Category: Political culture

Hooray for the rule of law

Speaking as a religious leftist, here’s a brief word to my liberal friends about the rule of law.

We just had an emotionally and politically divisive election. Yet the rule of law has held out: we will all quibble about the details, but while the election may not have lived up to many people’s ideals for a fair election, for the most part the election was fair. And then I think back to Massachusetts politics, where for many years the president of the state senate had close ties to organized crime, and where politics was very dirty and very personal (see: Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, The FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, New York: Public Affiars, 2000) — and Rhode Island politics, where it was rumored that half the state legislature had Mob ties, and where the governor was convicted of blatantly illegal activities. By those standards, the recent presidential election looked like a Sunday school outing.

Actually, having supervised some pretty unpleasant Sunday school outings, maybe I should change that analogy.

Bad analogy aside, the point is that for the most part the existing laws and court opinions held sway. You may have preferred it if there were different laws on the books, and different court opinions (I certainly would prefer that), but for the most part, the rule of law has held.

So this is not an apocalyptic scenario. Carol and I read to each other at night, and right now we’re reading “A War in 1935” by Evelyn Waugh, from When the Going Was Good (Penguin Books, 1946/1976), in which he describes the Italian invasion of what was then Abyssinia; that situation represented a breakdown of the rule of law, and was mildly apocalyptic. I’m also reading (on my own), the Letters of Pliny the Younger, in which he describes some of the truly horrible events during the reign of the emperor Domitian, a reign during which people could be put to death on mere suspicion of an unpleasant thought about the emperor. And then, look at the coverage from Syria: that really is an apocalyptic scenario, in which the rule of law has completely broken down.

I don’t like the results of the recent presidential election, but at this point I prefer it over the 1972 presidential election, when, under the direct leadership of Richard Nixon, the rule of law did break down. Or consider the Teapot Dome scandal during Warren Harding’s presidential administration. Or Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court in order to get the rulings he preferred. Or, for that matter, the breakdown of the rule of law detailed by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow.

So far, the rule of law is holding out pretty well. I would prefer that some of the current laws on the books were different, but in my case that mostly means that I need to get off my ass and stop working too many hours at my job and do my duty as a citizen of a democracy and get involved in elections and legislation. Nor do I have any illusions that the rule of law can be taken for granted; this again means, in my case, that I need to get off my ass and do my duty as a citizen of a democracy by attending city and county meetings, getting involved in voluntary organizations that amplify my solo voice (this, by the way, includes involvement in a local UU congregation).

If I don’t like the results of an election, then I need to stop spending time in the echo chamber of social media, stop anesthetizing myself by watching too many Youtube videos, and actually go out and do something.

That’s my two cent’s worth. Your mileage may vary.

No lines, plenty of angst

Carol and I just voted. No lines, no waiting. No anxiety — at least, no anxiety in the voting process itself.

Photo of my "I Voted" sticker

Today’s Daily Journal, our local freebie newspaper, reports that the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Belmont, Calif., is hosting a “stress-free zone” this evening — a place where you can go and not talk about politics, and not look at media. Rev. Michael Arase-Barhau of the church suggests people bring knitting, a book to read, adult coloring books, whatever.

Carol and I have a different destination in mind: we’ll be going to sing Sacred Harp music at Inder’s house in Oakland. And last night, we went to our congregation for a song circle organized by VJ, in the spirit of election eve song circles (the difference was that ours allowed any gender to participate). I don’t do adult coloring books (maybe I should), but singing works for me as a way to reduce anxiety.

It’s not just the presidential election. Here in Silicon Valley, we have a number of local ballot initiatives for rent stabilization measures. These initiatives are proving to be divisive. In our congregation, we have people on both sides of the rent stabilization issue, and while there isn’t any visible rancor, there are definitely some people who know not to talk local politics with each other.

Maybe this is the biggest problem. Here in the U.S., we lack skills in talking about disagreement. You either agree with someone, or you refuse to talk with them. You don’t like Hillary Clinton? then you won’t talk to a Clinton supporter. You don’t believe in God? then you’ll refuse to talk to Christians. We Americans believe in competition rather than collaboration; in market-based decisions rather than wisdom-based decisions; in individual rights rather than communal good.

No wonder we’re anxious.

Election research in California

We have 17 statewide ballot initiatives/referenda to vote on this year, some of which are confusing as hell.

Fortunately, the UU Justice Ministry of California (formerly the UU legislative Ministry, a less-politically-correct but more accurate name) has come up with an excellent one-page summary of 2016 ballot recommendations.

blognov0616

The best thing about this is that it summarizes the ballot recommendations of 15 different advocacy groups, including the League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club, Jewish and Christian faith-based legislative groups, and other groups. I found this very helpful as I try to make my way through the confusion of ballot initiatives.

Methinks Uber doth protest too much

A London Employment Tribunal has ruled that Uber is in the transportation business, not the software business; and that Uber is an employer, not a service that connects independent contractors to customers.

If you like reading legal documents, this decision is worth reading: the Tribunal is both witty and brutally critical of Uber. Here’s one quote from the decision, Case nos. 2202550/2015, paragraph 87 (the entire decision is online here:

“In the first place, we have been struck by the remarkable lengths to which Uber has gone in order to compel agreement with its (perhaps we should say its lawyers’) description of itself and with its analysis of the legal relationships between the two companies [i.e., between Uber B.V., and its subsidiary Uber London Ltd.], the drivers and the passengers. Any organisation (a) running an enterprise at the heart of which is the function of carrying people in motor cars from where they are to where they want to be and (b) operating in part through a company discharging the regulated responsibilities of a PHV [Private Hire Vehicle] operator, but (c) requiring drivers and passengers to agree, as a matter of contract, that it does not provide transportation services (through UBV or ULL), and (d) resorting in its documentation to fictions,36 twisted language37 and even brand new terminology,38 merits, we think, a degree of scepticism. Reflecting on the Respondents’ general case, and on the grimly loyal evidence of Ms Bertram [lawyer for Uber] in particular, we cannot help being reminded of Queen Gertrude’s most celebrated line: ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ 39

“36 Eg the passenger’s ‘invoice’ which is not an invoice and is not sent to the passenger
“37 Eg calling the driver (“an independent company in the business of providing Transportation Services”) ‘Customer’ (in the New Terms [of service]). This choice of terminology has the embarrassing consequence of forcing Uber to argue that, if it is a party to any contract for the provision by the driver of driving services, it is one under which it is a lient or customer of “Customer’.
“38 Eg ‘onboarding’ for recruitment and/or induction and ‘deactivation’ for dismissal
“39 Hamlet, Act III, sc 2″

The Tribunal doesn’t come right out and say that Uber is lying. But the Tribunal does state, for example (para. 89), that “Uber is in business as a supplier of transportation services,” not as a technology company. The Tribunal quotes with approval the following paragraph from a North California District Court judgment: “Uber does not simply sell software; it sells rides. Uber is no more a ‘technology company’ than Yellow Cab is a ‘technology company’ because it uses CB radios to dispatch taxi cabs.”

And the Tribunal later states (para. 93) that Uber “is precluded from relying upon its carefully crafted documentation because, we find, it bears no relation to reality.”

And further, the Tribunal calls Uber’s legal arguments (para. 96) illustrative the phenomenon of “‘armies of lawyers’ contriving documents in their clients’ interests which simply misrepresents the true rights and obligations on both sides.” So while the Tribunal does not say that Uber is lying, the Tribunal makes it very clear that Uber is not telling the truth.

As you’d expect, Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the British Trades Union Congress, speaks more harshly of Uber. Calling Uber and its ilk purveyors of “sham self-employment,” O’Grady said, “For many workers the gig economy is a rigged economy, where bosses can get out of paying the minimum wage and providing basics like paid holidays and rest breaks.”

This is pretty much what the Tribunal said in its decision, except more politely.

All this reveals a dark side of Silicon Valley: a significant part of the Valley’s vaunted “innovation” actually relies on armies of unscrupulous lawyers contriving documents to avoid legal requirements designed to protect workers and consumers. So thank goodness for the scrupulous lawyers who help expose the facts when Silicon Valley does not tell the truth.

BBC News offers more on this story here.

Alexandria, Va., to Washington, D.C.

We left Alexandria and drove up to Washington, D.C., in time to have lunch with my old friend Rabbi Michael and his wife Lawyer Julie.

Michael and I hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade, and now his children are no longer children; two of them are older than I was when I met Michael. I was in the first few weeks of college, feeling a little bit adrift, when the fellow in front of me in the dinner line started talking to me about science fiction. Next thing I knew, he got me to go to Washington, D.C., to participate in a political rally in support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) on the law of the Capitol building. That was my first trip to Washington, as well as the furthest south and the furthest west I’d ever been in my life. I guess it is not entirely surprising that two geeky, politically committed teenagers wound up as middle-aged progressive clergy committed to peace and social justice.

Capitol Hill Books

After lunch, Carol and I wandered over to the Capitol Hill Bookstore, a maze of books on shelves and books in stacks on the floor. The woman sitting at the front desk was listening to audio of the Congressional hearings on gun control. After dinner, my friend E took us over to East City Bookshop, a new bookstore near Capitol Hill. E pointed out the substantial number of books on politics and political figures, and said something to the effect that you’re just going to find more politics in a D.C. bookstore.

Carol and I went for a walk this morning while it was still relatively cool (that is, under ninety degrees). We came across this “Little Library” — not an official Little Free Library, or at least it is not listed on the official Web site — which Carol wanted to examine more closely because it has a green roof.

Little Library with green roof

We walked as far as the Capitol building, where a political rally was in progress. About 75 people in bright orange t-shirts stood on the rear steps of the Capitol building in the hot sun. Perhaps a hundred people stood directly in front of them in the hot sun, and another couple of hundred stood further back in the shade. We could hear the amplified voice of a woman telling about how her son was permanently disabled by stray gunfire. Several of the people in the shade held signs that said “Disarm Hate.”

I am glad that we still have the right to freely assemble in the United States — more or less, with significant restrictions on public assemblies, and generally with a significant police presence. But I’ve changed my mind about protest politics since the days I protested on the lawn of the Capitol building for the Equal Rights Amendment; protest politics is easier and more exciting than face-to-face door-to-door political organizing, but I now believe protest politics simply polarizes opposition while it’s the face-to-face one-on-one conversations that actually work best.

Gun control rally, Capitol, DC

From a pragmatic standpoint, I suppose protest politics might work, a little, if you can get some media coverage. Carol and I saw several young protestors, dressed in bright pink shirts and signs, talking with a television news cameraman; their signs read “Ban Assault Weapons Now.” Perhaps they will get a five-second slot on the evening TV news. Perhaps someone will watch that five seconds on TV, and change their mind about gun control. But I doubt it….

Gun control rally, Capitol, DC

Marion, Va., to Alexandria, Va.

Carol found us a hotel in Marion, Virginia, of a better quality than we have been staying at: this hotel provided breakfast; and the breakfast was not just microwaved eggs (“eggs-in-a-bag”) and cold cereal and stale bagels, it was eggs and waffles cooked for you by a pleasant young woman in a small restaurant open to the public. This is high luxury for us, so we settled in to enjoy it.

At the table next to ours sat a man and woman who were somewhat older than us. She was one of those forthright Southern women in upper middle age who are polite and unafraid to say what they think about the world. These women remind me of my mother, for there is a type of New England woman who become equally forthright in upper middle age, with much the same polite-but-firm manner.

When I got to breakfast, she and Carol were having a lively conversation about fracking, while the woman’s husband sat between them, mostly listening. This forthright Southern woman did not like fracking. What you learn in Real Estate 101, she said, is that you own your property, but these fracking companies can come in and do what they want on your property and there’s nothing you can do about it. Carol said that out where we live, some counties were organizing to ban fracking, but our new friend told us that in many eastern states, the state government has said that counties and municipalities cannot ban fracking. She said she had been taught that ours is a government of the people and by the people, but not when it comes to fracking. She was funny and articulate, and clearly very angry. The companies that engage in fracking, and the elected representatives that kowtow to those companies, had better watch out: it is not wise to anger women like this. They may appear to be polite older ladies, but they do not forget, they do not forgive, and they do not give up.

Most of the rest of the day involved driving in the rain, with too many cars on the road, and too many drivers who had abandoned all common sense once it started to rain. The less said about this part of the day the better.

It was raining when we arrived in Aleaxandria, Virginia, where we are staying with an old friend of Carol’s, someone she knew in college, and his wife. He is a principled and very knowledgeable Republican who used to work for the Congressional Quarterly, and I always enjoy look forward to hearing his views on politics. But none of us wanted to talk about politics very much. None of us like Donald Trump very much though we all agree that he speaks some truths, particularly about the effects of globalization and free trade agreements on average workers. And none of us felt that Hillary Clinton is particularly trustworthy, though aside from that she might make a capable administrator.

We went out to dinner, and on the drive back we saw the fireworks display through the rain and mist. Our host remarked that today is the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Only ten years to the 250th….

Happy Watergate Day

A friend from high school reminded me that yesterday was Watergate Day. On Saturday, June 17, 1972, five burglars paid by CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) broke into the Democratic National Convention headquarters at 2600 Virginia Avenue, Washington, D.C., in the same building as the Watergate Hotel. They placed hidden microphones — bugs — and took photos of sensitive material. It eventually turned out that then-President Richard (“I Am Not A Crook”) Nixon authorized and had direct knowledge of the burglary; he resigned rather than face impeachment proceedings.

The Watergate scandal shaped the political consciousness of my immediate age cohort. People a few years older than my age cohort talk about the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X as defining moments in their political awareness, but for us the defining moment was criminal activity by the President of the United States.

A few years after the Watergate scandal, I think in 1977, some friends of mine and I re-enacted the Watergate break-in in our high school: we walked in to the office of one of the principals, dumped dead insects on his desk, and informed him that we were bugging his office. I don’t remember suffering any punishment for this act of street theatre. At least we weren’t selling drugs, one of the things our high school was known for (the school had its own undercover narcotics agents), and at least we showed that we knew something about U.S. history.

I have never commemorated Watergate Day since then. But maybe I should, under the theory that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. The current presidential election campaign has already descended to mud-slinging and name-calling, and outright criminal acts may be following close behind.

Grumpy old white guys

I feel qualified to speak about grumpy old white men, because (depending on how you define “old”) I qualify as a grumpy old white man myself.

Now, I’m a big fan of being grumpy. There’s plenty to be grumpy about: endless wars, people out of work, terrorists, the list goes on and on. I say: if you’re not grumpy, you’re not paying attention. But as a grumpy old white man, if I want anyone to take my grumpiness seriously, there are some things I should not do.

If I start sounding angry, then even though I may be right my grumpiness loses much of its persuasive force. This is Donald Trump’s problem. When he says we should cut military adventures overseas and do something to protect U.S. jobs, I think he gets it right. But when he goes on one of his angry tirades, all I can think is: “Another grumpy old white guy who bores you to tears telling you everything he’s angry about.”

And if I refuse to acknowledge it when someone gets the best of me, then I lose the high moral ground that grumpiness requires to be effective. (This holds true even when I happen to be right, and others wrongly disagree with me.) This is Bernie Sander’s problem. When he says we need to further reform the health care system and we shouldn’t trust Wall Street, I think he gets it right. But when he refuses to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton has a lock on the Democratic nomination, all I can think is: “Another grumpy old white guy who won’t admit he’s been beaten by a woman.”

Pfeh. All I can say is that these two guys are making the rest of us grumpy old white men look bad; which is too bad, because grumpiness combined with persuasive force, that takes a high moral ground, has the potential to be an enormous force for good.

Obligatory election post

The creators of the Political Compass Web site assert that it is not enough to know whether a political leader is on the left or right; we also need to determine if they are authoritarian or libertarian.

Consider the economic scale first: Those on the far left believe it is best to manage the economy for the greater good of all; the further to the left, the more they believe in managing the economy. By contrast, those on the right believe to a greater or lesser degree in the power of the free market. Now consider the social scale: Those who take an authoritarian position believe that the state is more important than the individual. By contrast, those who take a libertarian view believe in the supreme value of the individual. Both scales are of equal importance.

We can put these two axes together in a Cartesian coordinate system to make the “Political Compass,” where the x axis ranges from leftists (negative numbers) to rightists (positive numbers, and the y axis ranges from libertarians (negative numbers) to authoritarians (positive numbers). In this scheme, Stalin would feel at home in the upper left quadrant, which is where you’ll find those who advocate for state-controlled collectivism. Gandhi would feel at home in the lower left quadrant, with voluntary regional collectivism. Pinochet would be happy in the upper right quadrant, with overwhelming state support for the free market. Ron Paul, with his support of libertarian social ideals and the free market, falls in the lower right quadrant. And the Political Compass Web site has a quiz you can take to determine where you yourself fall along the two axes; I scored -9.6 on the economic scale, and -7.6 on the social scale, placing me in the same quadrant as Gandhi.

As much as I like the Political Compass system, I don’t think four quadrants accurately capture the way I perceive political leaders. Therefore, I like to map the Alignment System from role-playing games onto the Political Compass.

The Alignment System describes a creature or character in a role-playing game along two axes: good vs. evil, and chaotic vs. lawful. The chaotic/lawful axis maps neatly onto the libertarian/authoritarian axis of the political compass. The good/evil axis does not map so neatly. But from my perspective, the current political environment privileges either the free market or individual persons; we are given a choice between making a profit, or protecting individual persons. In the Alignment System, “Good characters and creatures protect innocent life” (link), so I choose to map the good/evil axis of the Alignment System onto the left/right axis of the Political Compass, with good corresponding to leftist.

BlogMay0616

The beauty of the Alignment System is that it offers a nuance that does not appear in the Political Compass: there is a middle ground, named Neutral, in both axes. This gives nine possible orientations, as seen on the chart below: Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Chaotic Evil. Considered in terms of positive attributes, along the Lawful/Chaotic axis, Lawful equates with honorable; Neutral equates with practical; and Chaotic equates with independent. Along the Good/Evil axis, Good equates with humane; Neutral equates with realistic; and Evil equates with determined (link). All this helps me better understand why I feel left out of the current U.S. presidential race: there are no Chaotic Good (independent and humane) characters running for president.

Considered in terms of the Alignment System, Bernie is probably the best overall choice because he is a Neutral character, both practical and realistic: “…neutral characters … see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes” (link). Fair enough; but because I am a Chaotic Good character myself, I am turned off by Sanders’ claim that he is Chaotic Good when he is so obviously Neutral. If he would just admit that he is Neutral — a moderate Keynesian who is neither authoritarian nor libertarian — I could see my way to supporting him. Of course Lawful Evil characters dominate U.S. political discourse, and so Sanders will never be allowed to claim his true identity as Neutral; he will always be cast as Chaotic Good because that’s how the Lawful Evil characters perceive him.

Now both Hillary and Donnie are both in the authoritarian right quadrant of the Political Compass; i.e., they are both Lawful Evil, or in terms of positive attributes, they are honorable and determined: “Lawful evil creatures consider their alignment to be the best because it combines honor with a dedicated self-interest” (link). The only real difference between the two is that Donnie is significantly more authoritarian. However, since I am Chaotic Good, I am never going to feel comfortable with either one of them.

If you look back at previous U.S. presidential elections, as charted on the Political Compass Web site (2012, 2008, 2004), you will see that Barack Obama started out as Neutral, but after one term in office became Lawful Evil; and George W. Bush was of course Lawful Evil. The Political Compass Web site did not exist during the Bill Clinton years, but given that Hillary Clinton holds positions similar to his, it seems likely to me that Bill was also Lawful Evil. There is little doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was Lawful Evil, and so was George H. W. Bush. Thus we have had Lawful Evil presidents in the U.S. since at least 1980.

You know, that could explain a great deal….