Monthly Archives: September 2008

“Too important to fail”

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We keep hearing from our leaders that “Institution X is too important to fail.” And I’m not in a great position to second-guess just how important companies like Freddie Mac, Frannie Mae, and AIG are, and whether their demise would lead to worldwide depression or not. But what I do now know is that when things are “too important to fail,” free-market capitalists suddenly become proponents of socialism and government handouts.

We will live in a just society when we begin to see ordinary people as “too important to fail.”

Emerging politics and the postmodern cloud

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Back in the days of Tammany Hall, your ward captain, union leader, or other local boss told you whom to vote for, and you did it. That was machine politics at its well-oiled finest: you follow your leader.

Along came television, and suddenly voters had a closer, much more direct connection with the candidate. It was not unlike the relationship between the printing press and the Protestant Reformation. The telegenic personalities of JFK and Reagan enabled them to connect directly to voters — in Reagan’s case, peeling many core Democrats out of the ranks of their unions.

I’m vastly oversimplifying here — and courting unintended offense to adherents of various Christian faiths (really, none intended!) — but the analogy is interesting to consider when examining the current media landscape, which the New York Times’s Adam Nagourney describes as “fractured” due to the rise of niche cable channels and the blogosphere:

With the addition of so many other sources of information, the old formula, while not quite dead, is no longer so dominant in communicating information and shaping opinion.

In other words: we have lost “Truth.” So it might be instructive to look at how Christianity is dealing with postmodernism, namely, through the Emerging (or Emergent) Church. Instead of enforcing dogma, the Emerging Church emphasizes conversation; instead of establishing institutions, it motivates movements.

If the Web (and cable TV) fractured broadcast, it’s a mistake to try to rely exclusively on cutting through the “fog.” Instead of fighting the technological zeitgeist, political campaigns can instead push power down to their supporters, letting the grassroots engage their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and strangers in conversation — if not about Truth, then perhaps about truths. Maybe we’ve returned to the era of interpersonal, rather than charismatic, politics. But unlike old-fashioned political machines, these new relationships are collegial, not hierarchical; provisional, not essential; heterogeneous, not focus-grouped; authentic, not sound-bite. They will be difficult to create and maybe even harder to control.

If any of this comes to pass, the face of American politics may no longer be the telegenic politician but rather the guy down down the street. But ain’t that democracy?

The liberal empathy gap

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Judith Warner’s “No Laughing Matter” has me reeling — it’s written by a liberal female columnist going to a McCain-Palin rally and coming away with the realization that left-leaning Democrats have failed to develop any empathy for the part of the country that voted for Bush, and thus left themselves vulnerable to a counterattack and charges of “elitism.” What really nails it for me is the many comments that follow, comprising both liberals and conservatives largely sticking to talking points and calling each other names.

I’ve got this kind of queasy feeling in my heart and stomach right now after reading that piece and the “discussion” afterwards. For the past week I have been deeply worried about the upcoming election, and this piece puts my finger exactly on the source of that discomfort.

Barack Obama is fundamentally about listening, empathy, and uniting the country not with conformity but with understanding. It’s how he won the primaries, by building his base outside the Democratic strongholds and attracting Democrats in “Red States” who understood Republicans because they had to, to survive. But it’s his own party — his surrogates, his supporters — who seem to be the ones alienating that vast middle, the America that’s felt overlooked and condescended upon.

The standard liberal response to this is that the rednecks are idiots. This, of course, just confirms both sides’ view of each other, leaving us worse off then if we just ignored each other.

When liberals argue that Republicans are playing “wedge politics,” they fail to understand that the wedge exploits their own partisanship as much as the conservatives’, sometimes even more so. Witness the masterful jujitsu the McCain campaign used to whip the liberal blogosphere into a frenzy over Palin.

Liberal bloggers made a strategic mistake in going after Palin’s family situation. Their charges of “hypocrisy” misjudged Palin’s Christian base, one that can be quite forgiving of personal lapses because all people are sinners. (Bush’s alcoholism and cocaine use are prime examples). Liberals used O’Reilly shock-jock politics as cartoon stand-ins for how the religious right really feels, and thus failed to understand how their attacks were counter-productive, baring the contempt they can feel about “rednecks.”

When Obama called us to rise above partisanship, many of us only heard about Red States joining with Blue States. Blue Staters brushed off the corollary requirement that they also reach out with empathy and listening. If Obama’s own supporters can’t show our ability to empathize and understand, is it any surprise that others perceive the promise of post-partisanship as empty?

To close the income gap, close the empathy gap

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Marxism may be dead, but lefty activists still seem to itch for some good old-fashioned class warfare. With rising inequality in America (see this New York Times article from 2006), it’s easy to understand why. But Marxist cynicism is, I think, exactly the wrong way to look at inequality.

We often assume that people vote with their wallets: whoever can can line my pocket gets my vote. But a funny thing is happening in America: the rich are increasingly voting Democratic, the party of progressive taxation. That is to say, wealthy Americans are increasingly voting against their own financial interests.

Fretting about the future of the Republican party in the face of vast American equality in the New York Times Magazine, David Frum casually mentions that the more unequal a place is, the more Democratic it tends to vote; the more equal, the more Republican. He dallies around with many possible reasons for this — an extreme Republican social agenda, disdain for good governance — but ignores the possibility that equality is, itself, might be core value that people — even Americans — cherish.

It seems there are better (and less expensive) ways for rich people to buy off their guilt than support progressive taxation. So I’m left to conclude that, once a person’s financial needs are more than comfortably taken care of, s/he turns to less tangible interests like self-fulfillment. (This is something advertisers have understood quite well with luxury brands). And it heartens me to find that people really do care about each other’s welfare. At least, when they can see each other.

So it strikes me that we care about closing the wealth and income gap in America, class warfare is not the way to go. We care about our fellow Americans — but only, it appears, when we can see them. If we want to close the income gap, we ought to look into closing the empathy gap between the rich and the poor.