Warding Off Political Apathy - Part 1

Would you like to recreate this scene in your neighborhood?

In this election cycle Republicans have to be more conscientious than ever about saying that they will reduce the "size" of government. They might even have to mean it. I heard Mr. Gingrich make such a promise a few primaries ago in Johnston, Iowa. In exchange for reduced government however, he asked something of us: increased citizenship. Whether or not you think government needs to be downsized, most of us can probably agree that citizenship has waned substantially in our country and may be at an all time low. It's hard to imagine how JFK could tell us just 50 years ago not to ask what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country. Does that sentiment even make sense to us anymore? Our country should be able to take care of itself right?

Is my ballot in there anywhere?

My own lack of engaged citizenship has disturbed me for a long time. The primary problem is motivation. I feel incredibly distant from government power and my vote seems like little more than a token. It is discouraging to think how much hard work would be required to fully grasp the complexity of the many political challenges we face and then watch that hard work swallowed up by giant bins full of other ballots cast by people who think that political discernment is absorbed passively from cable news shows.

I guess he ran for NASCAR president too.

Maybe the enormous population growth in our society has alienated us from our government in ways we need to counteract. Consider the following: John Quincy Adams won* the 1824 presidential election with 113,122 votes. John McCain lost the 2008 election because he only got 60,000,000 votes. For every American that successfully elected JQA there were 530 who couldn't quite get it done for McCain 184 years later. It is astounding to think how small our electorate was in the good old days. There were fewer votes cast in that election than there are voting-age citizens in Multnomah County today! Back then, it seems to me, our efforts to understand the issues would really have paid off. Discussing and debating issues with those around us could really have an influence on an election, even at a national level. Now it just seems like an exercise in futility or pedantry depending on who you are talking with. People who "know" about politics these days are probably much more likely to be lunatic ideologues rather than the conscientious, wise, humble, and creative citizens we need.

So here's my plan to fix all that.

Ready?

It's simple:

Give up your vote. Rather than voting individually we can unite together and vote collectively. We would divide our country into equal sized wards of say 1000 people. These wards would have regular meetings, discussions, and rules of order. Each ward could cast one vote on any issues that we vote on currently: ballot measures, representatives, bonds, levies, as well as mayors, governors, and presidents.

 Who has time to fill out ballots? Can't I just "phone it in"
like I do for DWTS? Text "citizenship is dead" to
20500 to vote for Barack or Sara

This might sound like a radical, anti-democratic ploy by a half-baked, half-educated half-wit. Well…I’ll only deny the first bit of that…because really this is not such a radical idea. These wards would be democratic, so I’m not really asking you to give up your vote. In fact, I hope to amplify it. This is a tactic that states have been using for a long time. For example, in Oregon we expressed a slight preference for Obama in the last election, but we gave him all of our electoral votes so that we could maximize our influence on a federal level. At this point, state populations have grown so large that it would be helpful for us to have more manageable civic units so that politics could be thought of as a social enterprise again rather than a smattering of inchoate private preferences that we’d better not discuss with the in-laws. Take another look at the School of Athens painting by Rafael and imagine they are discussing political issues. It seems like truly democratic people shouldn't just be driving to the library twice a year to drop off their ballot, but should be lounging in some public square now and then to discuss their ideas with friends, acquaintances, and even strangers.

If you don't like my plan then Socrates
thinks you're an idiot.

When I think of the democracies I would most like to have been a part of I think of small polities where political discourse is not limited to a handful of demagogues, talking heads, and television pundits, but truly involves everyone. Perhaps this has never existed in the way that I idealize it, but I think it is much more likely to have existed in smaller sociopolitical assemblages like ancient Athens, some Native American tribes, the Republic of Venice, or a Swiss forest canton. In these smaller civic units I think it must have been much harder to disengage from politics. I believe that a ward system would draw us out from our private delusions and force us to expose them and refine them. Just like a flabby stomach, we are much more likely to tone up our political thinking if we know someone is going to be checking it out. Let's dare to make this "res publica" a truly public thing again. And while we're on word derivations, let me remind you that the word “idiotes” in Greek was originally the word for a private person, someone who didn’t participate in public life.

Anyway, I decided to break this post up. In the second half I will enumerate more specifically what I believe to be the benefits of this "ward system" of democracy...or maybe if I could just find some people to talk to about politics I could stop blogging entirely.

We the Consumers

If the financial stakes are really being raised in the political sphere as high as I indicated in my last post then I would like to predict at least one high profile assassination in the U.S. in the next three years.

Secondly, I would like to remind you that I promised to unveil an idea for a new form of democracy in the blog post after this one. That is still my plan. Be prepared. It will take the world by storm.

If you have one of these you are an active voter.

Now to the topic at hand: just wages. In my last post I explored money in politics, which I find vaguely frustrating since I can't do much about it. So now I want to think about the money in my wallet. The value of our political vote may be on the wane, marginalized by the rising influence of corporate cash, but our economic vote (how we spend our money) is as important as ever. Not only does it exert economic influence on the companies we are buying from, but it also has a moral component that influences our very character.

There is a good chance that you have eaten chocolate from
cocoa grown by these kids at this gunpoint. 69% of the
world's cocoa is grown in West Africa.

Unfortunately, the moral implications of our spending are often obscured by the increasingly impersonal relationship between us and the people we buy things from. This makes economic justice in the modern world bedevilingly complex. My argument here is that we are hurting not only others but even ourselves when we fail to strive for a better understanding of what our spending means. Ignorance is no excuse, but it is the only one we have. Consider the following passage from the Bible. 

"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you." - James 5:1-6

This passage is basically saying that living large while taking advantage of other people is not only wrong, but will hurt you. With all the talk about fields, harvesters, and moth-eaten garments the passage might not seem very relevant to my highly sophisticated readership, but I think it is extremely important that we consider this passage in a modern context. So, if they aren't out your back door, then where are your fields? And if they aren't in your backyard, then who are your harvesters?

Sure, it looks like easy living now, but you should have seen
this guy an hour ago in the milking parlor.

In the time Jesus' brother wrote these words there would have been lots of people who were proprietors of some sort. Some of them were so rich that they didn't have to work their own fields. They were lucky enough to escape the curse of Adam. "Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken." With the exception of one good friend (shout out to Rohne's Long Island Dairy!) I don't know anyone who works their fields for a living. There are also very few of you who win your bread by "the sweat of your face" like Dirk does. I've seen him. It's not pretty. For the rest of us who have escaped this part of Adam's curse we need to look elsewhere to make sure that we are paying the mowers and harvesters of our food (and the producers of all the other products we consume) appropriately and that their cries of injustice will not ascend to the Lord's aural cavity.

Rather than the occasional wealthy landowner of biblical times, there are whole nations of wealthy individuals now who live with luxuries that our ancient forebears could never have dreamed of. If you are reading this you are one of them. Additionally, our world economy is structured so that we don't ever have to look the exploited people in the face. They are separated from us by oceans and centuries. They might be harvesting our 30-cent bananas right now in Ecuador or suffering from our depletion of resources one hundred years from now.

You are what you eat. Feedlot beef for feedlot people?

But it is not just they who pay a price. Those of us living in luxury risk being fattened in the day of slaughter by ignoring what luxury, self-indulgence, and self-obsession do to our souls. As James says earlier, friendship with the world is enmity with God. To follow Christ you have to "deny yourself" because you will either find your comfort ultimately in this world's pleasures or in Christ. No one can serve two masters. For me one of the saddest and most troubling passages in the Bible is Luke 16, which ends with a rich man in hell being told, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. Woe to us if we love our good things too much and do not count them as rubbish, in order that we may gain Christ.

Now I am not suggesting that we all should become Amish and categorically reject modern luxuries. I don't think the Bible goes quite that far. I'm not suggesting that income inequality should somehow be abolished. I'm not even suggesting that you should grow some of your own food in a garden if you aren't into that kind of thing. But I am saying that we need to think very carefully about what we buy and who is getting paid to produce it. If comparing prices is more important to us than comparing ethics then we are serving the wrong master.

Consider Tillamook Cheese. I don't like everything about Tillamook, but there are good reasons to believe that buying more expensive Tillamook products is morally superior to giving any more of your money to Kraft Foods. I realize that this is a bold and controversial statement, but consider the following. Tillamook is cooperatively owned (so my buddy Dirk is part owner). The cows are largely grass fed. Farms are "family" sized and thus the land is less vulnerable to the shortcuts of agribusiness. Farm laborers are valued and well paid. Finally, for those of us in the Pacific Northwest Tillamook is local so that shipping and refrigeration externalities are minimized. I realize that deciding which cheese is most ethically produced is a complex and somewhat subjective issue. You may not think that Tillamook is all I have made it out to be, but I hope you will accept the principle nonetheless. If it is a more ethically produced product, then you have some explaining to do if you are unwilling to pay more for it.

From latinorebels.com

If you were lucky enough to escape the working-your-own-land-for-your-own-food part of Adam's curse, then someone is probably suffering the curse for you. It might be exploited children on a cocoa farm in West Africa. It might be your great-grandchildren who will have to pay the external costs (low crop yield and thus higher food prices) incurred by our decision to drain the Ogallala aquifer and deplete our soil and water quality through over-fertilization. It might be small farmers who have been driven out of business because of policies, regulations, and manipulation that favors the big moneyed interests that produce the cheapest products.

So, I think we need to adopt a new attitude when we go to the grocery store. I admit that it is difficult to do and we won't be able to figure it all out right away, but let's walk the aisles thinking about fairness, sustainability, and if you believe in him, God. Remember that when we buy it we are complicit in whatever circumstances brings the food to the supermarket shelves. It may sound like a duty you will be shackled with, but I really believe this will set us free. We will be free from obsession with cheap food and good deals. We will be free to pay what our food is really worth. Our relationship with our food will be the slow, deliberate, lingering enjoyment of a man with his wife rather than the obsessive, lustful, exploitative fix a man gets from his mistress. As the Bible says elsewhere, he who loves his wife loves himself.

Love your food!

Politics is a Game. Money is How They Keep Score.

Vote for Teddy this year! You won't hear this from anyone else.

It is not my intention that this should be a political blog. This was conceived of as a no-niche blog and hopefully once I get all this political stuff off my chest I can get back writing about what I know best: nothing in particular.
  
Though my last post may have convinced you otherwise, I readily admit that autocracy is not a good idea. It may be more palatable when it is headed by dynastic monarchs rather than upstart demagogues, but either way the ride is going to be bumpy. But in America the ride is getting pretty bumpy right now anyway, don't you think?
  
So, having briefly considered the festering abscess that is Russian politics, I would like to turn briefly to the ingrown hair that is American democracy. Our problems are much fewer, but they may be growing worse. I ventured to argue in my last post that Russian politics is attracting the wrong kind of politician. Any unbiased observer of the current Republican presidential hopefuls would likely agree that we have a similar problem. This is not because Republicans are all complete tools. There are many intelligent conservatives (as well as liberals) who would do our country a lot of good if they were running things. But none of them are foolish enough to join the circus of casuistry (word for the day used here in its pejorative sense) that is bringing shame and international opprobrium to our country.

Good

Bad

As we consider the modern American political game I would like to draw a comparison from sports. You may know that I adore the game known as Ultimate. Many who know me would probably say that my adoration looks a lot like obsession so I risk carrying a good deal of bias into this analogy. Anyway, since its inception in the late 1960s Ultimate has gone through eleven editions of its rulebook to make the game more fun, fair, and safe for players and spectators. As an example, one of those rules is known as the Principle of Verticality. This gives you the right to the airspace directly above you. Anyone in your airspace who makes contact with you is committing a foul. This principle helps both to diminish the likelihood of injury and to prevent tall people from having too many advantages. Sports are much more fun to watch and participate in when skill and effort are rewarded more than size or height. 

"If I had a hammer, I'd open BLM 
lands for my gas fracking buddies 
all over this land." - Dick Cheney

Our political system is in need of a similar rule. It increasingly favors one political virtue above all others: money. You need it to run. You need it to win. Unwillingness or inability to obsess over money means that qualified leaders of every political stripe are less likely than ever to end up on TV answering questions from Brian Williams. Instead, our system is encouraging more and more fame-starved nincompoops to run for office probably because they weren't lucky enough to get on a reality show. More likely it is because they are the only people foolish enough to run our country exactly the way well-financed interests would like it run. These people are "tools" in the traditional sense I suppose, being unwittingly exploited by others to accomplish a task. For example, maybe oil companies don't have a hard enough fist to punch fracking deregulation through Congress, but once they can get a grip on the right hammer they will have no trouble. 

To borrow another sports analogy, it's kind of like the LA Lakers buying the "tool" of Shaquille O'Neal (an enormous man with limited basketball ability) in order to dominate the NBA for a few years. It doesn't really seem right that a man who is a worse free throw shooter than me should be making millions of dollars missing them on national television while winning the NBA finals. Perhaps the rules of the game need to be changed if the highest bidder buying the biggest oaf will win the games. The NBA will not likely make rules that help favor smaller more talented players (I guess because there are plenty of tall talented players), but they definitely need better salary cap rules so that teams can't just buy championships.

This is a visual representation of Senator Ben Nelson (D)
Nebraska trying to develop useful legislation.

Back to politics. The current rules on a variety of money related issues are changing the kind of people that we can elect and the bedfellows they must keep. The LA Lakers in the current scheme are multinational corporations which are now able to wield political influence in ways our Founding Fathers could never have dreamed. The rest of us are the Milwaukee Bucks, unable to win many games as long as the playing field is tilted in favor of larger market cities. We can't get good players (i.e. candidates) because we can't afford them. Instead we have to watch the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Heat, and Bulls choose who the winners will be. I don't pretend to understand the shadowy relationships between PACs, 527 groups, and 501 groups, but their combined use by candidates since the Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling last year (and a subsequent D.C. circuit court ruling) results in a completely new campaign finance structure, which allows corporations to bankroll political candidates to their hearts content without ever sullying their reputation by having to reveal it to the public. Allowing corporations to anonymously fund candidates in this way is already having enormous consequences. 

As Lawrence Lessig pointed out in his recent C-span interview (and, I suppose, in his new book which I am waiting on at the library), fundraising has become so important to political success that it not only determines the outcome of the elections but has become what distinguishes candidates for perks and promotion within their party. Talent, leadership, ideas, and loyalty to voters in your district are far less important to your success than loyalty to those who donate to your campaign. This conflict of interest is now determining the kind of politician who can be successful. Fundraising rather than policy is what a new generation of politician thinks about, talks about, and relies upon. Long-serving Congressman Jim Cooper from Tennessee says that when he sits down with the Democratic Policy Committee in Congress they don't really talk about policy anymore. They mostly talk about fundraising. 

To $$$$$$$$$$ and beyond

I even heard one of the Republican campaign managers (can't remember which one) say that he too was worried about the rising influence of PACs. His concern was that with money being funneled straight to candidates it could altogether bypass political parties making them irrelevant. Although I am no fan of either party, that kind of radical change frightens me. Can you imagine what Ultimate would be like if some players were getting jet packs from an observer with a stake in which team won or lost? Certain players could fly all over the field and the Brodie Smiths of the world could do nothing about it. The Principle of Verticality wouldn't matter anymore because the jet pack gang could catch the disc without any worry of making contact with a player underneath. Similarly, the rules limiting and requiring disclosure about campaign financing are being nullified by Super-PAC jet packs. So this Republican primary debacle we are all watching is only ostensibly about politicians trying to impress us. More truthfully the presidential contenders are trying to impress the jet pack distributers.

Every political system filters out the vast majority of candidates for political office. The way this occurs in Russia, the US, or anywhere else is different and depends on a wide variety of factors. No country's filtration system is perfect and rarely are the traits needed for successful campaigning ideal when it comes to leading. Though I don't advocate aristocracy, monarchy, or the rule of philosopher-kings I do agree with Plato on at least this point: There are a class of people in every society that surely would make great leaders, but have little motivation to run for office.

Coming soon...everywhere!

Unfortunately, those people are currently farther than ever from wanting to join the farcical political sphere and less likely than ever to be allowed in. The problem isn't that Americans are too dumb to elect a good candidate. The problem is that they will never be allowed to elect a good candidate because good (thoughtful, perceptive, principled) candidates can't get the traction required to be admitted onto a ballot. Our political game currently honors fundraising ability above all other qualities. So let me join the new chorus of voices (Lessig, Catherine Crier, and even a reformed "Casino" Jack Abramoff are the ones I have run across purely by chance in the last month.) saying that we must change the rules (specifically campaign finance, corporate personhood, and the revolving door) if we want to avoid trading our democracy in for plutocracy or perhaps something we should call "corporocracy." Hopefully enough focused cheerleading by we the people can convince the players to call a timeout and change the rules.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King

Pick a card!

The end of my last post alluded to the difficulties Americans have had in selecting the best candidates for elected office. Against my better judgement I have since started four different blog posts related to this topic and hope to release them for thee (I don't think my readership is plural yet) to read in the near future. The final one will include a proposal for a new form of democracy that I hope would engage more people in politics and mitigate the influence of money. Bold move, I know. 

Obviously, democracy is far from flawless in producing great leaders. You don't get to vote for an Abraham Lincoln every time you go to the polls. In the West we tend to think of democracy as one of our highest ideals, the culmination of the slow and bloody march of lady freedom against the sons of tyranny. While I admit that I tend to agree with this view, I think it is important to explore democracy's shortcomings. Blind allegiance to some of our most precious institutions is probably what keeps us from tinkering with and improving them. So in this post I would like explore some of the unappreciated qualities of democracy's long-derided wicked step-father: hereditary monarchy.

Still angry after all these years.

Democracy has been around ever since "Occupy the Acropolis" 508BC. Athenian activists only needed three days to overthrow the system and give Isagoras the boot. They established a democracy, which lasted for almost 200 years until Alexander the Great popped in for a visit. However, long before this Athenian luminaries such as Plato were already sour on rule by the people. According to Plato the biggest problem with rule by the people is the people. Perhaps he was just bitter because five hundred of the people (an Athenian jury) condemned his beloved teacher Socrates to death. But after tasting the bitter cup of watching Socrates drink his bitter cup you could excuse Plato for likening the people to a mob, too easily swayed by rhetoric and demagoguery. 

The other problem with democracy is that the people with the desire and ability to get elected aren't the ones most qualified to rule. In Plato's mind the best rulers would have been the philosophers, who were breathing the easy air of Platonic reality. Unfortunately, when these people move out of Plato's "cave" they acquire wisdom enough to avoid the meretricious charms of political power. 

A new way to kill time. An old way to be governed.

The reluctance of qualified leaders to seek office is a problem that is hard to deal with. Old school hereditary monarchy has some benefits in this regard that alternatives like democracy can't often produce, and Plato would probably agree. Democracies are ruled almost exclusively by a class of men and women who are good at rhetoric and persuasion, sophists rather than philosophers. That could be a problem, especially if you have any doubts about the morality or character of that class of men. Monarchies on the other hand have produced a dazzling array of political leaders: sophists, philosophers, and idiots of every imaginable kind. Despite the risk of bad eggs and the potential of power going to one's head, there have also been many benevolent and forward-looking monarchs. Plato thought philosopher-kings should be trained from birth partly because they would never go into politics otherwise. If Plato is right then perhaps the only way an enlightened philosopher has ever been coerced into accepting political power was by the accident of being born to a king. Monarchy is a game of roulette producing a random assortment of leaders because, as Chesterton noted in this essay, you will never find a more dazzling array of personalities than a random sampling of your own blood relatives.

Give me your diabolical, your compromised, your
huddled asses yearning to scheme freely. 

If you still find hereditary monarchy completely odious, it is worth carefully considering the alternatives we have tried since the toppling of the ancien règime 200 years ago. For example, when Russia switched its authoritarianism from a hereditary to an ideological variety almost 100 years ago, they signed a social contract far worse than the one they broke. The last hundred years has proved their error. They have experienced democratization, economic reform, revolution, and the collapse of their communist empire but Russia is still sleeping in the political bed it made during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Communism in Russia has produced the wrong kind of welfare system, one that provides political jobs for men with impoverished morals. If you aren't up for shady dealing, you'd better find another career. People who really care about Russia, like say a Solzhenitsyn, will never get anywhere near the levers of power. 

There were supposedly three bullets in this gun. Russia
should be so lucky.

If Monarchy is like a roulette table, modern Russian politics might be closer to Russian roulette. There's not much to win, but a lot to lose. In Russian roulette you have a one in six chance of getting a bullet in your brain. Not the worst odds, but it could be worse. In post-revolutionary Russia it is worse. You have more like a three in six chance of having a psycho in charge who will put bullets in many peoples' brains. In Tsarist Russia you were at least as likely to get a "the Great" as you were a "the Terrible." But since going Tsarless Russians have endured Lenin the Terrible, Stalin the Atrocious, Khrushchev the Less Repressive, Brezhnev the Megalomilitant©, Gorbachev the Pretty-good, Yeltsin the In-over-his-head, and Putin the Unscrupulous Macho-Man. Voting is not enough to undo the damage that has been done. The primary problem is that the kind of person you have to be to succeed in Russian politics precludes almost everyone who is actually qualified. Gorbachev seems to me like the best hope of Russia during this period, but his reforms were stymied by the hosts of lower-level apparatchiks, promoted I assume for their willingness to collude with the corrupt establishment.

"Fine," you say, "but that's not really an argument against democracy." I will address that in my next post, but for now I just want to show that political systems can be much worse than hereditary monarchy if they demand and engrain appalling character traits in their leadership structure top to bottom. Monarchies at least introduce a little festive randomness at the top. How much worse off would Russia be now if not just the top job, but every political job was hereditary? It sounds a little medieval, but if this rule was enforced it would stymie the development of entrenched, corrupt political cultures because of all the randomness in successive office-holders. I admit there are many shortcomings to this idea, like potential political disfunction, incompetence, and the establishment of a separate class of citizens, so it won't be reappearing in my fourth post about a new kind of democracy. However, I doubt it would be much worse than many of the "democracies" in the world today.

The Doge Abides: Leadership and Jeff Lebowski

As everyone knows, Barack Obama has not been a transformational president. He rode a wave of immense popularity into the White House, but squandered his political capital early in his administration to push through an eviscerated, zombie-like health care reform act and take the probably necessary but painful steps of bailing out banks, the automobile industry, and enacting economic stimulus. To be fair, Obama has had to deal with several once in a generation crises and some awkward albatrosses like a Nobel Peace Prize and international superstardom. Nevertheless, Obama is no Jeff Lebowski...and that's a bad thing.

Campaign manager. Check.

Of course no one would ever vote for Jeff Lebowski (the little Lebowski from the The Big Lebowski) for President and at first glance you probably couldn't think of any way you'd like Barack Obama to emulate "the Dude." However JL has one thing that BO doesn't have: according to Sam Elliot he was "the man for his time and place." Jeff wasn't the ideal man, but he was exactly the right man for navigating shallow, kooky, anything-goes Los Angeles. His degree of ineptitude, greed, passivity, laziness, connivance, compassion, and cowardliness were exactly the combination necessary to see him through the dangerous situation he was facing. He was by no means perfect, but he was the right man for the job.

Media resonance. Check.

Of course Barack Obama has a lot more than Jeff Lebowski in the way of presidential qualifications, but his enviable charm, pragmatism, and intelligence are not the combination our country needs right now. Obama understands the political landscape. He is well aware of what it takes to get stuff done in Washington. He knows how to work a crowd and convince us that we are better than we are. He is quite skilled at reading the American public, and pandering to our whims. Unfortunately, he does not seem so skilled at leading the American people, which is what we need right now. Perhaps at a time when America was less turned off by politics and more engaged that would have been ok, but right now we need a leader not a poster-boy.

We need someone to inspire us to make sacrifices because he himself is making sacrifices. We need someone to inspire us to take risks by taking real political risks himself. We need someone to believe in ideals higher than a churning economy and a polished reputation. We need inspiration to be better people than we are, but Obama (and most other fearful, poll-beholden elected officials) is like an indulgent parent treating the American people like spoiled children who want cake (read "jobs") now. Instead of coddling us and making promises about how to get us our cake as soon as possible, I would like to see a politician dare to raise the debate to a higher plane. Talk to us seriously and courageously about some bigger issues like how we really got where we are now, what pillars shaky or sturdy our economy is built on, and what kind of country we will leave for our grandkids if politicians continue to kowtow to the myopic, presentist, simplistic demands of the American people as interpreted by the pollsters (who never ask questions like "would you sell your soul for a job?").

Muscle. Check.

I don't want someone who knows how to play the game. I don't want someone who "inspires confidence." I don't want someone who looks good on TV. I just want a president who is courageous enough to make a stand on unpopular issues, to help us change our thinking even if it costs him reelection. I want a President who cares more about policy than about reelection. I want my President to convince me to embrace higher taxes (so that my grandkids don't have to pay them), to pay more for oil, gas, and electricity (by not using my tax dollars to subsidize its skyrocketing costs, both internal and external), and to support a fight for the new type of government that Mr. Obama promised (by ceasing to tolerate the increasing influence of well-finanaced special interests in the process for selecting and electing candidates for government office).

Frightening alternative. Check.

Lawrence Lessig was recently interviewed on C-span and said that when Obama received his first budget from Congress his instinct was to veto it because of the thousands of earmarks it contained. The "cooler" heads around him convinced him that it wasn't worth alienating both Democrats and Republicans by pulling such a stunt. Lessig believes that when Obama signed it he lost the moral high ground and along with it his chance to reform government. Jeff Lebowski may not have understood the budget, but he wouldn't have been nearly so calculating, political, or partisan and might have had the guts to veto it, or at least to take a leak on its rug.

My hope is that if BO wins a second term he will be freed from worrying about the next election cycle and will be able to start thinking more about his legacy, which at this point will be dubious at best. Show some real courage, Mr. President, or step aside so we can find the right person for the job. I know he or she is out there and no matter how bad it gets, I agree with Sam Elliot, "The Dude Abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowing he's out there." If we could just get him to run for office.

Love, Actually

"I see you."

“I have to warn you, I've heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.“ Those words from the movie Speed might be seen as a tacit admission by Hollywood screenwriters that 90% of what they do is bogus. All the relationships are based on intense experiences. Often the relationship is the intense experience. And it’s not just the romantic comedies. Even if we escape into the fantasy world of Avatar, we always want to bring our love baggage along with us - perhaps to see if we can gain any insights. Apparently, the love angle is an easy way for movie producers to grab us by the heartstrings and give us a cathartic release relevant to our own lives, and get fifteen bucks from us in the process.

This is not all bad, I suppose. The love stories in movies are often designed to teach some kind of lesson: money isn’t that important [see: Jerry McGuire, Trading Places], humility is a virtue [see: Good Will Hunting, Pride and Prejudice], Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams are incompatible [see: Midnight In Paris], and as I discuss below, people often must undergo profound change before they are ready for a lasting relationship [see: just about anything].

Hollywood says you're a cockroach.

There is, however, a darker side to these love stories: The message in all of these movies is “if you get your act together, you will find the most important thing in life: true love, defined as a completely emotionally satisfying relationship with another person.” There are many things unrealistic about this message, but here I would like to focus on the fact that Hollywood’s definition of love is simplistic and driven completely by our transitory emotions. These movies teach us that the truest thing we possess is our inward compass of “love” and it would be foolishness for us to do anything other than faithfully follow that compass needle in whatever direction it is pointing, without hesitation or question. Celine Dion summed it up nicely for Titanic, “love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime, and never let go till we're gone.” If that's the way it works, it sounds like what happens when a cockroach gets bit by a parasitic wasp. The fact that the cockroach turns into a docile zombie fatally obedient to the wasp may give it an excuse for its future actions, but when we humans are bit by "love" we still have some moral responsibilities. Hollywood often writes these out of the script. What good would it do to include

Let me take it one step further to make sure my point is clear. I'm not against love and I don't think it automatically makes us selfish. I even think it is beautiful how it can chemically alter our brains in wasp-like fashion (As I learned at Body Worlds and the Brain, love is kindled first by the release of adrenaline, then drug-like dopamine, and then oxytocin and vassopressin for long term bonding.) But the problem is that in happy ending after happy ending, Hollywood teaches us that life goes better if we follow our hearts, which is not true. Hollywood's "love" often looks like a categorical imperative that we ought never to contradict. On the other hand, if "love" doesn't happen to us then Hollywood's story will make us bitter and resentful.

I guess it's my turn to leave you, kid.

I’m not claiming to be a movie expert, but Casablanca is one of my favorite all-time movies and my favorite old movie. (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is second.) I like Casablanca not only because it undermines Hollywood's usual exculpation of our obsession with emotional "love," (as I will explain in a minute), but also because it seems to be pleasantly prescient about the good parts of Hollywood’s formulaic plots: To wit, for a story to really be a story, characters on screen need to undergo a significant change.

Despite being a movie written for my grandfather’s generation, Casablanca has believable modern relationships. The people act in ways that seem largely rational to me, and, I think, to most of us. Rick is jilted and self-destructive, but wants a reason to be good again. Ilsa has been faced with agonizing decisions in her life, and wants a second chance at love or to assuage her guilt for hurting Rick. Victor Lazlo is living his life in service to mankind more generally, but still trying to keep his marriage alive. What often bothers me about old movies is that the love stories rarely seem plausible. Perhaps they were plausible back then, or perhaps I can’t pick up on subtleties that would have meant more to a pre-war (or pre-method-acting) public, but these dysfunctional relationships strike me as downright bizarre. In My Fair Lady and The King and I, it is understandable why the male falls in love with the witty, plucky, compassionate, long-suffering female, but there never seems to be a moment when you can reconcile why Audrey Hepburn or whoever played Anna could ever fall in love with the raving solipsists sharing their silver screen. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers might seem tame at first glance, but the chauvinist, bride-napping plot is so bizarrely outrageous I can’t even imagine Quentin Tarantino attempting it nowadays. The African Queen is another one. I remember finding it quite upsetting that the affable and resourceful Humphrey Bogart should fall in love with the priggish (and mentally ill as far as I could tell) Katharine Hepburn. The problem with the character development, I guess, is that some gaping character flaws are never really addressed. I’m not convinced throughout these movies that the king of Siam, Hepburn’s character, or Henry Higgins ever really change. They just seem to eventually accept the persistent love offered by the sane person on the screen, which makes me question the sanity of said sane person.

Insane and the brain

So, I’m glad Hollywood followed the Casablanca model and doesn’t offer these weird romances anymore. Clear character growth is a part of the modern, scripted Hollywood romance that I find indispensable. Characters need to change, if only in their perspective, before “love” is ever going to work out. Not only that, but without characters being changed, there isn’t much point to the story. I recently read a Donald Miller book about storytelling in which he says, “in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet.” In Casablanca, Rick Blaine is clearly transformed by meeting Ilsa again and learning that she still loves him. He becomes brave, self-attuned, and decisive. Thank you Hollywood for getting that part right. Casablanca and most newer movies show characters going through intense circumstances and being changed on the other side. We love that because it reminds us that our own troubles might someday reap for us the benefit of actual growth.

But just because Rick Blaine is changed doesn’t mean that he automatically earns the right to a traditional “happily ever after.” That’s what makes the ending of the movie all the more satisfying, and this is how it completely turns upside down what we are now conditioned to expect from Hollywood. Through a chance meeting at Rick’s Moroccan watering hole, an old flame is kindled between he and Ilsa, who is now married to Victor Lazlo. We expect emotional “love” to conquer all and reunite Rick and Ilsa who were so tragically separated many years ago. But the problem is that there are actually more important outcomes at stake in Nazi-occupied Europe and North Africa than whether two people get to live out their fairy tale ending, and Rick Blaine is man enough to face the facts. So the most "Hollywood" of Hollywood endings (“Here’s looking at you, kid.”) turns out not to be so "Hollywood" after all. The most loving thing Rick can do is face a future without his soul mate.

That’s a risky and complicated plot twist that Hollywood likes to avoid these days. Unfortunately, the fact that they usually do avoid it means that we have a planetful of Hollywood romantics who selfishly believe that if the universe owes them one thing, it is true “love.” Not only does that lead to a lot of disappointment, but it leads to broken relationships (when the “love” doesn’t last) and to individuals who are too weak to face the world without a relational crutch.

That’s why I liked Spanglish, too. I certainly didn’t expect such a satisfying experience when someone cornered me into watching a seemingly kitschy rom com. But aside from delivering great performances (as I recall) from Tea Leoni, Adam Sandler, and even the kids, the movie took a stand against traditional Hollywood love stories by showing how following the romance (no matter how ostensibly pure and justifiable) is not always the best choice for you and those you love. The plot seemed to be setting up a straightforward opportunity for Sandler to ditch his cheating wife and follow his “love” compass into a bilingual union with his housekeeper. The title even seemed to demand it. But then somehow, the plot meandered back to the kids, and what divorce does to kids. Refusing to follow the simplistic dictates of Hollywood “love” stories, screenwriter James L. Brooks kept these pre-adolescent complicating factors in the script and denied Sandler the right to his true “amor.” I was elated at the end to see responsibility and integrity given such seats at the table in a love story.

Oh man, kids screw everything up.

Now, I have no problem with love and romance. I am thankful to still be deeply in love with the woman I married and am so glad for the romantic times we have shared, even if they don’t always feel quite as exciting as they used to. Dopamine is way more exciting than oxytocin. But I do think that we as individuals need to remember that those who sell us things, whether movies, clothes, or vacations, are not telling us truths that they are dispassionately investigating for our good. It seems that way because we feel our heartstrings being tugged, but in fact they are telling us the “half-truths” that they think we want to hear. Their truths are designed to tickle our ears rather than improve our character. They are not laboring for our benefit but for our business. Right now, movie studios are designing more intense cinematic experiences for us. Let’s remember not to give them our hearts too easily. Those intense experiences are not a sound basis for a permanent relationship.

In other words...

Rereading my last post made me realize that I may need to tweak my approach to writing. I appear to be long on ambition and short on pith. I wish I could bear to take the necessary time to cogently tie up all my loose ends. I probably should have divided it into a post on levity and a post on special interests too. I'm not even entirely clear on why I thought those two were so closely connected. I guess the very act of writing gets my imagination going and leads me off topic. At least I think I'm avoiding the imprecision, vaguery, and general slipperiness I see from the politicians and interests I'm berating.



Anyway, this cartoon from Thursday's Economist sums up many of my thoughts from my last post, except that I would probably have drawn some obsequious charlatans goading the Tea Party on and labeled them as special interest groups.