Revelatur Newsletter December 28, 2010
We're at War - Like it or Not
“Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
and lightness has a call that's hard to hear” - Amy Ray and Emily Saliers
Hello and happy holidays dear readers! In today’s Revelatur Newsletter we detail: the accelerating governance crisis in the United States (“The Elephant in the Room”); how Republicans are waging actual, not rhetorical, warfare against the majority of American citizens and therefore committing sedition against the United States (“But if they Mean to have a War, Let it Begin Here”); and the better practices in Democracy we could follow to lead our way out of the fix we find ourselves in (“Better Practices in Society and Government”). I guarantee that the last article is nowhere near as boring as it sounds!
The Elephant in the Room
What’s the biggest crisis in the world now? Covid-19 pandemic? Global warming? Conflict in Darfur, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine?
All important, all dwarfed by the unacknowledged, unaddressed, self-inflicted and adversary-fueled governance crisis in the United States. Not more important normatively than the others, of course -- but magnitudes more impactful.
How are we defining the crisis in governance? First, as a series of problems within our national domains of action: politics; justice; economy; education; civil discourse; information; technology; and culture (values, principles, vision, national purpose, viewpoint). Second, the inter-connectedness, intractability, and acceleration of these problems -- and the subsequent overwhelming of our institutional response mechanisms. Third, the deliberate exacerbation of these problems by the right and the obscuring of reality through lies and propaganda. Fourth, the insufficient understanding of reality -- and therefore obscuring of potential solutions -- on the part of citizens and government officials alike.
What are the macro proximate causes of the governance crisis?
➢ Neoliberalism – an authoritarian governance ideology masquerading as a free market/libertarian economic philosophy;
➢ Hyper-capitalism, another governance ideology pretending to be the natural economic system compliment to Democracy, hyper-capitalism is actually highly antithetical to democratic principles;
➢ The Global Democratic Governance Crisis;
➢ Willful erosion of American Democracy by the Republican Party, Russia, and China;
➢ The emergence and merging of “impunity spaces,” a steadily growing conceptual space ungoverned by principle, effective regulation, accountability mechanisms and/or legal sanctions, artfully fueled by social media manipulation and Republican communications strategy;
➢ The acquiescence of the Democratic Party, the mainstream press, and the vast majority of American citizens.
The effect? Each of these problems amplifies and accelerates the unaddressed structural problems with American governing processes and institutions -- our “governance infrastructure” if you will -- infrastructure that has decayed because we did not feel it worth the investment of our time and attention.
Perhaps this sort of systemic crisis obscured by “bread and circuses” is what always brings down empire. Even so, there is nothing inevitable about our current state. Or future state. History doesn’t have ironclad “laws” like physics. It‘s truly up to us where we go from here. Unfortunately, the window for us to help ourselves is rapidly closing. This is a five-alarm house fire and, for the most part, we’ve responded like we accidentally left the popcorn in the microwave too long.
Why is this the central challenge of our time? The U.S. continues to be the pivotal global player in terms of aggregate influence, ecological impact, economic stability, international order, human rights, and democratic principles. Fixing the American governance crisis enables solutions to regional and global challenges to emerge and/or gain sustainable momentum. Failure to fix it dooms the planet. If the U.S. collapses into itself like the nation state equivalent of a black hole, the world will be hard-pressed to avoid a dystopian outcome and new Dark Ages.
That said, America’s governance crisis is the world’s problem to help solve. For the first time since the American Revolution, America needs massive external help solving a problem of its own making. We’re not very good at this, but the good news is we’ve got some chips to call in. Of course Americans will do the heavy lift of fixing their own Democracy, but the problem with U.S. governance is systemic, dynamically connected to and impacted by the nation state system/global governance, and facing a series of inter-connected vicious cycles in multiple sub-systems and domains that preclude solely U.S.-internal, ‘up by the bootstraps’ solutions.
Left on its own, the U.S. will not, in fact cannot, change rapidly enough from within to solve its governance problem in time to prevent global catastrophe. This challenge is not only a matter of will -- though it is that in spades -- it is a also matter of knowledge and courage and all three must all be summoned, sustained and directed on a global scale. The American governance crisis is what is known as a ‘wicked problem’ in systems science -- wicked meaning unfathomable complexity, not an evil conspiracy.
Here’s the thing: Americans, for the most part, aren’t even aware there is a governance crisis. We are so used to seeing crises as being things that happen in other places that we are blind to the biggest global governance threat since World War II. Sure Trump was bad, sure, Republicans are fine with his attempts to overturn the election, but the worst is surely behind us. America has always overcome its challenges -- the British, the Civil War, both World Wars and the scourge of fascism, the Cold War and the threat of global Communism. Surely we can lick this one too with good old Yankee ingenuity!
The blindness is to some extent willful -- being a byproduct of American Exceptionalism and misplaced confidence -- in turn making us blind or at least indifferent to global warming, the suffering of millions at home and abroad, and incapable of mustering sufficient response. We are so attached to our own national myths that we can’t acknowledge that they only ever constituted a Ponzi scheme of expectations that kept us all on the labor treadmill of hope; while we willingly shipped the fruits of our labor to those who used their social advantages to lock them in and accelerate their returns.
So what? We are no longer the country I grew up in and served -- we are the rapidly decaying shell of a once great nation whose reflexive instincts are being used against us by the domestic right; by the Russians, Chinese and Transnational Criminal Organizations; and tactical coalitions of these when it serves their collective interests. 40% of the American population is ineligible for the ‘Democracy draft’ we require to fight this battle successfully; in fact they are actively waging war against democracy (see following article). If we’re up to the challenge -- not a given at this point -- we’ll be trying to fix our Democracy while simultaneously trying to put down a large, well-funded insurgency.
We’re in for the fight of our lives to survive as a Democracy, much less re-assert global leadership, and yet we’re checking our 401ks on our cell phones and dissecting Trump’s tweets like Kremlinologists used to do with Russian and Chinese Politburo proclamations -- instead of doing something about the slow, sloppy coup Republicans are conducting. And figuring out how to prevent the next one.
___________________________________
How did we get here from the country that fought the War on Poverty, the War in Vietnam, the Cold War -- and put a man on the moon simultaneously? As noted, we are experiencing simultaneous crises in all of our major national subsystems --political, social, justice, economic, environmental, infrastructure, and health – and this has created a perfect systemic storm in the larger system of governance -- causing an accelerating cascade of negative effects -- resulting in a phase transition in our system of government from “struggling” to “managed” Democracy, and now teetering on the brink of transitioning again from there into full-blown authoritarianism.
So then it’s not just about Democrats winning a few elections here and there. The foundations of our governance system are not “stretched,” they are broken. Our institutions are not “holding.” They are pretending to function normally, but are functionally corrupted by long-term neglect and, increasingly, the unrelenting assault from the right.
A big part of the problem is that virtually nobody understands system dynamics. States can reach tipping points, cascades and phase transitions ‘apparently’ (from the viewpoint of individual observers) “all at once,” regardless of how long the trends have been in place. Our mental models, training and experience are incapable of grasping system challenges like the one we’re in; in fact, they actually prevent us from seeing things clearly. Solutions will require that Americans develop a working understanding of system science and dynamics or be doomed to continually making things worse despite their best intentions.
Additionally, although right wing ideology is not marked by intellectual rigor, I thought even Republicans would realize that neoliberalism was killing the goose that laid the golden eggs -- this recognition then ultimately limiting the amount of corruption we would have to endure.
From the other side of the political spectrum, I reasoned that it wouldn’t be much longer before even the dullest of American citizens would realize that the American dream was no longer worth pursuing -- and the world’s best would stop coming here, our universities would complete their conversion to commercial sector research facilities, and the tax base would start shrinking -- leading in turn to an inevitable race to the bottom as infrastructure decayed, industry moved abroad, etc.
Most of us, myself included, saw American Democracy as a pendulum that swings back and forth between liberalism and conservatism but always bounded by logical limits, and always “centered” by the strange attractor of American Exceptionalism, when what has really been going on are races to the bottom in each of our subsystems due to vicious system cycles whose effects are no longer in control of their instigators.
What is to be done? We are long overdue for a coordinated, nationwide response proportionate and appropriate to the actual challenge: continuous impeachment proceedings; multiple Congressional, DOJ, State and Local investigations; civil unrest, labor outages, economic boycotts, transportation system blockades; collaboration between Democrats and progressives with global democratic governments and movements; with clear collective messaging to governance institutions and politicians that such a ratchet that will only get tighter until the people reassert their rightful position in governance.
We need help from global Democracies in the form of: the threat of sanctions on the U.S. economy from Democratic governments; continuous pressure on U.S. elected officials to renew and reform American Democracy; support in the U.S. adoption of best practices in Democracy; demanding U.S. participation in existing and emerging global Democracy advocacy fora; and a reduction in global security, economic support and civil rights burden on the U.S. None of this will be easily achieved, as these actions require the same sea changes in behavior, culture, courage and practices that we require domestically.
In the end, the people must be the ones to fight this fight and declare victory -- not politicians telling us they’ve done enough for us. Doing so requires the people to reclaim the moral high ground, engage decisively, and control the national narrative -- in turn enabling innovative forms of participative and deliberative Democracy to co-exist with, buttress and bound our failing Representative Democracy.
But if They Mean to Have a War, Let it Begin Here
“Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” – Minuteman Captain John Parker, supposedly spoken to his Men just prior to the Battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775.
The quote remains a piece of the historical record because even if it wasn’t actually uttered, it should have been. It was a perfect fit to the historical circumstance.
It is also an unfortunately perfect fit to our current circumstances.
Republicans have been conducting undeclared warfare against Democrats, progressives, non-white male citizens, and American democracy and governance institutions for some time now -- slipping over the border between opposition party and enemy combatant sometime in the first Obama administration. In fact, they’ve been experimenting with some aspects of warfare as a party since the late 1960 -- and we’ve watched and permitted it to unfold just like Germany and France watched Hitler until he forced their hands. And just like we watched the southern states negate the Civil War after Reconstruction. In fact, the historical parallels are uncanny and alarming, but also instructive for those interested in learning and doing better.
While the type of warfare Republicans are conducting is commonly softened by multiple modifiers -- “hybrid warfare,” “fourth generation warfare,” “asymmetric warfare,” “information warfare,” “guerrilla warfare,” “public opinion warfare,” “psychological warfare,” and “legal warfare;” the point of those euphemisms is not to more accurately pinpoint the enemy’s strategy so that it can be effectively countered. The real purpose is to distract from the horrible reality denoted by the word “warfare.”
Both sides want desperately to distract -- Republicans because such distraction is the strategy -- it prevents the opposition from mounting an appropriate and proportional response; Democrats because they need an excuse to continue to dither and appease while they await the cavalry. In “classic warfare” soldiers know when their backs are to the wall or they’re supposed to “die in place.” In hybrid warfare the whole point is to delay this understanding so that your adversary never makes a stand and never fights to the death! This dynamic has created an equilibrium that favors Republicans, and sapped the will of Democrats and progressives.
The horrible reality clouded by rhetoric is that an undeclared and unacknowledged war is still a war, there are still victims and innocent bystanders, there is still collateral damage, and combatant leaders are still forced to choose between doing what it takes to achieve victory or capitulating. The fact the Republicans have chosen warfare over Democratic politics means a lot of things -- not all of which we’ll have the opportunity to unpack here. But what is most relevant is that -- based on our intelligence analysis -- Republicans are highly unlikely to capitulate or change a strategy that is working.
And make no mistake -- their strategy is working. More likely, they will go down in the end -- should Democracy ultimately prevail -- like Hitler and Tojo with their bunkers and kamikazes. The widespread Republican support for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election result should leave us in no doubt on that count.
Republicans have indeed ‘burned their bridges’ -- not because they need to keep their troops from wavering -- but because they fear no repercussions. They have been acting with near total impunity for so long they have developed a confidence similar to that of combatant armies who have known only success and have yet to meet with decisive defeat -- the Germans before Stalingrad and the Japanese prior to Midway, for example. They can emerge from their places of impunity -- the Senate for one -- strike at Democracy like they’ve done with the elections -- then evade and escape back to their safe harbors. The fact that these spaces are conceptual, political and psychological more so than geographic doesn’t make them any less powerful; indeed this is a principle advantage of hybrid warfare strategy.
I deploy martial language in this piece not hyperbolically or provocatively, but deliberately. If you are squirming or recoiling at the language, that is natural. It took me quite some time to acknowledge this aspect of reality. But if you are not at least open to the characterization of our current state as “warfare,” then you are aiding and abetting the right’s attacks on American Democracy. Yes it’s that stark and that important.
Is there proof to the assertions in this article? Some proof points, with term definition followed by example(s):
Hybrid Warfare: “A military strategy which employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyber warfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy, lawfare and foreign electoral intervention”
2016, 2018 and 2020 elections; Russia Collusion; Trump’s Twitter, etc.
Fourth Generation Warfare: “Conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, combatants and civilians”
Trump’s Response to Covid-19 Pandemic
Asymmetric Warfare: “War between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly”
Republican efforts in Gerrymandering, Voter Suppression, Propaganda to counter their demographic disadvantage
Information Warfare : “A concept involving the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent. Information warfare is the manipulation of information trusted by a target without the target's awareness so that the target will make decisions against their interest but in the interest of the one conducting information warfare” Republican Social Media Strategy
Guerrilla Warfare: “A form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility, to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military”
Right Wing Hate Groups intimidating Voters and Democratic Officials; Vehicle Attacks on Liberal Protestors, etc.
Public Opinion Warfare: “Attempts to shape public opinion both domestically and internationally” “China’s Three Warfares in Perspective,” War on the Rocks, January 30, 2018 Republican Interest Groups and Think Tanks
Psychological Warfare: “Any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people"
Trump’s Rallies; Counter-protests, etc.
Legal Warfare: “Strategy to shape the legal environment to ease the acceptance of questionable or problematic forthcoming actions” Mark Hill Federalist Society & other Right Advocacy Groups
____________________________________
Why does it matter what terms we use and how we characterize the environment? Because effective action is generated first and foremost by an accurate picture of reality -- “actionable situational understanding” in military parlance. We won’t begin to stop the losses, much less begin winning, without coming to grips with the awful reality that a major political party and 40% of American citizens hate the other party and the majority of Americans so much they’d rather give up Democracy altogether than co-exist within one -- and that they see this as the central existential choice they are compelled to make and defend. They couldn’t be more wrong, and because of that the situation we face couldn’t be more socially, politically and morally existential -- and yet still we dither.
How do we Win? We don’t have all the answers. Here are some key actions we are sure must take place to give us a fighting chance:
All of Us:
• First, publicly acknowledge reality, and describe it accurately in our communications.
• Second, stop dithering. War necessitates martial actions. Act now, accept risk. The risk of doing nothing is far greater.
• Teach and Influence others – engage your networks from a position of knowledge, courage and determination. Leave the door open for traitors to come back to the fold.
Democratic Party:
• Stand Your Ground and Fight back! Extract a price for all Republican transgressions through well-planned counter-measures and tripwires.
• Jettison ineffective Party Leaders immediately and ruthlessly.
• Cooperate with Progressive Interest Groups.
• Lead by Example – eliminate your own big and dark money, stop insider stock trading, stop petty corruption, and make yourselves worthy of support and leadership.
• Develop a Strategy, dammit!
• Reorganize the Party to match the Strategy.
Progressive Interest Groups:
• Reduce the barriers and costs to joining and participation.
• Cooperate with each other and the Democratic Party.
• Merge Strategically.
Concerned Citizens:
• Put your money where mouth is – boycott all possible Republican-supporting product and service providers, and exhibit positive preferences for progressive-supporting and minority-owned businesses. In the U.S., money talks, and bullshit walks. This is a very neglected lever for change. One real easy call -- get off of Facebook. They’re monetizing your data, using it to support authoritarians, and causing massive societal increases in anxiety and depression. I’ve been “off” the platform for years and haven’t missed a best. Here’s the link to the firms you should boycott: Boycott List
• Establish and/or participate in Community-based mechanisms such as local councils and zoning hearings. These have been turned into rubber-stamp exercises for the lottery winners primarily because Democrats and progressives have ceded the space to them.
• Participate in Participative Government/Deliberative Democracy mechanisms that interest you.
• Get knowledgeable and Teach Your Children – the Founders expected this and therefore built our governance concepts around this expectation. There is a correlation, and likely causation, between citizen education and form of government, and strength of Democracy. Get involved in PTA and school boards; insist on robust and mandatory civics courses and “good citizenship” standards to evaluate them. Read books -- lots of them.
• Vote, and get out the vote, in every election, not just Presidential elections. Republicans have inordinate sway in local and state legislatures because they prioritize participation and voting. In turn, this enables them to gerrymander state Congressional boundaries and generate inordinate power in Congress.
• Run for office – here’s a link to your support group: Candidate Support Group
• Support the right candidates -- do your research and vote the entire ballot.
• Join and support progressive organizations -- there is one or more for every cause.
• Support Collective Labor Efforts. American unions have been problematic historically, acknowledged, but their absence has been infinitely worse. Germany has a great labor-management system; we can modify it to suit.
• Contact your elected representatives regularly with issues of substance.
• If you’ve got Disposable Income, Spend it! Progressive interest groups and Florida Convicted Felons need it.
• Conduct Civil Protest. Historically major societal, form of government and legal changes have been driven through mass protest. That said, if you are not willing to participate, you really don’t care that much.
Allied Democracies:
• Reach out, lend a hand with best practices and expertise.
• Set and enforce your redlines re U.S.
Finally, we need to coordinate amongst all levels of action. A joint action committee consisting of a Democratic Party representative, progressive interest group representatives, concerned citizens, and allied Democracy representatives, must be formed now and act decisively with counter-measures to the Republican strategy. The committee must then develop a joint strategy while fighting.
Establishing consensus on the reality that we are at war – admittedly not one of our own choosing -- should finally put to bed the left’s tendency to fail to act proportionally and appropriately to Republican provocations because of concerns that doing so will only provoke more and worse. “More and worse” are inherent in warfare in general and the Republican strategy in particular -- standing up to a bully is the only thing that ever stops one.
Better Practices in Society and Government
So my wife and I were vacationing in a small town in France a couple years ago and we decided to get dinner a la carte from a small local grocer instead of going out to a restaurant. We were the only people in line when we arrived, but soon thereafter another customer got in line behind us. My limited French, combined with the plethora of food choices and the meticulous care the proprietor took with explaining everything and then packaging it as if we were going to bring it to the Queen of England meant that we held up the other customer for more than fifteen minutes.
I was just certain he was seething with resentment and impatience, as it was quite clear we were daft American tourists holding up his dinner. I was inwardly cringing and dreading interacting with him after our transaction. When I apologized to him after we paid I had the shock of my life. He smiled from ear to ear and, while exchanging glances with the proprietor, told us that this was “the French Way” and he was glad to wait for us to experience it. Can you imagine that happening in the U.S? Nothing remotely like that has happened to me in my 60+ years here. And it’s just one of the dozens of reasons I love Europe and have fallen out of love with the country I served my entire adult life.
What are some of the other reasons I’ve fallen out of love? Well, to start, the U.S. is no longer Number 1 in any positive category that matters -- with the exception of Gross Domestic Product (“a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period” - Wikipedia).
Unfortunately, most of us do not benefit directly from our Number 1 GDP ranking. But the majority of Americans do suffer suboptimal if not deleterious personal and familial outcomes from our relatively low rankings in: Inter-generational Upward Mobility; Income and Wealth Inequality; Tax Inequality; Quality of Life; Happiness; and Citizen Power, Influence and Agency.
We do lead, though, in: abuse of legal and illegal substances; incarceration rates; defense spending, debt, obesity and crime rates.
Because of these things, “American Exceptionalism is rapidly shifting from a positive characterization to negative domestically -- amongst those paying attention -- and towards some combination of pity and schadenfreude amongst our Democratic allies.
It’s long past time to stop explaining this all away as: the inevitable growing pains of Democracy, at 239 years we are the oldest continuous Constitutional Democracy in the world. Or as the temporary and inevitable downsides of our dynamic economy and vibrant polity -- they are neither temporary nor inevitable. Our economy has created primarily McJobs for over 50 years, and our polity is close to open civil conflict. And in fact the “younger” Democracies have to large degree already solved these same problems.
Well, if we wanted to do better, what would doing better look like? Here are the affordable (re the concept of what is affordable: how can anyone argue with a straight face that the country with the highest GDP cannot afford the things Denmark -- with less than 2% of U.S. population -- does, and how stupid do you have to be to buy that argument?), tailorable concepts and policies we can implement without a Constitutional Amendment {with one notable exception} that would, collectively, improve quality of life, improve the domestic and global economies, improve justice and equity, improve the environment:
• Governance
o Parliamentary, multi-party systems – they generate better aggregate citizen outcomes than two-party Federal Systems – that’s the measure that matters.
o Proportional Representation – no other Democracy has an Electoral College, non-representative second legislature like our Senate, or sophisticated and inequitably Gerrymandered districts – much less all three (Unfortunately we can’t “fix” the Senate within the existing Constitution – its distortions were “grandfathered in”).
o Limited Executive Functions and Simple Executive Recall – most Democracies – and all the ones with highest quality of life, have far less powerful executives than the U.S., and they are much easier to recall/boot from office than our President
o Political Money Restrictions – we have by far the most money-driven electoral process of any Democracy, and likely the most corrupt to boot – it’s just that it’s hard to tell what with money being equated with free speech and all
o “Incitement to Hatred” Laws, Sanctions and Enforcement – the U.S does not have an effective constraint on the propagation or incitement to hate, or even prevent the organization of a force with that intent. All other Democracies and most governments overall do. All sorts of evil hide behind free speech in the U.S., including dark money. Free speech is important, but it needs to be bounded by reasonableness. The lack of an effective boundary on free speech is tearing the country apart – why are we more wedded to an abstract principle than its effects?
• People Support Programs
o Education – in the aggregate, European high school graduates are smarter than Americans with Bachelors degrees. They have better critical reasoning skills, and know much more about comparative government and politics than their American counterparts. I know, I’ve worked with hundreds of Europeans and thousands of Americans.
o Vacations – Europeans earn and take more, resulting in higher quality of life and institutional loyalty.
o Maternal and Paternal Leave – Our programs are anemic in comparison.
o Universal Health Care – we are the only Western Democracy without it.
o Free College – Most First World Nations offer it, we prefer to impoverish our students so they have the ennobling experience of pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.
o Economy “Down time” – nobody else has the 24/7/365 commercial cycle we do. German retailers are open substantially fewer hours and yet they have perhaps the most vibrant economy in the world – they certainly have great quality of life.
o Logical Tax Types and Rates – European tax rates are proportional in the aggregate to income and net worth and, contrary to popular belief, do not disincentive aggregate or marginal work rates.
o Public Transportation – you get can anywhere in Europe safely, rapidly and cost-effectively without a car.
o More livable public spaces/Land Use Planning – European towns and cities are a delight what with their pedestrian zones, green spaces, architecture, safety and accessibility. There are vast parts of our country and within many cities I do not feel safe in – and much of it is simply banal at best and ugly at worst.
• People Self Help Efforts
o Engaged Citizens – European Democracies – while challenged as we are with authoritarian impulses and movements, do a much better job of citizen engagement. Participative and Deliberative Democracy practices are now formally enshrined in most, and they “work” in the sense of generating better policy and citizen outcomes, and in being generative. They create virtuous cycles which are tremendously difficult to generate – and almost impossible to do via “top down” methods.
o Smarter Citizens – schools obviously carry the lion’s share of this load, but they are a product of citizen demand and attention. German schools (my daughter attended them) are focused on creating citizens, American schools are high-pressure social environments that warehouse our children and render them into good consumers. With the complexity of the modern world we need smarter citizens but we are not headed in that direction.
• Miscellaneous Socio-Political Issues
o Technology Oversight/Data Protection – through engaged citizens and governments, EU countries have begun to bring technology companies under control with such laws as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – with plenty more ready to come off the legislative assembly line. We can’t even get Zuckerberg to tell the truth under oath or to limit hate speech on his platform, much less get any meaningful technology related legislation passed.
o Trade Unions – Germany has a tremendously effective partnership program between Corporate Management, Government and Trade Unions. If we adopted it wholesale we’d have better companies, a stronger economy, more highly paid workers, and enhanced quality of life.
o Crime and Incarceration Rates – Ours worst in world, by far. Why? The combination of historical factors (path dependence), massive societal inequalities (Social, Economic, Legal, Tax), and out of control capitalism (prisons and criminal justice are big money enterprises whose stakeholders want them to grow same as any other business enterprise).
o Generational Continuity – Europeans connect viscerally to their pasts and future. Their policies build on previous work and sacrifice in a generative manner, and look towards a better future for all vice just for some.
o All for One and One for All Thinking – Europeans don’t mind paying taxes because every taxpayer also taps into universal support systems, accessible infrastructure, and public goods; whereas in the U.S. there is much less transparent connection between “taxes in” and “benefits out.”
But it’s not first even about socio-political practice and policy -- that’s looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. It’s the values, vision and purpose piece that we’re getting wrong. It’s about establishing quality of life as the organizing principle and “measure of measures,” not the economy and GDP. It’s about a collective and abundant vision for the future in which everyone does better relative to a quality of life index, not better than each other within a domestic status hierarchy. It’s about striving mightily to get to the right balance of rights, responsibility and respect -- from the perspective of citizens. The shift to such an outlook and approach is the long pole in the tent in the effort save and improve American Democracy and life. Towards that end, if we can’t get sufficient citizen engagement using participative and deliberative Democracy mechanisms -- we’ll get sucked back into the vortex of the way things are. And if we don’t change the way things are we’re going down like Greece and Rome, and generate a tsunami that brings on another Dark Age as a side effect of our collapse.
Look, I lived in Germany for six years, and have visited most of Western Europe. The bottom line is those places are just flat fucking better places to live than the States. Anecdotal data set of one, I know, but the Quality of Life and Happiness Indices agree with me. I served my country in the Army and Department of Homeland Security and voted Republican for 32 years – I’m not some snowflake or latte-sipping liberal. And I’m here to tell you that things are better elsewhere and can be better here. I’m sick and tired of hearing from the Republicans that: this is as good as it gets and we should be grateful; that we’re better than everyone else so we should be proud of that; and that some of us are more equal than others and that we should just accept that. Those are the most un-American things I can imagine being pedaled to us as quintessentially American. The widespread acceptance of these assertions is the real measure of how far we’ve fallen in just my lifetime.