Is America ripe for tyranny?

Andrew Sullivan, writing in New York Magazine, thinks so. The rise of Donald Trump has terrified him, as it has most of the intelligentsia. His response is deeply conservative: that’s what happens when you have too much democracy, when you give too much power to the unreasoning, emotional, masses, when the established status order crumbles.

I see it quite differently. First of all, we were much closer to tyranny in 1933: when Roosevelt took office, a delegation of national leaders pleaded with him to take dictatorial powers to manage the crisis. (He refused, though he may have regretted it later!) Second, what is astonishing from a historical perspective is that the Trump backlash, potent as it appears, is really a minority movement; whereas for most of human history appeals to nationalism, tribalism, hostility to immigrants have been pretty reliable ways to rally the population as a whole, now we are deeply split. Sanders' supporters, like Trump’s, feel the system is failing them, but they are almost on the opposite extreme in terms on "the Wall" and anti-immigrant views in general. Global, as opposed to national, identity continues to grow slowly worldwide. My rough estimate from my own research is that around 25% of US  citizens are pretty strongly pro-tradition and nationalist, and 30% is pretty strongly "progressive" – supporting feminism, cosmopolitanism, diversity. The rest are uncertain but lean towards the latter.

This is a dangerous moment, of course: a major terrorist attack could rouse the uncertain middle to react by supporting Trump. But otherwise there is perhaps less chance than ever before that the exclusionary view will win, and more chance that we will in the end respond to this ugly reaction by embracing diversity more enthusiastically than ever.

Local food

Food is a paradox. Many of us now are attracted to local, sustainable, food, organically grown in the sun and clean country air. That was pretty how things were a century, or certainly two centuries ago: few chemicals, everything fresh and local (there was no refrigeration), no agribusiness interests. But – here’s the paradox – at that time food was also a lot more expensive and a lot worse. A century ago food required over 40% of the household budget in the U.S.; now it’s about 15%. There were only a few foods available, and the quality was often poor. Lard was a staple. People just didn’t eat as well. It was also not much fun to be a farmer: the hours were extremely long, the labor backbreaking, the returns meager.

So what we want is to go back to the good parts of the past, but not the bad parts. That pretty much describes how we all feel about a lot of things in this unstable age. We’d like the stability and warmth of small towns, but not their suffocating conformity and limited horizons. We’d like the job security of traditional corporations, but not their bureaucratic rigidity and hierarchical control. We like to hear authentic music from isolated regions, but we’d go crazy if that was all we could hear year in and year out.

It’s not easy constructing a life that keeps the good and shucks off the bad. There are many organic farms near me in central New Jersey, but they’re struggling and they’re expensive. Most of the farmers love the land, the animals, the change of seasons; they just don’t love the backbreaking, grinding labor and the poor return. The ones who grew up in the life are selling their land and moving to cities, as farmers have been doing for generations; the newcomers are often giving up.

Does anyone have a way to square this circle? Not that I know of, not yet. The good news, perhaps, is that a lot of people are working on it.

The return of the repressed: how liberals helped create the Trump movement

The supporters of Donald Trump and of the right wing of the Republican party are, in general, those who dislike the changes of the past half-century: the globalization of the economy, the rise of diversity and cosmopolitanism, the broad migration towards cities, the challenges to traditional religious and communal values, the weakening of national self-confidence and power. Many of these groups define themselves by “traditional” values and communities, with strong and homogeneous local ties, clear gender roles, unquestioning pride in their region and nation. This world, now idealized, was one in which they felt valued and self-confident; they knew who they were, and had no qualms about it.

For the last few decades they have suffered constant attacks on their sense of self from elites who increasingly value diversity, innovation, globalization, cosmopolitanism. They have been told for decades that they are bad, racist, stupid, out of date, uncool. They have bowed before apparently universal social condemnation, suppressing their own feelings. Now suddenly they find in Trump someone telling them they don’t need to deny themselves, that they aren’t bad after all -- and millions of others who agree. The explosion of joy and solidarity is earth-shaking.

I speak from the point of view of my own tribe, the the privileged white coastal liberal intelligentsia. I, like everyone around me, find Trump repugnant. But I believe that no tribe has a monopoly on truth. We cannot move forward in peace and justice – we cannot deal with the great problems that confront us all – without a willingness to listen, understand, open ourselves to others, even and especially others we do not like. This is my attempt to understand another point of view.

Nearly fifty years ago I, like my friends, supported the movement for racial justice. Many of us went to the South to bring this message. We began telling the Southern whites that they were racist. While there were segregated water fountains and cafeterias and buses, many of them accepted the accusation, blamed themselves for participating in a culture that was so manifestly unjust. There were positive changes: the most obvious forms of discrimination began to fade, first in formal laws and gradually in the hearts of most of those who had once lived with and accepted the Jim Crow norms.

But we went a lot farther. We also told them they had to change the way they brought up their children. We agitated to put Black children side by side with them in the classroom. This was harder to accept. The education of one’s children is near the core of the sense of self, passing on what we feel is right and good. To have a bunch of outsiders telling them how and what they should teach their children, and how, was for many a step too far, and the resistance was fierce and long. This feeling extended far beyond the old South, to Chicago and Boston New York and Gary, Indiana, pretty much everywhere.

The message kept going out to the resisters that they were racist – racist, racist, racist. Eventually, most succumbed to the sustained pressure of the courts, the media, the political class; they told themselves they were wrong to resist, they tried to put up with it. Yet there was always some resentment of holier than thou outsiders.

Then we told them they were also bad because of their family and gender relations. We told them the way they thought about about housework, about the everyday expectations of what women and men should do, about sex – all this was bad. They needed to change everything, we said, to be more egalitarian and inclusive and just. They needed to change what they did when they got up in the morning – who made the breakfast, who packed the kids’ lunchboxes; to change what they did when they went to work, accepting an entirely different view of women’s role and capabilities from the one they had grown up with; to change what they did when they went to bed. We went on to tell them they were bad to tie their sense of self-worth to heterosexual masculinity and femininity.

We told them they were bad because of their friendships and associations. When men went off hunting with their buddies, they were reinforcing gender stereotypes and excluding women. When they went to their clubs, they were excluding blacks.

We told them they were bad because of the cars they drove, which (we said) threatened the planet.

We told them they were foolish and ignorant in their religious beliefs, which challenged our self-evident (to us) certainties about scientific Truth.

We had moral confidence in all of this, reinforced every day by the papers we read and the pundits we listened to. Our schools and universities repeated and extended the message.

The message of moral condemnation has in the way broadened its scope, from its initial focus on white Southerners, to encompass almost all groups that have been left out of the cultural and economic earthquakes of recent decades – including rural areas across the country, and some urban areas in which the fabric of community has been torn by economic change. Hunters in northern New York who love the skill and craft of handling guns; factory workers in Michigan who believe that a man has the responsibility to support a family; shopkeepers in Minnesota who have to deal with immigrant customers who have very unfamiliar needs and expectations – all of these feel they would like to go back to a more comfortable remembered past, where they felt confidently proud of of their identities and ways of life.

The spread of what might be called postmodern relations is threatening and difficult for all these groups, requiring them to reconstruct who they are, what defines them as worthwhile; it launches them into unknown territories where they can’t predict how others are going to respond; they feel uncomfortable almost all the time, not sure what will set off a charge or racism or sexism, not sure what the right thing to say or do is. Some feel liberated, but most feel uneasy, and many feel angry – but they can’t say so.

I believe in trying to define and fight for the good. But every time we do that we also define others as bad. We have sought to extend our sense of community to more fully include women and blacks and gays; but we have excluded many who used to feel central to the culture but now feel marginalized - the white men, and women, who are rallying behind Trump precisely because he makes them feel valid for the first time in decades, who tells them they can be proud of who they are.

The fundamental battle now is over whether to expand the boundaries of community, or retract them. When the members of my tribe talk with disdain about Trump voters -- see them as stupid and delusional, see their leaders as venal and evil -- we are deepening a divide that will not quickly heal, no matter what happens in November's elections. At the very least we should try to understand them, and converse with them. Maybe we would learn something. Maybe we could even work together on some things.

The new struggle over race

The recent conflicts  in the US over race have involved a confused mix of two very different strands, one old and one new. The new one has left many Whites like myself feeling confused - and many, at some level, angry.

The protests over the shooting of Black youths in Ferguson and elsewhere are of an unfortunately old kind: a struggle for equal rights and equal treatment before the law. Whites who have long seen themselves as allies in the battle for equal rights are quick to support protesters in this new conflict. But when Blacks protest the name of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, or the quality of the food at Oberlin, or the nature of Hallowe’een costumes at Yale; when they talk of “privilege” and “safe spaces” -- they are crossing into a different territory. 

In these protests long-time White allies, who have marched and fought for civil rights, feel alienated, excluded. Their good will in the fight for equality seems no longer to count. The Black demands seem to them petty -- how can “micro-aggressions” like bad food be put in the same league as Black lives at risk on the streets? These protesters have gained admittance to elite universities, they have won the battle for that right: why are they still complaining?

But the new issues, though they sometimes adopt the language of “rights”, are not about rights. No one has a right to name a building or determine food choices. The more telling and accurate word, widely used in these protests, is “comfort”. Blacks are demanding to feel comfortable.

This seems petty only to people who themselves feel comfortable. Yet with a little effort, we can all put ourselves in situations that give at least some sense of the significance of the movement. All of us have been in situations where we have become members of a group, yet don’t really know the unspoken rules, don’t know how to win respect. It’s a severely crippling experience. We are afraid of making a mistake that will make everyone laugh at us. If we do speak out, it may be to blurt out a feeling which falls flat and makes us seem even stranger to the other members. So most of us say as little as possible. We would like to be invisible. We keep our opinions to ourselves. We self-censor.

There is now a large body of research showing the long-term damage. Students who feel uncomfortable perform less well. Employees who feel uncomfortable do not contribute as much.  In boards of directors of major companies, new female and minority members feel uncomfortable and so don’t speak their minds. These reactions lead quickly to vicious circles: the students, the employees, the board members confirm the old suspicions that they are not as good. And then it doesn’t matter what rights they have: they are back in their old position at the bottom of the status hierarchy, unheard.

If we want to include new groups in our community, they have to feel comfortable. And it is always a messy process, because to feel comfortable they have to violate the unspoken rules of the existing in-group. They must have the space to be “off”, different, not quite fitting in. They are necessarily going to say things that we, the Whites who have set the rules of civil dialogue, find strange and offensive, that we don’t “get”.

We’re into a new phase. Equal rights have been achieved in many arenas, but that is simply not enough for citizenship in today’s society. We need equal inclusion, which has been achieved almost nowhere. That will take a lot of work, a lot of humility, a lot of misunderstanding and overcoming of misunderstanding.

Hope from Paris: rebuilding trust

It has begun again: the age-old cycle of hate and counter-hate, self-justification and counter-justification, the grim joy of righteousness and revenge. In the U.S., conservative politicians play on it as demagogues always have, projecting strength and patriotism by refusing to take refugees from the lands terrorized by ISIS; my own governor, Chris Christie, tries to outdo his competition by arguing that even five-year-old orphans from Syria should be stopped and sent back, as if they are tainted by being from the same part of the world as the murderers. In France, anti-Muslim sentiment is said to be rising. Everywhere people want to shut down, to cling to people like themselves whom they can trust, to build walls against people unlike themselves.

We know some things about these cycles. We know with the  scientific confidence of good evidence and good theory, that they breed ever-deepening spirals of violence and hatred. ISIS draws its strength from the suspicion and mistrust of Muslims in the West, like a malignant antihero drawing energy from its enemy. It will only grow as our hostility spreads to millions of innocent people tarred with the broad brush of prejudice.

But ISIS is no hero to Muslims. The overwhelming majority among them, by all indications, abhor the attacks in Paris and the brutality of the movement. That is why millions are fleeing to our shores. ISIS can be defeated with ease, but only -- only -- if Muslims as a whole feel the West is a friend, feel we support their efforts to build better lives for their families.

Amid the heartbreak and terror, amid the recriminations and bombast, there is some reason for hope.

There has been a substantial outpouring of support for Muslims in Paris, on social media and in the streets - expressions of empathy, concern that they not be demonized. Messages of support have gone viral in social media. A New Yorker named Alex Malloy wrote on Facebook of getting a Muslim cab driver the day after the attacks who wept, from despair and fear that he would be labeled as one of “them”. Malloy’s response drew wide support:

“Please stop saying ‘Muslims’ are the problem because they are not and they are feeling more victimized and scared to the day. These are our brothers and sisters as humankind, we are all humans underneath this skin. And they deserve nothing more than our respect and attention. They need our protection. Please stop viewing these beautiful human beings as enemies because they are not.”

And a young Parisian wrote,

“This is not really about ISIS. ... This is about ignorance, insecurity, emotion. It’s about not understanding who other people are, what they want or how they feel.”

This reaction of empathy and understanding is extraordinary. In the past, only small pockets of cosmopolitan elites have been willing to reach out in this way to the “other”, beyond the tribe. But now the desire for understanding of others has spread widely, especially of the young who have grown up with the rich exchanges of the internet. It has, for perhaps the first time in history, extended far enough to become a credible counterweight to the ancient, and still strong, tendency to close ranks against an enemy.

ISIS itself will not enter into a dialogue of understanding, and it would be a delusion to act as if it were; there is a need for fighting. But we do need to understand and engage the vast Muslim population who hate ISIS but also feel disenfranchised in the West. For that, we need to avoid succumbing to the sweet temptations of tribal loyalty, the marching bands and self-congratulatory speeches. As great leaders like Abraham Lincoln well knew, fighting may be necessary but there can be no joy in it: we should empathize with our enemy even as we enter combat, so that when the opportunity for peace comes we know how to seize and build on it.

Meanwhile, we must from the instinct of self-preservation, as well as from the generosity of our best selves, reach out to Muslims wherever we can, welcome them, celebrate their desire for peace and good lives. Together we can clear the poisonous swamps where hatred breeds. We don’t want to get dragged into them ourselves.

Changing culture: the moral blunderbuss

My old high school has been in the news, and not in a good way. A young man was tried for the charge of raping a freshman girl, age 15, shortly before he was to graduate, on his way to Harvard. It seems he had asked this girl out as part of a school "tradition" called the "senior salute", which involves bedding as many underclass women as possible before graduation. It's not clear exactly what happened, but things clearly went over the line: they went into a utility closet, the girl  -- at a minimum -- felt violated.

The tradition is despicable. But is the boy despicable? He was just doing what was expected, indeed admired, by those around him. For that matter, the girl herself was caught in this powerful social web: she was flattered to be asked out, and in her own account didn't want to "rock the boat " or seem like a "drama queen" by reacting too strongly to his advances. Though I know little about the details, there is no reason to think that this is an evil boy, someone who enjoys hurting others. He appears to be, on the contrary, one who plays the game and wants to win - whether that game is getting into Harvard or sleeping with a virgin. Most of the time we applaud those who play to win.

This is a classic situation in which the rules are changing. The rules need to change, of course; but we also need to ask: what's the best way to change them?

The approach here was to pull out a moral blunderbuss: to treat act the act as a criminal violation, which carries the full weight of moral condemnation of the community. It would destroy the young man and serve as a dire warning to others who might be tempted in such a direction.

But doing it this way may only slow down the process of change. Instead of fostering learning, this approach fosters fear. Young men I know now, even the best of them, are confused and frightened and even angry; they feel that if they cross some line that they can't even see, they may be destroyed. They are not gaining respect for women; they are feeling like lab rats threatened by some mad scientist's random shocks.

The moral blunderbuss is a poor weapon. It doesn't destroy the bad beliefs it aims at. The true believers are infuriated, like a bear shot with an old rifle, and may turn viciously on the accusers. Many others - those who have gone along, just trying to find their way - grow defensive, cynical, and tend to withdraw from the fray. That describes a lot of our political scene today.

As it happens, the jury was unwilling to pull the trigger. They acquitted the accused of the most serious charge of rape, but convicted him on a lesser charge of enticing a minor on the internet. It seems they wanted to signal that something was seriously wrong here, but they didn't feel the kind of unmixed moral condemnation that would justify the most severe sentence. They found it a difficult case.

Perhaps this opens the path to something better. Everyone is talking about the problem now. On the school campus , the headmaster promises a combination and deepening of discussions about the issues. "When we first learned of these disturbing events", he writes, " ... we pledged that we would use this case and the issues raised by it to learn more about ourselves and to make our School better." 

Now it's a question of what kind of discussion there will be. If it is one-way hectoring and lecturing,  we know how kids -- and people of all ages -- react: they will shut down and withdraw. But if they have a chance to express and explore their confusions, to ask their questions in an atmosphere of thoughtful dialogue, such conversations may be able to tip the moral balance - so that the cool kids will have a code different from the "senior salute". And we may be able to minimize the collateral damage, the destruction of lives and communities, that accompanies unrestrained righteousness.

Water wars

There's a severe drought in Vancouver. All the grass lies brown and dead, except the golf courses. The dark pine forests crackle underfoot. The arboretum explains apologetically that its water is recirculated. Reservoirs are down to record lows.

This was startling to me, as an Easterner; I thought it rained all the time there - I packed my rain coat and pants first thing. And talking to a few people, it seems they're not ready for this. They're used to long showers and lush lawns. They don't know quite what to do.

You'd like to think that everyone would pull together and share what they can, decide together on the priorities, work out some way of dealing with the problem. But judging from other areas that have gone through this, the prospects aren't good. The first stage, which Vancouver may be starting now, is denial. The NY Times reported last Fall on Porterville, California, which has largely run out of water. A mother recounts that when her neighbors' wells began to run dry, she told her children to take shorter showers. “They kept saying, ‘No, no, Mama, you’re just too negative’”. Now they have no showers at all.

“You don’t think of water as privilege until you don’t have it anymore,” said Ms. Serrato, whose husband works in the nearby fields. “We were very proud of making a life here for ourselves, for raising children here. We never ever expected to live this way.”

I heard some of the same in Vancouver, about how some people were refusing to cut down on their showers and watering. It seems people don't want to face this problem till it hits them. Their lifestyle includes water, and they - like the Serratos - are proud of their lifestyles. Giving up their lawns is like an admission of failure.

It can get worse after that. Once the crisis hits, people often start to fight over what's left. We hear about wealthy Californians who fight against or ignore the water restrictions. Farmers who can afford it dig their wells deeper, drawing water away from their neighbors, as well as destabilizing the ground far beyond their own properties.

A typical Western water rights conversation

On the other hand: California does suggest some reason for hope.  While some responses have been short-sighted and unsustainable, others have involved significant changes in behaviors which may make a real long-term difference. Farmers, with government help, have been shifting to drip irrigation which has doubled the yields for given water volumes. This Spring the water district for Southern California beefed up a program to encourage the general public to cut back on their lawns and use drought-resistant plants. The astonishing thing is that people are embracing it in droves; the planted landscape is already being transformed. In an era where government incentives and regulations too often are ignored or manipulated or resisted -- think of Obamacare, or cash for clunkers -- these are unusual successes.

It’s hard to say why these things work when others don’t, but I would suggest two reasons. First, the shift in California has been building for decades. The irrigation programs have been gaining ground, as it were,  for many years, and have proved themselves economically; so farmers have grown generally more open to the idea of changing their practices around environmental issues.

The second reason is that the current crisis has “changed the conversation” -- a currently popular phrase. Changing the conversation means that people are talking about it.  In places that failed to deal with the problem, like Porterville, there was for a long time no conversation: the mother whose kids told her, “You’re just being too negative” were not aware that others in the community were already running out of water. No one talked about it, everyone thought it was just their own issue. But now, with the breadth and depth of this crisis, everyone in California is talking about it, everyone knows that the problem is real. And for changing behaviors, there is nothing more powerful than the sense that everyone else is doing it.

Perhaps those two factors are both needed: slow long-term adaptations, and a sudden crisis. A crisis by itself often just drives people to defensive postures, fighting against their neighbors. But when the conversation gets a chance to build, and everyone knows that everyone else is feeling the same things they are, there is a chance for cooperation. So getting the conversation going may be one of the most important activities.