A ratcheting down hypothesis on the end of American democracy

Unhappy parents at a school board meeting

fighting tyranny

"The highlight of the Koch summit in [January of] 2009 was an uninhibited debate about what conservatives should do next in the face of electoral defeat. As the donors and other guests dined [...] they watched a passionate argument unfold that encapsulated the stark choice ahead. . . . . Cornyn was rated the second most conservative republican in the Senate . . . . But he was also, as one former aide put it "very much a constitutionalist" who believed it was occasionally necessary to compromise in politics.

Poised on the other side of the moderator was the South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a conservative provocateur who defined the outermost antiestablishment fringes of the republican party . . . . Before his election to congress, DeMint had run as advertising agency in South Carolina. He understood how to sell, and what he was pitching that night was an approach to politics that according to historian Sean Wilenz would have been recognizable to DeMint's forebears from the Palmetto state as akin to the radical nullification of federal power advocated in the 1820s by the slavery defender John C. Calhoun.

. . . . Cornyn spoke in favor of the Republican Party fighting its way back to victory by broadening its appeal to a broader swath of voters, including moderates. . . . . the former aide explained . . . . 'He believes in making the party a big tent. You can't win unless you get more votes.'

In contrast, DeMint portrayed compromise as surrender. He had little patience for the slow-moving process of constitutional government. He regarded many of his Senate colleagues as timid and self-serving. The federal government posed such a dire threat to the dynamism of the American economy, in his view, that anything less than all-out war on regulations and spending was a cop-out. . . . . Rather than compromising on their principles and working with the new administration, DeMint argued, Republicans needed to take a firm stand against Obama, waging a campaign of massive resistance and obstruction, regardless of the 2008 election outcome.

As the participants continued to cheer him on, in his folksy southern way, DeMint tore into Cornyn over one issue in particular. He accused Cornyn of turning his back on conservative free-market principles and capitulating to the worst kind of big government spending, with his vote earlier that fall in favor of the Treasury Department's massive bailout of failing banks. . . . . In hopes of staving off economic disaster, Bush's Treasury Department begged Congress to approve the massive $700 billion emergency bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.[1]

Advisers to Obama later acknowledged that he had no idea of what he was up against. He had campaigned as a post-partisan politician who had idealistically taken issue with those who he said "like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states." He insisted, "We are one people," the United States of America. His vision, like his own blended racial and geographic heredity, was one of reconciliation, not division." -- journalist Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, 2017

The New York Times writes about threats to school board members from enraged, often disinformed parents. The article,‘I Don’t Want to Die for It’: School Board Members Face Rising Threats, provides more evidence of how deep and mentally deranged a combination of toxic polarization and endless lies have pushed American society into. The NYT writes: 

Across the country, parents have threatened board members and vandalized their homes.

It was only days after Sami Al-Abdrabbuh was re-elected to the school board in Corvallis, Ore., that the text messages arrived.

The first, he said, was a photograph taken at a shooting range. It showed one of his campaign’s lawn signs — “Re-Elect Sami” — riddled with bullet holes.

The second was a warning from a friend. This one said that one of their neighbors was looking for Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh. The neighbor was threatening to kill him.

Like many school board races this year, the one in May in Corvallis, a left-leaning college town in the northwest corner of the state, was especially contentious, swirling around concerns not only about the coronavirus pandemic but also the teaching of what Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh called the “dark history” of America’s struggle with race.

“I love serving on the school board,” he said. “But I don’t want to die for it.”

Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh is not alone. Since the spring, a steady tide of school board members across the country have nervously come forward with accounts of threats they have received from enraged local parents. At first, the grievances mainly centered on concerns about the way their children were being taught about race and racism. Now, parents are more often infuriated by Covid-19 restrictions like mask mandates in classrooms.

It is an echo of what happened when those faithful to the Tea Party stormed Obamacare town halls across the country more than a decade ago. In recent months, there have been Nazi salutes at school board meetings and emails threatening rape. Obscenities have been hurled — or burned into people’s lawns with weed spray.

While there has not been serious violence yet, there have been a handful of arrests for charges such as assault and disorderly conduct. The National School Boards Association has likened some of these incidents to domestic terrorism, though the group eventually walked back that claim after it triggered a backlash from its state member organizations.

Some protesters who have caused a stir at school board meetings in recent months have defended themselves by saying that they were merely exercising their First Amendment rights and that schools are better when parents are involved, arguments echoed by Republicans in Congress and in statehouse races.

The NYT goes on to point out that last October Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo stating that the Justice Department would respond to “a disturbing spike of harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.” Not surprisingly, the radical right immediately denounced this attempt to defuse the situation and took retaliatory action. Republican attorneys general in 17 states published a memo that described federal monitoring threats against school officials as a threat itself. Local law enforcement should be used, not federal. Thus, one can argue that respect for the rule of law has been politicized and undermined. For tens of millions of Americans, the new norm is that law and order is only for the political opposition, not for their tribe or cult.

A ratchet down hypothesis of the end 

of American democracy, civility, the rule of law, etc. 

During Obama's first administration, the thought occurred that respect for democracy, political and social civility and norms, the rule of law, and other pro-democracy, pro-truth norms were all being attacked and weakened in a process that seemed to work in only one direction, the bad direction. The professional press was under constant attack and heavily discredited, while professional propaganda outlets were on the rise in influence, reach and funding. Now in 2021, it appears that the old restraining, pro-democracy and pro-truth norms have been mostly or completely obliterated for what seems to be about 40-60% of Americans. Some of them are highly motivated and vocal. Most of their trust in government and fellow citizens is gone along with most faith in democratic institutions and truth itself.

The ratchet, or democracy death spiral, works by one side in culture and political war using a well-funded, sophisticated propaganda Leviathan to foment unwarranted, irrational terror, rage, distrust and intolerance. Each successful poison dart, e.g., "the press is the enemy of the people," or smearing the monitoring of threats against school board members as a threat, moves the social-political ratchet mechanism another notch in the bad direction. Society inches closer to democracy-destroying distrust, intolerance, authoritarianism and kleptocracy. From what I can tell, counter measures are mostly ineffective, hence a reasonable perception that this works in mostly or completely only one direction, away from democracy, truth and the rule of law.[2]

The ratchet phenomenon first came to mind after observing what happened to Obama. It became clear over time that the machinery to effect the toxic ratchet had been under construction at least since the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools. In recent months and after reading some more, it now appears that the anti-democratic ratchet arguably has been in operation in one way or another at least since the 1861-1865 US Civil War. Arguably, the Civil War has not ended, but is still being fought through poison ratchet technology and tactics. That belief is fully in accord with inherently anti-democratic, anti-truth Christian nationalist ideology and morals. Along with special interest money in support of capitalism and profits, aggressive Christian nationalist fundamentalism is one of the top two influencers of the modern Republican Party.

Questions: 

1. Is it a threat for federal officials to monitor threats at school board meetings? What is the difference between federal and local law enforcement in terms of threat perceptions and actual threat to people who want to make threats to school board members? Should threats, including death threats, be made legal?

2. Is the one-way toxic ratchet hypothesis plausible in view of how American politics has played out since the 1950s?

Footnotes: 

1. TARP was not a major cost to taxpayers. ProPublica wrote that in total, the federal government realized a $109B profit as of August 30, 2021. The government continues to collect additional profit over time.

2. It wasn't just Republican rage at the election of Obama, who congressional Republicans "hated—and I mean hated," as John Boehner observed in his book. New social weapons came online, e.g., social media. There was a recognition of the power of social media to effectively spread poison lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, and irrational fear, rage, moral disgust, intolerance and distrust. In addition, there was a recognition among hard core political right that old restraining norms, e.g., 'you are entitled to your opinions, but not your facts', were too much opposed to authoritarian radical right policy goals. The old pro-democracy norms had to go and so did all respect for inconvenient truth, both of which are now gone. 

It's the end of the world as we know it

 

                        I must be talking about the Election results from Tuesday night, right?    

                                                                            Actually - NO!

Will the world end in 2038?

This year wasn’t what we expected it to be. We went from making some of the best plans of our lives to just sitting at home and streaming movies, which, in fact, was a great bummer. And the sudden outbreak of such a deadly virus planted a seed of fear inside our heads, all of us asking some version of the question, “Is the world going to end?”. Some even went on to predict that the world will end in 2038.

So, let’s dig in and see if this is all to scare people off or something that may be of concern to us.

Is the world going to end in 2038?

So, the next big question is – why this specific reference to 2038? Why is 2038 predicted as the world’s end?

Doomsday predictions are not new and certainly do not apply only to 2038. The world has been predicted to end countless times. The world has been predicted to end in both 2022 & 2027. Future predictions are never certain. But, can we in any way know if there is any truth in these doomsday claims? Is the world going to end in 2038?

No, the world is not going to end in 2038. Having said that, certain events could cause chaos to a certain extent in that year.  

What exactly is going to happen in 2038?

We will be facing another crisis like the Year 2000 problem, when computers that used two digits for years were unable to handle the transition into the emerging 21st century. 

To fully comprehend the problem of the year 2038, it is necessary to fully define it. This event or potential crisis has been termed as the 2038 issue or Y2K38 issue. In 2038, Y2K38 is likely to occur due to the limitations of 32-bit processors and those operating systems that run on them. 

All 32 bit systems will face a time encoding error in 2038, i.e. the computers will be unable to calculate the time and return an invalid value for time on 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038.

So, how does it lead to the world getting destroyed? Let’s find out.

What does it have to do with the world ending?

Many around the world are concerned that these machines will eventually crash. Although the world is not coming to an end on 19th January 2038, several problems will arise with digital systems. The following are some of the major challenges that we will be facing in 2038:

• Globally, essential infrastructure systems, including those controlling computer systems, will go offline simultaneously.
• Thousands of aircraft may fall from the sky, medical equipment may fail, and nuclear power plants may melt and release radioactive waste.
• Satellites in Earth’s orbit may collide.
• Today’s most advanced technology would not be able to calculate dates.
• Mobile devices might become obsolete and have to be disposed of.

While we might be able to deal with the loss of our mobile devices, imagine an airplane without GPS or a car without airbags. The situation could be chaotic. 

Will the world come to an end because of this?

Several times in the past, people have spoken of the day a computer apocalypse will be a reality. The computer apocalypse was widely prophesied about 20 years ago, with many insisting December 31 of 1999 was the end of the world.

During the seventies, some people gave warnings that computers cannot distinguish between 1900 and 2000, the start of the new millennium. A nuclear attack was one of many disasters predicted for that day.

In response, many people went out and bought basic necessities. A few computer failures here and there aside, it was nothing major. Now, there is a new date when some people think that all electronic devices and computer systems will stop working. 

Should you worry about it?

You don’t have to worry about it. As technology advances, more and more systems are using a 64-bit architecture, which stores information more efficiently.

Even though this is not a definitive solution, computer experts are surely working on one. We are pretty sure that, just as it happened in the year 2000, nothing drastic will happen in the year 2038, and we will continue living our normal lives afterwards. 

But the situation doesn’t settle here. There could be other reasons for the world to end in 2038.

Why will the world end in 2038?

There are various other reasons for 2038 being the judgment year. So, here are a few of them explaining why the world will end in 2038.

1. The US military will withdraw from the areas conquered in most of the middle east nations, which may lead to a dictator’s rulership and will bring nothing but hell upon its residents. Well, this nation’s dominance process is already in effect now, as the Taliban took over Afghanistan after the US military withdrew their power.
2. It’s reported that wildfires will increase between the years 2030 to 2040, which will be the major source of carbon dioxide emissions, to be expected around 70%.
3. Temperatures will increase, which will gradually help various viruses and disease-carrier insects to perish, resulting in something like West Nile Virus, which is not good news.
4. People living on the shorelines in various regions will have to move because of the potential risk of regular flooding. This will create an enormous impact on the government and the people.

And the list could go on. The quality of life on Earth and its living conditions are rapidly declining. These reasons could be the answer to ‘why will the world end in 2038?’.

How will the world end in 2038?

Now let’s look at how the world will end in 2038. There are two main reasons for that, stating below:

1. After the withdrawal of the US military over some parts of the middle east, terrorist organizations may command world dominance and because of that they may end up using the deadliest weapon of all time, the nuclear bomb, and once any country drops the first nuclear bomb, it’s the beginning of the end of the world.
2. The next way is the sudden outbreak of something way more powerful than COVID-19. It’s not just a regular virus, it killed millions of people all around the globe, and we know that but what if there’s something way worse out there? So, the biological outbreak is the other way how this world may end.

But at the end of the day, these are all speculations and it is impossible to definitely answer questions like, will the world end in 2038. 

Dissecting the 2021 elections: Messaging wars

Virginia shifted solidly to the right

“The mind is divided into parts, like a rider [controlled processes or consciousness] on an elephant [automatic processes or unconsciousness]. The rider evolved to serve the elephant. . . . . intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Therefore, if you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first.

Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t. Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants work. Their slogans, political commercials and speeches go straight for the gut .... Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory.” -- psychologist Johnathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012

An article, Rough Night for Democrats Exposes the Party’s Weakness, in the New York Times analyzes the situation the Democrats are in. The NYT writes:

Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate future, struggling to energize voters without a presidential foil and losing messaging wars to Republicans.

“The Democrats need to take a serious look at how we chose to engage with the Trump narrative,” said Dan Sena, a Democratic strategist who helped the party win the House in 2018. “This was an election where the Democrats did not lean into their accomplishments either in Virginia or nationally. And as we look to 2022, we’re going to have to ask some hard questions about whether that’s the right strategy.”

Perhaps most strikingly, the crushing setbacks for Democrats in heavily suburban Virginia and New Jersey hinted at a conservative-stoked backlash to the changing mores around race and identity championed by the party, as Republicans relentlessly sought to turn schools into the next front in the country’s culture wars.  

With their focus on “parental rights” — a catchall rallying cry capturing conservative outrage over mask mandates, vaccination requirements, transgender rights and how the history of racism is taught — Republicans found an issue that energized their voters, uniting the white grievance politics of the Trump base with broader anger over schooling during the pandemic.  

By promising at nearly every campaign stop to ban critical race theory, an advanced academic concept not taught in Virginia schools, Mr. Youngkin resurrected Republican race-baiting tactics in a state that once served as the capital of the Confederacy.

Critical race theory is not taught in Virginia public schools, but that was irrelevant. Voters wanted to make sure it was stamped out even though it wasn’t there at all. Once again, dark free speech clearly shows its awesome power. Once again, Republican messaging went straight to the gut and dealt a damaging blow to Democrats.

Questions: 

1. Do Democrats need to improve their messaging?

2. What else do they need to start doing or do better, e.g., start doing DINO hunts to get rid of . . . . who or what?

Saving American democracy: The dangerous split in the Democratic Party

This discussion is based on some of the comments that PD made in a related post here yesterday, Can Civics Save America? That discussion is based on a May 2021 article in The Atlantic with the same title. PD's original comments are at this link. 

The Democratic Party deep split; a party on the verge of implosion?

One cannot speak of the American left as a monolith. In large part, the Atlantic article is about a schism within the left. The article's author, George Packer, calls it 'progressives vs. liberals'. What we see in Congress, the intraparty tension between the progressive caucus/Justice Democrats https://justicedemocrats.com/ and the rest of the democratic party, is mirrored in this debate about civics. 

Justice Democrats screenshot

The original Dissident Politics discussion posited that Biden made a mistake by losing neutrality and taking the progressive side in some of his policy statements. However, he did not make a "mistake." Instead, he fulfilled a pledge to woke progressives to fight for a certain narrative about American history, justice and the nature of racism, as well as gender rights. Even though Biden is a culturally conservative centrist, he ran a campaign and staged a carefully choreographed "diversity"-themed Democratic Party Convention in the summer of 2020 that engaged in a lot of virtue-signaling. As 

George Packer, author of Atlantic piece, notes this all but insures continued paralysis on the civics/history front. The 1619 Project mentioned by Packer, which has been blessed as the basis of K-12 social science and history curriculum by the Pulitzer center and many woke progressives. Unfortunately, The 1619 Project is historically inaccurate in several of its claims.[1]  Packer is quite clear about the danger of today's self-described "leftists" of the Justice Democrat variety. He opens his essay in The Atlantic with this very serious warning about the danger the Democratic Party faces:

The early months of the Biden presidency have revealed a conflict between two approaches to policy. One is liberal and universalist, the other progressive and particularist. One pursues equality through programs that include as many Americans as possible; the other targets groups, sometimes narrowly defined ones, in the name of equity. One minimizes cultural flashpoints; the other heightens them. One tries to weaken the Republican opposition with broadly popular ideas; the other, pushed by activists, draws conservatives into battles that intensify polarization. One has a chance to build a governing majority; the other risks consigning the Democratic Party to the dismal fate of the British Labour Party.

That's no joke. He is arguing that the woke progressives, with their purity tests and orthodoxies about "particularist" claims pertaining to "narrowly defined groups," and the no-compromise, morally indignant politics of owning the "high-ground" in their minds, would keep "particularizing", i.e., breaking everything down into "narrow" identity groups, rather than building bridges across the political spectrum at this vital time in order to preserve the Democratic Party, which is the only legitimate major party today, and the process and peaceful transfer of power. 

The progressives are an insurgent group, not a prudent one. They are ginning up rather than quelling the hyper-partisanship. The question is no longer, assuming it ever was, "who's worse, the blundering left or evil right?" It's useless casuistry (the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry). The so-called "leftist" progs are not just "blundering" but programmatic ideologues. If Packer is right, and I agree with him, they may lead to the implosion of the Democratic Party, which might be, "consigned to the dismal fate of the British Labour Party," i.e. irrelevance. 

I've thought so for a while, but it's time to speak up. In 2016 the leftist intellectual historian and political theorist, Mark Lilla, in The Once And Future Liberal (2016), issued the same warnings about going down the path of identity politics with little of the broader concerns about class and not just race and gender, etc.[2] He was not so much "cancelled" by progressives as condemned to the "silent treatment" after being bashed by woke progressives on Twitter. He was called "out of touch with the key issues" by "progressive" pundits, and rarely appears on TV interviews about politics nowadays. Yet he predicted much of what has happened since 2016.

So, no-compromise woke progressives want to install one vision of America, frankly somewhat mythical, ahistorical and self-flattering. For example, in history as taught by The 1619 Project, black slaves become the "real" original founders of American Democracy, though they were excluded from it. Meanwhile, those in the authoritarian right offer a dangerously distorted view in which Christian nationalism, elements of a Lost Cause mythology of the South, and vile nativism and scapegoating combine to frame ideological discourse, and curriculum/ text books. For example, look at the Texas schools today, with book-banning, and CN textbooks. Both must be eschewed. 

Sane, informed history and civics requires the rejection of both, not the coddling of one side as "merely mistaken" and the condemnation of the other as "evil." Both are "evil" if that means dangerous to the future of democracy. Both are self-conscious movements. The woke left, and Biden in courting it, did not "make a mistake" but rather calculated how to get, as they see it, the votes of several minority groups including blacks, latinx, lgbtq+, etc. That's what Packer means by "particularism." 

"Progressives" mean POC (people of  color) + Lesbian + Gay + Transgender +Muslim+ Non-binary + Feminist + nominal socialism (ala the ill-defined DSA), but MINUS "heteronormative cis-gender white males" all of whom, presumably have "white privilege" and are part of the dreaded "Patriarchy." They may hold placards and such, but don't vote for one if *he* is on the ballot! Is there even ONE straight white man running for office on the Justice Democrat Website?? Of course not. Such are the rigid identitarian dogmas of this "joyless religion," as Nick Cave called it. Nor do they realize that *many* people lumped in these categories-- do not buy into all this divisive rhetoric or care much about it. 

If you watch too many youtube vids and go on Twitter a lot, it looks like all leftists agree on these issues, on history, civics, how to interpret slavery vis a vis democracy, the need for "truth and reconciliation and reparations" right now, in the middle of a slow-motion authoritarian coup. These woke progressives just don't get that most people don't internalize or commit to all these PC talking points. But most people do care about good education, a safety-net, decent living wages, safer neighborhoods, fewer crimes and homicides, health-care, and a way to break out of the stagnant freeze on their paychecks as costs of living rise daily. The few social programs that are left can no longer keep struggling Americans (of all colors) safe, warm and fed. Poverty and hunger in this land are embarrassingly widespread across ALL race, gender, age and regional categories as discussed in this National Geographic article. 

Educating For American Democracy, which Germaine praised, was prepared by academics from more ideologically restrained quarters of both the left AND the right. It's time to recognize identitarian progressivism and its mainstream media propaganda for what they really are. After all, MSNBC and many op-ed journalists at NYT are to the "left" what FOX news is to the right. Much of the content in woke TV-land and journalism promotes identity-based ideology, while maintaining the economic status quo. Woke journalism does not seriously challenge the elites or get into the broad picture of economic inequality among ALL "identity-groups", i.e. groups outside of the race/minority identitarian context. The culture wars and identity politics are themselves the root problem. The largely racist, authoritarian right USES woke nonsense (like 1619 and BS anti-racist manuals that teach "racism exists without racists" while simultaneously calling out individuals as smug racists with the scarlet W of "white privilege") to demonize the entire democratic party as "dangerous, socialist" and any other scary terms that unsettle many middle Americans. 

Problem is, when authoritarian right propaganda quotes from some of the woke books, speeches, tweets, or cut to cancel culture video, etc. they do score points because much of that discourse IS embarrassingly stupid, as a growing number of reluctant but increasingly vocal critics are beginning to say. That makes sense because if we don't speak out now, democratic unity and pro-democracy momentum could be lost VERY SOON. It is time to prioritize pro-democracy over pet agendas. MSNBC, NYT opinion staff writers, Biden's virtue signaling-- it's all of one piece. Most people don't have much of a dog in the fight over the year of the founding of the USA, but few really think that year is 1619, regardless of the black indentured servants that arrived that year in a British Colony to join oppressed white servants here. 

Stop coddling the progressive left-- starting with the college students that need "safe spaces" for each and every social identity they embrace while endangering the careers of professors who don't use the mandatory PC lingo. Professors like Brett Weinstein and many others end up with violent threats, intimidation and loss of employment. Does anyone think this is what most voters want to see in the name of "progress?" This clip from Vice News shows what woke progressivism looks like up close and it's well worth a look (I looked at it and PD is right - it's worth a look (and it's darned ugly)):

We can't clean up the right because we, here, are mostly not within it, and its rot is far too deep. Just last week, Adam Kinzinger, one of Trump's last Republican critics, announced his retirement. Nobody can save that party right now. It must be defeated, and hopefully later a different kind of GOP or new party that plays by the rules will emerge. But comparing the GOPs "sins" to the problems on the left is a distraction from the task of getting our own shit together and bringing this quasi-fascist/neo-fascist train to a screeching halt before the many blessings we now take too much for granted go up in smoke. 

We CAN and should start calling out the no-compromise progs Packer's article describes. Those who think they have a monopoly on cultural and political truths, imposing purity tests, refusing to pass legislation unless it's got X or Y (in an ideal world, yes, we'd be able to pass X and Y, but in the real world the votes ain't there and we should get what we can get done now and continue struggling for the rest after that-- you can't wish assholes like Manchin and Sinema into oblivion-- you have to swallow the bitter pill of reality, and take the best deal on offer while that offer lasts).

Civics which I've been involved in and promoted for years is now hostage to authoritarians on the right and PC woke progressives on the left. So NO the left has some serious problems right now. It shoots itself in the feet in the name of "Justice." The Justice Democrats are an insurgent sub-party within the Dems more interested in primarying incumbent Dems then uniting around pro-democracy cause as I described in an earlier post here.

If we can form a pro-democracy UNITY coalition of all non-GOP groups and take what's left of that rotten party down to the ground, each member of the coalition may not get everything it wants, but chances are good that democracy in the US will survive another day. Then the differences in policy preferences, agendas, ideologies can be hashed out. After we've saved the basic form of gov't we currently stand to lose.

A personal observation: a lesson learned

PD goes on to make other points. One is his criticism of me for being too sucked in by my own casuistry, i.e., sophistry or maybe clever but definitely unsound reasoning. On consideration, he has made a convincing case. I goofed. I underestimated the threat from the internal progressive left to both the Democratic Party and democracy in view of considerations including (i) how alienating no-compromise the progressives are to out-groups, and (ii) how much actual truth and propaganda the woke left just hands over to the radical right. I was blinded by my focus on how threatening the radical right and its authoritarian goals are to good things including democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, truth and honest governance. 

Questions: 

1. Is it reasonable to argue that the progressives or justice Democrats are counter productive or dangerous no-compromise ideologues on a par with the now morally rotted and irredeemable Republican Party?

2. We are flying by the seat of our pants[3] and something more effective arguably needs to be done. Is forming a pro-democracy unity coalition of all non-GOP groups something reasonable that should be tried in the short run to oppose the Republican Party and its anti-democratic agenda?

3. Is the woke left evil or a threat to democracy?

Footnotes: 

1. The 1619 Project asserts that "Black Americans have...been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights. Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all."

In response to that, PD wrote this at his blog in 2020:

I am not sure how such a sweeping causal claim can be established, nor am I sure just what kind of empirical evidence might be marshaled to support it. As Hannah-Jones says, it is an interpretive claim about which reasonable people can disagree. .... What, then, are some of the alleged FACTS marshaled by the 1619 project to make the grand claims they advance appear plausible? There are a few, and some of them disturbed major historians of American History enough to cause them to write a letter to the Times requesting several corrections of what they regard as mistakes and untruths. .... Leaving aside the broad claim regarding blacks as the ultimate cause of modern US democracy, these scholars focused on more discrete and manageable issues amenable to empirical inquiry.

2. Lilla wrote this in a November 2017 New York Times op-ed piece that got him ostracized by progressives:

“American liberalism, has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.”

The Guardian wrote this in December of 2017:

In August, Lilla doubled down on his argument with The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (2017), a short book and his first for a popular audience. “We need no more marchers. We need more mayors,” he wrote. Only by articulating a political vision that speaks to all Americans, Lilla believes, can Democrats secure political power, turn the tide of Trumpism, and help minorities.

Lilla, a liberal, wants to save liberalism from itself.

3. We're flying like this:

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Can Civics Save America?

Culture war in education

A May 2021 article in the Atlantic, Can Civics Save America?, considers whether civics and history can be taught in public schools in a way that helps to restore some health to our seriously damaged American democracy. The alternative is that it will inflame partisan antagonisms if not done with extreme care and strict neutrality. The Atlantic writes:

Civic education sounds dull, dutiful, and antiquated, like paper drives or the Presidential Physical Fitness Test—but today it bears all the passion and distemper of our fraught politics. Last year, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz found that a majority of Americans of both parties rank civics as their top choice for how to “strengthen the American identity,” ahead of national service (preferred by Democrats) and religious activity (favored by Republicans). Civics, if left undefined, is the one solution for polarization that both sides support.

It’s also the most bitterly contested subject in education today. Civics is at the heart of the struggle to define the meaning of the American idea. Think of the battle lines as 1619 versus 1776—The New York Times Magazine’s project to reframe American history around slavery and its legacy, and the Trump administration’s counterstrike in the form of a thin report on patriotic education. Teaching civics could restore health to American democracy, or inflame our mutual antagonisms. Events are currently pushing in both directions.

Schools fail to give students not only a knowledge of basic facts and concepts, .... but also “the realization that free people will disagree about just about everything.” The art of self-government depends on a capacity for argument, persuasion, compromise, and tolerance of disagreement—civic virtues that need to be learned and practiced. .... If Americans of all stripes now hold righteously dogmatic views that we can neither ground in facts nor justify against counterarguments, one overlooked cause is the fading of civics from American education.

In 2019, a group of scholars and educators began an ambitious effort to lay out a vision for how American children in the 21st century should learn about their multi-everything, relentlessly divided democracy. .... Funding came from the U.S. Department of Education (then led by Betsy DeVos) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Around 300 people ultimately worked on the project, whose 33-page report, Educating for American Democracy, came out in March.

Rather than euphemizing hard truths and eliding divisive arguments, the report faces them in clear language. “In recent decades, we as a nation have failed to prepare young Americans for self-government, leaving the world’s oldest constitutional democracy in grave danger, afflicted by both cynicism and nostalgia, as it approaches its 250th anniversary,” the report announces at the top. Its solution is not a new nationwide curriculum (sure to self-immolate in partisan fights) but a “roadmap” of pedagogical guidelines, informed by broad themes such as “civic participation” and “institutional and social transformation,” and also by questions such as “How can we offer an account of U.S. constitutional democracy that is simultaneously honest about the past without falling into cynicism, and appreciative of the founding without tipping into adulation?”

The article goes on to point out that the Educating for American Democracy report intentionally does not choose sides in culture war. That would cause it to be rejected and attacked by one side or the other and then fade into irrelevance. To avoid that trap, the authors resort to reliance on evidence, inquiry and reason (like pragmatic rationalism). In particular, the report does not tell schools what to teach or students what to think. It just provides guidance on educating students about how to think, debate, disagree, and learn about the past in the context of the present. The goal is to balance American pluralism and diversity with a shared American narrative. 

Phrases like “reflective patriotism” and “civic friendship” were invented and used to try to limit the inherent tension. As one can imagine, this puts a significant, complicated burden on teachers. 

The author of the article understands that the Educating for American Democracy report could lay out good ideas but still die a quiet death, like many other reports and efforts that try to be helpful. One question asks what else can we try to do? The two sides are bitterly divided and that is not going to change. 

We oppose it!

A proposed bill in Congress, the Civics Secures Democracy Act, appropriates $1 billion to support civics and U.S. history teaching. As of last May, there was some bipartisan support, but it is tenuous. The Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act both came  

under immediate attack from the right. A radical right pro-T**** source called American Greatness, referred to the report as “a Trojan horse for woke education.” The influential radical right National Review, Federalist Society, and Heritage Foundation all argued that the report and the proposed bill constituted a conspiracy to impose a national left-wing agenda and ideology on schoolchildren. A conservative group, the National Association of Scholars asked Republicans in congress to withdraw their sponsorship of the Civics Secures Democracy Act. 

Biden screws the pooch - he took a side in the culture war

In what appears to be a serious, probably lethal mistake for a civics and history teaching renewal, on April 19 the Biden administration proposed Education Department funding for two small teaching grants related to teaching civics and history. The grant rationale and requirements blundered by clearly taking the liberal side in the culture war. Information that accompanied the grants included these mistakes (i) citing “the New York Times’ landmark ‘1619 Project,’” (ii) emphasis on teaching “both the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society,” and (iii) stating that grant applicants must “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” “support the creation of learning environments that validate and reflect the diversity, identity, and experiences of all students,” and “contribute to inclusive, supportive, and identity-safe learning environments.” 

Both the Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act were designed to not inflame partisan differences or take a side. Despite that, both elicited immediate, intense criticism from the radical right. The ghastly mistakes in the grant applications has given the radical right the excuse to say, we told you so, and more vehemently reject the report and the bill pending in congress. Radical right demagogues are reveling in a festival of disinformation using Biden’s mistake as fresh ammunition.

The article ends with this correct observation:

Unlike Educating for American Democracy, the Biden administration’s [grant application] rule, like its conservative critics, imposes a fixed view of civics and U.S. history in place of inquiry, debate, and disagreement. By intent or blunder, the left and right are colluding to undermine the noble, elusive goal of giving American children the ability to think and argue and act together as citizens.

Questions: 

1. Based on the information in this post, is it reasonable to think the right is mostly acting to sabotage by intent and the left mostly blundering, assuming that the left generally supports the Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act, while the right attacks and opposes them?

2. Is it reasonable to see neutral but honest teaching of civics and history as inherently more at odds with the morals, ideology, beliefs and politics of the radical right than with those of the center or left, radical or not?