Very hard book to find, I found it in a collection of Schnitzer's short stories Night Games and Other Stories which is the easiest way to access it. It's tragic that the novel is so obscure despite the well known movie that is based on it Eyes Wide Shut, the last film Stanley Kubrick directed.
The obscurity of the source of what is known to us (Eyes Wide Shut) is the theme of Dream Story, or Traum Novelle. The real world exists deep in our unconscious unknown to reason, but which manifests itself in our actions, like dreams. This sounds Freudian because it essentially is. Freud wrote to Schnitzer saying that he in fiction had discovered what had taken him, Freud, years of psychological research.
The book pretty much follows the film except some minor alterations, like time period location and character names and totally different endings. But in both the theme is dissatisfaction as the ruler of life. It is the striving toward pleasure that animates us, its never being achieved is what keeps us going. It is the insatiable will to live which left unchecked leaves us to destruction. We have to learn to live with it. The protagonist learns this after trying to regain his lost passion from a passionless marriage getting involved in sexual escapades which only deepen his desires. He through his judgement, ego, and through the prodding of the secret society after him, the superego, in unison restrain his id and return him to a balance of desire and stability with his family.
I loved this book because it expressed why I read books. I wish to gain what I don't have in life by getting it through others. But I don't quite get it, whatever that longing is, and keep on reading.
Very Promethean. The drive toward self knowledge is what destroys motivates and torments us.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Monday, December 2, 2013
HG Wells' Time Machine and the Future of Inequality
Negative thinking about society's future has become so commonplace in the last century that it has developed into its own genre, called Dystopian fiction. A dystopian work depicts a hypothetical future in which current social trends have led to societal decline. The 1895 novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is an example of dystopian fiction that deals with the contemporary social trend towards greater inequality. Wells’ story is of a 19th century English scientist who travels to the distant future where due to the growing inequality prevalent in the industrial age, humans have evolved into two separate species. Inequality has resulted in a future that has solved social conflict at the terrible price of the wealthy becoming lethargic and losing the will to survive, and the lower classes losing their humanity altogether and becoming animal-like. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx are two philosophers who agree with H.G. Wells on the ill effects of inequality, but represent contrasting opinions on whether social progress is compatible with equality. Rousseau agrees with Wells that equality is incompatible with progress, to which Marx dissents that inequality hinders progress. I agree with Rousseau and H.G. Wells that social progress is incompatible with equality due to their contradictory nature. Inequality divides us so much that we form separate lives, and cannot see the ill effects of the entire system. As we become divided, we become more like those in our class and have an illusion of social balance.
The type of inequality criticized by Marx and Rousseau is social inequality. Social inequality differs from inequality in general as being in some way artificial. It only exists in power relationships in which an individual or group is able to make others act in ways they would not otherwise. Rousseau distinguishes between natural inequality which “is established by nature and consists in difference of age, health, bodily strength, and qualities of mind or soul”, and what he calls “moral or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention and is established...by the consent of man”. Marx is concerned with power in terms of ownership beyond what one creates with their own labor. Inequality is the result of the products of one’s labor not being owned by one’s self but by another, and is inherently social. This relationship results in the laborer becoming “all the poorer the more wealth he produces... an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates” because the laborer works for someone else.
The story of The Time Machine is of an English scientist in the year 1899 who by realizing time is a dimension, and not something physical, discovers one can move through it in several directions like one can move around in the second dimension. He gives a lecture on the possibility of time travel in which the narrator was present. The scientist sets up a dinner party for guests who attended his previous lecture on time as the fourth dimension, but arrives late with his clothes in tatters. He claims that since their last meeting he actually used a working time machine and went to the future, to around the year 800,000 in what used to be London. He tells the story of a future society where mankind is divided into two species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are evolved from the upper classes of Britain and are a fair skinned race of small, childlike adults with very little intelligence who spend all day in leisure. Below them are their opposites, the Morlocks who live underground and are descendants of the British working class. They are ape-like, nocturnal creatures who toil with industrial machinery underground. They are the ones who work to make the Eloi´s clothing and food, and in return hunt and eat the Eloi. The future society is relatively peaceful, as the Eloi and Morlocks have developed a symbiotic relationship. Class conflict has been solved by a total separation of the working class and the wealthy. The rest of the book involves the time traveler losing his ship to the Morlocks and having to go into their underground world. Before going back in time he tries to being one of the Eloi, Weena, who he falls in love with him, but ultimately loses her to the Morlocks. As he escapes the Morlocks he accidentally travels further in the future, and becomes curious with the fate of the Earth. He reaches the end of planet Earth when all life has disappeared and the Sun no longers heats the Earth. He makes it back to the year 1900, but again goes to the future to alter Weena’s fate. Three years have passed without him returning.
The theme of The Time Machine is that inequality is the driver of social advancement. The Eloi and the Morlocks are the inevitable result of increasing inequality when human beings become so adapted to their circumstances that they become separate species. This starts with “the gradual widening of the present merely temporary social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer”. Inequality changes human beings to the point where they no longer have a common interest and feel comfortable in servitude or control. The fulfillment of society, which is the stability and security so sought after, is unsustainable and ultimately defeats itself. The balance between the rich and poor was achieved in The Time Machine only by destroying their common humanity. The abundant life of the Eloi was only possible by impoverishing the Morlocks to the state of transforming them into animals. The Morlocks are the initial victims of this arrangement, but do not revolt because they have become adapted to their situation and lack the essential feature of humanity, which is intellect. The Morlocks have "continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. "the rebellious would die: and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy as the Upper-world people were to theirs”. The Eloi are themselves victims who despite living in leisure have lost their physical and mental strength. The advancement society has provided has done away with class conflict by first eliminating want, and along the way creating such a gulf between classes that equality becomes unnecessary for creatures which no longer have the mental capacity to want a more just society. "The advancement of the technology which increases the output of their labor has abolished necessity. “Where is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Wells suggests that conflict is what gives meaning to life by developing our capacity for individual survival, as “only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers”. This capacity is what society is designed to extinguish. Stability, which is social progress, comes at the price of what makes humans equal, which is their intellect.
Rousseau agrees with Wells that social inequality is inevitable due to the destruction of common human interests. Rousseau identified the development of ego-centrism as analogous to society. Ego-centrism is caused by reason which is “what turns man in upon himself” and is what “isolates him and moves him to say...perish if you will, I am safe and sound”. Reason emerges from social life, due to a competition for scarce resources. As the population grows, what is enough for an individual becomes scarce and requires invention from the use of knowledge to artificially increase resources. Social inequality arises from necessity, as “natural inequality manifests itself together with inequality occasioned by the socialization process”. These needs would not exist if nature’s product was not consumed so quickly. Once this process of reason develops from need, it creates an imbalance of wealth to those who have the yield of the new technology. “Laboring equally, the one earned a great deal while the other barely had enough to live” is what technology, the product of reason and society, brings. This new scarcity brings “inequality in our lifestyle: excessive idleness among some, excessive labor among other” that creates inequality of social status. We become “subject, by virtue of a multitude of fresh needs, to all nature and particularly to his fellowmen”. We seek to look out for ourselves, but due to scarcity our selfishness brings us together, in bondage. Society makes us more selfish while at the same time making us more dependent. It is no contradiction, because civilization’s growth increases differences between individuals so that they no longer feel compassion towards one another, but competition. The intelligence that created technology, and consequently deprivation, rids the scarcity that gave rise to reason and becomes a defender of inequality.
Karl Marx offers a contrary view of the nature of inequality to Wells and Rousseau, claiming that inequality is not inevitable and is an impediment to progress. Inequality is part of a historical process leading towards greater human equality. Marx’s idea is that as society becomes more unequal, it unites the interests of the powerless until they become a majority with common goals and topple the class system. This unison is possible only by the growth of inequality. The high level of inequality under capitalism simplified property relations by ending feudal and communal forms of property like the family and religion and lays bare the true exploitative nature of the elite. Capitalism “has simplified class antagonisms”. The dominance of private property destroys and leaves “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest”. The relationship between rich and poor is made closer by eliminating countervailing sources of authority against private private property so that “national one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible”. Since “society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat” there should be increasing common interest among the working class. The enlargement and common interest of the laborers over time means that a future society can be created where there is no inequality at all. Their superior numbers and unison will give them a productive force that ends property. From the historical process, “the proletariat is its special and essential product” who are a class which does not rest on exploitation but is its result. Marx believes that the economic growth of propertied society is in the end beneficial in the long run by producing “its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable”.
I agree with Rousseau’s argument that social inequality is inevitable. The division of labor which wealth provides allows for more leisure for some and work for others. Growth is not distributed evenly. The Time Machine puts this reality into the starkest terms. The Eloi are able to live in leisure because the Morlocks do all their work for them. It would seem that the Morlocks are self sufficient and could throw off the Eloi's control, but they do not since they depend on the Eloi as a source of food. The poor because they do not own their labor are dependent on the rich. They have their own self-interest to look out for. As Rousseau said the poor will not achieve class consciousness because their dependency has engendered ego-centrism. They do not have an existence beyond their social status and do not conceive of a world without individual differences, largely because they have nothing to gain from such a situation. Society's growth is designed to cut us off from each other and give us something to lose in case of revolt. Wells' dystopia shows how inequality can continue without conflict. We become satisfied with our bondage because contrary to Marx we have nothing to gain and a world to lose.
Marx’s error is not taking into account the effect our social conditioning has on reconciling us with our unequal footing. Diverging ways of life, as described in The Time Machine, adapt each class to their situation and make them content in their position. “This widening gulf-which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich-will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent”. The cultural behavior of the wealthy enforces their lifestyle through interbreeding and increasing separation from the working classes. The isolated lives of the working class will become so hard for them to get out of due to less interaction with their superiors that “the rebellious would die”. The gap between class increases even as both classes interests become uniform, thus hiding their antagonism from sight. Today we see this from the geographic segregation of the wealthy from the inner cities and their tendency to attend private schools and intermarry with each other. In Marx’s time, the laborer came in close contact with the capitalist at the factory. But globalism has made it so the workers never see their bosses who reside in a foreign land with completely different cultural aesthetics. The elite cease to become a tangible thing to rally against, and the worker is immersed among only their own kind.
The Time Machine shows how inequality changes human beings to the point where they no longer have a common interest and feel comfortable in servitude to each other. Both rich and poor need each other to live, but are so blinded by their narrow interests created by society’s growth that they will act to make others worse off to better themselves. The Eloi and the Morlocks are the paradoxical result of the perfect society. The perfect society results in a dystopia because the foundations of society set in motion greater inequity in wealth which reinforces class distinction and removes our common humanity. Rousseau correctly identified the rise of ego-centrism as the logical conclusion of social life, and as the source of conformity. Marx thought that property which create such antagonism that it would not last. But the future of the Eloi and Morlocks is one that portrays the counterrevolutionary effect of inequality, which eventually does away with the gains of society. The essence of humanity, the intellect, does not survive. Social progress is incompatible with equality because it creates complacency and lowers humans to the level of instinct like the savage Morlocks and the simpleton Eloi.
Note: This was a final paper I wrote for a political philosophy class.
The type of inequality criticized by Marx and Rousseau is social inequality. Social inequality differs from inequality in general as being in some way artificial. It only exists in power relationships in which an individual or group is able to make others act in ways they would not otherwise. Rousseau distinguishes between natural inequality which “is established by nature and consists in difference of age, health, bodily strength, and qualities of mind or soul”, and what he calls “moral or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention and is established...by the consent of man”. Marx is concerned with power in terms of ownership beyond what one creates with their own labor. Inequality is the result of the products of one’s labor not being owned by one’s self but by another, and is inherently social. This relationship results in the laborer becoming “all the poorer the more wealth he produces... an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates” because the laborer works for someone else.
The story of The Time Machine is of an English scientist in the year 1899 who by realizing time is a dimension, and not something physical, discovers one can move through it in several directions like one can move around in the second dimension. He gives a lecture on the possibility of time travel in which the narrator was present. The scientist sets up a dinner party for guests who attended his previous lecture on time as the fourth dimension, but arrives late with his clothes in tatters. He claims that since their last meeting he actually used a working time machine and went to the future, to around the year 800,000 in what used to be London. He tells the story of a future society where mankind is divided into two species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are evolved from the upper classes of Britain and are a fair skinned race of small, childlike adults with very little intelligence who spend all day in leisure. Below them are their opposites, the Morlocks who live underground and are descendants of the British working class. They are ape-like, nocturnal creatures who toil with industrial machinery underground. They are the ones who work to make the Eloi´s clothing and food, and in return hunt and eat the Eloi. The future society is relatively peaceful, as the Eloi and Morlocks have developed a symbiotic relationship. Class conflict has been solved by a total separation of the working class and the wealthy. The rest of the book involves the time traveler losing his ship to the Morlocks and having to go into their underground world. Before going back in time he tries to being one of the Eloi, Weena, who he falls in love with him, but ultimately loses her to the Morlocks. As he escapes the Morlocks he accidentally travels further in the future, and becomes curious with the fate of the Earth. He reaches the end of planet Earth when all life has disappeared and the Sun no longers heats the Earth. He makes it back to the year 1900, but again goes to the future to alter Weena’s fate. Three years have passed without him returning.
The theme of The Time Machine is that inequality is the driver of social advancement. The Eloi and the Morlocks are the inevitable result of increasing inequality when human beings become so adapted to their circumstances that they become separate species. This starts with “the gradual widening of the present merely temporary social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer”. Inequality changes human beings to the point where they no longer have a common interest and feel comfortable in servitude or control. The fulfillment of society, which is the stability and security so sought after, is unsustainable and ultimately defeats itself. The balance between the rich and poor was achieved in The Time Machine only by destroying their common humanity. The abundant life of the Eloi was only possible by impoverishing the Morlocks to the state of transforming them into animals. The Morlocks are the initial victims of this arrangement, but do not revolt because they have become adapted to their situation and lack the essential feature of humanity, which is intellect. The Morlocks have "continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. "the rebellious would die: and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy as the Upper-world people were to theirs”. The Eloi are themselves victims who despite living in leisure have lost their physical and mental strength. The advancement society has provided has done away with class conflict by first eliminating want, and along the way creating such a gulf between classes that equality becomes unnecessary for creatures which no longer have the mental capacity to want a more just society. "The advancement of the technology which increases the output of their labor has abolished necessity. “Where is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Wells suggests that conflict is what gives meaning to life by developing our capacity for individual survival, as “only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers”. This capacity is what society is designed to extinguish. Stability, which is social progress, comes at the price of what makes humans equal, which is their intellect.
Rousseau agrees with Wells that social inequality is inevitable due to the destruction of common human interests. Rousseau identified the development of ego-centrism as analogous to society. Ego-centrism is caused by reason which is “what turns man in upon himself” and is what “isolates him and moves him to say...perish if you will, I am safe and sound”. Reason emerges from social life, due to a competition for scarce resources. As the population grows, what is enough for an individual becomes scarce and requires invention from the use of knowledge to artificially increase resources. Social inequality arises from necessity, as “natural inequality manifests itself together with inequality occasioned by the socialization process”. These needs would not exist if nature’s product was not consumed so quickly. Once this process of reason develops from need, it creates an imbalance of wealth to those who have the yield of the new technology. “Laboring equally, the one earned a great deal while the other barely had enough to live” is what technology, the product of reason and society, brings. This new scarcity brings “inequality in our lifestyle: excessive idleness among some, excessive labor among other” that creates inequality of social status. We become “subject, by virtue of a multitude of fresh needs, to all nature and particularly to his fellowmen”. We seek to look out for ourselves, but due to scarcity our selfishness brings us together, in bondage. Society makes us more selfish while at the same time making us more dependent. It is no contradiction, because civilization’s growth increases differences between individuals so that they no longer feel compassion towards one another, but competition. The intelligence that created technology, and consequently deprivation, rids the scarcity that gave rise to reason and becomes a defender of inequality.
Karl Marx offers a contrary view of the nature of inequality to Wells and Rousseau, claiming that inequality is not inevitable and is an impediment to progress. Inequality is part of a historical process leading towards greater human equality. Marx’s idea is that as society becomes more unequal, it unites the interests of the powerless until they become a majority with common goals and topple the class system. This unison is possible only by the growth of inequality. The high level of inequality under capitalism simplified property relations by ending feudal and communal forms of property like the family and religion and lays bare the true exploitative nature of the elite. Capitalism “has simplified class antagonisms”. The dominance of private property destroys and leaves “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest”. The relationship between rich and poor is made closer by eliminating countervailing sources of authority against private private property so that “national one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible”. Since “society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat” there should be increasing common interest among the working class. The enlargement and common interest of the laborers over time means that a future society can be created where there is no inequality at all. Their superior numbers and unison will give them a productive force that ends property. From the historical process, “the proletariat is its special and essential product” who are a class which does not rest on exploitation but is its result. Marx believes that the economic growth of propertied society is in the end beneficial in the long run by producing “its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable”.
I agree with Rousseau’s argument that social inequality is inevitable. The division of labor which wealth provides allows for more leisure for some and work for others. Growth is not distributed evenly. The Time Machine puts this reality into the starkest terms. The Eloi are able to live in leisure because the Morlocks do all their work for them. It would seem that the Morlocks are self sufficient and could throw off the Eloi's control, but they do not since they depend on the Eloi as a source of food. The poor because they do not own their labor are dependent on the rich. They have their own self-interest to look out for. As Rousseau said the poor will not achieve class consciousness because their dependency has engendered ego-centrism. They do not have an existence beyond their social status and do not conceive of a world without individual differences, largely because they have nothing to gain from such a situation. Society's growth is designed to cut us off from each other and give us something to lose in case of revolt. Wells' dystopia shows how inequality can continue without conflict. We become satisfied with our bondage because contrary to Marx we have nothing to gain and a world to lose.
Marx’s error is not taking into account the effect our social conditioning has on reconciling us with our unequal footing. Diverging ways of life, as described in The Time Machine, adapt each class to their situation and make them content in their position. “This widening gulf-which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich-will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent”. The cultural behavior of the wealthy enforces their lifestyle through interbreeding and increasing separation from the working classes. The isolated lives of the working class will become so hard for them to get out of due to less interaction with their superiors that “the rebellious would die”. The gap between class increases even as both classes interests become uniform, thus hiding their antagonism from sight. Today we see this from the geographic segregation of the wealthy from the inner cities and their tendency to attend private schools and intermarry with each other. In Marx’s time, the laborer came in close contact with the capitalist at the factory. But globalism has made it so the workers never see their bosses who reside in a foreign land with completely different cultural aesthetics. The elite cease to become a tangible thing to rally against, and the worker is immersed among only their own kind.
The Time Machine shows how inequality changes human beings to the point where they no longer have a common interest and feel comfortable in servitude to each other. Both rich and poor need each other to live, but are so blinded by their narrow interests created by society’s growth that they will act to make others worse off to better themselves. The Eloi and the Morlocks are the paradoxical result of the perfect society. The perfect society results in a dystopia because the foundations of society set in motion greater inequity in wealth which reinforces class distinction and removes our common humanity. Rousseau correctly identified the rise of ego-centrism as the logical conclusion of social life, and as the source of conformity. Marx thought that property which create such antagonism that it would not last. But the future of the Eloi and Morlocks is one that portrays the counterrevolutionary effect of inequality, which eventually does away with the gains of society. The essence of humanity, the intellect, does not survive. Social progress is incompatible with equality because it creates complacency and lowers humans to the level of instinct like the savage Morlocks and the simpleton Eloi.
Note: This was a final paper I wrote for a political philosophy class.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Who is Behind the Opposition to Immigration Reform?
Policymaking is more an art of deliberation than of preparation. In the political world, a policy only has the chance to work if it has enough support to pass and be implemented. The interests of a voting constituency can be thwarted if opposing groups have enough clout to change the terms of debate. In recent years Latinos have become the newest and most significant voting demographic, and have made their influence clear by making immigration reform a top legislative priority. But their strength hasn’t been enough to pass said reforms. That is because the counter influence of groups opposed to immigration reform is enough to affect policy towards Latinos. NumbersUSA is a prime example of an organization today that is making or preventing policies that affect Latinos. NumbersUSA is the leading group of a coalition formed for the purpose of opposing comprehensive immigration reform, which is any immigration bill which would grant amnesty or a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants. The strength of this coalition in the past two immigration reform efforts in 2006 and 2013 shows the power of a single organization over the fate of the Latino population in politics.
NumbersUSA is a nationwide political advocacy group with an office in Washington D.C. committed to reducing total immigration levels, legal and illegal, into the United States. They are by far the largest and most consequential group opposing increased immigration, claiming a million members in every Congressional district around the country. Their goal is to reduce total immigration legal and illegal without racial quotas, as they claim their opposition to immigration is colorblind. The story of how NumbersUSA formed such a formidable coalition against immigration starts with John Tanton. Tanton is the founder of the modern anti-immigration reform movement and is directly related to founding key groups in the movement like NumbersUSA. Tanton became concerned about immigration levels from a left-wing direction, being a member of the environmentalist group the Sierra Club and a founder of a local chapter of Planned Parenthood. This unusual start against immigration on the left is due to the environmentalists’ concern during the 1970’s about population growth’s strain on environmental stability. He for a time headed the Sierra Club’s Population Committee and became convinced that immigration was a root cause of environmental degradation. However as his concern with immigration grew, he left the environmentalist movement and adopted racialist ideas. Ethnic minorities, particularly Latinos, because they will not assimilate must be kept out of the country altogether. His opposition to immigration switched to worry about a non-White unassimilated majority. In the late 1970s, Tanton laid out a strategy for a multiple organization movement, founding the lobbying group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 1979 and U.S. Inc. which would fund other organizations, like NumbersUSA. NumbersUSA founder Roy Beck met Tanton in the environmentalist movement and joined his journal The Social Contract. Beck founded NumbersUSA in 1996 as an anti-immigration group that wouldn’t have the racial aspects of other groups, and would retain the environmentalist ethos. Tanton’s U.S. Inc. would own NumbersUSA until 2002 when it became independent, and since it has left behind its ties to nativist groups and has become mainstream.
In the anti-immigration movement originated by John Tanton, NumbersUSA is the activist wing. It is through this role that they wield influence in national politics. Their success is based on grassroots organizing. It is not in money power as The Sunlight Foundation estimates that $1.5 billion has been spent lobbying for immigration reform over the last four years, compared to NumbersUSA’s annual budget of $6.5 million. NumbersUSA influences immigration reform by utilizing information technology with grassroots activism. In 1997 the group discovered the ability to send faxes through the internet. When someone signs up to join NumbersUSA, a fax is automatically sent out with their name to the White House, their Governor, Congressman, and two Senators saying “I oppose the Senate Gang of Eight's amnesty proposal to legalize millions of illegal immigrants in a time of budget deficit crisis and high unemployment.” At first their base was fewer than 20,000 until 2004 when George W. Bush began pushing for immigration reform. By 2007 it was more than 500,000. NumbersUSA’s goal and its underlying success isn’t in getting a majority of the public on its side. Rather it is in micro-targeting actively committed members. In their email surveys they collect data on a member’s civic affiliations and demographic data to aid in future targeting campaigns. These dedicated citizens are the ones who will participate in public demonstrations and attend townhalls.
NumbersUSA is important to policy making affecting Latinos because immigration is of very high importance to Latinos. Despite only having a single issue as their focus, the relative importance of immigration reform to Latinos gives NumbersUSA an outsized influence for Latino politics in general. For one, Latinos are concerned with immigration as an issue far more than most Americans. 20% of Latinos place immigration as an important issue, compared to 8% of all Americans. For Latinos, immigration is tied for top issue with healthcare and unemployment while it is the fifth most important issues for all Americans. Also immigration itself affects future Latinos being able to become citizens and engage in the political process. The largest consideration of immigration reform from Latino advocacy groups is the adoption of a pathway to citizenship which would give undocumented immigrants legal rights and could lead to an enlarging of the Latino eligible voting population. The 2013 legislation could add more than 17 million new potential voting-age citizens by 2036. Given that modern presidential elections are decided by a few million votes, this would maximize their importance as a voting block. It is precisely this possibility that NumbersUSA engages in political activism.
The influence of NumbersUSA on immigration policy became manifest with the 2006 effort to reform federal immigration policy. The proposed 2006 reform promised to increase border security to reduce future illegal immigration and offer a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States. The effort was bipartisan with support from Republican president George W. Bush and Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy. The bill had enough momentum to pass the Senate 62 to 36, with 23 Republicans and 39 Democrats. However it died in the Republican controlled House of Representatives where it did not come up for a vote. Partially to blame was the division of the bill’s supporters. Labor unions wanted amnesty and opposed a guest worker program, while corporations wanted high skilled immigration and a guest worker program over a pathway to citizenship. This helped NumbersUSA defeat the bill in the House due to an increase in their ranks during the debate. Their base of activists sending faxes and calling Congress increased to 300,000, from 100,000 two years ago, with more than a million receiving email alerts. Their success was in getting their message out to the public using conservative AM talk radio. Hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity with millions of listeners around the country in almost every Congressional district, and certainly Republican districts, told their listeners that immigration reform would lead to what NumbersUSA warned about, and helped increase their ranks. Anti-immigration Congressman Tom Tancredo gave talk radio listeners a political figure to rally behind. He has accepted donations from the John Tanton group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), having accepted more than $20,000 from FAIR between 1996 and 2006. As a result the bill never came up for a vote in the House. Again in 2007 the new Democratic majority brought up the bill, but it even failed to pass the Senate by 53 to 46 due to organized labor’s opposition. NumbersUSA didn’t have to lift a finger.
NumbersUSA again flexed its activist muscle in 2013. Immigration reform had a new impetus after the 2012 elections when Barack Obama won re-election as president over Mitt Romney. Romney advocated for immigration restrictions like self-deportation and opposition to the DREAM Act early in the campaign. Obama to court Latinos promised action on immigration reform including a pathway to citizenship. His victory and Romney’s poor showing among Latinos convinced Republicans that they too must support immigration reform to court Latino voters. In the Senate a “gang of eight” of four Republicans and four Democrats convened to draw up the bill. The final bill included like the 2006 bill a pathway to citizenship and increased border security. It passed 68 to 32 on June 27th with all Democrats and 14 Republicans. This number was higher than the previous effort which failed to pass the House, giving proponents hope it would be signed into law. So far, immigration reform seemed to be on track. But efforts stalled in the House of Representatives where Speaker of the House John Boehner has refused to allow it to come up for a vote. This is where NumbersUSA comes in. By 2013 NumbersUSA actually increased its membership, now claiming at least a million active members. They so far have been on the winning side despite an outpouring of activism from undocumented immigrants and their families in front of Congressional Republican offices. Even faced with a growing Latino electorate which has voted less and less for Republican candidates, Republicans in Congress still do not go against NumbersUSA and support comprehensive immigration reform. The bill so far still has a chance of passing since there are likely enough combined Republican and Democratic votes in the House. But even against this fact Republican leadership still has not relented.
The fate of comprehensive immigration reform is in the hands of a group which doesn’t want it to pass. Immigration reform is a seminal example of how the political interests of Latinos is dependent on the political process. In the political arena opponents are just as important as allies if they have the organizational skills to defeat a bill. NumbersUSA shows where deliberation ends and where activism makes the difference in policy. Superior activism can overcome well funded institutional support. The strength of the opposition is in its unity of purpose. Their goal is to stop a bill from passing, while the goal of proponents of immigration reform varies from a pathway to citizenship, increased border security, increase in high-skilled immigration, family reunification, or a guest worker program. It is a classic David versus Goliath story where the focused resolve of a single organization has the ability to topple a seemingly insurmountable foe.*
*2/4/2017 This research helped me on my way to supporting immigration restriction.
*2/4/2017 This research helped me on my way to supporting immigration restriction.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The exact opposite of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, it is a book ostensibly about a murder and the morality of murdering a human being, but in the end denies that life has any special meaning for anybody. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment murders a pawnbroker he knows intimately, and who he knows makes the world a worse place. He realizes the error of his ways before being sent to prison, and decides that life has a moral value, and that there are no supermen who have have the right to take it away to improve the world, as Hegel's World Historical Man or Nietzsches Übermensch would.
Camus turns this upside down, as the protagonist Mersault kills a man he doesn't know, an arab, for no reason. Mersault is the kind of person who denies any meaning to anybody and only learns a value to life when facing execution. The society around him from the court trying to prosecute him and his lawyer try to give rational meaning to his actions when there is none. It is interesting that the only rational thinking occurs right before his execution, and he even himself admits that if he was successfully appealed he would again become irrationally exuberant with the delusion he can escape death. When he gives up the delusion that he can escape death, he finally finds happiness.
It is interesting that this is considered an existentialist book, since Camus denied he was an existentialist. It is through the absurd that Camus finds a way to escape the meaningless and totality of existence. The absurdity of the trial is when the court tries to use Mersault's behavior after his mothers death as proof of ill will since we the reader through the eyes of Mersault see these events as making the best of a miserable situation, life.
A very slender novel, that must be read in full to appreciate. The ending conversation with the chaplain makes it one of the best novels of all time.
Camus turns this upside down, as the protagonist Mersault kills a man he doesn't know, an arab, for no reason. Mersault is the kind of person who denies any meaning to anybody and only learns a value to life when facing execution. The society around him from the court trying to prosecute him and his lawyer try to give rational meaning to his actions when there is none. It is interesting that the only rational thinking occurs right before his execution, and he even himself admits that if he was successfully appealed he would again become irrationally exuberant with the delusion he can escape death. When he gives up the delusion that he can escape death, he finally finds happiness.
It is interesting that this is considered an existentialist book, since Camus denied he was an existentialist. It is through the absurd that Camus finds a way to escape the meaningless and totality of existence. The absurdity of the trial is when the court tries to use Mersault's behavior after his mothers death as proof of ill will since we the reader through the eyes of Mersault see these events as making the best of a miserable situation, life.
A very slender novel, that must be read in full to appreciate. The ending conversation with the chaplain makes it one of the best novels of all time.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Why America is Exceptional
In a New York Times op-ed criticizing president Obama's past attempt to gain support for an invasion of Syria, the Russian president Vladimir Putin assailed an idea close to many Americans as part of a larger criticism of American foreign policy, particularly towards intervention in the Middle East. He directly blamed the idea of American exceptionalism as a reason why the United States is so willing to intervene in the affairs of countries who have not threatened it. American exceptionalism as told by Putin is the idea that America is unique among nations for being responsible to spread freedom around the world. Since we are the oldest continuous democratic government in the world, our freedoms are ingrained in our institutions like nowhere else. His use of the phrase came as a shock to most Americans who today hear it from those on the pseudo-nationalist right like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They too share the definition of American exceptionalism to mean America has, or a at least believes so, a responsibility to spread freedom around the world due to its exceptional history as a democratic nation.
But this is not what American exceptionalism really is, or at least was originally meant. The exact origins of that phrase date to Putin`s country of origin, Russia, and to its most legendary leader in recent centuries, Joseph Stalin. The phrase originates from a 1929 conversation American Communist leader Jay Lovestone had with the General Secretary. In Moscow Lovestone argued that socialism wouldn´t happen in America because the proletariat who would benefit the most from socialism are not interested in revolutionary change. America had a uniquely individualistic culture without the class antagonism of a feudal/monarchical past. Growing imperialist ventures opened up foreign markets to bring more riches to buy off the working class and shift the worst exploitation overseas. Stalin during this conversation demanded Lovestone end this ¨heresy of American exceptionalism¨ and the phrase was born. Stalin used the phrase a a term of derision for the blinding of the proletarians from their true class interests. The phrase stayed within leftist circles and faded away as the American Communist movement lost its thunder after the New Deal erected a great compromise between labor and capital by use of the state and the economy rose to new highs after World War 2. It gained its current connotation after the 1980´s where its meaning was transmuted into a positive affirmation of Americas inherent faith in individualism and the role it had in spreading those values throughout the world. At that time, America´s economy hit the worst recession since the Depression and lost its first war in Vietnam. Confidence in Americas optimistic individualism was challenged further by Socialist insurrections in Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan during the 1970´s.
What makes America exceptional is the fact that no socialist movement has ever been viable on a national scale. The most common definition today of what makes America exceptional fails to explain what continues to make America unique today as democracy has become established in more and more countries since the 19th century, and as formerly monarchical Europe has become far more left-wing than the United States on just about every major issue. Russia itself has a representative government and a similar federal system to the United States. These countries are more left-wing because they have organized and successful socialist movements. one of France´s major parties is the Socialist Party who in 2012 won control of the presidency and the National Assembly. Germany´s Social Democratic Party is one of two major parties, which is actually the first Marxist political party in the entire world. Even Great Britain which is much closer to the United States in its political-economy has the Labour Party as one of its three major parties, a party which describes itself today as Democratic-Socialist. Our neighbor to the south Mexico has the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) which is aligned with the Socialist International and is one of three major parties. Americans scoff at Socialism by associating it with poor despotic countries like the Cuba or North Korea and claim Marx was dead wrong when he claimed that the wealthy capitalist countries would soon see revolution, but this is myopic since each advanced capitalist economy has developed a welfare state, and most have a socialist movement based historically around labor unions. The lack of successful socialist parties makes Americans think that Socialism can only succeed by violent revolutionary means and makes it even harder for left-wing movements to gain ground.
The failure of socialist organizing explains itself. A movement doesn´t succeed without prior successes. The fact that from the beginning no serious challenge to liberal capitalism has succeeded in open opposition suggests that there is something inherent in American society itself that prohibits that kind of criticism. Socialism is defined in opposition to capitalism and as a larger critique of Classical Liberalism which unlike in Europe forms the basis of Americas values. Left-wing politics developed as an anti-thesis to the class structure and had a decidedly more radical character in Europe. In America there didn´t develop a feudal class system to ingrain a dislike of wealth in itself, and its association with political oppression.
The larger problem that prevents socialists from gaining ground is that our system isn´t friendly to outsider ideologies period. This has its advantages for the even the most dedicated leftist because it means the far-right doesn´t succeed either. They do affect the political system but never from within and are usually co-opted. This sacrifice is what has allowed the United States democracy to last so long. A basic consensus that liberal democracy is the best system of government can over power what problems afflict the application of those principles. In this way by accepting liberalism carte blanche we have been able to approach issues on a pragmatic basis accepting socialist solutions for some and laissez-faire for others. America is exceptional in the modern era because it doesn´t have a strong socialist movement, but it is exceptional against human history because it has a strong devotion to liberal ideals.
But this is not what American exceptionalism really is, or at least was originally meant. The exact origins of that phrase date to Putin`s country of origin, Russia, and to its most legendary leader in recent centuries, Joseph Stalin. The phrase originates from a 1929 conversation American Communist leader Jay Lovestone had with the General Secretary. In Moscow Lovestone argued that socialism wouldn´t happen in America because the proletariat who would benefit the most from socialism are not interested in revolutionary change. America had a uniquely individualistic culture without the class antagonism of a feudal/monarchical past. Growing imperialist ventures opened up foreign markets to bring more riches to buy off the working class and shift the worst exploitation overseas. Stalin during this conversation demanded Lovestone end this ¨heresy of American exceptionalism¨ and the phrase was born. Stalin used the phrase a a term of derision for the blinding of the proletarians from their true class interests. The phrase stayed within leftist circles and faded away as the American Communist movement lost its thunder after the New Deal erected a great compromise between labor and capital by use of the state and the economy rose to new highs after World War 2. It gained its current connotation after the 1980´s where its meaning was transmuted into a positive affirmation of Americas inherent faith in individualism and the role it had in spreading those values throughout the world. At that time, America´s economy hit the worst recession since the Depression and lost its first war in Vietnam. Confidence in Americas optimistic individualism was challenged further by Socialist insurrections in Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan during the 1970´s.
What makes America exceptional is the fact that no socialist movement has ever been viable on a national scale. The most common definition today of what makes America exceptional fails to explain what continues to make America unique today as democracy has become established in more and more countries since the 19th century, and as formerly monarchical Europe has become far more left-wing than the United States on just about every major issue. Russia itself has a representative government and a similar federal system to the United States. These countries are more left-wing because they have organized and successful socialist movements. one of France´s major parties is the Socialist Party who in 2012 won control of the presidency and the National Assembly. Germany´s Social Democratic Party is one of two major parties, which is actually the first Marxist political party in the entire world. Even Great Britain which is much closer to the United States in its political-economy has the Labour Party as one of its three major parties, a party which describes itself today as Democratic-Socialist. Our neighbor to the south Mexico has the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) which is aligned with the Socialist International and is one of three major parties. Americans scoff at Socialism by associating it with poor despotic countries like the Cuba or North Korea and claim Marx was dead wrong when he claimed that the wealthy capitalist countries would soon see revolution, but this is myopic since each advanced capitalist economy has developed a welfare state, and most have a socialist movement based historically around labor unions. The lack of successful socialist parties makes Americans think that Socialism can only succeed by violent revolutionary means and makes it even harder for left-wing movements to gain ground.
The failure of socialist organizing explains itself. A movement doesn´t succeed without prior successes. The fact that from the beginning no serious challenge to liberal capitalism has succeeded in open opposition suggests that there is something inherent in American society itself that prohibits that kind of criticism. Socialism is defined in opposition to capitalism and as a larger critique of Classical Liberalism which unlike in Europe forms the basis of Americas values. Left-wing politics developed as an anti-thesis to the class structure and had a decidedly more radical character in Europe. In America there didn´t develop a feudal class system to ingrain a dislike of wealth in itself, and its association with political oppression.
The larger problem that prevents socialists from gaining ground is that our system isn´t friendly to outsider ideologies period. This has its advantages for the even the most dedicated leftist because it means the far-right doesn´t succeed either. They do affect the political system but never from within and are usually co-opted. This sacrifice is what has allowed the United States democracy to last so long. A basic consensus that liberal democracy is the best system of government can over power what problems afflict the application of those principles. In this way by accepting liberalism carte blanche we have been able to approach issues on a pragmatic basis accepting socialist solutions for some and laissez-faire for others. America is exceptional in the modern era because it doesn´t have a strong socialist movement, but it is exceptional against human history because it has a strong devotion to liberal ideals.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
The Latino Vote: Historical Considerations
The 1960 campaign, as close as it was between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, can be seen as the closing of one door and the opening of another in American politics. Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic to be elected president, and the last Irish Catholic candidate for whom that mattered. Before him was Al Smith, the first Irish Catholic to be nominated for president of either major party, back in 1928 for the Democratic Party. Unlike Kennedy he had no shot at winning running against Herbert Hoover who was the air apparent to the prior two Republican presidents of the 1920´s, but what he did was to solidify the ¨ethnic¨ white vote, consisting of largely Catholic descendants of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Before Smith the ¨immigrant¨ vote was actually split according to region and nationality. Afterwards it became off-limits for Republicans for about four decades.
Just like how Al Smith´s success bringing in a new constituency for the Democratic party proved latent, Kennedy´s greatest success would prove to be tapping into the Latino vote. Kennedy´s campaign was ahead of its time by bringing Latino voters into national politics because of how small a proportion of the population they were. In 1960 Latino´s were 3.6% of the population, compared to 16.4% in 2010. They were such a small percentage of the population that the Census Bureau didn´t even list Latino/Hispanic as a separate racial category until 1970. However the closeness of the 1960 election meant that every vote counted. Mexican-American voters helped tip over Texas and New Mexico to Democrats. The first Spanish political ad was done by Jacqueline Kennedy, and the slogan Viva Kennedy was adopted. In fact a day before his assassination on November 22nd 1963, he made the first speech acknowledging Hispanic-Americans as an important voting block speaking to a group of Mexican-American civil rights activists in Houston, and convinced his wife to speak to them in Spanish. In 1960 Kennedy won 85% of the Latino vote. A Democrat has not won the presidency since without at least 60% of Latinos.
At the same time, twilight had been reached with white ethnic voters. As soon as 1964 working class and urban whites began casting ballots for right-wing candidates like George Wallace and Barry Goldwater as the old political loyalties to the Democratic Party faded away and were replaced with the ¨New Politics¨ of appealing to younger and minority voters. The linchpin of ethnic white support for Democrats was economic. By the 1920´s the Republican Party had purged most of its progressive wing and the Democratic Party had by way of Woodrow Wilson´s efforts brought those progressives into the fold as well as trying to reduce the influence of the reactionary elements of the Solid South. When the Great Depression hit its worst in the early 1930´s, the previously progressive Herbert Hoover opposed federal relief efforts and as the unemployment rate passed double digits was routed in a landslide by Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt´s strong support of labor rights ensured the largely blue-collar ethnic whites would opt to re-elect him to serve a total of four consecutive terms. This voting pattern continued for decades until after World War 2 when the nation suffering over a decade and a half of depression found itself into unprecedented levels of prosperity. Thanks to the GI Bill and federal investments in national infrastructure as well as strong labor rights, working class whites finally were able to join the middle class. Becoming middle class meant moving out of the urban environment and from the influence of Democratic political machines and restrictions on immigration passed in the 1920´s cut off the influence of immigrants from the Old World who might pressure their Americanized counterparts to stick to their ethnic roots.
The significance for today is whether Kennedy´s courtship of Latinos into the Democratic coalition will end some time in the future like Al Smith´s efforts did by the 1960´s, resulting in Latino´s voting more or less like white Americans. This goes beyond politics as a ¨normalization¨ of voting patterns may also coincide with full assimilation into American society meaning Latino´s will cease to be a distinct demographic. Already Latinos vote slightly more Republican than they used to, but still overwhelmingly choose the Democratic Party. They have gone from a high of 90% for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to a low of 53% in 2004. When controlling for general waves in the whole electorate, the Latino vote has been 30-40% for Republicans since the 1980`s. By Bush 43`s administration, Latinos appeared to be leaving the Democratic Party as Bush won a staggering 44% of their vote in his close re-election. When looking at American-born Hispanics, they lean more Republican than their predecessors and were set to continue this trend. During the 2000`s Latinos replaced Blacks as the largest minority group in the United States and became a large source of new small businesses. It seemed likely that the ¨race card¨ that Democrats have used with Blacks since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would not work with a population arriving after the chaos of the 1960`s became the norm and when being Catholic wasn`t special, possibly neutralizing race and cultural issues. Republicans after Reagan to Bush Jr. further neutralized the immigration issues by backing amnesty plans in 1986 and 2006 respectively.
But alas this shift didn`t continue as conservatives realized how Republicans were trying to co-opt Latinos by moderating their tone and policies on illegal immigration, and lashed out creating grassroots movements led by AM talk-radio to kill the 2006 and 2007 attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. Even though Republicans ran John McCain for president in 2008, who was a leading advocate of immigration reform, they won only 31% of the vote nationwide reversing much of their gains only four years prior. In between 2008 and 2012 the Tea Party wave of the 2010 midterms elected at the state level governors and legislatures which would reverse any support for a more lax immigration policy and aggressively go after illegal immigration. In 2011 Arizona passed SB1070 which required law enforcement to inquire the citizenship status of someone they pulled over on suspicion for a crime. Several other states like Georgia followed suit and invited federal prosecution from the Justice Department. Nationally Republicans conspired in the Senate to kill the DREAM Act which would give citizenship to undocumented youths who finish High School or join the military. During the 2012 primary for their presidential, Texas Governor Rick Perry who signed a bill similar to the DREAM Act was attacked from all sides as supporting amnesty, and received the harshest attacks from Mitt Romney who would go on to win the nomination. Romney did this as part of a larger strategy to win over hard-right holdouts who preferred just about anybody to the Governor who signed a healthcare bill in Massachusetts which served as the basis for the Affordable Care Act. In addition to lambasting Rick Perry, he also gave his support to self-deportation. Self-deportation is the idea that making life for illegal immigrants harder by barring them from government benefits will incentivize them to go back to their home country and apply for citizenship. This was included in the 2012 GOP platform and sealed the Republicans performance with Latinos. Romney received 27% of the Latino vote nationwide and lost the popular vote in total by 5 million. The decades long gradual drift towards the Republicans reversed itself within four years.
This isn't a surprise however. Even before the backlash in 2006 and 2007, at the state level in the 1990´s conservatives were already honing their attack. Independent 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot ran a populist campaign against the North American Free Trade Agreement and argued that passing NAFTA would increase illegal immigration, bringing the issue of Mexican illegal immigration to national attention. Patrick Buchanan was the first to run a populist movement against immigration as he gave a serious challenge to George Bush Sr. in the 1992 presidential primaries winning 38% in New Hampshire and getting the high profile keynote speech at the Republican nominating convention, and again performed very well in the 1996 primaries actually winning the New Hampshire primary and coming second in the Iowa caucus. The turning point came in 1994 in California when then Republican governor Pete Wilson visibly supported Proposition 187 which prohibited illegal immigrants from accessing state social services. This and other propositions like Prop. 209 in 1996 which banned affirmative action were the first instances of self-deportation and the backlash against comprehensive immigration reform. Prop. 187 incidentally was the first time immigration policy was dealt with on the state level, setting the stage for Arizona in 2011. It was also the first time Latinos mobilized as a political block of consequence. Their efforts bore fruit when in 1999 the Proposition was ruled unconstitutional. Since the 1990´s the Republican Party has fallen into minority party status in California and after 2010 holds no statewide office.
While Romney was extolling self-deportation, Obama made amends with Latino voters. Obama won big with Latinos partly by promising to pass immigration reform in his first term. As this didn´t happen due to the primacy of the faltering economy and Congressional opposition, Latinos began to sour on him. This was made worse as the recovery in his second term still saw higher unemployment rates among Hispanics than the total population. As 2012 approached Obama knew he needed every vote he could get in what seemed to be a close re-election. In the summer of 2011 he announced that the Department of Homeland Security would defer deportations of minors, enacting a sort of DREAM Act. Now he had something to show for Latino voters. He and his wife Michelle also appeared on Spanish-language television and ran campaign ads in Spanish. This combined with the outright hostile rhetoric of the Republicans garnered him 70% of the Latino vote.
Voter trends are not deterministic, and depend a lot on how parties can adapt to rising demographics. Such reactions can accelerate or reverse even linear trends. So far Latinos have followed the pattern laid by previous ethnic groups, but have reversed course recently due to Republicans doing just about everything they can to lose as many Latino voters as possible. It would seem that 2012 would signal a reverse of this, but besides some encouraging words about outreach efforts, Republicans again have fought to kill an effort to reform immigration. Comments by Iowa Congressman Steve King describing immigrants as dogs have seen heavy rotation on Spanish media. And so Democrats continue to reap the gains of the Hispanic vote. An extended childhood period seems to be the foreseeable future. What is interesting is that this phenomena seems to be effecting all minority groups, even Asians who despite assimilating rapidly vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. What seems to be happening is that the current crop of immigrants have the additional aspect of being racial minorities and are affected by the concentration of White voters into the Republican Party since the 1960´s when White Ethnics pulled the lever for Richard Nixon in ´68. With the first non-White president being a liberal Democrat this exodus has reached completion. But still this isn´t inevitable as Asians like Latinos were slowly leaning more Republican before the Nativists emerged post 1990´s. The future will be either a return to a linear progression or a sharp reversal, the first over decades and the latter in maybe a few years.
(Written for Latino politics class)
But alas this shift didn`t continue as conservatives realized how Republicans were trying to co-opt Latinos by moderating their tone and policies on illegal immigration, and lashed out creating grassroots movements led by AM talk-radio to kill the 2006 and 2007 attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. Even though Republicans ran John McCain for president in 2008, who was a leading advocate of immigration reform, they won only 31% of the vote nationwide reversing much of their gains only four years prior. In between 2008 and 2012 the Tea Party wave of the 2010 midterms elected at the state level governors and legislatures which would reverse any support for a more lax immigration policy and aggressively go after illegal immigration. In 2011 Arizona passed SB1070 which required law enforcement to inquire the citizenship status of someone they pulled over on suspicion for a crime. Several other states like Georgia followed suit and invited federal prosecution from the Justice Department. Nationally Republicans conspired in the Senate to kill the DREAM Act which would give citizenship to undocumented youths who finish High School or join the military. During the 2012 primary for their presidential, Texas Governor Rick Perry who signed a bill similar to the DREAM Act was attacked from all sides as supporting amnesty, and received the harshest attacks from Mitt Romney who would go on to win the nomination. Romney did this as part of a larger strategy to win over hard-right holdouts who preferred just about anybody to the Governor who signed a healthcare bill in Massachusetts which served as the basis for the Affordable Care Act. In addition to lambasting Rick Perry, he also gave his support to self-deportation. Self-deportation is the idea that making life for illegal immigrants harder by barring them from government benefits will incentivize them to go back to their home country and apply for citizenship. This was included in the 2012 GOP platform and sealed the Republicans performance with Latinos. Romney received 27% of the Latino vote nationwide and lost the popular vote in total by 5 million. The decades long gradual drift towards the Republicans reversed itself within four years.
This isn't a surprise however. Even before the backlash in 2006 and 2007, at the state level in the 1990´s conservatives were already honing their attack. Independent 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot ran a populist campaign against the North American Free Trade Agreement and argued that passing NAFTA would increase illegal immigration, bringing the issue of Mexican illegal immigration to national attention. Patrick Buchanan was the first to run a populist movement against immigration as he gave a serious challenge to George Bush Sr. in the 1992 presidential primaries winning 38% in New Hampshire and getting the high profile keynote speech at the Republican nominating convention, and again performed very well in the 1996 primaries actually winning the New Hampshire primary and coming second in the Iowa caucus. The turning point came in 1994 in California when then Republican governor Pete Wilson visibly supported Proposition 187 which prohibited illegal immigrants from accessing state social services. This and other propositions like Prop. 209 in 1996 which banned affirmative action were the first instances of self-deportation and the backlash against comprehensive immigration reform. Prop. 187 incidentally was the first time immigration policy was dealt with on the state level, setting the stage for Arizona in 2011. It was also the first time Latinos mobilized as a political block of consequence. Their efforts bore fruit when in 1999 the Proposition was ruled unconstitutional. Since the 1990´s the Republican Party has fallen into minority party status in California and after 2010 holds no statewide office.
While Romney was extolling self-deportation, Obama made amends with Latino voters. Obama won big with Latinos partly by promising to pass immigration reform in his first term. As this didn´t happen due to the primacy of the faltering economy and Congressional opposition, Latinos began to sour on him. This was made worse as the recovery in his second term still saw higher unemployment rates among Hispanics than the total population. As 2012 approached Obama knew he needed every vote he could get in what seemed to be a close re-election. In the summer of 2011 he announced that the Department of Homeland Security would defer deportations of minors, enacting a sort of DREAM Act. Now he had something to show for Latino voters. He and his wife Michelle also appeared on Spanish-language television and ran campaign ads in Spanish. This combined with the outright hostile rhetoric of the Republicans garnered him 70% of the Latino vote.
Voter trends are not deterministic, and depend a lot on how parties can adapt to rising demographics. Such reactions can accelerate or reverse even linear trends. So far Latinos have followed the pattern laid by previous ethnic groups, but have reversed course recently due to Republicans doing just about everything they can to lose as many Latino voters as possible. It would seem that 2012 would signal a reverse of this, but besides some encouraging words about outreach efforts, Republicans again have fought to kill an effort to reform immigration. Comments by Iowa Congressman Steve King describing immigrants as dogs have seen heavy rotation on Spanish media. And so Democrats continue to reap the gains of the Hispanic vote. An extended childhood period seems to be the foreseeable future. What is interesting is that this phenomena seems to be effecting all minority groups, even Asians who despite assimilating rapidly vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. What seems to be happening is that the current crop of immigrants have the additional aspect of being racial minorities and are affected by the concentration of White voters into the Republican Party since the 1960´s when White Ethnics pulled the lever for Richard Nixon in ´68. With the first non-White president being a liberal Democrat this exodus has reached completion. But still this isn´t inevitable as Asians like Latinos were slowly leaning more Republican before the Nativists emerged post 1990´s. The future will be either a return to a linear progression or a sharp reversal, the first over decades and the latter in maybe a few years.
(Written for Latino politics class)
Saturday, August 3, 2013
How Semantics Wins in Politics
Prior to the Republican sweep of Congress in 1994, Newt Gingrich distributed a memo, from the political action committee GOPAC called Language: A Key Mechanism of Control, that helped extend his party´s rule of congress for 12 years, 1995-2007. It wasn't based on the traditional gaining more voters from non-Republican constituencies, but actually polarizing politics on purpose to rally the GOP base and win more votes by demonizing their opponents. It was negative campaigning to the extreme. However it wasn't based on passing techniques like radio or newspaper, but more abstract; language itself. What Gingrich wanted was to change the way Americans thought about the two major parties and politics in general. The strategy was to use the pulpit of mass media, any kind, to attach positive words to oneself and negative words to your opponent. This has always been done, but the kicker was not just to attack the person but the organization they represented. In previous elections, Republicans and Democrats would still have a basic respect for each other´s party because they knew they would have to work with them to pass legislation. So attacking a whole party, which was made of millions of voters you wanted to peel off in the future, was seen as foolhardy.
But Gingrich had a new plan, Congress should be transformed into what the parliaments of Europe where political parties are united by ideology and work to stop any bills they do not favor regardless if they are popular. Many Parliaments have what is called proportional representation, where no matter how small a percentage a party gets it will still win seats (usually a percentage same as their vote total, 5% vote means 5% of the seats). This proliferates multitudes of radical, fringe parties who can simply refuse to join coalitions and prevent working governments from being formed. Further, this creates a system where no party can be large enough to pass anything unless it wins a clear 51% majority, meaning that the goal becomes not to forge compromise but try to destroy the opposition parties and ram through legislation on close party-line votes. That is why Margaret Thatcher could push though far more right-wing bills in Britain than Ronald Reagan in the United States, despite Britain being significantly more left-wing. So, if the more conservative United States adopted such a model, the liberal victories of the 30s and the 60s could finally be rolled back.
Gingrich did not begin the fight to create a fringe party system the way they were set up in Europe. The European Parliaments are that way because of the written law, by their Constitutions or subsequent legislation. Gingrich in contrast did not intend to use any formal routes. One reason is that for most of his tenure in Congress he couldn´t. From his start in Congress in 1979 to his ascension as House Speaker in 1995, his party was in the minority to the Democrats. And the Republican leadership, chiefly Bob Michel who was House Minority Leader 1981-1995, did not share his views of polarization. Even when he did become leader of the House Republicans, it was only for four years from 1995-1999 meaning he had to make a strategy which would outlive him and create a body of viable successors.What Gingrich had to do was an internal, de-facto coup. This had to be done he thought with the power of language which connects with ordinary Americans much better than pragmatic, ¨establishment¨ compromise.
In the memo, which is of course simplistic, the key is to "speak like Newt.¨ There´s good reason as to why he is the only former Speaker to continue being a relevant figure in American politics, over a decade after he was disgracefully ousted from the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton. All his style consists of is using emotionally charged words, positive for his side and negative for the other, to speak to the powerful irrational side of human nature. Phrases like honest, strong, liberty, freedom, abusive, cheater, weak, and bureaucracy are common words ingrained into our minds with meanings reinforced by our education with very specific unambiguous meanings. In the political sense, this is used to make unpopular or immoral ideas popular. Popular and good ideas do not need to be attached to these words to be what they are, which is their weakness. Aid to the poor, peace in the Middle East, and human rights are commonly held as socially desirable. Tax cuts for the wealthy, bank de-regulation, pre-emptive war, and austerity do need to be augmented because they are unpopular. Language defends the "indefensible" by using a Trojan horse, sneaking in policies with an appearance of being beneficial for all. For example, Ronald Reagan sold tax cuts to the wealthy which is not popular as ¨across the board tax cuts¨, going not just to the wealthy but to the poor. I am not making this up, Reagan´s own budget director David Stockman used the phrase Trojan horse in an interview with The Atlantic to describe how the Reagan administration sold supply side economics to the public.
The concept of the politicization of language was popularized by the well known novelist George Orwell. In 1946, before his magnum opus 1984, he published Politics and the English Language. Orwell argued that Totalitarian regimes justified their oppression by debasing language into simple emotional phrases that are either totally positive or totally negative. Ideas can be condescending into unambiguous phrases and ideally into single words which will invert the natural human suspicion of power into total submission, convincing people that freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. He described it thus:
¨In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.¨
Readers of 1984 will notice how the English language in the novel´s dystopian future is further simplified to the combination of larger words into smaller phrases. Instead of English Socialism, it is ingsoc.
Orwell´s conclusion on the politicization of language was thoroughly negative, it should never be tried because it aids tyrants. But Newt Gingrich would discover Orwell´s writings and re-interpret it to be positive in the direction of human liberty. He came upon this by way of Frank Luntz, a pollster for Patrick Buchanan and Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election. Luntz became Newt Gingrich´s pollster for the Contract of America. Gingrich discovered Luntz at a Republican retreat:
¨The concept of it was hatched in Salisbury, MD, at a Republican retreat. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to do a presentation about how the American people didn't trust politicians in general and, quite frankly, didn't trust Republicans in particular. And Newt Gingrich was there, and he listened to the presentation, and he said: "We have to do it differently in this election. We have to find a way to communicate that takes all of these policies that we believe in, that the Democrats don't, and articulates that difference. How can we do it?" I presented at that presentation a proclamation. I got the idea from a Massachusetts campaign I was involved with. Gingrich saw that, and he came up with the phrase "contract."
I didn't create the "Contract with America;" I was the pollster for it.¨
Luntz was hired by the Republican National Committee and during that time helped Gingrich produce the GOPAC memo Language: A Key Mechanism of Control. One fact is important to establish, Luntz and Gingrich did not start the semantic game in the Republican Party. The groundwork was laid by Richard Nixon and his Vice President Spiro Agnew who built a winning campaign in 1968 by claiming Conservatives stood for the ¨silent majority¨ and against the ¨liberal elites¨ in the media and universities. Ronald Reagan, using his acting experience, made the harsh Barry Goldwater attack on government into art by actually using quotations from Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy like ¨we have a rendezvous with destiny¨. Institutionally it was Lee Atwater, strategist for Reagan and Bush´s campaigns in the 80s and future RNC chairman, who figured out how to translate the ugly, racist appeal to southern states founded on attacking civil rights legislation socially acceptable. It is done by using abstract positive language:
¨You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.¨
The lesson for contemporary politics is that the right-wing wins not merely on policy, but on semantics. This is how even though a majority of Americans favor expanding background checks for gun purchases and raising taxes on the wealthy the Republicans can oppose them unilaterally and get elected. And further, lose and still be respected. When Mitt Romney lost the 2012 to Barack Obama convincingly, exit polls still showed a majority of voters still felt that Mitt Romney was closer to them ideologically than Obama. If this was not so Obama probably would have got more of the vote easily. Obama then only won by appealing to the self interest of at least some of voters who choose to vote against their personal beliefs.
Luntz and Gingrich´s strategy has been so successful that a plurality of Americans consider themselves Conservative even as they report favoring Liberal positions on important issues. Polling firm Gallup claims that about 40% of voters consider themselves Conservative, 35% moderate, and 20% Liberal. Gallup has measured this since 1992 when moderates were the majority with 43%. They remained the majority until about 2009 when Obama became president, but were declining slowly since 1992 around when Gingrich´s Republicans emerged.
Liberals and Democrats have fought these tactics by essentially playing into them. Instead of combating Conservative ideology head on, they have tried to convince voters that it is their policies that are truly Conservative. Bill Clinton proclaimed the era of big government over in 1996 and proceeded to sign center-right policies on welfare, taxes, trade, and regulation for fear of doing anything that would imply he is on the wrong side of the right. Today Democrats sold healthcare reform as being the true Conservative plan, stressing its past support from Bob Dole and the Heritage Foundation. The same goes for Cap and Trade which is argued for by saying it is a market-based model inspired by George H.W. Bush´s handling of acid rain. The hope is to act Conservative enough to provide cover to pass truly Liberal reforms. But this has failed with the above and even more examples because the opposition knows the game and instead moves further to the right (which is automatically defined as good, the more the better) and votes against it. Republicans gave no votes to ¨Obamacare¨ and filibustered Cap and Trade in the Senate. The same goes even for legislation that gets passed. Democrats loaded up the 2009 stimulus with tax cuts, included no tax increases whatsoever, and less spending than many Liberal economists believed was necessary to fill the immense gap of consumer spending. But with all these giveaways, the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted against it. Even though it became law because Democrats had Congress in 2009, their fear of being too Liberal made them water down the bill to get votes that the strategy promises should never be given.
The only way out of this bait and switch is to change the semantic game. Trying to play it the way the Republicans do will fail because they have been successful in demonizing Liberal groups and causes.
But Gingrich had a new plan, Congress should be transformed into what the parliaments of Europe where political parties are united by ideology and work to stop any bills they do not favor regardless if they are popular. Many Parliaments have what is called proportional representation, where no matter how small a percentage a party gets it will still win seats (usually a percentage same as their vote total, 5% vote means 5% of the seats). This proliferates multitudes of radical, fringe parties who can simply refuse to join coalitions and prevent working governments from being formed. Further, this creates a system where no party can be large enough to pass anything unless it wins a clear 51% majority, meaning that the goal becomes not to forge compromise but try to destroy the opposition parties and ram through legislation on close party-line votes. That is why Margaret Thatcher could push though far more right-wing bills in Britain than Ronald Reagan in the United States, despite Britain being significantly more left-wing. So, if the more conservative United States adopted such a model, the liberal victories of the 30s and the 60s could finally be rolled back.
Gingrich did not begin the fight to create a fringe party system the way they were set up in Europe. The European Parliaments are that way because of the written law, by their Constitutions or subsequent legislation. Gingrich in contrast did not intend to use any formal routes. One reason is that for most of his tenure in Congress he couldn´t. From his start in Congress in 1979 to his ascension as House Speaker in 1995, his party was in the minority to the Democrats. And the Republican leadership, chiefly Bob Michel who was House Minority Leader 1981-1995, did not share his views of polarization. Even when he did become leader of the House Republicans, it was only for four years from 1995-1999 meaning he had to make a strategy which would outlive him and create a body of viable successors.What Gingrich had to do was an internal, de-facto coup. This had to be done he thought with the power of language which connects with ordinary Americans much better than pragmatic, ¨establishment¨ compromise.
In the memo, which is of course simplistic, the key is to "speak like Newt.¨ There´s good reason as to why he is the only former Speaker to continue being a relevant figure in American politics, over a decade after he was disgracefully ousted from the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton. All his style consists of is using emotionally charged words, positive for his side and negative for the other, to speak to the powerful irrational side of human nature. Phrases like honest, strong, liberty, freedom, abusive, cheater, weak, and bureaucracy are common words ingrained into our minds with meanings reinforced by our education with very specific unambiguous meanings. In the political sense, this is used to make unpopular or immoral ideas popular. Popular and good ideas do not need to be attached to these words to be what they are, which is their weakness. Aid to the poor, peace in the Middle East, and human rights are commonly held as socially desirable. Tax cuts for the wealthy, bank de-regulation, pre-emptive war, and austerity do need to be augmented because they are unpopular. Language defends the "indefensible" by using a Trojan horse, sneaking in policies with an appearance of being beneficial for all. For example, Ronald Reagan sold tax cuts to the wealthy which is not popular as ¨across the board tax cuts¨, going not just to the wealthy but to the poor. I am not making this up, Reagan´s own budget director David Stockman used the phrase Trojan horse in an interview with The Atlantic to describe how the Reagan administration sold supply side economics to the public.
The concept of the politicization of language was popularized by the well known novelist George Orwell. In 1946, before his magnum opus 1984, he published Politics and the English Language. Orwell argued that Totalitarian regimes justified their oppression by debasing language into simple emotional phrases that are either totally positive or totally negative. Ideas can be condescending into unambiguous phrases and ideally into single words which will invert the natural human suspicion of power into total submission, convincing people that freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. He described it thus:
¨In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.¨
Readers of 1984 will notice how the English language in the novel´s dystopian future is further simplified to the combination of larger words into smaller phrases. Instead of English Socialism, it is ingsoc.
Orwell´s conclusion on the politicization of language was thoroughly negative, it should never be tried because it aids tyrants. But Newt Gingrich would discover Orwell´s writings and re-interpret it to be positive in the direction of human liberty. He came upon this by way of Frank Luntz, a pollster for Patrick Buchanan and Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election. Luntz became Newt Gingrich´s pollster for the Contract of America. Gingrich discovered Luntz at a Republican retreat:
¨The concept of it was hatched in Salisbury, MD, at a Republican retreat. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to do a presentation about how the American people didn't trust politicians in general and, quite frankly, didn't trust Republicans in particular. And Newt Gingrich was there, and he listened to the presentation, and he said: "We have to do it differently in this election. We have to find a way to communicate that takes all of these policies that we believe in, that the Democrats don't, and articulates that difference. How can we do it?" I presented at that presentation a proclamation. I got the idea from a Massachusetts campaign I was involved with. Gingrich saw that, and he came up with the phrase "contract."
I didn't create the "Contract with America;" I was the pollster for it.¨
Luntz was hired by the Republican National Committee and during that time helped Gingrich produce the GOPAC memo Language: A Key Mechanism of Control. One fact is important to establish, Luntz and Gingrich did not start the semantic game in the Republican Party. The groundwork was laid by Richard Nixon and his Vice President Spiro Agnew who built a winning campaign in 1968 by claiming Conservatives stood for the ¨silent majority¨ and against the ¨liberal elites¨ in the media and universities. Ronald Reagan, using his acting experience, made the harsh Barry Goldwater attack on government into art by actually using quotations from Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy like ¨we have a rendezvous with destiny¨. Institutionally it was Lee Atwater, strategist for Reagan and Bush´s campaigns in the 80s and future RNC chairman, who figured out how to translate the ugly, racist appeal to southern states founded on attacking civil rights legislation socially acceptable. It is done by using abstract positive language:
¨You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.¨
The lesson for contemporary politics is that the right-wing wins not merely on policy, but on semantics. This is how even though a majority of Americans favor expanding background checks for gun purchases and raising taxes on the wealthy the Republicans can oppose them unilaterally and get elected. And further, lose and still be respected. When Mitt Romney lost the 2012 to Barack Obama convincingly, exit polls still showed a majority of voters still felt that Mitt Romney was closer to them ideologically than Obama. If this was not so Obama probably would have got more of the vote easily. Obama then only won by appealing to the self interest of at least some of voters who choose to vote against their personal beliefs.
Luntz and Gingrich´s strategy has been so successful that a plurality of Americans consider themselves Conservative even as they report favoring Liberal positions on important issues. Polling firm Gallup claims that about 40% of voters consider themselves Conservative, 35% moderate, and 20% Liberal. Gallup has measured this since 1992 when moderates were the majority with 43%. They remained the majority until about 2009 when Obama became president, but were declining slowly since 1992 around when Gingrich´s Republicans emerged.
Liberals and Democrats have fought these tactics by essentially playing into them. Instead of combating Conservative ideology head on, they have tried to convince voters that it is their policies that are truly Conservative. Bill Clinton proclaimed the era of big government over in 1996 and proceeded to sign center-right policies on welfare, taxes, trade, and regulation for fear of doing anything that would imply he is on the wrong side of the right. Today Democrats sold healthcare reform as being the true Conservative plan, stressing its past support from Bob Dole and the Heritage Foundation. The same goes for Cap and Trade which is argued for by saying it is a market-based model inspired by George H.W. Bush´s handling of acid rain. The hope is to act Conservative enough to provide cover to pass truly Liberal reforms. But this has failed with the above and even more examples because the opposition knows the game and instead moves further to the right (which is automatically defined as good, the more the better) and votes against it. Republicans gave no votes to ¨Obamacare¨ and filibustered Cap and Trade in the Senate. The same goes even for legislation that gets passed. Democrats loaded up the 2009 stimulus with tax cuts, included no tax increases whatsoever, and less spending than many Liberal economists believed was necessary to fill the immense gap of consumer spending. But with all these giveaways, the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted against it. Even though it became law because Democrats had Congress in 2009, their fear of being too Liberal made them water down the bill to get votes that the strategy promises should never be given.
The only way out of this bait and switch is to change the semantic game. Trying to play it the way the Republicans do will fail because they have been successful in demonizing Liberal groups and causes.
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