Friday Reads: Odd Ducks with Odd Flocks

It’s a wintry Friday!

Hope you can hole up some place warm today. I’m watching the avocado tree outside my bedroom window shake and shiver in the wind. We’ve got a frost warning here which is never good for tropical zones. I’m sending warm thoughts to all of you on the east coast since you’re going to be in worse straits than the fur babies and me tonight. Still, I’m not about to take off my sloppy chenille sweater and thick wool socks in solidarity with those of you left out in the cold.

I’ve been looking for some coherent theme in today’s headlines. I thought it the impossible dream but then I remembered I am considering reading The True Believer by Eric Hoffer again. I read it for Jr. A/P English in High School and it’s been on my mind a lot as I read this and that about both the Trump and the Sanders campaign.  So, I decided to explore some of these thoughts and found a lot more allies in the idea that the much of the anger and shrillness come from similar places.  Are we looking at a duel fought for the heart of the new American Populism?

You’ll see Hoffer quotes scattered through this post today.  I put them in italics but I’m not going to take the time to footnote them all other than to say you can find them at the link above.

“For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. The men who started the French Revolution were wholly without political experience. The same is true of the Bolsheviks, Nazis and the revolutionaries in Asia. The experienced man of affairs is a latecomer. He enters the movement when it is already a going concern. “

Given BB’s post yesterday and this Paul Krugman blog today, I don’t think I’m the only one wondering why the primary process looks more like a series of mini stampedes than usual. American Primary season is never a pretty thing but wow, this year seems to have more insanity. So, what’s with all the true believers?

… there are some currents in our political life that do run through both parties. And one of them is the persistent delusion that a hidden majority of American voters either supports or can be persuaded to support radical policies, if only the right person were to make the case with sufficient fervor.

You see this on the right among hard-line conservatives, who insist that only the cowardice of Republican leaders has prevented the rollback of every progressive program instituted in the past couple of generations. Actually, you also see a version of this tendency among genteel, country-club-type Republicans, who continue to imagine that they represent the party’s mainstream even as polls show that almost two-thirds of likely primary voters support Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruz or Ben Carson.

Meanwhile, on the left there is always a contingent of idealistic voters eager to believe that a sufficiently high-minded leader can conjure up the better angels of America’s nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions. In 2008 that contingent rallied behind Mr. Obama; now they’re backing Mr. Sanders, who has adopted such a purist stance that the other day he dismissed Planned Parenthood (which has endorsed Hillary Clinton) as part of the “establishment.”

But as Mr. Obama himself found out as soon as he took office, transformational rhetoric isn’t how change happens. That’s not to say that he’s a failure. On the contrary, he’s been an extremely consequential president, doing more to advance the progressive agenda than anyone since L.B.J.

Yet his achievements have depended at every stage on accepting half loaves as being better than none: health reform that leaves the system largely private, financial reform that seriously restricts Wall Street’s abuses without fully breaking its power, higher taxes on the rich but no full-scale assault on inequality.

There’s a sort of mini-dispute among Democrats over who can claim to be Mr. Obama’s true heir — Mr. Sanders or Mrs. Clinton? But the answer is obvious: Mr. Sanders is the heir to candidate Obama, but Mrs. Clinton is the heir to President Obama. (In fact, the health reform we got was basically her proposal, not his.)

Why do some people go merrily down the path of the True Believer even when we live in an age resplendent with information? What causes folks to go all out for personalities that promise them such fundamentally undeliverable ideas?

“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources—out of his rejected self—but has it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength. Though his single-minded dedication is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrice his life to demonstrate to himself and others that such indeed is his role. He sacrifices his life to prove his worth. It goes without saying that the fanatic is convinced that the cause he holds on to is monolithic and eternal—a rock of ages. Still, his sense of security is derived from his passionate attachment and not from the excellence of his cause. The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. Often, indeed, it is his need for passionate attachment which turns every cause he embraces into a holy cause. The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he has no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached. Though they seem to be at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to be at each other’s throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. They are as far apart and close together as Saul and Paul. And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.”

This was one of the great discoveries of my life.  That if you go far enough to the left or right, you’re not on a straight line that just goes one.  You’re likely following a circle that meets where the fanatics meet.  But, the attraction of cults is nothing new under the sun. It drives terrorists on all sides of religion and politics. It kills its own as easily as it kills the other.  I’ve gone back to read some stories of cult members and thought I’d share this one where the author discovers they’re likely in a cult.

Several years ago, the founder of IHOP, Mike Bickle, created a list of seven ways to recognize the difference between a religious community and a cult. Written down, the signs seem clear:

1. Opposing critical thinking

2. Isolating members and penalizing them for leaving

3. Emphasizing special doctrines outside scripture

4. Seeking inappropriate loyalty to their leaders

5. Dishonoring the family unit

6. Crossing Biblical boundaries of behavior (versus sexual purity and personal ownership)

7. Separation from the Church

But when it’s your friends, your faith, your community, it’s not so obvious. For several years, roughly two dozen people, all younger than thirty, had been living together in Kansas City, Missouri, and following the leadership of Tyler Deaton, one of our classmates from Southwestern University in Texas. In the summer of 2012, Tyler had married Bethany; by the fall, she was dead. What started as a dorm-room prayer group had devolved into something much darker.

Reading about Bethany’s story and seeing so much followership in some of the political meanderings and postings of friends, I realize that we’re forever stuck on creating an idealized vision of leaders and demonizing those that try to expose the flaws.  We also search for data that reinforces our beliefs and leader at the expense of contradictory evidence.   Momentum and surges and polls!  Oh my!!

According to our latest polls-plus forecast, Hillary Clinton has an 85%chance of winning the Iowa caucuses.

It’s why some of the wonkiest wonks rely on megadata rather than individual data points.  Nate Silver’s latest doesn’t exactly show a Bernie surge in Iowa, does it?  Yet, my twitter feed and facebook news threads feel like it’s Bernie Tsnumi.  WTF gives?

We zoom in on the one point that trips our trigger and on that one piece of anecdotal evidence that suits our mindset. So much if what I’m seeing is just attempts at reinforcing beliefs and then demonizing any evidence to the contrary.   It’s like ” I’m against the Establishment, so every one that is against me must be the establishment” or ” I’m a winner and they’re a loser.”   I’m seeing a lot of that these days.

Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign and other progressive groups that have endorsed Hillary Clinton are not part of the political establishment, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday, walking back comments he made earlier this week on MSNBC.

“That’s not what I meant,” Sanders told NBC News in an interview during his campaign swing through the first-in-the-nation primary state. “We’re a week out in the election, and the Clinton people will try to spin these things.”

Pressed on whether he views the groups as “establishment,” Sanders said: “No. They aren’t. They’re standing up and fighting the important fights that have to be fought.”

Sanders said he was specifically talking about the leadership of those groups and their endorsement decisions.

The clarification comes after Sanders responded to a question from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow earlier this week about why so many progressive groups – including Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the Human Rights Campaign – were backing Clinton over him.

“We’re taking on not only Wall Street and economic establishment, we’re taking on the political establishment,” Sanders said. “So, I have friends and supporters in the Human Rights Fund and Planned Parenthood. But, you know what? Hillary Clinton has been around there for a very, very long time.  Some of these groups are, in fact, part of the establishment.”

There’s always been a populist streak in American Politics and religion.  Both the left and the right indulge populist fantasies and personalities.  There’s been a lot of evidence out there that both Bernie and the Donald are playing to similar sentiments.  Are we reaching critical in a dueling visions of modern Populism?  Michael Gerson asks a good question in this WAPO op ed.

The most fateful unanswered question of the 2016 campaign: Is this a populist moment in America?

It certainly sounds like one. The “establishment” is so universally despised that one wonders who is left to compose it. A putsch might find only empty offices. Outsiders with no political experience dominate the Republican field. Hillary Clinton has rapidly lost ground to an endearing but unelectable ideologue. A revolution seems to stir.

But then Donald Trump proposes a less fiscally responsible version of Jeb Bush’s tax plan. And Clinton, in the sober light of morning, remains the prohibitive favorite for the nomination of her party.

Is populism set to prevail in American politics? The term itself is famously difficult to define. In one way, historian Michael Kazin told me, populism is a “language, a way of talking about the people and the elites.” It doesn’t really matter if the elites being savaged inhabit Wall Street or the Education Department. By this measure, we are near the triumph of rhetorical populism. But it is more loud and annoying than revolutionary.

Yet populism also has a meaning rooted in American history. At its best, populism is the movement of common people whose interests are ignored in times of economic stress and transformation. In the 19th century, this group was (initially) farmers in the South and West who, in the aftermath of a serious recession, carried large amounts of debt and faced rising prices for transportation and supplies because of monopolies. Activists created economic cooperatives, formed third parties (including the People’s Party ) and ran slates of candidates. The movement gained support among laborers and small-business owners. Its demands were serious and structural: freer money, direct election of senators, federal insuring of banks and regulations on the stock market.

It’s odd that the current movement leaders are both elites and part of the establishment.  Yet, their voices throwback to the roots of their families more than their personal life experiences.  How much more elite or establishment can you get than U.S. Senator or a trustfund baby making a living by gaming tax law for real estate speculation? Is any of this really health for the country’s political discourse and for governance?  Tom Bachtell spins a story using an earlier example.

Populism is a stance and a rhetoric more than an ideology or a set of positions. It speaks of a battle of good against evil, demanding simple answers to difficult problems. (Trump: “Trade? We’re gonna fix it. Health care? We’re gonna fix it.”) It’s suspicious of the normal bargaining and compromise that constitute democratic governance. (On the stump, Sanders seldom touts his bipartisan successes as chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.) Populism can have a conspiratorial and apocalyptic bent—the belief that the country, or at least its decent majority, is facing imminent ruin at the hands of a particular group of malefactors (Mexicans, billionaires, Jews, politicians).

Above all, populism seeks and thrills to the authentic voice of the people. Followers of both Sanders and Trump prize their man’s willingness to articulate what ordinary people feel but politicians fear to say. “I might not agree with Bernie on everything, but I believe he has values, and he’s going to stick to those and he will not lie to us,” a supporter named Liam Dewey told ABC News. The fact that Sanders has a tendency to drone on like a speaker at the Socialist Scholars Conference circa 1986—one who happens to have an audience of twenty-seven thousand—only enhances his bona fides. He’s the improbable beneficiary of a deeply disenchanted public. As for Trump, his rhetoric is so crude and from-the-hip that his fans are continually reassured about its authenticity.

Responding to the same political moment, the phenomena of Trump and Sanders bear a superficial resemblance. Both men have no history of party loyalty, which only enhances their street cred—their authority comes from a direct bond with their supporters, free of institutional interference. They both rail against foreign-trade deals, decry the unofficial jobless rate, and express disdain for the political class and the dirty money it raises to stay in office.

Trump uses the typical right wing populist weapon of demonizing the other outwardly as an other while Sanders writes his enemies off as establishment.  Followers of both are much less subtle.

Students of the American populist tradition say Trump is filling in an emerging issues vacuum on the right—and for the declining appeal of longstanding culture-war crusades among the GOP faithful. The GOP’s great unifying issue over the past few election cycles—the demand to repeal the Affordable Care Act—is showing signs of wear. Presidential hopefuls continue to pay lip service to the ACA’s repeal, but the law’s run of Supreme Court victories—together with gradually increasing public support for some of its key provisions—means that the bid to kill Obamacare is unlikely to generate much new energy on the right. Obamacare’s repeal is “dead as an issue,” says Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, author of The Populist Persuasion (1998) and the 2007 Bryan biography A Godly Hero. “So here you have someone like Trump coming along to say, well, here’s an issue.”

That issue has been immigration, with Trump making his infamous remarks about Mexican immigrants raping women, dealing drugs and plundering American jobs—populist-style cultural scapegoating with a capital S. But there’s something more than simple white resentment at play here. In reviving the old populist cause of economic nationalism, Trump has struck a chord among a pinched conservative working-class electorate that knows free trade and globalization are not about to boost their wages, or bring their pensions back. He’s also tapped into the protectionist outlook of America’s older labor movement, which historically supported restrictions on immigration because of its downward pull on wages.

This is where my mind fills with the explanations of the 1950s Hoffer who looked to explain the NAZIS and Stalinists alike.  There is, indeed, so much passionate hatred.

“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

But, both of these guys seem to think they’re the singular entity that has the easiest answer and the purest ideas. So, what do I make of this?  What does Hoffer make of this?

…

“When the moment is ripe, only the fanatic can hatch a genuine mass movement. Without him the disatisfaction engendered by militant men of words remains undirected and can vent itself only in pointless and easily suppressed disorders. Without him the initiated reforms, even when drastic, leave the old way of life unchanged, and any change in government usually amounts to no more than a transfer of power from one set of men of action to another. Without him there can perhaps be no new beginning. When the old order begins to fall apart, many of the vociferous men of words, who prayed so long for the day, are in a funk. The first glimpse of the face of anarchy frightens them out of their wits. They forget all they said about the “poor simple folk” and run for help to strong men of action—princes, generals, administrators, bankers, landowners—who know how to deal with the rabble and how to stem the tide of chaos. Not so the fanatic. Chaos is his element.”

So, let me ask you.  Are we looking at a two-headed coin? Are we looking at two competing captains for a Krewe of Populist Chaos?