I have been brooding about something for a long time, and I have
decided to try to think it through in the medium of this blog. I do not see my way clear on this matter, so
somewhat uncharacteristically you will see me feeling my way to a conclusion in
public, as it were.
My question can be stated simply: How should I think about American politics
and public life? I do not mean by this
which candidate should I support or what policies should I favor or what
practical political action should I engage in?
I mean rather how should I think in an ongoing way about the norms and modes
of behavior that are desirable in the public and political life of the country
in which I live?
Let me begin, as I am wont to do, by reviewing briefly the
arc of my own long engagement with public affairs. My grandfather was a lifelong socialist of
the Eugene Debs Norman Thomas variety, and my father and mother courted at
Circle One of the Young People’s Socialist League in New York City, but by the
time I was a little boy, they were FDR New Deal Democrats, although they did
send me to a red diaper pre-school, the Sunnyside Progressive School. I was a Henry Wallace supporter at fourteen,
in 1948, but my serious involvement in public affairs did not begin until ten
years later, when as a young Harvard Instructor I became deeply committed to
nuclear disarmament, a cause I spoke publicly for and published on both at
Harvard and later at the University of Chicago.
I have always dated the turning point in my political life as the morning
of April 18, 1961, the morning after the unsuccessful effort of CIA backed
Cuban exiles to overthrow the new Castro government. Until that point, despite my vocal leftwing
politics, I considered myself a Liberal.
But Kennedy was a Liberal and he had invaded Cuba, so I was forced to
recognize that I was something else. As
a place holder, I called myself a Radical, with very little idea what that
might mean.
It has been fifty-eight years since that day in April, and
much has changed in the world and in my understanding of it. I have devoted a good deal of time thinking
about, writing about, and in small ways taking action in response to the
seemingly endless series of evil things the American government has done
domestically and abroad. I need not
catalogue them; you know them all. But
until quite recently, I gave very little thought to the norms of public
behavior that were presupposed and served as the backdrop for my political
activity.
Let me give you a very simple example. Let us suppose I am a dedicated supporter of Bernie
Sanders, as a consequence of which I volunteer to canvass for him in the North Carolina
Democratic primary, which this year is
part of Super Tuesday, March 3rd, and hence is very politically
consequential. Despite my thoroughgoing disenchantment
with the United States and my deep knowledge of the endlessly evil ways in
which American local, state, and federal government officials have acted for
the past 232 years, I expect the local volunteer precinct workers actually to
count the votes for Bernie that I have corralled and guided to the polls by my
efforts. I will be alert to the
possibility of fraud, perpetrated perhaps by malign Biden supporting poll
workers, but I will be righteously angry if I detect such fraud. I will not smile a superior, supercilious
smile and say that since America is a slough of hypocrisy, I am neither
surprised nor outraged.
In short, despite my deep disagreements with mainstream
political commentators, I share their professed belief that a democracy depends
for its success and survival on norms of civic behavior whose public flouting
and endless violation pose a threat to the possibility of social justice. And this is true not only for precinct poll
workers but for Senators, Congresspersons, Presidents, judges, Cabinet officers,
and everyone else who plays a role in the public life of a democracy.
Many of those commentators earlier in their careers served
in Democratic or Republican administrations whose hands drip, Picture of Dorian Gray style, with the
blood of countless victims, and I am so accustomed to shouting this fact at the
TV screen that I forget how completely I believe in and indeed count on the
norms of public discourse and behavior that they and their political employers
have violated.
I say I want socialism.
Well, socialism can replace capitalism either peacefully or
violently. If peacefully, then the
electoral processes by which this happens will require that countless thousands
or tens of thousands of public officials adhere to those norms even when the
votes are going against them. What is
more, the administration of a socialist state will demand a level of public
honesty greater than anything we see in the administrations of capitalist
democracies.
If violently, then there may well be an exciting period of
transition during which commitment to The Cause substitutes for quotidian norms
of public behavior. But as Max Weber
noted in another context, all too soon we see the routinization of charisma, and
as the ecstasy of revolution gives way to the grind of administration, our
protection against the inevitable lure of corruption and oppression will be those
same norms, even if they are now rechristened Socialist Morality.
It is for this reason that I really do believe Donald Trump
is an existential threat to the ideals I still cherish at eighty-five, and that
it is a serious mistake to say, albeit perhaps merely for the sake of
provocation, that a Beto presidency would be worse than a second Trump term.
