Slavery and Congressional Gridlock

There is a direct link between slavery and congressional gridlock. Looking back at the arc of American history, its original sin has shaped its curve. Embedded in the constitution and eventually splitting the country apart in a bloody war, slavery gave way to institutionalized and social and cultural racism. And racism became more exclusive to one party.

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Voting Rights initiatives moved conservatives out of the Democratic Party and into the Republican Party. Before this, as noted in the Economist article, conservatives and liberals has existed in both parties and had allowed members to find common ground more easily, reducing gridlock. This partisanship has been a major factor in increasing polarization and gridlock in Congress.

Race is still a great dividing factor in America and talking about race is difficult, especially for white people, who can become defensive very quickly when discussing white privilege or institutional racism. So how can we heal this divide, and therefore remove a host of divisive social issues from party politics?

Without certain social divisions people could once again move among parties to find common ground on individual policy issues. Support Black Lives Matter and reducing the corporate tax rate? Vote for Republicans. Want to end affirmative action but support a single-payer option for health care? Vote for Democrats. If this were the case so many regular problems tied to the actual smooth running of the nation, which is the chief victim of polarized gridlock, could and would be addressed.

The salient fact in engaging in this sort of thought experiment is to note how many divisive issues surround race and America’s attempts to reconcile with its (more) racist past. Affirmative action, our view of police and policing, welfare and tax redistribution, the war on drugs. Race has gotten in the way of making policy decisions solely on the facts, and on Utilitarian principles of governing for the greatest good for the greatest number. The practice of dividing people on a granular level, especially with the rise of big data and analysis, has the effect of dividing people even further into a Republican/Conservative camp and a Democratic/Liberal camp where policy and social and cultural views are all linked, where they do not necessarily need to be. It is a dangerous path that risks dividing people from one another where even if they share some similar, broad principles, they are utterly separated.

Obama vs. Eisenhower

President Truman had many difficult tasks that faced him at the end of World War II, and he handled them ably, for the most part. The most intractable problem he dealt with in foreign policy was the worsening relations and oppositional stance that he faced in the Soviet Union. In order to stop Communist expansion he was willing to go to war. In Korea the United States engaged in a tremendous blood bath.

When Eisenhower became president he was concerned about the death of American soldiers in a war that they could not win without massive escalation. He ended the Korean War and throughout his two terms he refused to get the United States entangled and military conflicts. Eisenhower had a dilemma: he had to confront and actively oppose Communism and he desperately wanted to avoid direct armed conflict. So he turned to technology and covert activity. The CIA was given free reign during his tenure and the value of having a distinct technological advantage was realized. An unintended effect of the prolonged arms race was to institutionalize the military programs that were put in place during the Korean War.

Now to Obama, if there are circumstances that could be said to provide a direct analogy from one presidency to another, Eisenhower’s could not be more fitting. The Bush Doctrine necessitated military intervention with combat troops invading countries and overthrowing regimes. This costly and largely failed approach informed much of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

If there is one thing that truly separates their views on foreign policy it is that Obama has wielded the fear of terrorism less effectively than Eisenhower wielded the fear of Communism. Eisenhower used that fear as a bludgeon to bolster his domestic agenda. It may be dishonest but it was effective in building infrastructure for the American economy, advancing education, and balancing the budget. Obama has not used the fear of terrorism in an effective manner on the domestic front. It is possible that he could have better used American’s fears to advance infrastructure projects or other worthy domestic projects.

The salient features of Obama’s policy toward confronting terrorism are a heavy reliance on drone strikes, which are shrouded in a veil of national security secrecy, and the institutionalization of legal justifications for attacking terrorists and the maintanace of NSA dragnets, covert military operations, and domestic security measures. These are the largely negative consequences of Obama’s policy of confrontation without war. A permanent Cold War-style apparatus has been called into existence to oppose an intractable political, economic, and religious problem. In the new world of crumbling borders and technology it remains to be seen whether or not this will be an effective strategy for defeating terrorism, but it certainly is an oppressive weight on the American government and military and it diminishes the dominance of the law in restraining the impulse to tamp down rights and use force.

Bowe Bergdahl and Mercy

How horrified are we by canniballism? One of the most profound taboos in our society is eating another person. So can that act be forgiven? There is a famous court case in the mid-1880’s in Britain dealing with the survivors of a shipwreck. In this case some surviving members of the crew, adrift on a lifeboat killed a terminally ill member of the crew to eat him and drink his blood. They were convicted of murder, but there sentences were commuted from execution to a short term of imprisonment. The idea was that in unusual and extreme circumstances the survivors had to do something generally considered horrible, but that in any case they had already been punished by their horrific ordeal.

Bowe Bergdahl did something incredibly stupid when he ran away from his base and was captured by the Taliban. I understand the anger of his comrades who were exposed to increased danger but it seems clear that he should not be punished further. While not a perfect analogy, Bowe Bergdahl did something terrible but he also suffered terribly at the hands of his captors. It would be proper in his case to say, “He has already suffered enough.”

On the Legitimacy of NSA Spying

Over the last three years the almost unbelievable level of communications interception by the NSA has been revealed largely through the Snowden leaks. They have revealed many threats to the principles of limited government, notably in domestic eavesdropping and in collusion with other domestic policing agencies (see DEA and “parallel construction”). While these are grave matters that have gotten ahead of the law’s ability to regulate and present novel and particularly frightening invasions of privacy and deserve to have a national conversation exploring them, not all of the activities of the NSA are illegitimate.

Spying on foreign leaders, especially those of our allies, has been excoriated in our press and in foreign countries. But this is truly an activity within the scope of the NSA’s mission. While it can be argued that it is foolish and a waste of resources, I believe it is legitimate as long as the information is not passed to private companies for commercial gain. The myth of a brotherhood of nations is a dangerous fairy tale. The US has strong allies, but even those allies don’t have interests that strictly align with ours all the time. While foreign policy should not be conducted in a completely ruthless and amoral manner, it should be conducted with a level of self-interest. Spying is therefore a critical task that every nation which is capable engages in, even on their allies.

Technology and Voyeurism

One marked social effect of changing technology has been to distort the human experience of observing one another. It is now easier than ever to peek into people’s private lives and to experience a wide range of emotions and obtain a good deal of pleasure or entertainment while doing so. One effect of this is to increase the sense of superficiality that permeates modern life. We are all being surveilled all the time by not just corporations and the state, but by each other, and we project ourselves accordingly.

We may, before a first date (if we didn’t find our potential partner online), Google someone to perform a brief background check. This manifestation of our voyeurism can be potentially destructive but is perhaps the least dangerous aspect of this modern process. Voyeurism tends to cause fetishism. People are reduced to objects and ownership of these objects can be conferred on the viewer. This is why dating sites and apps like Tinder are problematic for society. They reduce our empathy and our view of people as unique and deserving.

Outside of personal relationships there is the baser parts of life that are now in full consciousness for the first time in human history. The modern era has shown an ever increasing incongruity between the public acceptance of sex and violence and the private ability of people to view it. Pornography and filmed violence permeate the internet. The discord between public and private life, and the increased scope of public life, are also damaging to society. A society that looks on death and sex as taboo in public, but as mundane in private, is bound to develop a shame complex, as well as dehumanizing the participants and victims of sex and violence respectively.

One example that vindicates the mass-development of shame, which is caused by the public revelation of private embarrassment, is the proliferation of cringe-comedy in documentary or first-person style. It enables a catharsis for people to experience vicariously, and voyeuristically, other people’s shame.

The long-term effects of shame and dehumanization cannot be good for the public health of society, and it may be a primary cause of increased anxiety, depression, and mental illness, as well as feeding sexual deviancy.