Tag: democracy

Women’s Work

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

I have been thinking about who are the people working to bring about the financial and political downfall of Trump. There is a panthean (note feminist spelling) of women. Liz Cheney. E. Jean Carroll. Letitia James. Fanni Willis. Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. Nancy  Pelosi. Nikki Haley. Judge Chutkin. Cassidy Hutchinson.

The Latin word virtus (virtue) literally means manliness. (The made-up feminist equivalent, muliertus, doesn’t resonate very well!) Aristotle argued that there are four primary virtues, the private virtues of prudence and temperance or moderation, and the public virtues of courage and justice. (His Greek equivalent of virtus was arḗte, which translates as excellence, not manliness.)  A list of men possessing and exercising the primary public virtue of moral courage with respect to Trump would be a lot shorter. (Judge Erdogan. Jack Smith. Brad Raffensberger. Adam Kinzinger.)

Additional nominations welcome for both genders.

Our task as the middle and beyond generations is to encourage GenZ and millennials to show up at the polls, because in an era of toxic masculinity, they don’t vote like our generations do. I am working as a poll worker (6 am to 8 pm) in the South Carolina presidential on February 3rd and 24th, so it will be interesting to see who shows up.  My assignment is in a working class community, where I expect that African Americans will turn out to some degree in the Democratic primary while the numerous Trump-supporting evangelical “Christian” white angry aging folks will show up for the Republican primary.  I have to vote early 20 miles from home since I am not working in my own polling place, so in a few weeks I will be off to vote for Nikki, encouraging her to keep being a thorn in the flesh of the Donald.

My friends and blog followers, do what you can to mobilize what truly is the silent majority of our generation. My life at age 82 is much more past than future. On a personal level, I am trying to minimize any burden I leave for my daughters and grandchildren. On a communal/national/global level, I am trying to do what little I can to leave our children and heirs a safer, healthier, more livable world. Join me in trying to convince them to get engaged in the process of making that happen.

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The Risk-Averse Voter

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Fifty years ago ,I was roped into teaching risk and insurance, a required course for several majors in the business school at Clemson University.  The insurance part was rather dull, but risk was interesting. Right now, I am thinking about the risks associated with voting strategy in the presidential primaries. The race has come down to Biden, Trump, and Haley.  How should one spend one’s single precious vote so as to contribute to the most desirable outcome in November? And what are the risks involved in making that choice?

In 2010, three friends of mine, all Democrats, voted in the Republican primary to try to select the candidate least likely to win in the general election. (South Carolina splits about 55-60% Republican and the rest Democrat. Voters do occasionally elect a Democrat to a statewide office.)  These three thoughtful women reasoned that South Carolina was a sexist, racist state (true) and that it would never elect an Indian woman.  They voted for Nikki Haley. It is a strategy they did not intend to apply again, but ironically, in this year’s presidential primary, they will be voting for—Nikki Haley.

What’s a voter to do? There are two parts to the strategy.  The first steps to rank your preferences Three are three candidates, which creates six possible preference rankings.

  1. Biden, Haley, Trump
  2. Biden, Trump, Haley
  3. Trump, Haley, Biden
  4. Trump, Biden, Haley
  5. Haley, Biden, Trump
  6. Haley, Trump, Biden

I find options 2 and 4 highly improbable.  Option 3 is easy, vote in the Republican primary for Trump.  No hard choices there. The same is true of options 5 and 6, to vote for Haley in the Republican primary.  If you prefer Haley or Trump to Biden, you vote for the preferred one in the Republican primary.  The challenge of risk assessment is only in option 1, the ordering Biden, Haley, Trump.  That voter is probably a Democrat or a Democrat-leaning independent. In some states, she can vote in either party’s primary.

If Biden is your first choice, there isn’t much need to vote in the Democratic for Biden because he will win anyway. Instead, you express your support by voting in the Republican primary for—which? The least electable one? The least dangerous one? Ah, there’s the rub.  The sense I get from talking to voters is that Haley runs stronger against Biden. but even the remote possibility of re-electing Trump would have much more serious consequences.   

Which one do you think has the lesser chance? Which one could you more easily live with if elected? If you strongly prefer Biden over either Republican, but could definitely rest easier with Haley on the ballot, that suggests you should vote for her.  But beware, she may be more electable—she’s attractive, articulate, and YOUNG. And very conservative. Whereas Trump may be able to energize his base but not much of anyone else.

Some Democrats will just vote for Biden, especially if they live in a state where the primary is limited to registered party members.  (I do have a good friend, a liberal Democrat in Florida, who called me last year to tell me that she is now a registered Republican. I understood her choice. She is not the only one taking that course!)  I live in an open primary state. I can simply walk in and say “I feel like a Democrat” or “I feel like a Republican.” 

Normally both party primaries are held at the same time and in the same place, saving money and poll worker time, but this year the Democratic National Committee gummed up the works, at least in South Carolina.  As a result, I will be working as a poll worker in both primaries in February and casting my own early ballot 20 miles away at the Easley public library. In all three places, I will be among voters chewing on the same dilemma. What are they risking by making this choice, and what might be the consequences?

Or they can stay home.  But as I used to say to some of my libertarian economist colleagues who thought voting was a waste of time, ”If you don’t vote, you lose your right to bitch.” That’s a First Amendment right that has to be earned.

What would you do, and why?

The Season of Hope

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Advent begins with hope, which continues as we move into a new year. We can choose our attitude. We can be optimistic, expecting that everything will turn out all right in the end. Yes, there is war in Gaza and Ukraine, and drought and famine and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and species extinction and rising sea levels and a crisis of democracy here and around the world. Optimists just shrug and are confident that all will be well in the end. No need to do anything different.

Pessimists reach the same conclusion from the opposite perspective. Nothing I do will make any difference. We are headed into a not so brave new world, one where we can’t believe what we hear and see, because of the failings of our institutions and the advent of artificial intelligence. So, let’s eat, and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

In between the extremes of unjustified optimism and defeatist pessimism lies the middle path of hope. But not just passive hope. Theologian Joanna Macy insists hope is worth no more than either pessimism or optimism unless it is active hope. What are you going to do to bring about a different, better outcome in 2024?

Some of our aspirations (also sometimes known as New Year’s resolutions) tend to be personal—like the perennial goals of eating better, watching less TV, getting more exercise, spending more time with friends and family, reading one hundred books. Those are fine goals, but notice that they are input goals, not output goals or results. If your aspiration is weight loss, for example, the experts tell us to focus on controlling your intake of food and your hours of exercise, not losing twenty pounds. You can only control inputs, not outcomes.

Your personal hope is a healthy body, mind and spirit. Active hope means identifying actions that we can take that will make those outcomes more likely.

The same advice applies to our hopes for our world, our nation, our communities. Yet, we need for our society—our communities, our nation, our world—the same identification of desired outcomes and actions we can undertake that make those outcomes more likely. My aspirations for the world are peace, justice, democracy, and sustainability. Those may not be your goals, but whatever hopes you have for the world, nation or community, the same advice applies.

Some of my inputs are personal choices that promote those goals—the way I deal with energy use, eating habits and gardening (organically), work for peaceful solutions to conflict in the family and the neighborhood, respect differences of opinion and seek common ground, and the way I stay informed about how my choices impact those aspirational goals so that I can choose more wisely. But they are not enough. I cannot save the world by recycling or other individual acts. They are necessary but not sufficient, as the mathematicians like to say. 

Perhaps you are familiar with Marge Piercy’s poem:

“Alone, you can fight,

You can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, snake-dancing file

Can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization….

Google the rest of it! Her point is that we are stronger and more effective in groups than as isolated individuals. Shared aspirations for a better future for ourselves and our children require a community. I would add a second point — Don’t go looking for the World Improvement Society. There are many changes that our world needs, and we can’t tackle them all at once. Find an organization that matches one or two of those aspirational goals, one which also matches your skills, experience, and knowledge (or a willingness to acquire them).

For me, the organizational choices were easy, made long ago. One group is focused, the other more general. My faith community shares all those aspirations and encourages us to work toward one or several of them in partnership with our brothers and sisters in faith. Other community organizations like the Rotary Club or a political party may be a better fit for some readers.

While I contribute financially to a wide range of “do-good” organizations at the local, state and national levels, the organization on which I have focused much of my “save the world” time and effort for the past 55 years is the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voter matches my skills and experience and is primarily focused on democracy. You may be drawn to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, or some other organization that engages in direct action or lobbies for policy decisions that improve the world we live in.

When it comes to saving the world, what part of that agenda speaks to you, where does your particular passion meet your skills? What organized group of people can best help you channel your effort to making the world a better place both for us and future generations? How can you participate in that work?

Now that’s a New Year’s resolution worth making. Check back with me in 12 months and we will see how much progress we have made on our little piece of the action for a better future.

Pick Your Tyranny

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Pick Your Tyranny?

In the 19th century, John C. Calhoun, on whose former plantation I taught, was concerned about the tyranny of the majority.  That is, he feared that a majority would impose their wishes on the whole country without regard to those who were harmed or disadvantaged by their actions.  He had a point, even though at the time it was a point about slavery (and secondarily, about tariffs). But equally distressing is what the U.S. is experiencing now, the tyranny of the minority. A vocal minority is trying to inflict a narrow, change-resistant, anti-democratic way of being onto a majority that clearly and openly disagrees with them about guns, abortion, book censorship, gender identity, sexual orientation, and a whole host of cultural issues.

The Constitution tried to avoid that kind of cultural tyranny in parts of the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment and the Fourth (which until Dobbs was interpreted as creating a right of privacy). The general attitude of the cultural majority is embodied in the bumper sticker, “if you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.”  If you don’t want your child to have gender-affirming care, you are certainly free to make that choice, but don’t inflict your minority religious and political views on my child. Likewise, if you don’t want your child exposed to ideas in certain books, you have that right, but it does not allow you to prevent everyone else’s children from engaging with those ideas or books. (By the time those protected children are adolescents, many of them will be intensely curious about the content of those forbidden ideas or books—and will find a way to satisfy that curiosity!)

 If readers want to accuse me of being  “woke”, I am happy to wear that label. I don’t want to be asleep. I want to be aware of the challenges others face and help them find ways to overcome them, whether those challenges arise from an unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy,  gender identity, sexual orientation, poverty, racism, misogyny, or any of the many hazards of being human in a pluralistic society.

Economic policies are a different matter. We can assert our own cultural practices without inflicting them on everyone else, but the economy is community property. We all affect the economy with our earning and spending and saving and its ups and downs in turn affect each of us. As you may have noticed, it has become increasingly difficult to get agreement on our shared economic policies—the budget, the national debt, the tax system, the role of government in infrastructure and disaster relief and reducing poverty. In economic policy, the tyranny is that of a very wealthy minority who want lower taxes, less government regulation, and privatization of everything from schools to health care to fire protection and law enforcement. Those changes would let them get out of contributing to these services for anyone outside of their immediate families in their private schools and inside the gated communities tat provide their own road maintenance, fire protection,and security..

That minority has been quite successful in imposing their view of how the nation should run its government budgets, school choice, reduced funding for public higher education, and resistance to expansion of publicly funded health care. In health care, for instance, the US. has worse health outcomes and higher health expenditures both public and private than any other developed nation.  They are aided and abetted in this pursuit of unenlightened self-interest by certain features of our Constitution that were put in place to placate the wealthy slave-owning plantation class by ensuring that that nation would have disproportionately ore more representation in Congress and the electoral college from smaller, rural, and from 1787 to 1868, slave-owning states.

We don’t need more Republicans or more Democrats, more congressional hearings or more showdowns over shutting down the government. We just need to give up the joy of tyrannizing over those with whom we disagree and, in the words of Rodney King, ask ourselves “Can’t we just all get along?” The cry of tyranny (often rephrased as fascism or socialism) is used by both sides to try to get their own way, but it also undermines trust and confidence in our institutions by convincing people that they are in the service of the tyranny on the other side  Democracy, unlike football, is not about winning. It’s about compromising. It’s about considering the needs and concerns of all kinds of minorities whether their minority position is grounded in religion, culture, gender, age, race, income, health, security, education, or anything else. It’s also about the role of government in meeting the needs of the majority for basic public services and protections and ensuring that the cost of providing those services is shared equitably among its citizens.

None of us can or should get everything we want at the expense of others. Considering differences in needs and desires and being willing to make compromises is the hallmark of being an adult and a good citizen. As the 2024 elections approach, those are the qualities I will be looking for.in candidates for public office fro city council to the president of the United States.

Passionately Moderate In Print

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Almost three years ago I posted this blog about my book in process. The title is Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy. Now it’s in print, available in paperback or digital form from amazon. I hope you will buy a copy and urge your friends to do likewise. For those of you who are more recent subscribers, here is the original blog from 2020.

“How can you call yourself passionately moderate? I thought you were a liberal, ” my oldest daughter asks.  Yes, I answered, my personal preferences are liberal. Universal health care, a woman’s right to reproductive choice, a tax system that doesn’t favor the wealthy, affordable college and affordable housing…the list goes on. But I realize that a sizeable chunk of my city, state and nation subscribes to a different set of priorities and preferences, overlapping in some cases and diametrically opposite in others.  And even if my views were those of the majority, which they are in some cases, I don’t want to impose them on a frustrated and probably angry minority.  I am willing to compromise, to settle for the pretty good or even the good enough for now rather than holding out for the very best. I am passionate about openness to compromise, the give and take that means none of us get exactly what we want personally but what may be good enough, at least for now.  That makes me a liberal in theory and a moderate in practice.

Moderation lies at the core of the two academic disciplines I love the most and have taught to several generations of college students   I have a Ph.D. in economics from my early days and worked as an academic economist for 30 years.  Then I went to seminary and got a master’s degrees in theology with a concentration in ethics, which helped me to get my economic head and my theological heart on the same page. It also gave me the opportunity to teach ethics and public policy for 15 years to graduate students in policy studies because I was able to bring these two  disciplines together.

As both an economist and a theologian, I was interested in very practical questions about how we live our lives, and in particular, how we live in community.  For an economist, that means a focus on policy—making and implemented decisions that affect our material well-being in our common life.  For theology, my focus has been ethics, which was my concentration in seminary.  Theological ethics explores how our faith understanding guides our participation in governance in a democratic society. In the process of studying ethics, I fell in love with virtue ethics, which is not tied to any particular faith tradition but infuses all of them.

 The heart of Aristotelian virtue ethics, incorporated into late medieval scholasticism by Thomas Aquinas,  is moderation.  Moderation is fulcrum on which Aristotle’s golden mean rests. The golden mean, which we will explore further in later chapters, contends that each virtue lies at the midpoint between two vices (or sins, in Christian/Jewish language).  One vice is the virtue’s extreme, the other its opposite.  Aristotle’s notion of the golden mean fit perfectly into the decision processes of my economist mind and my progressive heart.

Thirty years ago, economist Alan Blinder wrote a book called Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, arguing that the Republicans were the party of hard heads, hard hearts, while the Democrats were the party of soft heads, soft hearts. What we needed, he argued, was hard heads and soft hearts–rational decision processes combined with compassion and empathy.The same dichotomy exists between economists and theologians—and in my head and heart.  It is in the middle meeting point that we engage both head and heart in dialogue with each other.

 The core of economic decision-making is also a balancing act, weighing costs and benefit, pain and pleasure, and steering a middle course rather than going to the extremes.  In fact, economics embodies utilitarian ethics, the greatest good for the greatest number.  It’s all about getting to get good outcomes.

Barry Goldwater got it wrong when, running for president in 1964, he said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue..” He lost in a landslide. Mderation, along with patience, is a more likely path to human flourishing than extremism. In political economy (the old name of economics, it is economics as a guide to public policy), moderation is not just a principle, it’s a survival strategy. The successful candidate is ever in search of the median voter, constantly resisting the pull of the extremes where few voters reside.  Yes, there is lure of standing tall for what you believe, whether it’s an extreme version of the second amendment or free college for all;  rigid and unyielding in the face of pressure to compromise. It’s high drama, and it was Bernie Sanders’ strategy in both 2016 and 2020 when he failed to get the Democratic nomination But it doesn’t create or sustain communities in which we can dwell together in peace and enable humans to be nurtured and flourish.   So if you value a healthy and sustainable human community, please consider join me in declaring yourself a passionate moderate. With this qualification from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”

The golden mean applies not just to virtue, but to other qualities of being.  I have friends who are perfectionists, which is frustrating for them because it is impossible to always be perfect, and so often the perfect keeps us from getting to the good enough. Perfection is the opposite of moderation.  Carelessness, indifference, apatheia represent its extreme.  Most of us invest our perfectionism—if we have any—in just one or a few areas of life. W vacillate between appreciating the gift that perfectionists bring and exasperation at the lack of big picture, the delays while everything is revisited one more time.  I have worked with perfectionists, and it has never been easy for either of us.

My passion for moderation is a passion for process, not outcomes.  In order to practice moderation as a commitment to good process, you have to let your inner Buddha guide you in letting go of attachment to outcomes. I do believe that in most cases that good processes are more likely to lead to good outcomes. Not best outcomes. Not perfect outcomes.  But again, outcomes that are steps in the right direction, or good enough for now. 

Note: This blog is an excerpt from the opening chapter of a book in progress.

Have You No Sense of Decency?

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

In 1953, 70 years ago, Joseph Welch, special counsel for the U.S. Army, asked that rhetorical question of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  The answer was, of course, no.  The same question could be posed to the Republican supermajority of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and once again, the answer is a resounding no. They voted on whether to expel from their body three Democratic representatives.  True to Southern culture, they expelled the two black males but kept the lone white female by a one vote margin.  They were expelled for representing their constituents’ deep concerns about gun safety in the wake of yet another school shooting, this one within shouting distance of the very state Capitol where the House was were meeting.

Expulsion, disenfranchising some 150,000 Tennessee citizens from being represented, is normally reserved for criminal behavior on the part of the accused.  This time, the accusation was a breach of decorum, in reaction to being persistently refused recognition by the Speaker.  At the same time, Wisconsin legislators have threatened to impeach the newly elected state Supreme Court justice before she is even sworn in.  Her crime? Disagreeing with their views on gerrymandering and shredding the right to reproductive choice. Wisconsin is an appropriate locale for this attitude, having given us Vince Lombardi’s famous quote, “Winning is the only thing.” Unless the other side wins?

In my home state of South Carolina, the General Assembly is contemplating a move from open to closed primaries.  It would mark the de facto return of the Jim Crow white primary, since the majority of the 40 percent of South Carolinians who identify as Democrats are people of color.  In many cases, the only time a South Carolina voter has a choice is in the primary, because the Republican primary winner frequently faces little or no opposition in the general election. Many of us treasure the right to pick which primary to vote in, depending on what’s at stake.

I have just published a book on Amazon with the title Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy (available in both electronic and paperback format).  I am passionate about democracy, and that passion means that winning comes second to maintaining healthy processes and listening to one another and yes, that dreaded word, compromise. I am encouraged to see the wheels of justice slowly turning in the case of those who would undermine democracy and exercise the tyranny of the minority by suppressing dissenting voices. But it is no time for complacency. It is well past time for all of us to wake up to the very real threat that we could lose our precious but fragile right to self-governance.

Hurrah for the Red, Purple and Blue!

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

Marjorie Taylor Greene recently said out loud (or more likely, a tweet) that we should just split the country into red states and blue states, let them go their separate ways,  and diminish the role of the central government—in other words, return to the Articles of Confederation which were our national governing document for 1781-89.  She raises the interesting question of how one defines a red or blue state and how stable that definition might be.  (Arizona definitely moved toward the blue end of the spectrum in 2020 and 2022  compared to previous years.)

Perhaps the best measure of a state’s collective political orientation would be statewide votes for president, governor and senator, because these elections are not affected by gerrymandering for the U.S. House and state legislative districts.  So let’s start with her home state of Georgia, which in the last two senate elections went blue (both senators being Democrats) while the Republican governor was recently re-elected and the Democratic presidential candidate won the popular and electoral vote.  I would call that bluish purple, with three of the four tests being Democratic.  And Georgia is not alone.

Wisconsin has a Democratic governor, one Democrat and one Republican in the US Senate, and voted for Biden.  That also makes them bluish purple like Georgia.  Vermont has a Republican governor, two senators who are more or less independent but both caucus with Democrats, and voted for Biden. Maine has a Democratic governor, a Republican Senator, an independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats, and voted for Biden. Virginia has a Republican governor at the moment (the predecessor was a Democrat) and two Democratic Senators, and voted for Biden.  North Carolina is reddish purple with a Democratic governor, two Republican Senators, and voted for Trump in 2020. 

Yes, there are states that are entirely red—my home state of South Carolina, Florida, Texas, North and South Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho.   And there are states that are entirely blue—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois. New Mexico, California. But they are not a monochrome. Within those red states there are blue people and within those blue state there are red people.  And increasingly, there are  many, many citizens who consider themselves independents and wish that the reds and blues would stop treating politics like warfare and rather accept it as an imperfect but useful way of making collective decisions.

Secession was not the answer in 1861. It still isn’t. Time to learn to live together with respect and an open mind.

What Voter Fraud?

~ purplesage41 ~ 2 Comments

On Tuesday, November 8th, in a fit of civic duty, I spent 14 hours from 6 am to 8 pm as a poll manager, which is less complicated than being a clerk (one of a few places where a clerk is the boss of managers!).  If you have any doubts about the security of your vote, sign up to be trained and serve at the polls just once and you will be enlightened.  The security precautions are awesome and the whole team pitches in to make sure that people have a good experience and are treated with respect.  At least, that’s how we run an election in South Carolina. Every ballot is accounted for, all tallies must match, and we worker bees have to witness the opening and closing o f the scanner that tallies and collects the votes.  For my part, I patiently explained from my station at the scanner what happens to your ballot, how it is tallied by the scanner and deposited in a safely guarded basket below to revisit in case of an audit.

 All signs and equipment are delivered before the crack of dawn and returned to the election office as soon as possible after the polls close. The seven seals of the Book of Revelation nothing to the number of seals are applied to every container and machine and we have to witness each unsealing and resealing.  I hope this safe, secure, and nonviolent election has put the fraudulent fraud claims and threats of violence to rest.

I spent the post-election day recuperating and watching the aftermath.  Democracy passed the test. I will never take it for granted again.

The Rise of the American Taliban

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

As an economist, I have been watching this drama unfold since the late 70s, although it began earlier—a deliberate effort to rouse the passions of people who felt marginalized by people of color, immigrants, non Christians, and women and wanted to “take their country back.”  Perhaps to 1861. This is the war (Civil war? War of the Rebellion? War Between the States? War of Northern Aggression?)  that is a fire still smoldering 167 years after it supposedly ended. So it’s been a long time coming. But it’s here, and the misogyny has just proved itself as powerful as the racism. The purpose of this concerted, well-funded effort was to distract citizens and voters fromt he growing inequiality, deterioration of public services, land lack of basic protections enjoyed in other advanced nations by blaming it on the current whipping boy–people of color, immigrants, refugees, imaginary socialists,, welfare queesns…

And I am angry, very angry.  I am the grandmother of four granddaughters of child-bearing age living in a red state.  They have been stripped of the rights that their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed. I was married in Connecticut before Griswold in 1968 made contraception legal there, but my husband and I cheerfully defied the law and no one cared.  It was legal to sell condoms for avoiding STDs and birth control pills to restore menstrual regularity, which were apparently epidemic among the tate’s citizens. These blue laws were like prohibition, driving what was legal in other states underground and making the sales and use of these products a little harder but no less prevalent. But today’s penalties are much more stringent, and legislators are looking to find every possible escape rout and to shut abortions and perhaps evetually contraceptiondown.

What can we do? 

  1. Most of my blog readers are South Carolinians.  Talk to your legislators, who will reconvene for a special session later in the fall.  Abortion is on the agenda.  Try to urge them to vote no or better yet, to soften the impact with more time and exceptions.  Look for ways to hold the putative fathers accountable with DNA tests and obligations (or in the case of rape or incest, legal penalties). If you are not from South Carolina, do what you can where you live to keep a woman’s right to choose alive.
  2. Seek out ways to support women seeking abortions if they need to travel.
  3. 3. Harness the power of the vote—in remaining primaries if your state hasn’t primaries already, in candidate events and putting those running on the spot about what they will and will not support (don’t let them do a mealy-mouthed Susan Collins on you).
  4. Help people register and get to the polls. Now what the registration deadlines are, what’s available in early voting and/or mail-in voting, how to find their ballot, and drive them to the polls.
  5. Take every opportunity to remind people of the Martin Niemoller quote on the rise of Naziism:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.Be aware that this court decision is part of a larger systemic effort to undermine democracy and replace it with an oligarchy of rich, greedy old white men! Yes, there are plenty of good, caring, compassionate old white men. I was married to one. But those are characteristics shared by the beneficiaries of cutting taxes and services, gerrymandering, enhancing minority rule, discouraging voting, and fomenting hatred against the “other.” And creating hare-brained theological justifications for forbidding abortion and contraception that are so out of touch with a Christianity of love, respect, compassion, and second chances, as well as with most other major religions.

Democracy is a fragile system that we take for granted and let fall  into disrepair.  Roe v. Wade overturned and the very unveiled threats in Thomas’s opinion should a clarion call for really stopping the steal—not just the attempted theft of the election but the attack on our human rights. It is of a piece with the plot to overturn the 2020 election.

I have hope that telemedicine and nonsurgical abortion with the 25 or so states that still think women and people of color and LGBTQ people are full fledged human beings.  I fantasize about he right of a woman to demand a DNA test for the putative father and use it to required financial support—unless it was rape or incest in which case there need to be criminal penalties. I find myself wondering if Native American sovereignty extends to developing abortion clinics on reservations. And I refuse to surrender to despair.  It is my country too. Any yours.

By What Authority?

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

Many years ago, Clemson University briefly hosted a visiting economics professor from Russia who had emigrated because he was Jewish and felt unwelcome there.  He visited some of our classes to talk about life under communism.  One student asked whether the people of the USSR didn’t want more freedom.  No, he said. I think most people prefer to be told what to do, think and believe. 

Surely not, I thought. Some people, yes, but not most. Maybe the Soviet Union is different,  having had little experience of anything but authoritarian governments. Bur psychological research confirms that there are people who are drawn to authoritarians, seeking out authority in religion, or customs, or laws. They stick to familiar gender roles and resist diversity—whether in race, politics, sexual or gender orientation, religion, or just about anything else. They gravitate to authority figures in politics, join cults, listen only to select media, and blindly follow doctors’ orders—even that last one is not always a good thing.  In response to authoritarians moving into silos and echo chambers, those of us who do not share their worldview are driven to seek safety and affirmation by building our own silos and listening only to our own echo chambers.

I (and I imagine my readers) tend to think that authority must be earned and tested against our own values and perceptions.  But reading Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy, I am apparently in a minority.  I like diversity.  I try to seek out and listen to  other viewpoints in order to reflect more deeply on my own.  The same is true of my family members and most of my close friends. But the facts suggest we are a minority, or at worst, a silent and ineffective majority attempting to hold back the tidal waves of history. Worldwide, authoritarian regimes are taking power and stamping out resistance once they gain it by whatever means, including stealing elections and gaining control of the media. Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are the exceptions, not the rule.

The division of society into  liberal-conservative, Republican-Democrat, religious-secular, and other binary categories is quite different from  this particular tension between authoritarians and libertarians. I do not use the term libertarian in it more recent sense of pro-free market and anti-government, but rather in the sense of questioning authority and looking for common ground between two extremes. I describe myself as both pro-life and pro-choice, pro-market and pro-government, each with their particular strengths and weaknesses and more useful as partners than opponents.  I look with sympathy and gratitude on those Republicans who are pro-free market but anti-authoritarian like Susan Collins. Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney.

I am somewhere on the spectrum from pessimism to hope to optimism between the latter two. My inborn optimism has retreated to hope. But theologian Joanna Macy reminds us that hope by itself is not worth much unless it is activist hope.  Pessimism is just giving up.  Optimism is the unjustified belief, like Dr. Pangloss in Candide, that “all is [or will be} for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Active hope is the most powerful response. Those of us who truly believe in democracy have to earn it by resistance and support.  We need to be “woke” not just to the sufferings of the oppressed but to the very real threats to tear down what protections they already have in our laws, our courts, our constitution that are now all under attack.

Where is the resistance? In the 1950s (actually 1949) there was Orwell’s 1984. In the1960s there was a Broadway play by Ionescu called Rhinoceros.  Each cast member gradually turned into a rhinoceros, following the herd, trying to conform. In the 1970s, it was The Stepford Wives .Then the anti-authoritarianism that is another deep current in American culture turned to folk music and sitcoms on the wave of civil rights, the women’s movement, and environmentalism. Since 1980, however, the tide has steadily turned, to push back,the fragmenting a society, culture and economy that had previously been perceived (inaccurately) as a unified nation (or plantation) peacefully overseen by old wealthy white men.

Where and how do we begin to revive the resistance?  Free and fair elections historically have been the most common casualty of the rise of authoritarianism around the world,aided by control of the media.T

here is a rich array of electoral tools forged in the Jim Crow era and enhanced by modern technology and gerrymandered state legislatures to suppress the vote, purge the rolls, limit access to the polls, discourage mail in ballots, and target those voters least likely to support their party and its candidates—poor, people of color, young people. Carol Anderson’s One Person, No Vote offers, a powerful account of these methods of undermining democratic elections in the last 50 years .  But there are also stories of hope. Anderson tells the story of one Native American community that resisted efforts to keep them from voting, with election officials using as a pretext the  lack of suitable IDs and mailing addresses.  A labor-intensive volunteer effort overcame those obstacles, provided everyone with a legal street address, ensured that tribal IDs were accepted, and reclaimed their right to vote.

What can you do to push back against the tide?