Saturday, October 29, 2016

Saturday Morning Cartoons
The endless campaign has exhausted nearly everyone, particularly anyone actually paying close attention. There are numerous interesting themes that will no-doubt keep doctoral students and talking heads busy for decades analyzing the causes and consequences of the rise of Trumpism. I admit to finding these sometimes puzzling questions enticing, but today I seek refuge in some cartoons.

David Horsey is my favorite cartoonist and he hits on an important theme here: the role of the larger Republican Party (leadership and rank-and-file) in both the rise of Trumpism and its stubborn persistence as election day nears and fears us.

Many Republican leaders have been courageous, like our governor and John McCain and Colin Powell and many more, but those currently in power...not so much.

The party of law & order (which studies show is actually a trope designed to rally working class white voters' hatred of non-whites) has chosen the deeply unpatriotic and anti-American path these past 8 years of obstructionism rather than loyal opposition, choosing to mislead average voters by pandering to falsehoods like birtherism, the president is a Muslim who (with HRC) founded ISIS, that Obamacare is a government takeover rather than a plan designed to support our private sector system for providing health insurance based on a Republican idea (individual mandates), and more.

...As a result...we have a candidate who gleefully encourages us all to support burning down the house, exterminating the Great American Experiment, on the basis of obstructionism exemplified by his own party and special interest's tilting the battlefield against working families as exemplified by the candidate himself.

Many on both sides have (and continue to) contributed to the very real frustration and economic hardship driving some to seek solace in an angry loudmouthed bigot.

But that does little to change the fact that his message is incoherent and dangerous and misguided and narcissistic and hate-filled and even more divisive than politics before his campaign.

This one is still more aspiration than reality, because Trump is too close to winning for anyone to take anything for granted. If, however, the decency of the average American voter prevails against the sleeze industry on the Alt-Right and their Fox Noise and Republican collaborators...then the image may capture a fitting outcome: electoral and commercial defeat on the basis of a campaign that did what campaign's are designed to do: reveal what a candidate is really about.









Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Even if Trump loses big, the anger will remain. Here’s how we can address it.
EJ Dionne, in the Washington Post, helps us make sense of this troubling election. Below is the full text of his very thoughtful analysis and commentary. With images added.
The urgent task of progressives in this election is to defeat Donald Trump. But even if we succeed, we have a long-term responsibility: to understand why Trump happened and to face up to how failures on the left and center-left have contributed to the flourishing of a new far right, not only in the United States but also across Europe.
The left, you might fairly protest, has enough problems without being blamed for the rise of a dangerous figure who is, first and foremost, a creation of the conservative movement’s radicalization and the Republican leadership’s pandering to extreme views over many years. When I watch GOP leaders bemoaning their party’s fate under Trump (or belatedly jumping off his ship), I am reminded of John F. Kennedy’s warning that “those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
But progressives should resist complacency bred by the idea that the anger on display in this election will soon subside as older voters uneasy with change decline in numbers. Throughout the West, social-democratic and left-liberal parties are facing defections, divisions and decline. Their economic model — combining a market orientation with welfare states, strong unions and regulations — is no longer delivering the broadly shared prosperity that was once its hallmark. Yes, part of the problem, particularly in the United States, comes from a weakening of social protections thanks to conservative policy victories and the resistance of congressional Republicans to social reform. Nonetheless, even if Trump loses big, the left and center-left have a lot of work and rethinking to do.
The grievances of Trump supporters have been well-covered this year (although it should not have taken both the Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns to bring them to the fore). Many voters fear that the social and economic world that has defined their lives is irretrievably passing away.
The left is in trouble precisely because it has not responded adequately to this fear or managed to tame the forces that produced it. This is not just a political mistake but also a moral failing.
It is tempting to discount the Trump movement as primarily a backward-looking reaction among less-well-off white voters who can abide neither the cultural changes of the past half-century nor the increasingly diverse country that has come into being since we changed our immigration laws in the mid-1960s. And it’s true that racism and nativism have taken particularly vicious forms in this campaign — remember, Trumpism was born in birtherism.

But we can condemn prejudice and still understand the adversity afflicting Trump supporters. And we should acknowledge that those who are angry about what’s happened to their lives are not all delusional bigots.
Technological change has undercut incomes and living standards for a significant share of our fellow citizens. An influx of immigrants has shocked certain communities, leading them to experience a genuine sense of displacement and powerlessness in the face of change they cannot control. There are struggles for power as new groups gain political ascendancy and older groups, once a majority, become minorities. There are also battles over material resources as newcomers are perceived as taking jobs (sometimes for lower wages) from groups that once dominated particular fields.
Supporters of immigrant rights need to be sensitive to who pays the highest cost for a more open society. Some remedies are obvious, including additional federal funds to communities whose local budgets have taken a hit as they provide services to large numbers of new residents. Broad egalitarian measures, including a higher minimum wage, can lift the incomes of lower-skilled immigrants and the native born alike. Those who — rightly, in my view — support a generous refugee policy can take care to help those fleeing oppression and violence locate in areas with the capacity to absorb them, and not expect a small number of communities to take an outsize number of those in need. And advocates of immigration reform need to do a far better job of making the case that the rights of the native born are strengthened, not weakened, when millions of undocumented residents are allowed to earn equal rights themselves.
Also feeding populist rebellions on the left as well as on the right is the fact that supporters of an open global economy have simply not been attentive enough to the costs of change. Every trade deal is defended in the same way: There will be a majority of “winners” and a minority of “losers,” and the losers will be assisted and compensated. But the assistance and compensation are never adequate, and the trade deals have focused far more on protections for investors than for workers.

We have added hundreds of millions of new workers to the global labor market. This has created a downward-trending bidding war for less-skilled labor, which is particularly tough on the least advantaged workers in the most advanced economies. A much-cited study by three well-known economists, David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, found that import growth from China cost 2.4 million American jobs in the 2000s. It must also be stressed that deindustrialization has undercut the opportunities for African Americans in inner cities, as the sociologist William J. Wilson has written. Progressives have an obligation to underscore that angry white Trump voters have grievances and interests in common with their fellow citizens of color.

Yes, trade creates jobs, but it can also destroy them. Those who lose out dramatically will notice trade’s impact more readily than those who gain ground gradually.
The global economy is not going away, and the United States draws some real advantages in the worldwide competition it fosters. But unless there are what Jared Bernstein and Lori Wallach have called “new rules of the road” on trade deals, advocates of an open economy will face ever more ferocious opposition. Just as it has often fallen to capitalism’s critics to save the system, so might critics of free trade push its advocates to more sustainable approaches.

Progressives and moderates alike also need to recognize that arguments can be sensible as far as they go but still send signals of indifference to those who are losing out. Take a group we might call the “schoolers.” They say again and again that there’s nothing wrong with our economy that can’t be solved by giving more education and more training to more people. The core insight here is certainly right: We must do far better in preparing workers for the economy as it exists.

But especially for older white workers, a lot of this talk sounds like a put-down. They can be forgiven for thinking they’re being blamed for following the rules that applied when they first entered the workforce: A high school degree and hard work would be enough to allow them to live well and their kids to live even better.
Trump is blowing smoke when he claims he can reopen the old factories and mines. But his promise, however empty, sounds more sympathetic than technocratic talk about “the skills gap.” And the education argument should not be used to draw attention away from another problem, the declining bargaining power of workers in a world where unions are weaker. Progressives need new approaches to empowering workers, as David Madland argued recently in a paper for the Center for American Progress.

Then there is the paradox of “cosmopolitanism,” a word that captures another aspect of the reaction. Attacks on “rootless cosmopolitans” are the stuff of old forms of anti-Semitism. Trump, whether consciously or not, veered toward a classic anti-Semitic trope on Thursday, when he declared that Hillary Clinton “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.”
But there is another, positive understanding of the idea of cosmopolitanism, offered by Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. He writes that “two strands . . . intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism. One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance.”
This should be an aspiration for all of us. And it means that those who live cosmopolitan lives must go about “taking an interest in the practices and beliefs” of those whom the late Rev. Andrew Greeley called “neighborhood people.” Being “citizens of the world” is not high on their priority list. They love the particular patch where they were raised or that they have adopted as their own.
I suspect that many of Trump’s backers are neighborhood people. Economic change, including globalization, is very hard on them. It can disrupt and empty out the places they revere, driving young people away and undermining the economic base a community needs to survive.
Liberals and conservatives alike insufficiently appreciate what makes neighborhood people tick and why they deserve our respect. Liberals are instinctive cosmopolitans in the citizens-of-the-world sense. They often long for the freedom of big metropolitan areas. Free-market conservatives typically say that if a place can’t survive the rigors of market competition, if the factories close, the people left behind are best off if they find somewhere else to live.
Let it be said that there are no simple answers for the plight of neighborhood people who find themselves under siege. Ghost towns are another old story. There are limits to how much a local economy can be propped up when it is pummeled by globalization’s gales.
But if there are limits to what can be done to help such places help themselves, this does not mean that nothing can be done. Neighborhood people are the forgotten men and women of an integrating planet. Their affections and loyalties are civic gifts. We should nurture them, not cast them aside.
The far right is still a long way from winning majorities. The center-left’s constituency is younger and more diverse and thus much more like the United States of the future. My reading of the polls is that unless we repeal both women’s suffrage and the remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act, Trump will lose. The video portraying his disgusting misogyny and the latest round of harassment charges against him have further tilted the electoral playing field Clinton’s way.

But to roll back the far right, progressives need fresh thinking about how an innovative economy can make those innovations work on behalf of the many and not just the few. We also need to tend to non-economic matters such as patriotism and a sense of belonging. Citizens worry not only about their pocketbooks but also about how to build community and how to rear children in a challenging time.
Progressives regularly preach empathy and insist that the best way to solve a problem is to deal with its underlying causes. These principles apply as much to the struggles of our political opponents as they do to the problems faced by our allies. Defeating Trump is the first step. Giving an ear and a heart to the legitimate concerns of his supporters is the next.
Liberal elitism will never pave the way for liberal egalitarianism.
[Thank you, EJ Dionne, for your insights here.]

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

The Lies We Tell
Watching the news last night and the story was Trump's efforts to change the conversation from a focus on women accusing him of sexual assault to his claim that the election is rigged.

Ohio Republican Jon Husted, who is in charge of the election in Ohio, was interviewed saying there are so many checks in place that Trumps claims are without merit: nothing to worry about. These are not the droids you are looking for.

The MSNBC host was satisfied...more evidence Trump is a loon.

I turned to my wife and said, "the only concern I have about election rigging in Ohio would work in Trump's favor, given all Husted has done to suppress the vote."

At the end of the segment, a prominent Republican talking head concluded that "while he is concerned about individual voter fraud" he is not concerned about the kind of widespread rigging Trump is prattling on about.

The MSNBC host was satisfied...loon confirmed.

So, both of the non-looney sides on this question do have concerns about the legitimacy of the election, but we are in agreement that Trump's claim goes too far. Or that he is motivated by a desire to distract, so his claim has nothing to do with our actual (and opposite) concerns.

Are we both misleading ourselves and others?

Sunday, October 16, 2016

A Great Week for Political Cartoons
A picture really is worth a thousand words, so just let the images tell their story.















Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom
AP journalist Joyce Rosenberg wrote about election talk in the workplace. Choosing to write on this topic during the election is smart and helpful. Well done. Her approach was less so. Consider this.
She focused on what employers could do to minimize any potential negative impact on productivity, which strikes me as the central concern we might expect in Pravda or The People’s Daily, ripe with instructions on how to manage worker thinking.

In a democracy the more important concern ought to be how we can all learn to engage more productively in these types of difficult dialogues. Our democracy depends on more of us mastering this skill set, particularly in the shadow of the most uncivil candidate in our life time being a heartbeat away from the White House.

A second choice to reconsider, in my view, is her choice to focus so heavily on employment law. This is a cultural and political challenge. The law is not irrelevant in establishing outer boundaries and guiding principles for evaluating situations that cross the line.

The contentiousness of this presidential campaign is spilling into some workplaces. Employment lawyers [recommend] rather than trying to control what people are saying, owners should focus on whether the work is getting done in an atmosphere that isn't hostile.

Of course we should not encourage employers to try to control or silence conversations among fellow citizens. Further, we should celebrate, not fear, whenever our interest in selecting our leaders is so high that the conversations spill into the workplace.

Our author then notes that the one employer she was using as a prop chose to call a meeting and “everyone agreed not to focus on it during work hours.” This strikes me as a fear-driven, undemocratic, missed opportunity.

Why not organize brown bag lunch conversations that include local experts from both parties coming into the workplace? Use coffee breaks to encourage those interested to meet one-on-one with the express purpose of listening to the reasoning behind an alternative perspective they currently do not understand?

Some employers do want to “ban political talk altogether.” Bad idea, as our author notes, but only partially because “this could land the employer in legal hot water.” The law is a good starting point here: employers determining what their workers can talk about is crosses a line. But the law only gets us so far in figuring out how to ‘be the change we want to see in the world’ here.

Rather than explore options for celebrating and supporting this amazingly democratic impulse in the workplace, our author’s narrow focus on the legal exposure of employers leads her to then turn to a focus on how political talk can create a hostile work environment.

Only when we lack the citizenship skills needed to engage with others who disagree with us. This is not a trivial caveat. The threat here is not the desire to talk politics, but our fear of talking politics that has resulted in a public pedagogy that has consistently de-skilled us in precisely the tools we need to do this in a productive and democratic and civil way that focuses on problem solving.

Our author’s narrow legal lens then brings us, of course, to enforcement questions.

"Enforce the fact that you're running a business. Political discussions at break time are fine as long as they're respectful," says a consultant. But make sure employees know they shouldn't get into political discourse with customers. If a customer is offended by a staffer's political beliefs, the company could lose that person's business.

We should absolutely reject any effort to ‘enforce’ conversational parameters here. But alienating customers is an interesting question to consider…perhaps a business would earn well-deserved customer satisfaction points if it were known as a place where conversations, on any compelling topic of the day, were always civil and thoughtful and respectful?

At the end of her piece, our author adds another reason not to focus on silencing these conversations.

Political conversations that remain friendly "can be just as much of a morale-builder as that baseball game or football game," says another consultant. Discussing the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the workplace was a bonding event.

I applaud the choice to address this question and even much of her contributions to the conversation. At the same time, it seems to me there is more to say and reframing this to focus on celebrating the latent opportunity marks the democracy-strengthening path forward.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Chain of Command
As a young, untenured, professor I lived 'outside the chain of command.' Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not so much, often unconsciously, it seemed I nearly always chose to speak directly with the Provost or President, rather than work an idea up from my Chair, to my Dean, and beyond. I am sure my engaged candor was mostly seen as being a pain in the ass by administrators.

Now, as a lowly associate dean, when I see other faculty doing the same, I want to explain two things I have learned since my own days in the wild west.

First, going directly to the source is, often, very useful and positive. But keep in mind that treating this as our default undermines the formal institutional channels of communication that faculty rely on if we want to have a reliable and real impact on shared governance. So, it is best to see these adventures outside the chain as selective and intentional, rather than the most well-worn path. It is also important to go the extra mile to make these as civil as possible, focused on problem solving rather than just complaining.

Second, it is important to recognize the value of strengthening the chain of command, particularly in an organization (like many) where transparent and timely communication is a challenge. Communicating up the chain, when possible, strengthens Faculty Senate, the union, and even individual academic units by enhancing the formal pathways and institutional networks designed to guide decision making.

Either I have lost my way or there is the beginnings of a decent idea here somewhere.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Elections are Tough on the Heart and Soul
Three women I work with, each of whom I consider an engaged and thoughtful colleague and friend, suggested today that they are wavering between not voting or supporting Trump. One noted and another agreed that he is "a smart man," with a vague reference to his business experience and added, again to agreement, that we "need a fresh face." All three repeated more than once that "she cannot be trusted."

These are very intelligent women my age, with professional jobs. And the tone of their voices indicated to me that these are not the casual statements of those not paying attention. Their was a touch of venom every time one repeated "she cannot be trusted."

Our conversation was not long, but it has stuck with me all day. I wish I had simply said, "I just don't want a generation of our boys growing up with a misogynist as their role model." Instead, I just noted that he is "dangerous," and her corruption is within the normal range, while he is unstable and dangerous.

Yes, I repeated "dangerous" more than once. I was a bit at a loss for words, because I really like all three of these colleagues. I felt weak and cowardly.

With no insult intended, it felt like it would do not good to point out that all the major fact check organizations have found not only that HRC is more honest than Trump (by a long shot) but she is also more honest than most politicians.

Nor did it seem like noting that Wall Street Journal analysis showed that Trump's fortune is less than what he would have had if he had put his father's inheritance into a standard IRA like an retiree does...hardly business savvy.

At least one mentioned she had not heard the recent tape of Trump on the bus, but I quickly dismissed send that to them. Seems like the violates some unspoken work-related boundary, given the political and explicit nature of that recording.

So, I feel stuck.

It is possible that they are Fox News viewers, but if that is the case it is even less likely they will be moved by learning that studies have shown FN viewers are 4 times more misinformed (by their daily news source) than any other viewers.

One mentioned watching the SNL skits and it seemed at least one other might have as well. Is art and satire coming to the rescue again? Is that the only avenue into our otherwise walled off worlds today?

It is possible they just did not want to reveal to anyone who they plan to vote for, but it felt like these were three who would not consider voting for HRC. I could be wrong; would not be the first time.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Empathy Gap
While I remain concerned that Trump might still win, because the anger and frustration he has tapped into is real and pre-existed his vanity candidacy...today I am feeling sorry for my Republican friends.

For me, there is no doubt that Trump has revealed himself to be entirely unqualified to lead, indecent, ignorant, and dangerous. For me, that means supporting a candidate in my own party who is too hawkish and close to Wall Street for me. But that is nothing compared to the choice my Republican friends are facing.

But since Trump was a Democrat about 20 minutes ago, let's imagine that he was somehow the Democratic Party candidate. (Do not dismiss the idea, because we all dismissed the idea that he would ever become the Republican Party candidate too.)

If he was the candidate of my party, would I vote for Romney or Bush, McCain or Rubio or even Ted Cruz?

Yes.

Without hesitation.

He is that dangerous.

The list of his deplorable characteristics is long, but for me at the core of all of that is that he has a complete lack of empathy for others. So, in opposing him I want to be as empathetic as possible, recognizing the very real pain many of my Republican friends are experiencing right now.

It stinks, but the right thing to do remains clear: we all must unite to reject Trumpism.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Time for Men to be Men: Protect Our Daughters from Trumpanistas
Trump leads among white men by a large margin, but this is based on two things: a blanket of misinformation about Trump and a failure of my fellow white men to step up and be men.

Conservative columnist, Michael Gerson, argues that Trump's huge lead among white men (and even more so among less educated white men) suggests "a movement of white grievance led by an avatar" whose "version of Eden is lounging at the Grotto at the Playboy Mansion," a vision "left behind along with adolescence" for most...but not Trump.

Take a moment to let this image from Matt Wuerker sink in.

A moment...

Here are ten reasons any white man worth his salt could never vote for Trump.

1. We do not want our sons to have Trump as a role model. He is an example of how not to be a real man.

2. Trump is that rich SOB who stiffs his contractors, cheats on his wives, loudly exaggerates his dick size, rates our daughters by their breast size, and laughs about it with his rich SOB pals in the sauna.

3. Trump's record of success as a businessman is BS. His business model is to inherit millions from his father and use it to screw you and I out of what we earned actually working for a living.

4. We do not want our daughters to grow up in an America where the men in their lives grew up with Trump as their role model. These Trumpanistas will make our daughters lives even harder and more dangerous.

5. Trump is that douchebag in the locker room who always takes the jokes three steps too far, making real men cringe as we wonder if he would treat our daughters that way.  We know he would.

6. We do not want our young men and women in uniform to put their lives on the line because Trump went ballistic about a tweet from another world leader or has to defend his imaginary dick size.

7. Trump is clearly unstable, untruthful, unprepared to be president, and he consistently doubles-down on this by insisting only he knows more then our generals.

8. When Trump recently announced that President Obama was, indeed, born here, he told us that he has been intentionally lying to us for many years in order to cripple our government.

9. His only allies in his own party are Guiliani, Christie, and Gingrich, so just a glance around the room confirms that this is a collection of SOBs who have no track record of helping the average white guy or his family, ever.

10. We should be angry about the failure of our government leaders to address the problems we face, but Trump is at the core of this failure, he is at the heart of these problems, and the only thing he shares with us is a loud and angry voice. Otherwise, he is pretty much the captain of Team Screw Average White Guys and has been his entire, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, privileged life.

In this post, I am attempting to speak white man to white man, using the kind of language that animates locker rooms and man caves and gets amplified many times in Trump-talk. It is my hope that any decent man reading this post will not only choose to enthusiastically support HRC as our first female president, but also choose to work hard to persuade others to do the same.

At the same time, this is just one post with one audience in mind seeking one outcome: see the danger in a Trump presidency and act. The larger questions surrounding gender subordination and agency and power also highlighted by Trumpism are not addressed here, but I welcome thoughts on that from others.