These Will Be "The Bad Old Days"

I believe in meritocracy. Someone with a special, unique talent or skill or knowledge that is beneficial to society can be rewarded extravagantly and I don’t mind. I also believe in the basic tenets of capitalism – or at least the version of capitalism I was taught as a kid in school. Competition, for example, is a good thing because products and services that are better than their peers will out-compete those that are inferior. People who invent, manufacture, and market the superior products deserve to be compensated more than those who are associated with inferior versions. Indeed, those with inferior products deserve to go broke.

In traveling the world I’ve seen evidence that seems to support my beliefs. For example, in Vietnam the economy was in shambles after the north won the war against the U.S. and tried to implement collectivist communism. After years in which people nearly starved to death, the government allowed a restricted form of free-market economy and things are booming – in just a couple of years the country went from having to import rice to feed its people to being a rice exporter. And people who are enterprising, clever, and hard-working are being rewarded for their efforts. This same scenario has been happening recently in other communist countries as well, including China.

And now for the “BUT.”

Revelations coming from the recent economic crisis suggest that my beliefs are way too idealistic and don’t pertain to how things actually are in this country (maybe they never did). For example, we’ve learned that many CEO’s are grossly overcompensated relative to their performance, to the point that even G.W. Bush warned big companies almost two years ago that CEO pay should be more closely tied to shareholder interests. The huge bailout packages to financial companies and most recently to GM, Ford, and Chrysler, show that poor judgment and inferior products don’t mean failure at all – the risks of big business are now assumed by consumers and taxpayers. It seems we’ve created an economy that depends on ever greater spending and borrowing by consumers. Specifically, if we don’t buy more and more houses and cars – and borrow the money to do so – the system collapses. And we’ve learned that greed and fraud seem to permeate Wall Street, that supposed bastion of capitalism at its finest – the latest instance being the 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme of Bernard L. Madoff.

I wish I had a solution but I don’t. Pay me $50 or $60 million a year, though, and I’ll be glad to try. Or better yet, just hand over 700 billion and I’ll fix things – just trust me, don’t bother with the details and don't ask me to justify what I'm doing. Geez.

It seems like we are now living in an era reminiscent of the Vietnam War, when many of us came to question some of our deepest beliefs about America. It was a time when authorities lied to us, when those whom we had trusted as leaders were exposed as shams, and when the future was uncertain and various shades of bleak. There is a glimmer of hope as we begin a new presidency with a man who so far shows that at least he values experience and competence in those whom he is appointing to positions of power and influence, and is not afraid to give a voice to those with whom he disagrees. What a refreshing change.

Breathing Again!!

My prediction that McCain would win the election was wrong. And I’m lovin’ it!! Never have I been so happy to be wrong, and in this case rather resoundingly . The divisive campaigning of McCain and Palin (particularly Palin) didn’t work as effectively as it has in the past, though unfortunately the country will suffer its residual effects over the next few months. Once bigotry and paranoia have been stirred up they take a long time to settle.

I’m not one who sees Obama as a saint, and I expect to disappointed in the reality of some aspects of his presidency after he takes office. Still, both he and Biden are respected worldwide, and the U.S. has regained some of its respect that Bush and Cheney destroyed. It feels good.

Thanks to all of you who worked so hard to prove me wrong. Good job!

Holding My Breath

Last July I predicted that John McCain will win , based on the underlying conservatism of the American electorate and the likely appeal of the McCain campaign to racist tendencies that still persist in our society.

As I write this the polls show Obama with about a 6-point lead over McCain. Despite this lead I’m sticking with my prediction for two reasons.

First, in the past couple of weeks the McCain campaign has ratcheted up their attempts to discredit Obama using the kind of insidious innuendo and rhetoric I predicted, for example by suggesting Obama was closely involved with ‘60's activist William Ayers. Sarah Palin’s campaign talks have become increasingly strident and are striking a racist chord. As Elisabeth Bumiller of the NY Times reported, at one Florida rally a racial insult was hurled at an African-American television cameraman and a man yelled “kill him” when Obama’s name was mentioned. At other rallies members of the crowds have yelled “off with his head!” The McCain campaign has pointed out that Obama, too, has made disparaging remarks about McCain’s character and that of his supporters. To my knowledge, however, no one at an Obama rally has been observed calling for violence against McCain or Palin. Fox “News” has joined in this attack against Obama with a recent hour-long program trying to portray Obama as a close associate of radicals, especially William Ayers. LA Times correspondent James Rainey has throughly debunked the show , but facts are probably not going to sway the estimated 2 million people who watched the program.

Second, the lead that Obama has in the polls cannot warrant optimism because there is a well-documented tendency for polls to be especially unreliable in estimating support for African-American candidates. As discussed in a NY times article by Kate Zernike , “there are plenty of ways that race complicates polling. Considered alone or in combination, these factors could produce an unforeseen Obama landslide with surprise victories in the South, a stunningly large Obama loss, or a recount-thin margin.” We enter here the realm of Social Psychology concerning self-presentation strategies, impression management, and the link between attitude and behavior as pertaining to polling.

Bottom line: This won’t be over until it’s over.

Returning to Africa

My wife and I just returned home from about 5 weeks in Africa. As with many other trips we have taken over the years, this one made us realize how little we (and most other Americans) really know about the world outside the U.S.

We traveled to Africa 30 years ago and now we wanted to return once more to see how things might have changed. Thirty years ago we had been out of the U.S. very few times, and never to a “third world” country -- except perhaps a brief foray across the border into Mexico. That Africa trip was the first time I experienced culture shock – a feeling of disorientation and loss of control from encountering social conditions that were so alien and foreign to my WASP sensibilities that my familiar ways of coping and understanding were not effective. My wife and I learned to deal with this, however, and returned home with a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our limited experience with life at the most fundamental level. How hard most people must work to make it from day to day!

When we told people about our travel plans the common reaction was (a) an expression of concern for our safety and health followed by (b) clear hints that they thought we were crazy. Why would anyone want to travel to Africa? Much of this reaction was undoubtedly based on incomplete and slanted information. The only news that Americans hear about Africa is all bad – poverty and hunger, AIDs , racial and tribal conflict manifested in massacres and genocidal wars, political instability, environmental degradation, economic collapse, etc. And this is a shame, because the reality is that Africa is complex, diverse, and quite unique – and for us at least, one of the most rewarding travel experiences we have had.

Our trip involved three countries – South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia. Part of the time we were doing safaris through game parks in South Africa and Botswana, and we were pleased to see vigorous conservation and management efforts that seem to be working. “Working” here doesn’t mean that animal populations and habitat are what they would be if humans had never been around to screw things up. I’m using a more practical criterion – there will probably be something to see and appreciate for at least another thirty years. In part this is because through ecotourism there are enough people who are willing to spend enough money to make it economically feasible for these countries to leave vast tracts of their land undeveloped in the usual sense. (Question – how much is it worth NOT to develop a country?)

The rest of our time was spent in a rather different way. We have friends in Zambia who have been working there as community volunteers for the past 5 ½ years. Their current efforts involve economic and social development projects in rural areas. We stayed in Choma, Zambia, and our friends involved us in their work in surrounding villages so that we got to meet many local people and see first hand the kind of problems they face in their lives. We also got a sense of the character and values of the local people. This was a wonderful, uplifting and educational experience. The people we met were living at a subsistence level raising maize, cabbage, onions, goats, and a few cattle. Their biggest challenge was to do this in a climate where it is bone dry for about six months of the year. Our friends help local villages build small earthen dams that catch water during the rainy season and store it for the dry period, allowing the people to grow more food and rise above the subsistence level. Our friends offered expert advice, encouragement, and follow up but the people “owned” the project. Note three important things about these dams: they are simple and require no special tools or materials; they have huge impacts on the quality of these people’s lives; and the people are doing the work themselves.

Other projects include helping with the installation of simple bore hole wells fitted with low-tech pumps. The availability of fresh clean water has obvious health implications, but it also has a tremendous impact on how people (usually women) allocate their time and energy. Without wells water must be carried by hand from sources an hour or more away.

Several of our friends’ projects are primarily educational in nature – running a remedial reading clinic in Choma City, and holding “workshops” in bush locations on topics ranging from simple book keeping for a home business to techniques of conservation farming. We attended two of these workshops and we were struck by the eagerness and commitment of those who attended (often having walked several hours to reach the site).

A potential irony of the wonderful work our friends are doing is that it may someday exacerbate the conflict between values of wildlife conservation on the one hand and social development on the other. This may not be inevitable, but avoiding it will require some enlightened leadership and policy making. The approach our friends seem to be taking to their work – empowering people to enhance their own rationality – may indirectly produce just that kind of leadership.

Children of the Juggernaut

The other night as I was about to turn off my television after watching a recorded show, I decided to surf channels to see what was on in real time. I happened to land on a rerun of the PBS series “CARRIER, “ a 10-part series filmed aboard the USS Nimitz during its 2005 deployment. The producers describe the show as a character-driven, nonfiction drama which “...closely follows a core of characters, from the Admiral of the fleet to the elite fighter pilots to the lowliest scrubs” while “...addressing larger themes as family, faith, discipline, patriotism, love and war, the rites of passage and the war on terror.”

I was riveted.

My interest certainly wasn’t based on any gung-ho, “lets-go-bomb-something” militarism. Nor did it come from a patriotic commitment to “support-the-troops-while-they-defend-us-against-the-evil-doers-and-make-the-world-safe-for-democracy-and-SUVs.”

In fact, I’m opposed to war on ethical, moral, and practical grounds, though I believe certain military actions can be justified (WWII and the first Iraq War, for instance). I am very much against Bush’s Iraq war.

So, what was so fascinating to me? I’m really not sure. One thing may be the scale and complexity of the social environment aboard the Nimitz – clearly a world unto itself. Another thing was how extraordinarily young many of the sailors were and how endearingly innocent they seemed despite the lethality and danger of what they were doing, Finally, it was clear that they were committed to doing their very best in keeping this juggernaut working smoothly, regardless of the tremendous personal sacrifices required.

It seems essential to me on moral grounds that the sacrifices being made by these sailors be justified by the magnitude and certainty of the threat they are facing and the efficacy of military action to reduce that threat. Sadly, I don’t think that is currently the case.

What, Me Worry?

My wife says I have a weird, warped sense of humor. “Sick,” is the word she often uses. Although I enjoy mainstream forms of humor, I must admit I have a particular fondness for humor that cleverly exposes in an off beat way the ridiculousness of much of our world. For example, I am an avid fan of the very deranged mind of Gary Larson, creator of the comic strip Far Side , and as a substitute now that Far Side is no longer published as a regular strip, the work of Dan Piraro in Bizarro . These guys are crazy. And very, very perceptive. Satire and parody are good, too, because they can show the fundamental silliness of our culture in a humorous way, particularly those aspects of culture we hold near and dear. American television news programs are certainly deserving targets of satire and parody, both in the topics they treat and the manner in which they treat them. John Stewart’s Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report do very well at humorously exposing the shallowness and recursiveness of American media. When I watch these shows I become all the more convinced that the news coverage offered on major media sources in America is shallow, incomplete, and distorted. I thought that without watching Stewart and Colbert, but they allow me to laugh about it instead of just being depressed. One of my favorite places to get a fix of “sick” humor is The Onion . A feature of the Onion that I just recently discovered is a collection of videos that parody tv news coverage of various topics. The difference between these videos and similar features on the Daily Show and Colbert Report is that the Onion reporters play it absolutely straight and the format is exactly the same as mainstream news coverage. But boy is it funny – in a weird, warped way. Two of the videos I particularly like are the High School Tony Awards (e.g., the Award for Best Stage Lighting of a High School Gymnasium) and the report entitled “Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused by His Disasterous Presidency” . Hilarious... but sad, too. Some years ago my students produced some insightful analyses of how humour can illustrate certain Social Psychological principles. These analyses are still available on the web . Of course, when you analyze humor it really isn’t funny anymore.

McCain Will Win

What to write in my first blog?? There are lots of possibilities, since I’m like most people and filled with opinions that crave validation. But there is one thing in particular I need to say because it is time-sensitive and I want it on record.

JOHN MCCAIN WILL WIN.

There. I said it. The liberal in me is saddened by the very thought. How could this possibly be? After all, hasn’t the American electorate demonstrated in repeated recent polling that it now repudiates the legacy of the buffoon they have twice elected? And surely the Democratic Party has learned from their mistakes of the past two Presidential campaigns, right?

I hope I’m wrong. My own views on many matters are very, very far from McCain’s – on the Iraq War specifically and American foreign policy in general – on issues of energy, environment, health care, education, abortion.

But.

There are two forces that will give McCain an edge in the coming months. The first is that although many Americans reject G.W. Bush, they don’t reject the underlying conservative philosophy he represents. The proof of this will be in their positive response to campaign messages that stress militaristic strength, defense of the “homeland” against irrational and fanatic foes, and above all the sanctity of mainstream religious and ethnic values. In the psychology of Presidential Campaign strategy, Obama is very vulnerable on these issues.

The second force is more insidious but very powerful. Racism. America has progressed to the point where this will be subtle and hidden, but if the McCain campaign taps into the racial fears that are deeper and more widespread than we liberals like to believe, it will gain advantage over any message Obama may offer. We may have already seen the beginnings of this. Rumors of Obama being Muslim have been difficult to neutralize, partly because it is more socially acceptable to be anti-Muslim than anti-Black. In short, it allows voters to feel justified in their rejection of Obama on religious grounds, rather than admitting (even to themselves) that the real basis of their negativity is race.

Ok, I hope I’m proven wrong. Please, work hard to prove me wrong.