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      in World Politics

      Can Mike Pompeo Swagger His Way Into 2024 Election?

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      The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has been a feature of Fair Observer for more than three years. Consistent with Fair Observer’s policy of crowd-sourced journalism, we have in the past expressed the hope that some new contributors, inspired by our example, may be incited to propose an article that follows the same format. We maintain an open invitation to anyone motivated by the potential ambiguity of language presented in the media. 

      Every entry in the Daily Devil’s Dictionary aims to provide enough circumstantial, cultural and historical context to deepen our perception of the meaning behind the words and phrases glossed. Typically, we cite well-known public figures but also journalists and various media personalities. 

      Texas: The End of Authentic America?

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      Today’s possibly involuntary contributor, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has made several appearances in these columns (for example, here, here, here and here.) Today, however, it is the first time Pompeo is the one who offers an original definition of a word he himself appears to enjoy using. He offered this astonishing definition in a tweet with the hashtag #swagger.

      In today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition, we quote Secretary Pompeo verbatim:

      Swagger:

      To represent America with pride, humility, and professionalism. We’ve done it.

      Contextual Note

      Alas, Mike Pompeo may have missed the point made by Ambrose Bierce or even of his predecessor, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the very serious dictionary of the English language. Johnson sought to account for the full breadth of the English language in a fundamentally scientific approach to his sources. He nevertheless understood that some definitions and redefinitions require a touch of irony to reveal the true secrets of their significance. For example, Dr. Johnson gave the definition of “luncheon” — a relatively new concept at the very moment of history that saw the culinary innovation of the Earl of Sandwich — as “as much food as one’s hand can hold.”

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      More closely related to Pompeo’s profession, Johnson defined the word “politician” as initially “one versed in the arts of government.” He nevertheless felt impelled to add a second meaning: “a man of artifice; one of deep contrivance.” As the former director of the CIA, Pompeo knew something about the art of contrivance. In 2019, he explained the kind of radical contrivance he was skilled at when he confessed, to resounding applause, that, as CIA director, he “cheated, lied and stole.” 

      The problem, in contrast to Johnson and Bierce, is that Pompeo seems immune to irony. His definition of “swagger” reveals what appears to be a total absence of irony in his thought processes. He even fails to acknowledge the implicit irony that becomes evident as soon as an official definition of swagger is evoked, like the one offered by Merriam Webster’s of the verb form: “to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner, especially: to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence.”

      Pompeo equates the dictionary’s “superciliously pompous manner” and “overbearing self-confidence” with “humility and professionalism.” This kind of inversion of meaning provides the key to understanding what many powerful politicians believe about their own actions: that their obsequious service to power is a manifestation of personal humility. They fail to notice that what they are doing is executing policies designed to express an attitude of supercilious arrogance.

      But it gets worse. Merriam Webster offers a second definition of the verb “swagger.” It proposes three synonyms, “boast,” “brag” and “bully,” accompanied by the following definition: “to force by argument or threat.” In this definition, the reader will recognize Pompeo’s penchant for imposing sanctions and threatening military force against any nation that doesn’t sycophantically fall into line with US policy.

      Pompeo adds to his curiously antinomic definition a note of self-congratulation, something no author of a dictionary would ever do: “We’ve done it.” By calling attention to his own accomplishments, he inadvertently justifies the original meaning of the word as he expresses his “overbearing self-confidence,” to say nothing of his Trumpian vanity and narcissism.

      Historical Note

      Many see Secretary Pompeo as a future Republican presidential candidate. There are indications that he currently processes what he sees as the historical lesson delivered by his guru, Donald Trump, following his surprising electoral success in 2016. Total self-confidence, bluster, lies and narcissism can deliver victory. Even when losing to Joe Biden in November, Trump attracted some 74 million votes.

      If Pompeo can avoid the irritating tics that motivated television’s late-night comedians to create a wave of intense personal hatred for Trump that in turn motivated their audiences to vote not so much for Joe Biden as against the incumbent, Pompeo may feel he has a reasonable hope of emerging as the kind of more palatable swaggering strongman that a lot of American voters appear to appreciate. He could assume that he will attract not only the 74 million who voted for Trump but many others across the spectrum who are increasingly fed up with the kind of traditional DC elites Joe Biden and Kamala Harris exemplify. The Democrats need to be careful to avoid a repeat of 2016. But, if history is any guide, they won’t be.

      Pompeo has another advantage. Unlike the president, he is an authentic evangelical, a true God-fearer and churchgoer, unlike the obviously immoral Trump. Pompeo believes in his own divinely appointed destiny. Moreover, he appears to be interested, in a way Trump never was, in language itself, the key to winning elections and exercising power. His recent activity as a lexicographical revisionist may indicate that he is preparing to create his own updated version of George Orwell’s Newspeak. “Swagger” is simply the first item in his new dictionary.

      Embed from Getty Images

      After the four-year Trump fiasco Republicans are left wondering how to recast themselves. One big challenge will be to find a way to deal with Trump. Some of them might be tempted to rally around Pompeo just to keep Trump at bay. After four predictably calamitous years of a Biden-Harris administration, Pompeo may see himself as bursting onto the scene to save America with the promise of turning the US into the “Nation of Swagger.” He has already semi-officially renamed his State Department the “Department of Swagger.” 

      Still, it’s too early to discount Biden, who has shown signs of wanting to do something similar. Almost all of his speeches conclude with this stale refrain: “This is the United States of America. And there has never been anything we haven’t been able to do when we’ve done it together.” This may not be swaggering per se, but it communicates the intent to swagger. Especially when he follows it up with sentiments such as, “now … we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.” Biden simply lacks Trump’s and Pompeo’s brand of swagger to make his bullying sound credible.

      The word “swagger” has been in the English language at least since Shakespeare, who used it in multiple contexts. Feste, the clown, closes the play “Twelfth Night” by lamenting the sorrows of his life In his song, “The Wind and the Rain.” It includes this stanza:

      But when I came, alas! to wive,

                  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

      By swaggering could I never thrive,

                  For the rain it raineth every day.

      It isn’t clear whether Feste regrets having married the woman who became his wife or whether he simply expresses his disappointment at learning that married life forced him to rein in his swaggering. In both cases, he appears to accept, unlike Pompeo, that swaggering is a less than respectable form of behavior.

      No one is positioned to tame Mike Pompeo’s swagger. His wife certainly hasn’t sought to play that role. She has even been accused of having her own taste for swaggering concerning lavish State Department parties she organized and personal travel. She eventually beat the rap, though it was established that she had clearly bent official rules. Pompeo understands that in the world of political hyperreality, swagger is a key to being elected to the most powerful office in the world and occupying the limelight. He now has three years ahead of him to hone his skills at swaggering before the next round of Republican primaries begins in 2023.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Texas: The End of Authentic America?

      by

      At Fox News, Tucker Carlson has found a new reason to sound the alarm in the war waged by liberals against the sacred traditional values of the United States. Having noticed the trend of Californian capitalists, including Elon Musk, who have begun transferring their allegiance from glitzy California to the land of gun-toting cowboys, Carlson fears the effect of a cultural takeover. The invasion by faithless, narcissistic West Coasters risks undermining and compromising the noble pioneering traditions that Texas has so faithfully preserved.

      Although originally a native of California, Carlson understands the symbolic role Texas has always played in defining America’s rugged individualism and the spirit of frontier justice that defines America. Texas alone has remained pure. Now he fears that purity may be threatened by contamination far worse than any coronavirus.

      In an interview with Greg Abbott, Carlson put on his most deeply concerned face with an appropriately knitted brow as he aggressively challenged the Texas governor to react to the threat. He appeared to accuse Abbott of underestimating the risk and failing to defend his state from the impious assault, surely the equivalent of Santa Anna’s soldiers attacking the Alamo.

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      Abbott showed the fortitude worthy of Davy Crockett as he defended the integrity and the seductive power of his state’s culture. Responding boldly to Carlson’s attack, he explained that it’s precisely because the Californians understand the superiority of Texan culture that they are making the move. He framed it in quasi-religious terms, as if it were a form of born-again conversion: “They believe in God, they believe in guns and they are so excited about coming to the state of Texas and getting a gun they couldn’t have in California. It’s the people who want to re-engage with the faith, people who want to have guns, the people who believe in fossil fuel and they’re trying to get away from the hostile positions of California against all of those issues.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Believe in (an object):

      Consider a particular object to be worthy not just of consideration or admiration, but of reverential respect and even worship, by attributing to it a status similar to that of a divine object or even a savior.

      Contextual Note

      Belief has always trumped knowledge in US culture. For example, rather than considering the reality of the use of lethal weapons in modern society, the media often cites the idea that someone believes in Second Amendment rights. Even NPR can introduce a feature on the NRA with this reflection: “So if you’re a gun owner that believes in second amendment rights, does the NRA represent your interests?” Articles about politicians or even law enforcement officials who militate for laws to control or outlaw military-grade weapons often contain the disclaimer that he or she believes in Second Amendment rights.

      The laws of most nations exist to define as explicitly as possible licit and illicit behaviors. They avoid building expectations about what people should believe. But one aspect of American exceptionalism appears to be the elevation of the status of the Constitution to the equivalent of holy scripture, something that requires not just acceptance by citizens as a legal framework but an act of faith. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      To some extent, the idea of believing in the articles of the Bill of Rights makes some sense. The first 10 amendments to the US Constitution assert abstract principles that are largely formulated negatively rather than as universally applicable affirmations of freedom. They express the limitations on what the federal government is empowered to do in relation to the governments of the states, seen as autonomous legal structures. As such, the Bill of Rights contains abstract terms like “right” and “freedom,” and the language is peppered with a series of “shall nots.”

      These restrictions leave open the idea of how the states may choose to constrict those rights and freedoms within their borders. This ambiguity encourages people to “believe” rather than affirmatively “know” that some behavior they value is foreseen or guaranteed by the Constitution. For example, the debate about what people call “gun rights,” which encourages people to believe that guns themselves have rights, turns around a real question of belief rather than knowledge. It requires an act of faith in the rather absurd idea that a metaphysical principle exists requiring government at all levels (federal, state, municipal) to refrain from regulating the ownership of lethal weapons. It turns guns into sacred objects.

      What Governor Abbott is saying demonstrates that the idea that belief should always trump knowledge. He says Californians migrate to Texas essentially for religious reasons because they believe in God, guns and oil. In more realistic terms, what he appears to mean is that such people see God, guns and oil as essentially good and beyond criticism. In the case of God, that poses few problems because acts attributable to God appear to be intangible and will never be adjudicated in a courtroom. But guns and oil have a very real impact on the human and physical environment.

      The gist of Abbott’s meaning is that human society must do nothing to oppose the exploitation of these objects or criticize their effect on the environment. Guns serve to protect property, and oil serves to produce income and jobs. That defines goodness, and Texas is all about goodness.

      In such a context, it is worth listening to the commentary of a prominent conservative Texan pundit, Saagar Enjeti, about the question that so troubles Tucker Carlson: “Let’s all be honest here about what’s waiting down there in the land of Texas. It ain’t just more space, it’s the lack of income tax.” Enjeti calls it “tax arbitrage” and points out that “the entire state government is designed for outcomes like this.” He describes the ethos of Texas as being based on the idea of the government doing “as little as possible.” Californians move to Texas not because they love guns and oil, but to keep their money for themselves.

      Carlson finally seems appeased when Abbott tells him that all will be well because while the Californians moving to Texas are gun-lovers, at the same time, Texan liberals are moving to California because of their love for government regulation. But to underscore his original point, Carlson concludes by invoking the fate of the nation itself: “If Texas goes, then we’re done.” It will be the end of authentic America.

      Historical Note

      In 1836, American colonists conducted a war to secure the territory Mexico was incapable of defending, opening its vast expanses of cotton land and prairies to slave-holding American settlers. This was necessary because the Mexican government had outlawed slavery, upsetting the plans of pioneering Americans intent on conquering the West. 

      Free of Mexican domination, the victors of the 1836 war created a political entity they called the Republic of Texas, even though the territory was still legally attached to Mexico. In 1845, the United States government unilaterally proposed to annex Texas as a state. The Texans agreed. This immediately provoked a war with Mexico, in which the US eventually prevailed, permitting, in 1848, not just the annexation of Texas but also of the territories to the west, including California.

      Thanks to a messy war that both former President John Quincy Adams and future President Abraham Lincoln opposed, calling it “unjust,” the culture of the Lone Star Republic was thus preserved. Twelve years later, Texas joined the Confederacy in seceding from the union during the Civil War. Had Adams and Lincoln had their way against President Polk, Texas might have remained an independent republic or even been returned to Mexican jurisdiction. But given the pressure of Manifest Destiny requiring the enterprising Americans to colonize a continent, history moved in a different direction.

      As the largest state of the union, with its memory of having been an independent republic between 1836 and 1845, Texas has always held a special status in US culture. It is the state that has most affirmatively preserved the mythology of the American cowboy. That explains why Tucker Carlson believes it is so crucial for Texas to preserve a culture that began with a belief in slavery and continued with faith in guns and oil.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      When Bad Customers Love Your Brand

      by

      A curious situation concerning Donald Trump’s beloved Proud Boys highlights several novel trends in US culture. A clothing supplier has expressed its consternation because of the public behavior by some of its paying customers. The story demonstrates how the quintessentially American science of branding has reached a new level of sophistication.

      In an article with the title, “LGBT-owned kilt maker denounces kilt-clad Proud Boys,” the BBC reports the disgust of a Virginia kilt company with the fact “that their yellow kilts were worn by the far-right Proud Boys.” Most people would be surprised to learn that there are companies producing kilts in Virginia, but globalization and identity politics have produced all kinds of fascinating examples of what some might indignantly call cultural appropriation. So far, the Scots have not reacted to this incident, possibly because the American idea of cultural appropriation hasn’t yet penetrated their psyches.

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      Allister Greenbrier, the owner of Verillas, proudly claims that his kilt company is “LGBTQ owned.” It has obviously become important to establish the sexual preferences of the owners of American enterprises. Greenbrier doesn’t require that his customers be LGBTQ, but he objects to the idea that paying customers might wear items from his collection in public while displaying views contrary to the values of his brand. 

      The BBC article explains an important feature of contemporary US culture that may not be evident to anyone not immersed in the culture, including the BBC’s British audience: “Extremist groups in the US often adopt or appropriate items of clothing as quasi-uniforms that indicate their allegiance and make them recognisable to others.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Quasi-uniforms:

      Articles of clothing that, when worn by more than one person at a public event, identify the wearers as belonging to a particular cultural or ideological grouping, thereby creating the impression that the article has become the group’s, and not the manufacturer’s, brand.

      Contextual Note

      For ages, the proverb existed in the English language that clothes don’t make the man. Apart from the fact that if anyone were to cite the proverb today, they would be obliged to make it gender-neutral, the idea behind the proverb appears to have disappeared and been replaced by its opposite. Today, clothes identify. If, in former times, the choice of apparel demonstrated class origins, in our evolved post-sexist society, a person wears the clothes (and body art) that advertise that individual’s social identity.

      The owner of Verillas complained when he realized the Proud Boys were all wearing exactly the same kilts. The fact that it was the same kilt made it a quasi-uniform: “I was appalled, angry and frustrated because they are the opposite of everything our brand stands for.” Had each Proud Boy been wearing a different style kilt, Greenbrier probably would have thought more highly of them, respecting each individual as someone who displayed his personal “values.” It became an existential problem for Greenbrier when the entire group wore the same kilt. In the age of conspiracy theories, people might suspect collusion.

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      The reigning ideology is built on a basic premise of the consumer society, that what an individual does is meant to be an expression of personality and individuality. What a group does expresses allegiance to a worldview. 

      The borderline between a personal statement and wearing a uniform has become so vague that we can now categorize clothes as belonging to one of three categories: personal style, uniform (imposed by an institution) or quasi-uniform (adopted by members with shared identity). Clothing has always sent messages about social status, but now it has become an active vector of meaning in personal strategies of advertising. Behind the idea of quasi-uniform lies the conviction that all people belong to separate and possibly multiple categories of identity, which they are required to display in public. Whether it’s a kilt, a medieval tunic or tattoos, people increasingly feel impelled to wear their brands.

      Like everything else in US culture, at some point, this cultural distinction becomes not just a political or ideological problem, but also an economic one. Greenbrier explains: “I can’t control who buys my product, but if they’re buying our product, they’re putting their money towards a good cause and I think they won’t be too happy when they find out they accidentally bought from a company that’s really fighting for the opposite of what they believe in.” Spending and the way one spends have become central to defining one’s relationships with others.

      Historical Note

      When, at the beginning of the 16th century, Renaissance princes and their courtiers rivaled amongst themselves to put on display their most expensive and sophisticated finery, England’s Lord Chancellor and humanist philosopher Thomas More offered his critique of the role of fashion in his famous work, “Utopia”: “Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes without any other distinction except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters, and as it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it is suited to the climate, and calculated both for their summers and winters. Every family makes their own clothes.”

      More’s idea of dressing, not to impress, but to carry on one’s life as pragmatically as possible, was actually a sophisticated attempt to reconcile simplicity and the rejection of ostentation with freedom of personal expression. The latter would be the consequence of every family making its own clothes. Clothing would be neither a tool of self-advertising, as it was at the English court, nor a standardized uniform imposed by authority.

      For the following five centuries, the ruling classes and the commercial classes that emerged subsequently in Europe blissfully ignored More’s advice. French King Louis XIV’s court pushed extravagance to an unparalleled extreme, partly as a strategic move to ensure that other aristocrats would follow rather than try to lead, but also to put pressure on their budgets, forcing them to invest in fashion rather than military capacity that might serve to overthrow royal authority. The uprising of La Fronde had made Louis fearful of revolt.

      The bourgeois society that emerged in Europe in the 19th century discovered the value of permanently evolving fashions that stimulated demand over time from the same customers. Fashions themselves, combined with the new capacity for mass industrial production, induced entire populations to adopt conformist behaviors serving to affirm one’s status as a respectable consumer as well as advertise the emerging cultural notion of “being with it” or keeping up with the trends.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In America’s highly conformist consumer culture of the 1950s, the Beatniks initiated the counter-cultural movement and touted the theme of anti-conformism. But when most male beatniks grew long hair and beards, they were sometimes accused of being conformist themselves. With the hippies a decade later, the idea of personal expression based on chosen cultural signs — borrowed from cowboys, Native Americans, Asian religions and other exotic sources — came to dominate people’s ideas about the purpose of clothing as an expression of cultural values and identity.

      The controversy about the kilts demonstrates how deeply ingrained all these contradictory instincts have become. Verillas appears willing to sacrifice revenue to defend the integrity of the brand’s association with one set of social values. That paradoxically appears to contradict the spirit of capitalism, where companies offer the same goods to all comers as they seek to exploit the full potential of the marketplace. But perhaps another principle is at work here, the factor of earned media. A story that can both make the news and serve to define a company’s social or moral identity is far more valuable than paid advertising.

      The Verillas story includes an emotionally charged dramatic component: betrayal by one’s customers. But Verillas’ marketers undoubtedly realize that it serves very effectively to stir curiosity for its products from its targeted market segment. The company designed its image to appeal to proponents of the current vogue of identity culture associated with the left. Using an incident that highlights their opposition to a notorious right-wing movement is well worth sacrificing the income from the sale to bolster their brand identity. That kind of reasoning has become a quasi-uniform bit of marketing wisdom.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Why Education Is Democracy’s Best Bet

      by

      Joyce Appleby, a renowned historian of the Founding Fathers and Republican ideology, wrote in her 2001 book “Inheriting the Revolution” that the first generation of Americans (1790-1830) believed a good education was a requirement for every responsible citizen. The majority of men, and notably a wide cross-section of women, in the early days of the republic viewed education as a “critical bridge to responsible citizenship,” according to Appleby. They admired the intellect of our Founding Fathers and felt a patriotic duty to elevate their knowledge so they could better understand the leaders and politics of the day, and thus become better citizens.

      In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville captured his enthusiasm for America and its enlightened citizens in his famous book, “Democracy in America,” proclaiming that in the future, “all the world will be America.” How times have changed.

      Soul-Searching for America’s Broken Ethics

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      Following Boris Yeltsin appointment of Vladimir Putin as his successor to the Russian presidency in 1999, after the death of China’s Deng Xiaoping in 1997 and, finally, at the end of the Arab Spring in 2012, the world has seen a reversal of democratic government and the rise of authoritarianism. More than a few Americans would say that had President Donald Trump been reelected to a second term, it is likely that many of our institutions and norms built to protect democracy would have suffered a similar fate. Many were already under assault in his first term, like the politicized Department of Justice.

      For the first time in our history, we are witnessing something other than a peaceful, orderly transition of presidential power that was enshrined in our American memory beginning with Washington’s “Farewell Address” in 1796. We have never seen anything like Trump’s assault on the facts, the electoral process and the sacred nature of a free and fair vote for all Americans. How in the world can more than half of Republicans believe the election was rigged?

      Disinformation and Lies

      The answer — a campaign of relentless disinformation and lies, spread by social media and irresponsible cable TV and talk radio journalists, believed to be true by a large swath of the population, who apparently received little or no instruction in civics and US history. If this debacle teaches us anything it is that civics and history deserve a much bigger role in our primary and secondary education curricula, even at the expense of a reduced STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) curricula that has been over-emphasized for too long.

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      Look at the voting process. Several recent surveys of Republican voters indicate that anywhere from 50% to 80% of them believe the 2020 presidential election was not free and fair. This despite the fact that Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency and a former Microsoft cybersecurity expert, stated that the recent election was “the most secure in US history.” Every state and every Republican and Democratic governor has certified their results with only negligible, immaterial changes in vote counts. 

      Yet we are witnessing a horrific display of threats against state officials — of both parties — who have certified the election results by those who do not trust the voting process. Why? Because they do not understand the voting process and how it is protected. Many do not understand the Electoral College either. This unacceptable in America. We are looking a lot more like a banana republic than the beacon of democracy to the rest of the world. Clearly America’s reputation has suffered terribly around the globe. 

      The vitriol and emotion, amplified and reinforced on cable TV and social media, builds continuously until it drowns out rational thought. These conditions — extreme ideologies, absence of compromise and bipartisanship and the threat of domestic terrorism created as a result — are a major threat to our republic. Left unchecked, the situation will worsen and could destroy us if we don’t act immediately. Let’s hope and pray that nobody gets hurt as a result of these mindless protests dangerously getting close to becoming violent.

      There are some short-term political and economic solutions to mitigate our divisions. Not the focus of this essay, but initiatives like publicly-financed campaigns to take “dark money” out of politics will go a long way to bringing the parties together. Economic policies to rebuild the middle class and reverse the growth of inequality will foster a shared prosperity to reduce fear and anxiety amongst a large portion of our population. 

      However, these political and economic solutions will not take hold unless we begin to restore the health of our underlying culture and start to remember who we were as Americans, and who we need to be going forward. It starts and ends with an informed electorate. In times of crisis, we look to history — and those who made it into history books for all the right reasons — to instruct us in a time of need.

      A Time of Need

      The 19th-century thinker Horace Mann often called the founding father of public education in America called out the importance of an educated public to the health of a democratic government: “A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.” Even before Mann, Thomas Jefferson offered similar wisdom: “Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other, [but if the new nation could] enlighten the people generally … tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of the day.”

      Regarding the importance of a strong civics curriculum in our schools, we have George Washington stating, on the one bookend of US history: “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Echoing similar opinions some 244 years later as the world’s longest-enduring democratic, self-governing republic, is Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “But in the ensuing years [following the ratification of the Constitution], we have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”

      This is quite a commentary on the importance of education generally, and civics specifically, to the health and continued survival of “American exceptionalism.” Beyond the voting process and the Electoral College, how well does the public understand how government is structured, how it works? The Annenberg Public Policy Center reported the results of a broad survey of Americans and found that only one in four Americans could name all three branches of the federal government. This an astounding discovery. The same survey found that fewer than 15% of the same cohort could name more than one First Amendment right, with only 37% of respondents able to name a single First Amendment right — their response, by and large, was freedom of speech.

      How beneficial would it be to society if everyone knew that our federal government does not sanction any religion, nor prevent anyone from practicing their own beliefs, or not? Freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government round out all the First Amendment rights.

      How are we doing in terms of education outcomes in this age of information overload, hyper-partisanship and emotion crowding out reason and thoughtful reflection? Not so great. According to DoSomething.org — a youth nonprofit whose corporate sponsors include 3M, Ford Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Google and General Motors among many others — in 1985, the quantity and quality of high school graduates in the US as a group was ranked number one in the world. But by 2015, our high school population was ranked 36 in the world. 

      Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School has been conducting expansive and thorough surveys since 2011 of more than 2,000 senior-level business leaders, across a wide spectrum of industries in the US, regarding the competitiveness of the US economy. The conclusions of the study team strongly align with the findings of DoSomething.org noted above. Porter has concluded that shared prosperity is a key component of an economy’s competitiveness and that the US economy is failing to deliver shared prosperity to an ever-shrinking middle class.

      More importantly, Porter has tied this economic failure to political and cultural failures. To find solutions to our political failures — climate change, inequality, health care and immigration — we must focus on revising election and campaign financing laws. To find answers to our cultural failures — systemic racism, increased polarization, domestic terrorism and crime — we must improve outcomes in K-12 public education as the most critical solution.

      Restoring Trust

      There is nothing more important to the long-term survival of our democracy than a large investment in education as well as in our defense and military capability. Turns out, that as a nation, we invest about the same amount annually in each, which is surprising to most people. The 2020 defense budget is projected to be about $750 billion, and total spending on public education — elementary plus secondary — in 2015 across the country, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, was $706 billion. The problem is that education is funded and administered locally and, as a result, there is a wide variation in the quality of its delivery as the DoSomething.org and the Harvard studies both demonstrate.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The current noise and disinformation around election fraud — a president asking state legislators to overturn a popular vote in choosing electors to the Electoral College and how presidents can lose the popular vote of the nation and still be elected — threaten our democracy. How? In short, even more people begin to lose trust in our government to be fair, and “for the People.” Trust in Congress is already at an historical low point according to Pew Research.

      How do we restore this trust? A strong civics education is a good start. Why is this so important? Here’s the deal: The 2016 presidential election came down to fewer than 80,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Even though Trump lost the popular vote among over 125 million total voters, his narrow wins in these three battleground states gave him an Electoral College majority of 306 over Hillary Clinton’s 232.

      This means that just 0.06% of all the voters in America determined the outcome of the 2016 election. In the 2000 presidential election, it came down to 537 votes in Florida. It is frightening to consider that so few voters could make such a difference, and how easily it might be to corrupt such a small number of voters. If that doesn’t argue for a strong civics curriculum in our schools, what does?

      Education is the single most important component of the common good for maintaining the long-term health of our democracy. Why? Because we will not meaningfully transform our political and economic models until we begin to transform our culture. And you do not transform culture by screaming at people. You transform culture by educating people and celebrating rational discourse among all citizens.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Learning to Become the World’s Second-Richest Man

      by

      After officially eclipsing Bill Gates to reach the rank of the second-richest person on the planet, Elon Musk clearly deserved a lengthy video interview with the Wall Street Journal. It could probe into how Musk managed to become the world’s wealthiest and most admired innovator. The Journal couldn’t saddle any random hack with that formidable task, and so its editor-in-chief, Matt Murray, rose to the occasion. The interview lasted nearly half an hour and can be viewed on YouTube.

      Most people consider Musk a genius, although here at the Daily Devil’s Dictionary we have regularly referred to him as an accomplished hyperreal performer who captures (because he is captured by) the spirit of the age. Call it the Taoist principle of reversion, being and non-being. The causal relationship between cultural icons like Musk and their environment is reversible and self-perpetuating. Pushing the metaphor, Musk’s hyperreality exists in a quantum state where the reassuring idea of stable identity disappears. Musk creates today’s culture because today’s culture has created Musk. Culture innovates; innovators hitch a ride.

      Who Rigs the Ship of State?

      READ MORE

      Interviews with Musk are generally painful to watch. This one is no exception. It reveals that there is nothing stable in Elon Musk’s thought processes and very little that is original. He is certainly deeply knowledgeable, with a well-focused technical vision of his companies and their products. But his attempts at “profound thought” are difficult to differentiate from the clichés promulgated by the ambient hyperreal culture, with its deep faith in anything, however superficial, that resembles technical progress and its belief that redesign and duplication on a massive scale equal innovation.

      Musk’s deepest wisdom includes things like his advice that “we don’t want to be complacent.” He brilliantly warns of the danger posed by “the gradual creep of regulations and bureaucracy.” He believes we must fear “regulatory capture by companies.” He sees a need to “have good feedback loops for the customer” and to “make the product better.” Clearly, these are the thoughts of an original thinker.

      Then Musk also offers this pearl of innovative insight, possibly borrowed from Ronald Reagan: “The best thing government can do is just get out of the way.” Murray might have seen this as an opening to plunge into the history of Musk’s lucrative relationship with the government. But he was apparently interested in deeper things.

      Just as everyone craves access to Warren Buffett’s secret formula for investing, Murray wants to know whether other people can be as brilliantly innovative as Musk. “Is it easily learnable?” he asks. Reporting on the interview, the website Inc. chose to focus on this theme: “During a candid and freewheeling interview with Wall Street Journal editor in chief Matt Murray this week, Musk argued that creating innovative products is ‘absolutely learnable.’”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Learnable:

      The actions of very rich people that poor people should be encouraged to imitate.

      Contextual Note

      Murray believes that if there were more people like Elon Musk, the world would be a better place. Concerned with the future of humanity, he hopes that Musk can teach others, or at least serve as a model so that we can all eventually become the second-richest person in the world. Musk was initially taken aback by Murray’s question. He began his response by saying, “I think it is learnable” before convincing himself that the right thing to say was “I think that’s absolutely learnable.” The website Inc. helpfully repeated for its readers Musk’s three original recipes for learning. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The first is: “Try hard.” Success is not for the lazy. The second is “Seek negative feedback” and then ask yourself this surprising question, “How can we make this better?” But even that requires its mystical corollary: you must “love your product.” The third is essentially negative: stay away from meetings, presentations and spreadsheets. Spend time on the factory floor. To prove his point, Musk mobilizes the metaphor of a general who leaves his “ivory tower” to fight with the troops on the front line. Inspiring! 

      Murray did at one point raise the more down-to-earth question of Musk’s relationship with government, an issue with financial implications WSJ’s readers tend to be interested in. But once Musk established the overriding principle that government should simply “get out of the way,” Murray saw no reason to follow it up. Luckily, other journalists have tried harder. Six years ago, New York Mag’s Intelligencer provided the details of Musk’s Amazon-style bullying and classic techniques of corruption.

      The piece summed up his dealings with the authorities in this succinct phrase: “This negotiation is straight out of the special-interest playbook.” It explained that in 2014 “SpaceX hired lobbyists and flew a key lawmaker to its offices. Musk gave about $12,000 in campaign contributions … During the meeting … Musk described his dream to take people to Mars. … He also said Texas needed to compete with other states.” 

      In other words, the government’s role is to pony up the cash Musk needs before it gets out of his way. Taxpayers pay for the right to trust Musk’s unimpeded judgment to do the right things (i.e., whatever he wants) with the cash they have offered him. Among those right things is, of course, the odd campaign contribution, just to keep things running smoothly.

      In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that “Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space. And he’s built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.” At the time, they set the figure at $4.9 billion. One analyst explained that “He definitely goes where there is government money. That’s a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day.” That day has yet to come. Musk is now the one who has the power to decide when to cut the government off.

      At one point, Murray did ask Musk an embarrassing question: “What mistakes have you made?” Musk humbly admits he has made so many mistakes he wouldn’t have enough time to list them all. But he conveniently dodges the question by vaunting his involvement “on the factory floor.” He claims that “the morale is good” at Tesla, which is his Trump-like way of denying that he has ever made a serious mistake.

      Historical Note

      Musk’s employees have had the occasion to offer plenty of negative feedback, none of which he seems to have taken on board. Why should he? The government has not only backed him but is SpaceX’s main customer. The company “signed $5.5 billion worth of government contracts with NASA and the United States Air Force.” Just last week it was announced that “The FCC is giving SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, $886 million” as part of its program to bring broadband to rural America.

      Employees have regularly complained of Musk’s style of micro-management and his alacrity for making promises but failing to keep them. In September 2019, a court ruled that “the Tesla CEO and other company executives [had] been illegally sabotaging employee efforts to form a union.” Bloomberg reported last year that, after a leaker revealed a serious problem of mismanagement at the Gigafactory, “Musk set out to destroy him” — like a Mafia boss. On the other hand, the success of Musk’s companies, the pay and the challenge of the firm’s ambition has kept most of his employees reasonably happy.

      Nevertheless, Tesla has a few seriously worrying skeletons in its closet. Another whistleblower made some damning charges when he reported Tesla not only for “covering up and spying on its employees back in 2018” but for organizing a “drug cartel operation inside the Gigafactory.” These affairs have still not been adjudicated in the courts. Most likely, they will never be permitted to become public scandals. It is equally unlikely that Musk sees them as “learnable” moments.

      A year ago, Musk was officially worth about $20 billion. Two weeks ago, he became the world’s second-richest person, with a fortune estimated at $128 billion. He definitely works hard to earn what amounts to about 0.4 billion for every working day (assuming he takes weekends off and a month’s vacation). That’s the reward one can expect from spending the right amount of time on the factory floor.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Joe Biden Will Face a Much-Changed and Skeptical World

      by

      Joe Biden was not elected for his positions on foreign policy and national security. Few US presidential candidates are. In his debates with outgoing President Donald Trump prior to the election, those issues were hardly discussed. So, the success or failure of the Biden presidency will not be determined by foreign policy.

      For President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, domestic policy will dominate their time and efforts. Overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, ensuring that newly released vaccines are quickly and effectively administered, and righting a still stressed US economy will be their top priorities in the first year. It is what the American people want and expect. Furthermore, there is America’s worsening and more pernicious longer-term problems: increasing economic inequality, continuing racial injustice and growing political polarization.

      Joe Biden and America’s Second Reconstruction

      READ MORE

      These will be profoundly difficult problems to address successfully, especially as President Biden could face a US Senate controlled by the Republican Party and a thinner Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives.

      First, Image Repair

      Nevertheless, after four years of an unprecedentedly destructive foreign policy and simply by virtue of the fact he will lead still the world’s most powerful and wealthiest nation, Joe Biden cannot ignore foreign policy. In fact, amidst his formidable domestic challenges, he must confront serious foreign policy challenges vital to America’s interests and to those of its many friends and allies around the world.

      We may already have caught a glimpse of how different Joe Biden’s foreign policy will be from Donald Trump’s, considering the first officials named to his senior foreign policy team: Antony Blinken as secretary of state, Linda Thomas-Greenfield as US ambassador to the UN with cabinet rank, Jake Sullivan as national security adviser, Avril Haines as director of National Intelligence and Katherine Tai as the US trade representative. They are all highly experienced, proven, knowledgeable, principled and committed public servants. Under President Trump, we saw few of those and many more self-interested, self-promoting political hacks and ideologues.

      One of the first jobs Biden must tackle is America’s badly damaged reputation around the world. Donald Trump undermined critical alliances, pointlessly insulted and demeaned allies, abandoned international agreements and institutions, embraced autocrats and dictators from Russia to North Korea, discarded traditional free trade principles and turned America’s back on core values of human rights, democracy and rule of law. In short, it was a side of America no one had ever seen, certainly not in the history of the modern presidency. Most profoundly, it raised the question: Who is America?

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      Joe Biden must try to answer that question, and not just with the eloquent prose of President Barack Obama, under whom he served as vice president. The world expects and will demand to see concrete action, preferably guided by some overarching policy that can show to the world that the United States can still play — and indeed, must play — a leadership role again on the global stage.

      There are some decisions that Joe Biden has indicated he will make right out of the starting block when he takes office on January 20. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. Those are relatively easy and straightforward but also very necessary. He is also likely to make clear in his inauguration address that America will return to be the leading voice for democracy, human rights and rule of law in the world, starting first at home but also unafraid to speak in their defense abroad.

      Then begins the hard part. One priority he has made clear that his administration will take on immediately is reaffirming American membership in and commitment to its alliances and critical partnerships. These constitute America’s competitive advantage in global affairs and remain the heart of its still formidable soft power in the world. After Trump’s destructive practices, Biden will have to appeal to America’s allies in Europe, e.g., NATO and the EU, and in Asia and the Pacific, like Japan, South Korea, Australia and others. And he’ll have to do it with humility, understanding that under his predecessor, America seemingly abandoned principles that had previously united them all.

      China: Work With Allies, Pursue Hard-nosed Diplomacy

      China will be Joe Biden’s biggest challenge. On trade, defense, the South China Sea, Taiwan, cybersecurity, human rights and global leadership, China presents a daunting challenge. We should expect his administration to drive a hard bargain with Beijing but to use a very different approach than his predecessor. Pursued smartly, however, he may be surprised by the inherent advantages America still holds. For example, fortifying the alliances and partnerships as previously mentioned will aid his administration in addressing the China challenge. In fact, if he is to succeed on this account, he will need those allies and partners with him at the negotiating table. Another advantage: He will likely have bipartisan support in an otherwise partisan Congress for taking a strong position on China.

      Trade is the clearest area where the US can capitalize on its extensive network of allies. China’s most important trading relationships — those with the EU and the East Asian nations — also happen to be America’s closest allies. The most effective approach will be one that joins their efforts with the administration to address China’s aggressive and predatory trade practices. Those range from intellectual property theft to intimidation and threats against foreign businesses to coopting confidential and proprietary techniques, practices and technology. But this approach works only if the new administration can establish that it can be trusted again, and not only on trade. If the US can succeed in its trade negotiations with China, it opens opportunities on other fronts.

      The objective must be clear: The US isn’t interested in standing in China’s way as it progresses to superpower status. However, China must understand that it must do so within an international community governed by collaboratively set rules.

      Renewed US Global Leadership: Climate and Global Health

      Climate and global health are two other priority issues for Biden. He has indicated he will want not only to reestablish America’s commitment to them but also to take the lead. Rejoining the Paris accords won’t be enough. The US must marshal a critical mass of other nations in joining a reinvigorated effort to go beyond the mandates of Paris. In that, he’s likely to garner support from the EU and other developed nations. Appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special envoy on climate change demonstrates Biden’s seriousness about the issue and the intention to take a much-needed lead role on this global existential challenge.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The COVID-19 pandemic raging at home makes it imperative that President-elect Biden make global health security a clear foreign policy priority. If there is one thing Americans have learned from the novel coronavirus, it’s that there is no greater threat to America’s national security and economic prosperity than another pandemic, especially one perhaps more catastrophic than COVID-19. If America is to be better prepared for the next pandemic, so must be the rest of the world.

      As he did for climate, Biden may even wish to name a special envoy for global health to begin galvanizing America’s efforts and those of the rest of the world to prepare and coordinate global initiatives for preventing, containing and treating the next pandemic.

      Climate and global health present the Biden administration with just the sort of challenge-cum-opportunity to which America was known to rise in the past. They are issues on which it is uniquely positioned to lead by virtue of its power, size, wealth and technological prowess. To reassume the mantle of global leadership, President-elect Biden must lead the global effort to combat climate change and strengthen the international community’s capacity to address pandemics.

      In the Middle East, Iran and Then Everything Else

      Unlike for the US administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter, the Middle East will not be a top-five priority in 2021. Americans have lost their appetite for inserting themselves into problems that the region’s residents cannot or will not work to resolve themselves. Biden and his foreign policy team recognize this, even as they know they can’t turn their backs on this dangerously volatile region.

      But there remains one exception. Iran is a grave problem, perhaps less for the US than for Washington’s allies in the Middle East, most especially Israel and Saudi Arabia. It also constitutes a major challenge to America’s traditionally unflinching support for the Nonproliferation Treaty. Nothing could be more destabilizing in that region than the introduction of nuclear weapons. It will require almost immediate attention from President Biden.

      The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” via its punishing sanctions has indeed inflicted enormous economic pain on Iran and its people. But it hasn’t changed Tehran’s behavior. Iran today has begun to reconstitute the nuclear program that had been effectively contained under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated under President Obama in 2015 and then abandoned by Trump in 2018.

      The purpose of the sanctions cannot be inflicting pain on the Iranian people, who are not responsible for their government’s policies. The objective of sanctions and an overall policy toward Iran must be to change its behavior. By that measurement, the Trump administration’s pressure campaign has not worked. Iran continues to: develop and build longer-range missiles; support malign behavior through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Shia proxies throughout the region, from Iraq and Yemen to Syria and Lebanon; senselessly threaten Israel; and deny the most basic human rights to its own citizens, most especially women, journalists, perceived political opponents and religious minorities.

      Whatever trust President Obama and then-Secretary of State Kerry may have been able to build with the Iranians in reaching the JCPOA has been largely destroyed now. So, short of immediately rejoining that agreement, which would be unwise, face-to-face negotiations between Washington and Tehran will not be in the offing for at least one year.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In fact, to tackle the Iran question, Biden and Blinken must address the failures of the Obama approach. That will mean: (a) turning to America’s P5+1 partners — the UK, France and Germany — to work out a modus operandi for rejoining the JCPOA while simultaneously securing a commitment to negotiate a stronger JCPOA version 2.0; (b) consulting regularly and frequently with key regional allies to ensure their concerns and interests are addressed in any follow-on agreement with Tehran; and, most important, (c) including key congressional members in the negotiation process, at least on the Washington end. The last is most vital because the absence of Congressional support was ultimately Barack Obama and the agreement’s downfall. Any new accord negotiated must have the support of a majority of the Congress if it is to avoid the fate of the JCPOA, even it isn’t submitted for formal approval to the Congress. All of these are sine qua non for successfully addressing the Iranian challenge and securing a durable solution.

      While the Iran portfolio remains an urgent priority for Joe Biden, it won’t be one resolved in his first year and perhaps not until well into his second. His administration and the Congress must understand that the US cannot not sanction, bomb, assassinate or otherwise forcibly compel Iran into complying with its norms for behavior. It will take patient, deliberate and determined diplomacy.

      Can’t Ignore the Rest

      These are likely to be President Biden’s top priorities. But they won’t be his only ones. His administration and the US also face serious challenges from a menacing and malign Russia, an arms control agreement with whom due to expire within weeks of his taking office; still extant terrorism and cybersecurity threats; a wave of autocrats with a full head of steam, from Turkey and Hungary to Venezuela and the Philippines; ill-behaved and irrationally aggressive regional actors vying for preeminence in the Middle East; continuing conflict and humanitarian crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus and elsewhere.

      Joe Biden will be the most experienced and knowledgeable president on foreign policy since George H.W. Bush. As such, he surely knows that it is issues like these that can suddenly rise to crisis proportions and take over his foreign policy or even his presidency. So, they won’t be far from his attention. But a clear-eyed view of what is most important will drive Biden toward those highlighted above.

      However, there is likely to be a critically important domestic component of the Biden foreign policy agenda. This gets to the Achilles heel of previous administrations’ foreign policies that Donald Trump cleverly exploited. Biden and his administration must be able to convincingly articulate to the American people a foreign policy that they will see as in their interests. That will mean a policy that protects American jobs, addresses threats to climate and the environment, ensures security and offers a promise of a better future.

      Crafting a policy that meets these criteria may be Joe Biden’s biggest challenge, especially in view of the historic disconnect between foreign policy and the American people and polarization of the American public exacerbated by four years of Donald Trump. But if this administration is to be successful in confronting and capitalizing on America’s many challenges abroad, it must be able to show that it holds the interests of Americans uppermost — and that they stand behind this policy.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Who Rigs the Ship of State?

      by

      Northeastern University’s website offers this account of US President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results in the runup to the Electoral College’s declaring Joe Biden the next president of the United States: “While no proof of tampering has emerged so far, the president has repeatedly claimed that his election was rigged or stolen, fired members of his administration who didn’t go along with the allegations, and pressured state officials to overturn results.”

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      Last week Trump was in Florida campaigning for the two Republican Senate candidates in next month’s special election. He also warned Georgians to expect more rigging: “They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, and they’re gonna try to rig this election too.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Rigged:

      Fitted out with the ropes, sails, pulleys and other equipment needed for a ship to sail, a traditional maritime labor that politicians long ago realized could be adapted to the needs of the democracies they felt predestined to control.

      Contextual Note

      The author of the article, Peter Ramjug, cites a survey conducted in November that reveals this astonishing fact: “More than half of Republican voters either believe President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 race or aren’t entirely sure who did win.” This should surprise no one. After all, when polled in 2006, a clear majority of Republicans believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, even though none were found in the end. As late as 2015, a majority of Republicans still believed that. This stands as a clear demonstration of the power of faith among Republicans, many of whom view Fox News as the Newer Testament.

      Another finding from the survey may seem more surprising, namely that 34% of independents polled apparently either believed Trump was the winner or “weren’t sure who was.” That’s an impressive number for people who have no apparent reasons to prove their loyalty to a political party.

      Ramjug alludes to the fact, often noted by pundits, that Americans have been showing a growing distrust not only of the nation’s institutions but of each other. The trend is toward solipsism and narcissism, the character traits Trump so perfectly exemplifies. A Pew survey published in July 2019 drew this troubling conclusion: “Many Americans see declining levels of trust in the country, whether it is their confidence in the federal government and elected officials or their trust of each other.” 

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      It’s worth noting that this 2019 survey dates from what we now look back on as the halcyon epoch when there was no pandemic to fear and only the vaguest stirrings of the quadrennial psychodrama known as presidential election campaigns that was about to unfold. The survey contained some good news. It found that 84% of those polled “think the decline in trust can be turned around.” It would be interesting to find out what that figure might be today. Our guess is that it would be below 50%.

      Ramjung cites the demographic breakdown that reveals “20 percent of white respondents overall believing Trump won, compared to 14 percent of Hispanic respondents, 9 percent of Asian respondents, and 7 percent of Black respondents.” The numbers for Hispanics, Asians and blacks correspond roughly to the percentage of each group that actually voted for Trump. This would appear to confirm the growing tendency of Americans to confuse their wishes with the truth or more simply to cast the notion of truth aside and cling to a belief in the “reality” of their wishes. And they aren’t wrong. Their wishes are real, even the ones that have no connection to reality.

      The Pew survey found that more than “two-thirds (69%) of Americans say the federal government intentionally withholds important information from the public that it could safely release, and 61% say the news media intentionally ignores stories that are important to the public.” In this case, their perception is correct on both counts. 

      Every citizen should be cognizant of the fact that all governments — even in democracies — manage the news and that corporate media have their own criteria, related to their obsessive quest for ratings, governing their selection of stories. The New York Times claims it reports “all the news that’s fit to print.” It fails to remind us of what everyone spontaneously understands, that commercial interests have the power to define what’s “fit.” The Times consistently ignores important stories and magnifies rumors and lies.

      One lesson everyone in the US should have learned — despite what the government and media choose to teach or suppress — is that everyone has the duty to market their own agenda. It’s a competitive world. If not quite dog eat dog, it has at least become dog tweet dog. You have to get your message across as frequently and volubly as possible. In such a system, who can distinguish truth from lies?

      Historical Note

      Joan Didion, an acute observer of US culture, captured one essential truth in an essay written 50 years ago. She was attempting to come to grips with the disaffection and alienation that had become evident through the disruptive events of the 1960s: “It occurred to me finally that I was listening to a true underground, the voice of all those who have felt themselves not merely shocked but personally betrayed by recent history. It was supposed to have been their time. It was not.” 

      Time has always been an important notion in US culture. Depriving people of their “time” or even of the feeling that their time might soon be coming is akin to an attack on their soul. We now know that Joe Biden wants to restore “the soul of the nation.” If he is serious, he should think about a way to give the nation the time for the soul. Amazon, the nation’s most successful company, and the contemporary symbol of American commercialism, literally steals the time of its employees as it holds them accountable for every minute of their presence, monitoring and measuring their time and punishing them for seconds wasted.

      At the end of the 1960s — the age of the hippies and Vietnam War protests — the underground culture Didion was describing existed in the form of a restricted but vociferous minority. Its members strove to define a mission to which they could dedicate their time. It might be ending the war, returning to nature in a commune or chanting “Om” on a street corner with the Hare Krishnas. Those who feel betrayed today may no longer be a minority. But they have no mission, and they increasingly feel there is no exit.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Many of them cling to their admiration for and identification with celebrities. They confide their hope in them and offer them their trust. Donald Trump was the first pure celebrity to profit politically from that trend. Ronald Reagan may have paved the way in the 1980s, but he was a mere figurehead, a stand-in for the abstract idea of celebrity. He provided a name, a face and a voice, but all three were associated with an absence of personality. He robotically acted out the script of standard US patriotism. If people thought of him as a celebrity, it was as a cardboard cutout of celebrity. Trump is the opposite.

      The hyperreal world of democratic politics Trump exploited requires sophisticated constructions designed to funnel votes in an intended direction, just as the masts, sails and rigging of an imposing 19th-century clipper or frigate were designed to harness the power of the winds to maximum effect. In the end, whether it’s a massive sailing ship, a movie set on the scale of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” or James Cameron’s “Titanic,” the rigging is what holds everything together.

      The rigging of elections in the US starts long before people can even think about voting. Between passing laws that make voting difficult for specific categories of people (the art of voter suppression), gerrymandering and the lock-hold on politics of the two-party system itself, the political class has consistently demonstrated its resourcefulness in preventing democracy from expressing and implementing the will of the people. For Trump this year, the Republicans’ rigging simply couldn’t match the Democrats’. It isn’t about shenanigans like stuffing ballot boxes or getting the dead to vote. It’s about equipping a ship that can sail for the next four years.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Live Free or Die: America vs. Science

      by

      A few days ago, the testimony of a nurse from South Dakota made international headlines. In a tweet, Jodi Doering recounted the harrowing experience of having to deal with patients dying from COVID-19 complications while denying that the virus is real: “The ones who scream at you for a magic medicine and that Joe Biden is (g)oing to ruin the USA. All while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm. They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have COViD because it’s not real.”

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      By now, North and South Dakotas have earned the distinction of being among the states hit hardest by the second wave of the pandemic — and least prepared for its impact. As in so many of America’s red states dominated by the Republican Party, the good citizens of the Dakotas largely ignored reality, and this is putting it graciously. As a recent article in The New York Times put it, “Deep into the coronavirus pandemic, when there was no doubt about the damage that Covid-19 could do, the Dakotas scaled their morbid heights, propelled by denial and defiance.” Public officials did their part reinforcing the illusion, adamantly refusing to mandate basic safety measures, such as the wearing of masks and keeping social distancing rules.

      Live Free or Die

      “Live Free or Die” — ironically enough, the motto of the blue state of New Hampshire in New England — assumed an entirely new meaning in the Dakotas. At the end of November, the Bismarck Tribune reported that a quarter of North Dakotans had known somebody who had died of COVID-19. At the start of this month, just three weeks after reporting the highest mortality rate in the world, North Dakota hit a new record: One in 800 residents here has died of COVID-19.

      In South Dakota, where the governor refused to mandate safety measures, things were equally bad. Intensive care units in small towns were quickly getting overwhelmed as the pandemic ravaged the very fabric of civil society, which observers such as Alex de Tocqueville have considered essential to the health of American democracy. And yet,  as Annie Gowan writes in The Washington Post, “anti-maskers” have continued to agitate, “alleging that masks don’t work and that the measure was an overreach that would violate their civil rights.” Given the fact that wearing a mask is above all a means to protect others against infection, this is a rather specious argument.

      Embed from Getty Images

      There has been widespread resistance to following the most basic safety precautions. Clinging on to a false sense of liberty is one reason, but arguably not the most important one. Instead, what infuses the refusal to take COVID-19 seriously among a substantial part of the American public is a profound suspicion toward health care experts, the scientific community and science-based evidence in general.

      This is part of a larger populist syndrome, which has suffused significant parts of the United States over the past several years and which was instrumental in propelling Donald Trump into the White House four years ago. Populism represents above all a revolt against the established elite — economic, political, social, cultural — in the name of ordinary citizens and their allegedly superior “common sense.”  Populists promote the virtue of personal experience and observation — Trump famously asked how global warming could be real if it was so cold outside — and the rule of thumb.

      Add to that the impact of right-wing influencers and opinion leaders like Rush Limbaugh, who in early spring claimed that COVID-19 was nothing more than the flu and who has insisted that masks are a symbol of fear and therefore “un-American.” No wonder that in the land of the free, that vast landmass between the two coasts, disparaged by the “coastal elites” as “flyover country,” they rather believe in the wisdom of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the Great Man himself than the “disaster” Anthony Fauci and his “idiots” in the scientific community.

      As a result, according to a recent Pew survey, in the United States, public opinion about COVID-19 has been far more divided than in comparable advanced liberal democracies. In October, more than 80% of Biden supporters said that COVID-19 was “very important” for their vote; among Trump supporters, less than a quarter. At the same time, there was a large partisan divide on trust in scientists. In September, more than two-thirds of liberal Democrats expressed trust in scientists; among conservative Republicans, less than 20%.

      Under the circumstances, the health care catastrophe that has invested the Dakotas and other parts of the American Midwest should come as no surprise. It is part of the disastrous legacy four years of President Trump have left, a legacy that has poisoned the political climate to an extent never before seen in the United States.

      Human, All Too Human

      Over the past several months, COVID-19 — what it is, what it means and how to respond to it —has become part of the polarization that has consumed American politics way before the onset of the pandemic. Polarization means that almost everything political is defined in partisan terms. Extended to its most extreme, it means that the other side is no longer seen as legitimate, but as the enemy that needs to be destroyed since it poses a fundamental threat to the common good.

      This, of course, is the fundamental dictum of Carl Schmitt, the brilliant 19th-century German legal and political theorist whose posthumous influence has significantly grown over the past few decades, both on the left and on the right. Schmitt was a great supporter of the Nazis, infamous for his defense of Hitler’s order in 1934 to eliminate his adversaries (the Röhm Purge) in an article with the cynical title, “The Führer Protects the Law.” Central to Schmitt’s thinking was the notion that democracy meant both to treat equals as equals and to treat not-equals as not-equals. For Schmitt, democracy required homogeneity as well as the exclusion, even “destruction of the heterogeneous.” No wonder Carl Schmitt has found enthusiastic acolytes among China’s patriotic intelligentsia.

      It is within this context that the dismissal of the threat posed by COVID-19 as, at best, negligible and, at worst, as a hoax designed to undermine the Trump administration becomes understandable.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has been obsessed with China. Trump’s pet project of making America great again only makes sense in the face of the challenge that the fulminant rise of China has posed to America’s claim to be the greatest country in the world. The way the slogan is phrased already reveals its weakness. Making America great “again” implies a recognition that it no longer is. There are numerous reasons why this might be the case. Most of them — such as decrepit infrastructure or the opioid crisis — have nothing to do with China.

      But, as Friedrich Nietzsche once put it, it is human, all too human to blame others for one’s own shortcomings. This might explain why Trump has insisted on referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” most recently in a tweet acknowledging that Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer who had “been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA” had been tested positive for the “China Virus.” Giuliani has done no such thing, i.e., exposing massive election fraud. Giuliani once was a respectable politician, arguably one of the best mayors New York City has ever had. By now, he is reminiscent of Wormtail, Voldemort’s pathetic factotum.

      Trump’s obsession with China not only explains his nonchalance toward COVID-19 but also his take on climate change and global warming. It deserves remembering that at one time, Trump was adamant about his concern regarding the climate. In 2009, Trump, together with his three oldest children, signed an open letter to the Obama administration that stated, “If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.” Among other things, the letter called for “U.S. climate legislation, investment in the clean energy economy, and leadership to inspire the rest of the world to join the fight against climate change.”

      I Don’t Believe It

      A couple of years later, all was forgotten. By 2012, the focus was on China’s rapid ascent. In this context, global warming assumed a new meaning in Trump’s narrative. As he put it in a tweet at the time, the “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Three years later, he referred to climate change as a hoax, and, once in office, he dismissed the warnings of his own government’s scientists with a simple “I don’t believe it.”

      Trump’s denial of climate change had a significant impact among his support base. In 2018, more than two-thirds of Republicans considered concerns about global warming to be exaggerated; among Democrats, less than 5% thought so. Around a third of Republicans thought global warming was caused by human activities; among Democrats, some 90%. And when asked whether they thought global warming would pose a serious threat in their lifetime, a mere 18% of Republicans voiced concern among Democrats, about two-thirds.

      A month before the November election, an article in Nature sounded the alarm bell. As the election approached, the author warned, “Trump’s actions in the face of COVID-19 are just one example of the damage he has inflicted on science and its institutions over the past four years, with repercussions for lives and livelihoods.” In the process, his administration, across many federal agencies, had “undermined scientific integrity by suppressing or distorting evidence to support political decisions.”

      In November, Trump spectacularly lost his bid for a second term. At the end of January, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the new president. There is great hope that this will be the beginning of a “new dawn for America.” Don’t bet on it. Trump’s legacy is likely to linger on, some of the harm his administration has caused potentially exerting its impact for years to come. One of the most deleterious legacies is that by now, belief in science — at least with respect to certain issues — has become overridden by partisanship.

      Climate change is a prominent example, so is COVID-19, and so is likely to be the question of vaccination as anti-coronavirus jabs become available over the next few months. In late November, among Democrats, 75% said they would get vaccinated; among Republicans, only half. Under the circumstances, it is probably prudent to be wary.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More