Left / Right / Dead

Proportional Representation, heard about it?

Oct 19, 2018

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Dysfunction. It’s a word most people will agree defines the state of politics in the U.S. today. But we seem to have a lot of confusion over other important words. Barack Obama is a dedicated family man. Calm, courteous, cautious in demeanor and action. A constitutional law professor and careful reader of briefing books. He rose to fame on the line “there are no red states or blue states, just the United States.” He’s a liberal or to some people a radical leftist. Donald Trump’s extravagant, libertine sex life has been played out in the tabloids for decades. He has children from various marriages. He is personally a bellicose, rude, mean “killer” in his own words. He makes crucial decisions of state on whims and gut feelings without learning the policy. He’s a conservative.

That band of dirty Antifa kids sleeping on the sidewalk, off the grid, out of the formal economy, apparently getting by dealing meth, they actually go to battle against Alt-right extremists in the streets so they do seem to be radical leftists. Hillary Clinton sleeps in her mansion in Kalorama. When she’s not sleeping in her other mansion in Chappaqua two of the most expensive enclaves in the country. But I hear Republicans say she a radical leftist too. Yes, she spent her career advocating women’s rights, children’s rights and for progressive social change. But in the senate her closest foreign policy ally was the Republican’s leading hawk John McCain. She and Bill vacation with Kissinger. She is famously cozy with Wall Street and likes to hang out with billionaires and celebrities. Unlike say Jimmy Carter who used his post-presidency to do charitable works, when Hillary left government she set out to make a fortune. A dumb move if she intended to later run for president but she did it anyway. There’s an old phrase that describes Hillary. Rockefeller Republican. And Trump’s an Archie Bunker Democrat.

The left / right, liberal / conservative paradigm no longer has objective meaning. Multiplicity is where it’s at.

Use of the right wing / left wing metaphor to describe politics began during the French Revolution when monarchists sat on the right side of the National Assembly and revolutionaries on the left. Since then right wing has been used to mean respect for authority, order, hierarchy, religion, tradition, nationalism, property rights, preservation of individual wealth and a greater propensity to go to war. Left wing has emphasized liberalism, progress, reform, revolution, racial, ethnic and gender equality, economic equality and re-distribution of wealth, human rights, and globalism. Both sides claim to stand for individual freedom while also imposing collectivist morality for allowing or denying certain behaviors. In practice there has never been a pure form of left or right wing government. Both sides take ideas from the other when practical or necessary.

In the simpler times of 18th to mid 19th century America with a small national government this basically played out as a competition between the Hamiltonian merchant class and Jeffersonian farmers. With the rise of industrialization, railroads and Wall Street in the late 19th century Robber Baron age power decisively favored the wealthy elites and the new giant corporate trusts. This lead to the progressive era with Republican Teddy Roosevelt being a key figure. During this time America grew into a modern industrial state with an income tax and large government bureaucracy to regulate and manage the now complex economy and relations with foreign powers. FDR made permanent the progressive reforms and the country emerged from World War II as a mixed economy, capitalist but with a large government safety net for market failures, and a standing army, navy and air force. This post WWII age is the “Great” time the MAGA hat wants to go back to. But things are better now for everyone. Emphasis on everyone.

Fast forward forty years. Young Reaganites like Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Frank Luntz and John Roberts and his Federalist society cohorts start to rethink things. Republicans have won the presidency consistently but Democrats have dominated Congress almost all of the time since the Great Depression and the judiciary is seen as aggressively liberal and activist. Corporations and the wealthy have plenty of economic power but the federal government has become so big and powerful with its far reaching bureaucracy that there are two competing hierarchies in society. Republicans hold sway in the private sector but Democrats control the law and the bureaucracy.

So the Gingrich crowd turned the tactics of leftist revolution against the left wing. The Federalist Society boys, it’s a largely male group, set out to play the long game, subtly shifting precedent in a multi-decade campaign to reverse the liberal activism of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Gingrich and his acolytes seeking elective office removed any trace of subtlety and declared war on the enemy, to be clear not a foreign power but their own countrymen the Democrats, in a campaign of permanent revolution. With a final objective of complete conservative control over the U.S. government these firebrands used techniques surprisingly similar to Maoism centered on the cult of personality of the great leader Ronald Reagan. Deviation from Gingrich/Norquist thought would lead to rejection as a RINO. Republican in Name Only. The central tenants, which Norquist enforced, were to never raise and always seek to lower taxes which would have the effect of always shrinking the government. Mao’s people’s war sought to rile the rural population up to revolt against the educated establishment with guerrilla warfare. Gingrich did the same within the political system. His comrade in arms Frank Luntz is a somewhat overlooked by crucial figure. Essentially the minister of propaganda this political strategist and pollster delved deep into language using testing groups to find the most effective forms of political communication. He believed that 80% of life is emotion and just 20% intellect. In 1990 he wrote a memo to Republicans, with a cover letter by Gingrich, called “Language, a Key Mechanism of Control.” The memo said to speak like Newt using contrasting words that would manipulate people’s emotions. “Radical” "corrupt," "devour," "greed," "hypocrisy," "liberal," "sick," and "traitors” described Democrats. While “opportunity” “courage” and “principled” defined Republicans. “Global warming” was “climate change.” “Oil drilling” was “energy exploration.” The “inheritance tax” is a “death tax.” Armed with this propaganda catechism Republicans marched to power taking over Congress with Gingrich’s leadership. The rise of right wing talk radio and Fox News consolidated the state propaganda machine.

A continuum exists. Gingrich/Norquist/Luntz thought in the 1990s. The dubious 2000 presidential election. Karl Rove in 2004 telling a journalist guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Mitch McConnell saying his number one priority was to make Obama a one term president. Birtherism and the thousand flowers of conspiracy theories. Trumpist Fake News!, media is the enemy and alternative facts. While certainly many if not most Republicans are authentic conservatives the political apparatus of the party was turned into a belief system, a type of religion, a narrative constructed out of whole cloth divorced from reality, science and fact.

The 2016 election smashed assumptions about American politics and has lead to a re-examination. Sadly in 2016 42% of eligible voters did not vote in line with 2012. This makes the non-voters the largest electoral block. One way to think about people that do vote is three groups - Progressives, Reactionaries and Conservatives. Starting with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment progressivism, guided by free thinking people endowed with individual liberty aka liberals, has driven society and history based on the idea that humans are capable of rational thought and can utilize reason to solve problem and gradually improve society. Being capable of rational thought and always acting rationally are two different things. Stupidity is one of the most enduring traits of humans and sometimes progressive ideas turn out badly. For this reason William F. Buckley famously said “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” A thoughtful conservative gives a reasoned critique of the progressive project. But stupidity again rears its head. Often times people react to progressive change based on fear and emotion.

A great salesman learns to read people, understand their needs and desires, their point of view and how they can be manipulated. Donald Trump despite his long list of negative qualities is a great salesman. He knows that in American today there is a great big market of Reactionaries. People that think their are too many brown people anymore, too many snobby coastal people doing fancy things, too few good paying jobs, too many foreigners making things worse for us, too much weird gender identity talk, way too much PC nonsense, too much change all the time. And things are deteriorating. The roads are crap. People are addicted and overdosing. Health care cost way too much. We need a savior.

For decades an alliance of economic elites and religious conservatives have run the Republican party. Supporting family values and opposing abortion went along with a program of small government, low taxes, alleged deficit reduction, minimal regulation, free trade, low tariffs, managed immigration. Nixon’s southern strategy appealed to white culture and implicitly racist attitudes to mine votes. ( An easy move for Nixon. His White House tape recordings are masterpieces of racist filth, bigotry and hatred.) Reagan and HW Bush continued the dog whistling tradition with the themes of the “welfare mother in a Cadillac” and the Willie Horton ad. But the yokels were not supposed to try to actually influence policy. That was for the club men to decide. Now the Reactionaries have found their strongman.

People don’t vote for lots of reasons but it seems the single biggest reason is disgust with politics. It’s petty, hyper-partisan and irrational. Both parties are controlled by monied elites of somewhat different sorts. Wall Street, large corporations and wealthy individuals favor Republicans but frequently hedge their bets. Rich business owners strongly back the Rs with multi-billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and various hedge fund mangers like Robert Mercer and Paul Singer playing pivotal roles. The Koch story is truly amazing. The vast sums of money they have poured into politics is just the start of it. They have built a political organization to push their libertarian agenda of super small government and minimal taxes and regulations which rivals the official Republican Party in size, scope and effectiveness. It’s really an impressive achievement. Unfortunately. Because it is profoundly anti-democratic.

Yes, the Democrats are beholden to union money, especially at the state level, and get plenty from trial lawyers. But since at least the Clinton administration the people at the top level of the party have been interwoven with Wall Street and corporate elites. Both the Clinton and Obama administration were packed with people that worked for investment banks before and after their government service. Plenty more traded their political profile for sweet gigs in media and high tech. The Clintons and Obamas are multi-millionaires. So is Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer is more than comfortable on Wall Street. With the need to constantly raise vast amounts of money and constantly get media attention the national leadership of both parties is structurally integrated into the superclass of the wealthy and famous. Some people are more equal than others and the ordinary citizen knows it.

Depression comes easily in these political times. Here’s a little hope. When Japan, Italy, Spain and Germany went fascist they were all monocultures. American diversity is strength and will prevent a worst case scenario. But if we do not solve dysfunction decline is inevitable. Here’s some more hope and a serious solution that could give voice to all citizens.

Proportional Representation.

According to Vox’s Matthew Yglesias “The way this would work is that most states, instead of being split into one or two or three or four or eleven House districts would just operate as a unitary electoral zone. Voters would vote via ranked-choice voting, and you then end up with a proportional result.” Two big results stem from this system. The minority does not get totally shut out. Red states elect some liberals and blues states some conservative. It also encourages additional parties. With proportional representation one could easily see Democratic Socialists splitting from the Democratic party to push for a Scandinavian style society. More Republicans would vote for Libertarians because they would not be wasting their vote. More interesting possibilities exist. Nicki Halley, Reihan Salam and various Never-Trumpers could form a Conservative party that rejects white nationalism but embraces small government, free markets, religion and family. This would leave the base of the Republican party as a Trumpist reactionary nationalist party. A business, science and technology friendly party could emphasize climate change, clean energy, infrastructure and a libertarian style social safety net peeling off both Republicans and Democrats. A coalition of groups like Black Lives Matter could band together to create a Social Justice party. It may be that for both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party the sum of the parts is worth less than the separate parts. With a half dozen parties no party would get much more than 30% of the vote creating a need to present the public with attractive policy proposals and negotiate political alliances to enact those policies. They supposed benefits of naked partisanship would fade away. Voters would have choices more tailored to there desires. And importantly white nationalists would be isolated and hopefully shunned. I do not personally vote for conservatives but I respect conservatism. I do not respect or accept the validity of ethnic nationalist politics. History is clear on this, ethnic nationalism is a menace to any country that allows it to fester and to all other countries.

Imagine an alien invader conquered the U.S. and found a geographically large, diverse land with complex regional histories, with a couple hundred distinct nationalities and ethnicities, dozens of religious persuasions, different gender and sexual orientations, vast disparity of wealth, income and educational attainment. Do you think that alien would decide to organize this society of over 330 million people into just two groups of Team Red and Team Blue? There is no particular reasons to have just two major parties in the U.S. It kind of works well for a mano y mano presidential contest but otherwise is failing. The constitution did not call for parties and the founders did not want them. Having already experimented with this extra-constitutional form of government we should experiment some more. Having more parties encourages innovative policy entrepreneurship. Maybe it would just bring us a new form of dysfunction. But the theory that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it does not apply here.