Doves' Devotion

Doves cooing in early February,

Calling to each other with an affirmation of their bond.

They comfort me

With the beauty of their commitment song.

The State of a U.S. Democratic Republic as We Enter 2017

The official form of government in the United States is still a democratic republic. Over the past two decades, our form of government has been shifting away from this. As we see with the growing gap in wealth between working-class people and the wealthiest people, where the influence of the working class and middle class has dwindled and the voice of the poor is even less influential, we also see the increased power and influence in governance that has occurred. Wall Street (and similar financial institutions worldwide) caused the Great Recession, and yet, they are being given additional abilities to run the same bad-debt practices that caused the recession, especially in the U.S. That requires tremendous influence. This form of government is a plutocracy.

U.S. governance has been moving closer and closer to a plutocracy, capping that achievement with the recent federal elections. We now have “a society ruled by a few of the wealthiest citizens.” This is not debatable: We now have a White House with cabinet and staff members with the highest level of wealth in the history of the country— by far. It’s a matter of definition, not debate. Whether this is good or bad is up to each of us to decide.

The tattered remnants of our democratic republic form of government include that the majority of Electoral College electors got to vote for who our president and vice president would be. The democratic republic, in this case, breaks down at the state level, where there is not “one person, one vote.” Most states have a winner-takes-all model for selecting electors. States with large populations have a proportionately lower number of electors than states smaller populations. If California had the same proportion of electors as Wyoming, it would have 199 electors. It had 55. Is this what citizens want as a way to elect a president and vice president? Perhaps. After all, in the Senate, every state has the same number of senators. But in the House, the number of representatives per state is loosely proportional to the size of the state's population.

Another way in which the democratic republic remains is that we elect members of Congress to act on our behalf, and we can contact them with our position on issues. To the extent that they don’t represent our positions, we can work toward electing someone who better represents our positions.

The current state of the U.S. democratic republic form of government can easily be summarized in terms of whether ordinary Americans are willing to do their job as citizens. As Thomas Jefferson said, "If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."

Too many Americans are poorly informed. Many are quite ignorant about the rest of the world-- even in their own Western Hemisphere. With the amount of misinformation and ill-logic that is readily available, few take the time to check the facts. The sheer magnitude of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that have been believed without question is staggering. Finding the facts means going to primary sources. What did this politician say? Read the transcript; don’t believe someone’s paraphrase that is likely to be slanted. Read Reuters and Associated Press factual reports rather than news sources that have their own obvious agenda. Never believe a politician. The adage is this: How do you know if a politician is lying? His mouth is open.

Someone said that the House of Representatives has a bill that’s going to do X, Y, or Z? Look up the bill. They are all available at congress.gov. Do not trust your friend to summarize for you; don’t trust social media; definitely don’t trust a Super PAC “newsflash,” no matter how much they represent your political ideologies.

When Americans are unable or unwilling to search for facts, we cannot have an effective democracy. Perhaps we’ve never had a perfect democracy, but when the Oxford Dictionary chooses “post-truth” as the 2016 international word of the year, we are definitely headed in the wrong direction. When we have verified facts and someone in the White House comes up with the term “alternative facts,” as if that were a thing, we are definitely headed in the wrong direction.

This is the state of our U.S. democracy: Citizens leaping away from informed participation in their government.

Fighting for Freedom of the Press through Reliance on Investigative Journalism

In his January 11, 2017, press conference, the president-elect, Donald Trump, would not answer a question from a CNN reporter because he does not like the coverage he gets from that news organization. This is a violation of the First Amendment, and yet journalistic colleagues did not unite against this violation of the rights of Americans to hear answers to questions that represent diverse interests. The president-elect and his staff have previously denied press credentials to entire news outlets even before they could ask the tough questions that Trump assumed he might get. It’s not just Trump’s insistence on not being shown in a bad light that motivates his refusal to respect these journalists. Trump's primary desire is to punish those he sees as opponents. He's quite above board about his determination to "get even." This will continue to result in Trump’s pre-emptive strikes against the First Amendment unless we find a way to stop them… or to work around them. In reality, we must do both. If President of the United States Trump is allowed to violate our right to a free press, we must fight that all the way to the Supreme Court.

Investigative journalism is so fundamental to dealing with this next administration, and yet it is under fire, in part, because news consumers are not willing to put their money behind their claims to want such responsible journalism and more factual information. With an administration that refuses to answer questions or even to listen to those questions, journalists now have a much more challenging job: finding and nurturing confidential sources and getting access to reliable documents and other forms of information they then need to verify.

I've come to believe that we exacerbate the problem of a healthy free press by referencing sensationalized and unverified information on social media. We're stealing eyeballs away from reading responsible, factual journalism-- even our own eyes. Reuters, Associated Press, verbatim transcripts, and verbatim documents: We need facts on the “front page” and opinions based on facts in the editorials and opinion columns.

Journalists need to step up, as do we. It's not just supporting the ACLU’s prosecution of First Amendment violations or paying for a newspaper subscription so that journalists have the resources to nurture those confidential sources. It's what we choose to share on social media. The supply of responsible reporting will increase if the demand does.

Major Points in John Kerry’s Speech on U.S. Israeli-Palestine Policy 28 December 2016

Major Points in John Kerry’s Speech on U.S. Israeli-Palestine Policy

28 December 2016

Kerry’s Thesis: Peace between Israel and Palestine requires a cessation of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a region that Israel agreed to return to Palestinian sovereignty in the Oslo Accords. It equally demands a cessation of all aggression toward Israel by Palestinian terrorists, also part of the Oslo Accords agreement.

Note: This speech was part tutorial and part argument for the thesis. This summary includes points made in brackets [ ] for supplementary information not included in Secretary Kerry’s comments. All maps are supplementary information. Kerry’s 1-hour 15-minute speech was repetitive; this summary is intended to be less so.

1. Anti-Semitism in Western Europe rose throughout the first half of the 1900s, culminating in the genocide of Jews during WWII. The first talks among Jewish leaders about the need for a separate homeland were held long before WWII began.
2. The U.N. [created in 1945] recognized the need to create a separate nation-state for Jews in their religious homeland. The U.N. came to a formal decision on the creation of Israel in 1947.
3. Israel officially became a separate nation on 14 May 1948. [Not mentioned: This was the day before the “British Mandate” that controlled Palestine was to end.] The separation gave Israel approximately half the area of land of Palestine, as Palestine had been under the British Mandate. [Kerry emphasized what an imperative implementation it was for Jews to have this holy land.] [Insertion of map for clarity in this summary. Israeli land shown in yellow.]
   
   
4. In 1967, Israel launched the Six-Day War [against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan]. The outcome of that war was that Israel claimed the West Bank [until then, part of Jordan], the Golan Heights [until then, part of Syria], and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula [until then, Sinai territory]. [Map for clarity in this summary, below. Israeli-claimed territory shown in purple with additional Palestinian territory under Israeli control shown in yellow.]
   
   
5. The Oslo Accords were signed [in 1993 and 1995] by Israel and the representative of the Palestinian state. Two parts of the Accords were an Israeli agreement to turn over the West Bank and Gaza Strip [Golan Heights not focused on here] to Palestinian control and a Palestinian agreement to recognize Israeli’s right to exist in peace and an end to Palestinian terrorism.
6. Neither of these two agreements in the Oslo Accords was fully honored by either side. But as Israel’s Shimon Perez said, “The original mandate gave the Palestinians 48 percent, now it’s down to 22 percent. I think 78 percent is enough for us.” [This quote goes to Kerry's argument about curtailing further settlement expansion.]
7. The U.S. is committed to having Israel and Palestine negotiate their own terms of peace and division of territories. It is not the place of the U.S. to dictate those terms nor will it.
8. The United States is Israel’s most staunch ally and always has been. The U.S. has consistently vetoed U.N. resolutions that demanded changes in Israeli actions, resolutions that often did not demand an equal change in Palestinian actions.
9. The U.S., in supporting Israel’s right to safety and peace, provides enormous amounts of military aid [approximately 3 billion USD]. During the current presidential administration, the amount of intelligence that the U.S. has shared with Israel has been dramatically higher than at any previous time. Israeli leaders acknowledge that this has been a very important augmentation of U.S. military assistance. Joint training exercises and continuous upgrades of Israeli air power are part of U.S. support.
10. The Palestinians absolutely must stop their terrorist attacks on Israel, and Palestinian leaders must openly demonstrate that those attacks are unacceptable. There is absolutely no path to peace until this happens. The current two situations of terrorism and implicit support for it are unacceptable to Israel and unacceptable to the United States. [This was repeated many times throughout the speech.]
11. Nearly all countries agree that a two-state solution is the only solution that can provide sustained peace in the region. This improved stability extends far beyond Israel and Palestine because other Arab countries have stated that they will only strengthen their support for Israel’s sovereignty and expand economic relations with Israel when the two-state solution is implemented. These commitments have been part of the extended negotiations that the current U.S. administration has been part of, with Kerry as the primary U.S. participant during his tenure as Secretary of State. However, further expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank will increase tensions with other Arab countries.
12. “Two nations for two peoples.” [a refrain during the speech]
13. It would be against fundamental U.S. democratic principles to abandon a two-state solution: “Without a two-state solution, Israel can either be a Jewish state or a democracy, but not both.” The U.S. stands with Israel on the importance of Israel being both.
14. Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to expand strategically, in such a way that a separate and effective Palestinian state is becoming impossible, logistically. However, it is up to the Palestinians and Israelis (not other nations) to work out a mutually-agreeable solution to the Israeli settlements.
15. In a two-state solution, Palestine would continue to be a region without militarization and must include provisions to ensure Israel’s safety against hostilities or aggression by neighboring Arab states.
16. The West Bank Palestinians go through Israeli checkpoints that make normal life very difficult. Access is fully restricted to Israelis in “Area C” of the West Bank. [Area A is Palestinian-controlled. Area B is a Palestinian civil area with Israeli military control.]
    
    N.B. Clear and verifiable facts about the number and distribution of Israeli checkpoints is difficult to come by. Israel posts maps of the walls they’ve constructed, but not the checkpoints (some of which are pop-up checkpoints). Some sources state that there are over 600 checkpoints and roadblocks within the West Bank region, with further restriction of Palestinian movement added after two deadly Intifadas by a group of Palestinians. Palestinian movement does not pass through Israeli settlements. The checkpoint map posted by the BBC uses Palestinian information about major checkpoints. The map of Areas A, B, and C uses a pro-Israeli website's map. Area A is shown in yellow, Area B is shown in brown, Area C is shown in blue.
    
       
     
17. The Gaza Strip people are destitute and have limited access to food or materials with which to create jobs that would enable them to be self-sufficient. Access to medical care in the Gaza Strip is severely limited. Israel has five security-gated crossing points on its border with Gaza. Despite Israeli walls and guarded crossing points to protect Israel from attacks, Palestinians keep tunneling under the walls. This is unacceptable to the U.S. as it reduces Israel’s safety. 
18. The next presidential administration has stated its intentions to support further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. While that is that administration’s decision to make, it should make that decision cautiously, with an understanding that it will essentially kill the possibility of a two-party solution that is Israel’s only hope for peace.

Liberalism's Objection to Objectivism

Why are the ideological positions of Ayn Rand’s objectivism anathema to those committed to progressive/liberal ideological positions?

Objectivism is based on these kinds of beliefs (taken from a definition by Ms. Rand):

• Each person’s purpose in life is to achieve his own happiness.
• Each person is to be respected to the extent that he is individually productive.
• “Reasoning” is the only acceptable means of thinking, drawing conclusions, and making decisions. (fn 1)

Rand’s fiction elaborates on these convictions and extends them to implications for the inferiority of those who don’t have the capacity or inclination to achieve sophisticated levels of reasoning and/or high individual productivity. These inferior individuals are not worthy of the efforts of people who are the paradigm for objectivism, even if we ignore the imperative for each person to be totally responsible for their own well-being. Note, however, that most Objectivists judge individual productivity relative to what the individual has the potential to produce. The open issue is how one defines “potential.”

If you read Rand’s essays, you will see an irony: She was not a very accomplished rhetorician nor was she particularly competent at developing soundly reasoned arguments. I find her fiction to be far more articulate, with clearer questioning of the challenges of implementing objectivism in the larger society.

Progressive ideological positions that parallel the primary positions in objectivism could be stated this way:

• One important purpose in life is to contribute constructively to the collective good of the society.
• Each person is to be respected. Higher degrees of respect are to be afforded to those with an admirable quality of character: honesty, respect for others, compassion, humility, fairness, ….
• People should balance head and heart in understanding sociopolitical issues and other people. They should make decisions in the context of verified facts and logical deductions, but also in the context of compassion for others and categorical fairness. The latter are seen as fundamental— not needing logical arguments to justify their importance.

With the (passionate) progressive value of improving the collective good of people in a society, it’s easy to see why an ideology that prioritizes individual happiness over societal well-being would not be well received. There is a progressive corollary that improving the collective good is of ultimate benefit to us all, but that is not used as a rationale for valuing the improvement of the collective good.

The objectivist position that individual productivity is the measure of a man is insufficiently nuanced, if not outright wrong, to suit progressive thinking. For Progressives, many factors determine one’s productivity, and an individual’s contribution to collective productivity might need to be measured differently from the way that productivity would be measured for individually-produced results by a person who cares about nothing but his own happiness. Here is where the question of individual “potential” has a different interpretation than the objectivist/libertarian interpretation of the term.

Progressives make allowances for those who have had the cards stacked against them-- those with few if any options that would enable them to make more substantial contributions to society and to their own socioeconomic improvement. In other words, their realistic potential is hampered by circumstances that, practically speaking, are beyond their existing ability to change on their own. For Progressives, one responsibility of government and individuals is to assist those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged so that they can overcome their obstacles to equal opportunity. Objectivism makes no such allowances. 

Compassion and other sensibilities that are not in the purview of strict reasoning are fundamental to progressive positions. Reasoning in the absence of those sensibilities is vacuous.

---

(fn 1) The metaphysical rationale for this tenet involves propositions about the existence of “reality,” the meaning of knowledge, and related metaphysical considerations. Since this is not where the opposition to objectivism focuses, there’s no need to elucidate further.

An Open Letter to Conservative Comedians

Dear [conservative comedian's name here]:

I have been disappointed in the lack of humor you have displayed with respect to both Conservatives and Progressives in 2016. In fact, some of you have only contributed to laugh-out-loud caricatures of Conservatives by acting like one.

You seem to have struggled most with what’s worth a good laugh about Progressives. I hope you will not give up because there is going to continue to be so much material for Progressives to use for their standup comedy about Conservatives that you could end up not getting on nighttime talk shows. A conservative lampooning show in the style of the progressive satires in The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight cannot happen without you making a better effort to identify and exploit Progressives’ more eccentric traits. Therefore, I am offering a few ideas to get you started.

First: There are some things that are not funny to Progressives or Conservatives. For example, (1) the Progressives’ insistence on equal civil rights for all Americans, (2) the Progressives’ insistence on fair and equitable treatment under the law, and (3) the Progressives’ insistence on the right of everyone to have comparable K-12 education and healthcare access, regardless of socioeconomic class. These are the kinds of things that conservative comedians and commentators have tried to state as being absurd Progressive beliefs. However, many Conservatives would not find it funny that all Americans should have equal civil rights or that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. Those who believe in excluding the LGBTQ community are dead serious about it. Don’t make jokes about progressive issues and positions that many Conservatives are dead serious about, whether for or against. Those jokes will fall flat (and, as you know, have fallen flat) unless your audience is full of White Nationalists. That’s currently too small an audience if you want to make a living with your comedy act.

What Conservatives could exaggerate for a set of jokes is Progressives’ pounding on the fact that Hillary Clinton “won” the popular vote in a landslide when the U.S. Constitution says that it’s the electors of the Electoral College who elect the next president and vice president (separately). The Electoral College is designed to add weight to the voices of less-populated states, a weighting that is a combination of the proportional representation of the House and the highly disproportional representation in the Senate. Telling Progressives to "read the Constitution" would be pretty ironic, since Progressives tell Conservatives to do the same quite frequently.

Also, December 19, 2016, is Election Day for the president and vice president, not November 8, 2016. Let’s see if Progressives stop whining after December 19, 2016. If not, they are flogging a dead horse and that would make a great political cartoon or a good slapstick comedy bit.

If Progressives want to win the White House, they need to understand the issues that face "Middle America" and convince those people that the Democrats are addressing those issues. And they need to stop using the term "progressive" or "liberal" when talking to farmers, manufacturing workers, manual laborers (electricians, plumbers, et al), and those who've been unemployed for a long time. Kind of makes their recent approach look clueless. Right? That one set of politically clueless missteps could make for a very funny, long sketch-- maybe more. All I can imagine is that they were thinking that presidents are elected by popular vote, but there could be funny alternative, made-up reasons for why they ignored the American Heartland. A decent conservative comedian should be able to come up with three suggested reasons off the top of her head.

Another unending source of jokes about some Progressives is their willingness to sign 85 Facebook petitions a day (often, without reading the text of the petition). Petitions? What do they change? Are they kidding? Another is their insistence that voters should read only reliable news sources that have checked the facts. Get the masses to read? Are they kidding? More than a headline? Are they kidding? Facts like the distortions stated in those petitions? Oh. Many don’t read the petitions before signing. And the petitions are not coming from reliable news sources. There's so much to work with there!

It doesn’t matter that your caricature doesn’t fit all or even most Progressives. The goal is to caricature a visible subset of the Progressives who make for good comedy.

What makes for good standup comedy are jokes about the personality quirks of Progressives—either collectively or individually. And, lucky for you, Progressives will not go quietly into the shadows come January 20, 2017. So, start practicing. If you want a test audience, ask some Progressives to see your act. They know what’s ridiculous about themselves—even those who are the very caricature that you draw. If it’s funny to them, it’s going to be hilarious to a conservative audience.

Sincerely (well maybe not so much),

--Patricia

How Do Progressives Proceed with Respect for the Republican President?

The key for Progressives with the coming Republican White House is to respect the office of the president. There are certain things that simply should not be said by congressional representatives; for example, they should not call future-President Trump a liar when he addresses a joint session— an unfortunate incident that President Obama did experience. It means congressional Democrats do not boo during Trump’s addresses to the Congress. Taking the high road means that Senate Democrats participate in hearings for Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominations, even if they ultimately find the candidates poorly matched to the job. It means that House Democrats on the budget committee do not hold the government hostage just because the proposed budget came from the Republican White House. It means that when changes to the Affordable Care Act are proposed, congressional Democrats participate in the discussion and are open-minded about how to improve the ACA, even though the suggestions might be coming from the Republican White House. Should congressional Democrats want to stage a sit-in to protest policy decisions, that seems quite acceptable. That is not demeaning the president or fellow congressional representatives; it’s focused on the policy decisions they believe are wrong-headed.

All that said, I can’t imagine how to have respect for any person who is a misogynist, racist, religious/ethnic bigot, or an arrogant person who “doesn’t like to read” (quote directly from Mr. Trump)— especially when that person claims he wants to be the president of “all Americans.” That last part, I simply resent. Stating facts as facts (read the definition of a bigot and you’ll see it describes Trump’s statements and behaviors) isn’t in the same league as the recent comment by a Republican voter that First Lady Michelle Obama is “an ape in heels.” That was so far beyond disrespectful that I don’t have a term for it other than “extreme racism.” Anyone who makes derogatory comments about Melania Trump’s immigrant origins is out of line.

The issue of respect by Progressives (whether Democrat or Independent) is whether they can recognize their own bigotries and stereotyping and discipline themselves to stop immediately. Calling Trump supporters “bigots” is just not acceptable. Many people (Democrats, Independents, and Republicans) voted for Trump in spite of his bigotries, but that does not make them bigots themselves. Calling “white people” racists (as if all white people fit into a single category) is not acceptable. Calling blue-collar workers and less formally educated people “stupid” is not acceptable. This is not a matter of showing respect for Mr. Trump; it is a matter of showing respect for fellow Americans. Any Progressive who thinks their own bigotry and stereotyping is okay is the ultimate hypocrite.