Prepping For The Final Exam

Pop Quiz. No time limit. Links to answers attached to each question. For purposes of self-assessment, don’t look before answering. Fair warning to Trumpic and/or Foxified Republicans: Have adult beverages handy, for you risk the shock of factuality by following the links. If none other, at least follow the first one. PLEASE. And may enlightenment shine upon you and bring you peace.

(Note for blog-readers only: you probably already know what's at the links, but click anyway. Some, you might find amusing. Also, the Herald version is moving to Fridays, I'm told.)

1. Intentionally creating distrust in elections by repeatedly lying about non-existent fraud, then forcing laws to “restore trust,” is an unprecedented, existentially dangerous attack on democracy. From within. Discuss. (Link)

2. Define Critical Race Theory. Explain its origins. Indicate where it’s being taught and where it’s not. Write a paragraph to refute its central tenets. (Link)(Link)

3. What is the 1619 Project? Explain its origins. Indicate where it’s being taught and where it’s not. Write a paragraph to refute its central tenets. (Link)(Link) 

4. Define communism. Give examples of where, in its pure form, it’s ever been implemented in a country. Have any countries referred to themselves as communist when, in fact, by strict definition, they weren’t? Do any official policies of the Democratic Party fit the definition? Which ones? Be specific. (Link)

5. Define pure socialism. Have any countries referred to themselves as socialist when, in fact, by strict definition, they weren’t? Do any policies of the Democratic Party fit the definition? Which ones? Be specific. (Link)

6. Define Democratic Socialism. (You may refer to it as Social Democracy.) Give examples of countries whose governance currently fits the definition. Is there a spectrum? If so, does the US belong somewhere along it? Compare happiness indexes and poverty levels. (Link)

7. In Social Democracies, government programs that provide education, health, and economic security for citizens, especially the workforce, enhance and strengthen capitalism. Refute. (Link)

8. True or false: In a fairly constituted democratic republic, the minority of voters should have a voice but the majority should prevail. Defend your answer. (Link)

9. Does gerrymandering, which allows a party to control state legislatures while receiving fewer votes than the opposition, lead to fair public policy? Is it consistent with the fundamentals of our democracy? Why or why not? (Link)

10. If an insurrection occurs in a democracy, successful or not, the intent of which is to overthrow a constitutionally certified, multiply-recounted and adjudicated election, and which results in deaths and destruction within the nation’s hallowed Capitol and which overtly threatens the lives of legislators of both parties, should the roots and carrying out of that insurrection be investigated? Why or why not? (Link)

11. If one party blocks a bipartisan investigatory commission, the composition of which included all the demands of that party and mirrors the framework of the 9/11 commission, is it fair to conclude they wish to hide self-incriminating facts from the American people? (Link)

12. If the Senate leader of that party demands his colleagues block it “as a personal favor,” what’s the “personal” part? What constituents does he fear? Do they reflect the opinion of most Americans regarding an investigation? Show your work. (Link) 

13. Discuss: The filibuster leads to bipartisanship. Give examples from recent years. If sixty to seventy percent of Americans favor certain legislation, should forty percent of senators, representing forty million fewer voters than senators of the other party, be able to block it? Why or why not? Does our Constitution mention filibuster? Does it square with original intent? (Link)

14. What is original intent? Would the founders agree that the mass murders occurring almost daily in the country they created are simply “the price of freedom”? In writing the Second Amendment, should they have specified, unambiguously, what they meant by a “well-regulated militia,” and what they intended as its purpose? Was slavery involved in any way? Support your answer. (Link)(Link)

15. The First Amendment was written when news spread on horseback. Would the founders have anticipated media sources with instant and worldwide reach, using lies and dishonest editing as a business plan? If not, are there arguments for updating the amendment? (Link)

16. Trump hired “only the best people,” and none were corrupt. Defend. (Link)

17. Reports say Trump believes he’ll be reinstated as “president” by August. Explain: (Link)

18. Who’s tougher, rugby players like your columnist once was, or soccer players? Provide examples. (Link)

19. MAGA Republicans prefer selecting leaders by coup or overturning elections. Refute. (Link)

Coming To Terms

My upcoming newspaper column, previewed:

Hoping to divert attention from their agenda of enriching the rich, cutting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, censoring science, polluting the environment, taking healthcare access from millions without replacement, controlling women’s bodies, worsening climate change, gutting consumer protections, and suppressing minority voting, it’s clear that Republicans’ cries of “Socialism” will be central to their attacks on Democratic candidates. So let’s address it, starting with three compendious definitions:  

Socialism: state-owned production and commerce; workers are government employees. 

Capitalism: private ownership, workers employed by the owners. 

Communism: ownership of everything by everyone. Give what you can, take what you need. No private property. 

Only right-wing media and people unhappy with certain opinion columnists mention communism, and no Democrat advocates it. In purest form, it’s existed only on Russian kolkhozes, Israeli kibbutzim, and a few ephemeral, utopian enclaves in this country. A socialist dictatorship, the USSR was never “communist.” Because humans tend toward greed and jealousy, comm-baya fails. 

So does pure socialism. Which is why, Trumpic lies notwithstanding, Democrats aren’t proposing it. Touring the Soviet Union when a student of the Russian language, I saw it. Their products were junk, their workers unproductive, and it seemed their only incentives (other than avoiding Siberia) were omnipresent warnings of an enemy to fear and hate: namely, us. It’s what despots do. And would-be despots. Not that anyone comes to mind. 

Venezuela, the right’s disingenuous definition of Democrats’ desire, and one of two potential stages for performing our next war, is failing for many reasons, including incompetence and authoritarian corruption. For those seeking partisan analogies, there they are. Venezuela is as far from what liberals want as Trump is from veracity.  

We’ve never seen pure, unfettered capitalism, either, although the US came close in the Gilded Age, when regulations were few, capitalists were extraordinarily wealthy and oligarchical, and their employees, including children, were overworked, undercompensated, and disempowered. Workplaces were unsafe and unhealthy, often fatally. Along came liberalism and unions to rectify, at least partially, the inhumane inequality, but not before unbridled greed led to the Great Depression. MAGA, it turns out, means Make America Gilded Again. 

So there’s a spectrum, at the unoccupied extremes of which are absolute capitalism and absolute socialism. Most countries lie somewhere between. Given the worldwide breadth of that scale, differences between Democrats and Republicans are comparatively narrow, and none but hardcore Libertarians and “Freedom-Caucus” Republicans are aiming for a far end, despite what one hears from Sean “Tell ‘Em Liberals Hate America, Donnie” Hannity, and Donald “Liberals hate America” Trump. 

Believing regulations stifle growth, conservatives favor abrogating most of them, arguing “market forces” will ensure that corporations won’t, say, pollute, and, out of charitable patriotism or something, they’ll do right by their employees. History suggests otherwise. 

Liberals are proud of producing workplace-safety, child-labor, and pollution-control laws, plus other Republican-hated programs like SNAP and Medicaid. They believe seniors are better off with than without Social Security and Medicare, that education and press freedom protect our constitutional democracy, and that voter suppression doesn’t.    

Some prefer to disparage these accomplishments, but it’s Fox-level fakery to suggest liberals want anything like pure socialism. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and other targets of right-wing lies have issues with the sort of capitalism in which widespread, crushing poverty exists alongside unimaginable wealth; in which enormous corporations pay no taxes; which creates leaded drinking water, contaminated canals, and coal-ashed rivers. Everyone should.  

Which brings us to “Democratic Socialism.” Before reflexively dismissing it, people should consider what it is, not what they’ve been told to think it is. In short, it’s capitalism with a conscience. Flourishing capitalism. Like Sweden’s, with worldwide, for-profit, tax-paying corporations: Volvo, Saab, Ericsson, Ikea, and more; and, by all measures, happier, healthier, better-educated, more financially-secure citizens than Americans. Higher taxes, better perks. Fewer worries, better sleep.  

Democratic socialism replaces profit-above-all with profit for a purpose, recognizing that capitalism endures when its workforce is educated, healthy, has decent benefits, predictable retirement, and enough income to buy what capitalists produce. It thrives by not salting the soil in which it grows. 

Rather than engaging in honest debate, Trump’s rally-joiners prefer chanting “AOC sucks.” That’s Trumpism: reflexive, simplistic nescience replacing thoughtful discourse. That’s fatal to democracy. And it’s intentional. 

Among those who’ve gained the most and will gain still more from progressive policies are Trump’s fact-free adulators, obediently swallowing the lies without a moment’s thought to who’s telling them, and why. 

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The Problem With Governing Humans

Comes now my next newspaper column:

Unprecedented stock market volatility. Poorer than expected jobs reports. Layoffs. Businesses still sending jobs out of country, working people still struggling to get by, an extra ten bucks a week notwithstanding. The only difference between Trump’s and Bush’s tax cuts, and the other Bush’s, and Reagan’s, is that its economic shortcomings are becoming evident sooner than usual. Maybe because the others figured on two terms.  

Readers seem to like calling me a communist when I point out the obvious about what’s needed to make capitalism work. In addition to showing how unaware they are of the meaning of the term, they refuse to provide examples of my alleged affinity. Which is understandable: there aren’t any. Capitalism has been good to me. In turn, unlike Trump, I’ve been good to capitalism: pay my taxes, follow the law, don’t cheat people or go bankrupt. Invest in good companies. Recycle. Minimize polluting. 

Communism and unfettered capitalism do have something in common, though: they both assume a level of goodness inherent in humankind that doesn’t exist. Self-designations to the contrary, there’s never been a communist country. Purely socialist, yes; and they’ve failed. Other than a few collective farms, the USSR was never communist. It wasn’t even in its name. Same with China. It’s an unworkable, borscht in the sky system.  

Over here, a few hippies and transcendentalists tried to live “from each according to ability, to each according to need,” (communism’s essential definition) but they dispersed after acrimonious collapse. As a whole, notwithstanding examples of individual selflessness, humanity simply isn't good enough to manage it.  

Since the point is philosophical rather than economical, this isn’t the place to discuss how upside-down and ill-timed Trump’s tax cuts were, other than to point out that with a humming economy after President Obama rescued it from Bush, with corporate profits at record highs, with crumbling infrastructure and escalating economic inequality, money extracted from revenues and handed to corporations and, therefore, to their investors but mostly no one else, while causing untenable increases in budget deficits and national debt, could have been much better spent to guarantee the survival of our system, by creating jobs and raising wages for real rather than a couple of impermanent boni. (There. I devoted only one sentence to it.)  

Communism doesn’t work because humans are inherently greedy and jealous. Pure socialism doesn’t work because most people need incentives to be excellent, and when the government controls all production, there aren’t any. (That, plus the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, not Reagan, is why the Soviet Union ultimately failed.) Capitalism works, but does so to the extent it’s mated with regulations providing reasonable restraint on the worst human tendencies. 

America has experienced unregulated capitalism. It led to abuse of workers (including children), disregard for the environment, the Great Depression, and, as is happening yet again, sequestration of too much money in the hands of too few. It’s the opposite of what drives successful capitalism: average people having the means to buy stuff, and rules mitigating corporate greed. And it’s where Trump and his invertebrate congress are taking us, yet again. 

For Trump’s part, maybe the wrongness of his tax cuts derives from his ingrained disinterest in educating himself. Republican Congressfolk had to have known though, from experience; they just don’t care. By action and inaction they’ve signaled their intent to take the money and run; and since they don’t see preserving our planet as remunerative, they figure they may as well take it with them, too. What they’ve done, while being decidedly pro particular donor capitalists, is demonstrably anti capitalism. Proof is everywhere. 

There’s one thriving system of governance that’s designed to improve the lot of its citizens, giving them a voice in the process while confronting the strengths and weaknesses of humanity: “democratic socialism,” a better name for which might be “democratic kinda socialistic capitalism.” Countries demonstrating it regularly top lists of health and happiness. Also, they invented telephone handsets, implantable pacemakers, medical ultrasound, three-point seatbelts, zippers, and dynamite.  

“Godless” liberals, foolishly counting on human decency, call for shared sacrifices to help all Americans, while the party claiming an inside track to Jesus Himself gives itself over to human nature’s darkest side, legislating every man for himself. (Woman, not so much.) Liberals get called communists by people who think Trump loves America. And Mick Mulvaney admits it’s all about bribery.

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Commies!

I'd love to know Glenn Beck's definition of communism. I'd be most interested to understand how he can call the administration both fascist and communist (which, in case you didn't know, are as mutually exclusive as "Fox" and "fair"). I'd be pleased to hear from those commenters of mine who recoiled in horror about an Obama appointee who said he'd been a member of the Communist party at one time: what, exactly, is the threat?

First of all, as the Communist party of the US says, there's never been a communist society on this planet. Moreover, in this country, whatever else they might be, the Communist party has about as much influence as a crazy guy in the street. What they are is a bunch of idealistic dreamers, with a vision of humankind that is entirely unrealistic. For communism to work, we'd have to be.... Christlike. All of us. Ain't gonna happen. Least of all, among Christians. The ideal of communism is people working together for a common good; no one exploited; all people treating all others fairly and compassionately; helping one another; caring; the need for central government nearly non-existent. (How's that for a conservative ideal!) I'm not sure what's so awful about that other than the fact that it's one hundred percent impossible. Just look around. (In case it needs to be said, those American Communists who supported the Soviet Union back in the day were as wrong-headed then as Beck is now.)

Personally, I'm fine with capitalism. I still plan to buy an HD TV some day, and if I could afford another Beemer (I had one thirty years ago), I'd get one of those, too (if I didn't care about gas mileage). But I don't consider those who have a pie-in-the-sky governing model some sort of existential threat; especially when the model has zero chance of being realized.

I traveled in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, on a Russian language study tour. (Time was, I was a pretty fair speaker of Russian: over there, people complimented me on my aksyent, when they weren't asking me about "Dev Brroobek" or trying to buy my Levi's.) No political scientist, I, it was nevertheless obvious to me that nothing about their society was communistic except the one collective farm at which I had the second greatest picnic of my life, and then proceeded to get drunk on the smoothest vodka I'd ever had -- to the consternation of the tour staff, based, as it was, in a "dry" campus back home. (As our large glasses were filled to the brim from pitchers of the stuff for a raucous toast, I was told to dump mine out and hide the fact with my hand. The "clink" gave it away, after which the glass was refilled, the staff lady gave up and drank happily along with the rest of us as songs were sung, accordions played, and people staggered off into the woods.)

What the Soviet government -- and the Chinese, and Cuban, all of them -- was, was totalitarian. They used the concept of communism ("Forward to the victory of communism," was plastered in signs everywhere), I guess, as a sort of ideal by which to get their workers to buy in. That, and the idea that they had a mortal enemy in the US, the defeat of which demanded the sort of sacrifices that their decaying society presented to them. Tiny apartments, crappy products, decaying buildings, while their leaders lived high on the свинья. They were a threat, all right, but it had nothing to do with communism, per se. They were, in fact, the opposite of communism: near complete exploitation of their citizenry for the aggrandizement of government power. The danger was their international aggression, not their not-believed, paper-thin look-the-other-way "communism." If you want to see the closest remaining thing to actual communism in existence, visit a kibbutz.

This is no polemic in favor of communism. True communists, in my view, are hopeless idealists, hippie squared, impossible dreamers. Theirs is a rosy view of humankind that is clearly counterfactual. In the political descent we are witnessing every day since President Obama's election, nothing could be more obvious.

My point is simply this: the cries of "communism" by Beck and his minions are but another example of the dishonesty of the leaders and the stupidity and gullibility of the followers of the right wing as currently constituted. Railing in the certainty that they know what they're talking about. They seen it on the teevee.

There is nothing "communist" about Obama or his policies, even if he appointed one to oversee green energy efforts.

We're more threatened by Tinkerbell.
.