Trump’s politics of hatred at the ballot box.  But nobody should be naïve enough to think this growing cancer on our democracy will be solved by simply electing a Democrat to the White House in 2020.  We have to understand, at a deeper level, what’s made Trump’s tactics so successful to begin with.

Discussions typically focus on three things: (a) a polka-dot political landscape, with urban islands of blue surrounded by oceans of red; (b) an upsurge of nativist sentiment caused by economic anxiety among displaced white workers; and (c) increasingly pinpointed appeals of both parties to regional, cultural, and racial differences, sharpening the process by which party becomes tribe.  All feed the maw we collectively bemoan as “polarization.”

But that’s only the mouth of the beast.  Its bloodstream runs deeper, pulsing with long-term demographic trends of America today.  We’ve come to a historic population tipping point — one that deeply affects how we feel about race and democracy.

First, the demographics underlying the urban-rural divide: in 1965, about 70% of Americans lived in cities.  Now, nearly 84% does, and that ratio is increasing fast — by half a percent per year.  By 2050, the US will be 90% urban.  Rural America is inexorably losing the demographic race.  By the hard logic of these numbers, the political power of rural elites faces steady erosion and eventual doom.

Second, the demographics underlying the rise of white hate: it’s been recently recognized that rust-belt economic distress doesn’t really explain resurgent right-wing racism.  Population shifts are likely a more powerful driver.  In 2017, the white population declined, and actually dropped below 50% for the 0-10 age group.  Both of these things are new, but they are expected to last. They scare white racists, and it isn’t surprising that they feature prominently in alt-right propaganda.  If your race defines your identity and your life is a glorious racial struggle, these numbers mean you’re inevitably going to lose.

Third, the demographics underlying polarization: this is where we get beyond recent headlines, and a little wonky.  As societies go from poor to rich, they pass through a “demographic transition.”  Grossly oversimplified, this is a progression from (1) high birth rates and high mortality, and thus low population growth; then (2) to high birth rates low mortality, as advances in economics and health care improve survival rates, leading to high population growth; then (3) to slower birth rates as societies adjust to later stages of development, resulting in a return to low population growth.  Some demographers find that the second phase of the transition corresponds to an explosion of democracy, with younger, urbanizing populations rebelling against an established order.  They suggest that the third phase of the transition represents a “mature” phase of democracy, as older populations settle into more established methods of political participation.

Other demographers paint a direr picture, arguing that at a certain level of overpopulation, liberal democracy will cease to function altogether.

I wonder whether right now we have “phase 2” – i.e., growing younger urbanite — and “phase 3” – i.e., stagnating older rural – types of democracy going on at the same time, in different regions and different cultures.  It follows that they will obey different norms, respond to different messages, and generally distrust one another.  A recipe for polarization.

Nate Cohn’s “538” piece this week illustrates how these dynamics played out in the Texas Senate race.  The five fastest-growing counties in Texas broke solidly for O’Rourke — with unprecedentedly high turnout — making the overall race more competitive than any in recent memory.  In contrast, Texas’ far-flung rural counties are demographically stagnant, with comparatively lower voter turnout increases.  The slower-growing the county, the stronger its preference for Cruz.  Cohn, the ruthless demographer, draws the lesson that in future Democrats can essentially write off rural voters and simply let urbanites disenfranchise them over time.

I look to the character of our democracy and draw a different conclusion – partly from Beto’s campaign, but partly from my own family.  My father’s line hails from a ranch in Knickerbocker Texas, in Tom Green County, where some of my cousins still live.  The county is conservative, but my cousins are a complicated, heterogeneous lot, as are most people if you actually get to know them.  In 2012, Democrats won just 25% of Tom Green County’s vote.  This year, O’Rourke did not write off rural Texas – he campaigned in every county, speaking to all kinds of voters statewide.  As a result, his showing in Tom Green County improved to 28%, and his results across rural Texas improved incrementally was well.   I’d argue that Beto’s near-success is not just because he ran up the score in Austin and Houston, but that he inched it up in San Angelo and Big Spring too.

It’s not just O’Rourke.  Congresswoman-elect Lauren Underwood, a 32-year-old African-American, won Dennis Hastert’s old seat in Illinois by knocking on every door in her district, over 80% of which is white.  “People who hadn’t been spoken to in ten years,” she said in an interview.

My point is that, for our democracy to revive, we should listen to Beto and Lauren, and reject Nate, understanding our demographics but not allowing them to control us.  We should broaden our efforts, not compartmentalize them.  Unless we keep dialogue and deliberation at the center, our electoral process will simply devolve into a quadrennial census — you could call it a “demogracy” — and polarization and hatred will be our just reward.