SERIOUS STUFF

Relatively long time readers of this blog may recall that four and a half years ago I wrote a 9,000 word review of a major book by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century.  Piketty’s work was based on research he carried out with Emmanuel Saez.  Today, Paul Krugman linked in Op Ed essay to a new journal article by Piketty, Saez, and a young Assistant Professor, Gabriel Zucman entitled “DISTRIBUTIONAL NATIONAL ACCOUNTS: METHODS AND ESTIMATES FOR THE UNITED STATES.”  I have just spent most of the morning reading it, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to dive deeply into the structure of economic inequality in the United States.  The growth in inequality in the United States in the last thirty years is astounding.  Speaking as an interested amateur, I was especially impressed by the methodological transparency of the essay.  The authors make quite clear the places where their data fall short or they are compelled to make ad hoc assumptions not yet supported by evidence or theory.  The essay is hard going, at least it was for me, but the picture it paints is compelling.  To cite just one among many conclusions of the essay, since the 1980s, the bottom half of the adult population has experienced no aggregate growth in real income whatsoever.  What is more, within that group, it is retirees who have experienced real income growth through Social Security and health insurance.  The working age portion of the bottom 50% have suffered a significant decline in real income.  By the way, the instincts of the Occupy Wall Street protestors were exactly correct.  It is the top 1% that has experienced almost all the growth in income over that time.

If you are interested, you can find the article here.

PRE-CAPITALIST LONGINGS

An easy non-judgmental affability is a useful personality trait in an entrepreneur.  If you are in the cut throat business of wresting a profit from heartless competitors, it is best to adopt a hale fellow well met public face, for today’s market enemy may be tomorrow’s investment friend.  Hence, the popularity of fraternal organizations – the Elks, the Masons, the Knights of Columbus – where two men, each of whom would happily drive the other into bankruptcy, can share drinks, slap backs, tell stories, and in general preserve that façade of congeniality on which tomorrow’s business deal can be built.  By contrast, aristocrats are prickly, proud, stubborn, and prone to nurse grievances, as Alexis de Tocqueville observes in his classic work, Democracy in America. 

Like all good Marxists, I applaud capitalism as a revolutionary way station on the road to socialism, but I must confess to a secret nostalgia for those pre-capitalist traits of the aristos.  This anti-historical longing of mine was called from its resting place deep in my soul by the elaborate funeral arrangements made by John McCain in preparation for his death from brain cancer.

McCain had many faults, as the commentators on this blog have noted at length, but he had certain endearing traits, and one, which speaks to his quasi-aristocratic life, was on full display this week.  I speak, of course, of his infinite capacity to be personally and visibly affronted.

The organizing and defining incident of McCain’s persona was his captivity in North Viet Nam.  I am not speaking of the truth of the matter, but rather of what it meant to him.  On that five year captivity and torture was built both his self-understanding and his political career.  When Donald Trump cavalierly dismissed that experience, saying that McCain was only a hero because he got captured [“I prefer those who don’t get captured”], he sought to rip away McCain’s reason for being, his essence, his claim upon our admiration. 

It was, I thought, transparently obvious that McCain’s dramatic thumbs-down on the repeal of Obamacare was a middle finger to Trump.  But like the aristocrats of old, McCain neither forgot nor forgave.  So it was that when he confronted the inevitability of his own death, he deliberately devised funereal rites specifically intended to achieve a final retribution for Trump’s insult.

McCain began by excluding Trump from the proceedings, thereby depriving Trump of his most precious possession – the daily news cycle. Trump has been compelled to endure an entire week devoted to someone other than himself.  But that was only the start.  He invited both George W. Bush and Barack Obama to the funeral, a second slight.   Then, as a final insult, McCain invited, as a memorial speaker, a Black NFL player!  All the proceedings lacked was a biblical reading by Stormy Daniels.

I must confess it.  I like a man who can hold a grudge even from beyond the grave.

SOME THOUGHTS PROMPTED BY DAVID PALMETER

David Palmeter posts a comment on a subject that has obsessed me for a long time, namely whether it is wiser for the Democratic Party to nominate progressive candidates in an attempt to increase turnout of their supporters or nominate centrist candidates in an attempt to woo soft Republicans, as it were.  He notes that this cycle the primary voters are opting again and again for the progressives.  Mr. Palmeter is appropriately agnostic about which is the better strategy for progressives, since what is at issue is a prediction of future voter behavior, not matters of principle or ideology.  He and I and most of the readers of this blog prefer the progressives if we can elect them. 

Thus far, voters seem to me to be behaving with extraordinarily refined judgment.  When a seat is assured for the Democrats, they nominate an Alexandra Octavio-Cortez.  When the race is an uphill battle for a deep red seat, they nominate a centrist Conor Lamb.  And when a succession of elections has seen centrist Democrats go down to defeat again and again, they choose an Andrew Gillum or Stacey Abrams in what may just prove to be successful efforts to boost turnout enough to win against the odds.  From a purely practical strategic perspective, it doesn’t get any shrewder than that.

David Palmeter observes that switching a voter from R to D is, arithmetically, twice as valuable as getting a lazy D to the polls, and he is of course right.  But I am still of the opinion that boosting turnout is the more promising tactic.  [I am here setting aside a different consideration, namely the value of building a progressive coalition long term.]

The central fact of American politics is that scores of millions of eligible voters don’t vote.  In presidential elections, roughly 60% of eligible voters vote.  In off year elections, roughly 40% vote.  The country is awash in voters who, if they would only come out on election day, would vote Democratic [the same, of course, is true of those who would vote Republican, although  Republicans are more likely than Democrats actually to vote.] 

This is why talk of impeachment is probably counterproductive.  Trumpists seem not terribly wedded to Republicans as a brand, as opposed to being loyal to Trump himself.  What we want to do is excite the Democratic Party base while not agitating the Trumpists, who tend to be low probability voters as a general rule.

All of this is tediously and offensively mainstream, I know, but it is the reality we are living with.  The hard, painful fact is that as we sit here worrying about just exactly how to be appropriately radical, the Republicans are filling the federal judiciary with hard right judges who will hand down disastrous rulings for the next thirty years.  It may be that in years to come [probably after I am dead, as it happens], the only available strategy for radicals will be to try to take over state and local governments and fight in whichever regions of the country seem receptive to our ideas.

These are bad times.

CROSS-CULTURAL LINKAGES

I watched the Monty Python sketch that MS linked to, and midway through realized it was an OxBridge version of that old African-American word game, Playing the Dozens.  

BIG NEWS [LOCAL]

A three judge Federal Appeals Court panel has once again found North Carolina's gerrymandered Congressional districts unconstitutional, and has raised the possibility that a new map will have to be re-drawn before November!  I have not yet been able to find out what this would mean for the 6th CD and for the chances of Ryan Watts, the young man for whom I have been working in his effort to unseat Mark Walker.  Any redrawing of the map could only help us.

The 6th CD cuts heavily Black Guilford County right in half, the line actually running down the middle of the campus of NC A&T, one of the two historically Black college campuses in Greensboro, the 6th CD's biggest city.

Stay tuned.

A FEW WORDS

I want to say just a few words in response to the flood of comments triggered by my son’s YouTube posting, which I reproduced here.  I really am not interested in arguing about the matter, but this is my blog, which is to say my weblog, and so I shall exercise that privilege.

John McCain’s political positions were anathema to me, as I am sure everyone can guess.  It is also the case that I know about, at least informally, his past as a privileged army brat and perennial screw-up.  [I recall reading that he crashed a number of planes during training before he even went to war.]  He chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, which is simply off the charts awful.  But when he was captured, and tortured, and was offered the chance to go home as an admiral’s son, he chose the stay a prisoner until his fellow prisoners were released.  Nothing in my own life enables me to even imagine making such a choice.  I have no doubt he was, in some way, trying to live up to his father’s expectations, or atoning for his screw ups, or even [though I suspect not] making a cold-eyed calculation of future political advantage.  None of that impresses me, since every courageous act [as well as every other kind of act] is rooted in childhood experiences, parental expectations, and other pre-moral psychological forces.

But he did it, and I honor him for it, even though I was bitterly opposed to the war and believe it was conducted on the American side as a series of war crimes.  Well, you may ask [as I am sure someone will want to], does that mean you would honor a German who made an analogous choice while fighting in a war to wipe out the Jews? And the answer is, yes.

Perhaps I say this because I am old, and painfully conscious of the limitations of life and its brevity.  Perhaps I am simply aware that I have never been presented with such a choice, and honestly do not know what I would do if I were.

Well, there are many fine blogs written by those of us on the left, so if you now feel that you can never again read what I write without a sense of revulsion or betrayal, feel free to click on one of them.

ONE CAN BUT DREAM

I await news that Mueller has indicted Don Jr.  The informal deadline is this Friday.  Hope springs eternal ...