Tag Archives: democracy

The War Against Hope

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“Let no joyful voice be heard! Let no man look to the sky with hope in his eyes!” says Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as his captives slave away on his ship. “And let this day be forever cursed by we who ready to wake…the Kraken!”

Alexei Navalny, 2011 photo from Wikipedia.

This well-known quote from a surreal character in a popular movie is a remarkable fit for the mood unleashed in Russia by President Vladimir Putin with the death of 47-year-old Alexei Navalny, an unparalleled advocate of Russian democracy, who suffered for his commitment with confinement in an Arctic prison after repeated attempts to end his life with poison. Putin, who has no apparent compunction about eliminating his opponents in any way possible, seems determined to become not only the Davy Jones of Russia, but of the world. If there were any doubt that his minions operate across the globe, consider that just yesterday (February 19), Maxim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with his Mi-8 helicopter last August, was found shot to death in Alicante, Spain. There is a long history of such assassinations by Russian agents of known dissidents abroad.

But the most compelling visions of his intended dystopia are those of the arrests of hundreds of Russians doing nothing more than laying flowers at memorials for Navalny. They are not even allowed to mourn their dead in peace because that would allow them to look to the dreary Russian winter sky with hope.

Hope for those with love in their souls, and passion in their hearts, is forbidden in today’s Russia.

If you have any doubt on that point, consider the position of Metropolitan Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has supported Putin in his quest for conquest of Ukraine and once described Putin’s rule as “a miracle of God.” The church has actively suppressed opposition to the war against Ukraine among its own priests, recently expelling one for his refusal to read a prayer for Russia’s success and for his anti-war remarks. The position of the Russian Orthodox leadership, securing its own comfort from oppression through complicit support for Putin, denies spiritual solace to those who seek a better day in their homeland and whose consciences are troubled by the unnecessary death and destruction he has unleashed. The church has sold its soul in a historical quest for sovereignty under an evil regime. (There are echoes of such behavior among certain churches in the United States that have aligned with Donald Trump as a matter of transactional convenience, but let’s save that discussion for another day.) In this sorry role, the Russian Orthodox Church has degenerated into a mere arm of the state, enforcing social conformity in the face of powerful demands for a voice of conscience to lift the morale of the Russian people.

Image from Shutterstock

It remains for courageous advocates like Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, to brave the foul winds spreading from Russia and keep the candle burning. It remains for the rest of us outside Russia to recognize and confront the dangers posed not only by Putin, but by the “useful idiots” who continue to justify autocracy.

Jim Schwab

If You See Something, Say Something

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National Park Service photo

We have become so accustomed to a certain Homeland Security phrase since the events of September 11, 2001, that we have never seriously contemplated its larger meaning. “If you see something, say something,” for most people simply means that, if you notice something strange, someone leaving a package on a train platform and walking away, for instance, you need to call 911 or point it out to a nearby security official. Having done our civic duty, we can go on about our lives and hope for the best. We may save someone’s life, or we may simply be exercising caution. Check it out.

But suppose we interpreted that phrase in the context of our duties as citizens of an endangered, or even potentially endangered, democracy. Suppose the threat were to our democratic institutions and not just to the lives of those in a single public place. Suppose the threat involved policies that affected thousands of people threatened by racism, ignorance, or hatred? Ought we not to speak up? How different would the history of the world have been if millions of Germans had spoken up about what they saw even in 1933? How many Russians in the past two decades have risked their lives and their careers to speak up about the threats they see to a democracy being strangled in its cradle? In the past year, the people of Sudan have arisen against a brutal military dictatorship and forced remarkable changes. Are we Americans somehow so special as to be free from such obligations? Do we not eventually lose our moral authority to speak for democracy in the world if we fail to speak for it at home?

If you see something, say something. Let me tell you what I see:

I see children housed in filthy cages at the southern border by the U.S. government, separated from their parents, their eyes full of fear and bewilderment, when their only alleged crime was to be brought here by parents from Central America who sought to remove them from gang warfare, violence, crime, and corruption in desperately poor countries. I see a U.S. President, as a form of retribution, cutting aid to those countries that was meant to promote reform and economic opportunity to reduce people’s need to flee such chaos in the first place.

I see Temporary Protective Status (TPS) denied to survivors of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, a neighboring country with deep ties to the U.S., even as that nation struggles to rescue and house its own people in the face of mind-numbing devastation. The rationale from the President was that “very bad people” would harm our country if this were allowed, although TPS has been standard practice in the past in the very same circumstances. It is unclear, other than being people of color, what makes the Bahamians especially dangerous in his eyes.

I see neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan members marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us” through the campus of the University of Virginia and the streets of Charlottesville, defended ardently by a President who sees “very fine people” on both sides while an innocent young woman is run over and killed by a young Nazi sympathizer with his car. I see this rhetoric emboldening an ever-widening circle of mass shooters who sow terror in American cities with unlimited access to weapons of war, but I also see a widening circle of brave citizens rising to demand effective action against such terror.

I see America losing the moral courage of the Emma Lazarus poem at the Statue of Liberty, pleading for the world to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and nearly mocking Lady Liberty as she seeks to lift her lamp beside the golden door. The Golden Door is becoming instead the Great Border Wall built with money never legitimately appropriated by Congress, and members of the President’s own party unable and unwilling to stop him or even raise the weakest of objections lest they be expelled from the halls of power—or are they becoming halls of obeisance, like the Roman Senate in Nero’s time?

I am telling you what I see because I understand the moral and civic obligation to say something. We must all be whistleblowers for the future of democracy. What do you see? Are you prepared to say something as well? And what shall we do once we have spoken?

Jim Schwab

What Is at Stake

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Before I delve into the essence of this article, let me clarify one point for any potential Trump supporters reading this: No, I do not think Hillary Clinton is the perfect presidential candidate. But I also do not think she is “crooked Hillary,” whatever Donald Trump means by that, nor do I think she is so terrible as to be unacceptable. She has a number of admirable qualities balanced by some noticeable drawbacks, and she is and has been a very serious student of public policy. She is qualified and experienced. That is offset to some degree by some noticeable shortcomings, although the office of President of the United States has almost never been a denizen of saints. She is certainly not a threat to democracy or the democratic process, nor is President Barack Obama, despite right-wing attempts to demonize him. I can think of many presidents of both parties with whom I disagreed on specific policies without worrying about whether they jeopardized the future of the republic.

All that said, I do think Donald Trump has crossed numerous red lines that others before him have, out of principle and concern for the nation, chosen not to cross, which is why previous Republican nominees and presidents—the Bushes, John McCain, and Mitt Romney—have either rebuked his candidacy or repeatedly clashed with him. Two are of special concern.

First, the threat to jail his opponent, following up the litany at the Republican National Convention of “Lock her up!” regarding Hillary Clinton, shows a shocking disregard of the constitutional limits of the presidency. There is a reason no presidential candidate has made such a threat before, and it is not that no one was as crooked as Hillary. It is that it is not the job of the President to decide who is arrested, who is indicted, and who goes to prison. It is the job of the courts and law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, to make that call. With regard to Clinton’s e-mails, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a Republican, has made the determination there was carelessness but not a crime, but it appears that Trump and his supporters will be satisfied only when they get the outcome they want. This weekend’s revelation that the FBI will examine the Clinton-related e-mails (which apparently were not to or from Clinton herself) found on a computer belonging to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a Clinton aide, has added no real substance to any accusations, Donald Trump’s hyperbolic implications notwithstanding. Trump himself is not entirely immune to prosecution on certain fronts, but it will not be Clinton who forces the issue. It will be the justice system at some level that will decide whether any charges have sufficient merit to justify such steps. Clinton knows far better than to wade into such a swamp even for political purposes.

What Trump’s rhetoric does, however, is dramatically reduce any apparent distance between the constitutional procedures at work in the United States and the more capricious workings of justice in authoritarian nations like Russia or Venezuela. That is a step into the abyss that should alarm any thinking, conscientious American. I say “apparent” because, while I absolutely believe the substantive differences between our political system and those in such nations is very real, Trump is erasing some of the appearance, and perceptions matter.

Second, the claims of a rigged election are despicable and based on nothing. Trump has offered no proof because there is none. Not only are there numerous studies, all cited repeatedly by the news media, showing only infinitesimal vote fraud at a level that would not even affect most municipal elections, let alone the presidency, but our electoral system itself is geared to prevent it. There is no national election system in the U.S. Elections are under the control of state-level Secretaries of State, for the most part, most of whom right now are Republicans. Why would Republican election officials be assisting a conspiracy to keep Donald Trump out of office? In any event, even they lack that power because the administration of elections is generally handled at the county level. The system is thoroughly decentralized. Both parties have long had poll watchers who monitor activity at polling places and can blow the whistle when something is awry. The number of people who would need to be party to a conspiracy in order to rig a national election successfully is so vast as to be laughable. My wife has been an election judge for Cook County. There are strict incentives for accuracy for poll workers on Election Day. The county clerk, David Orr, is a thoroughly honorable man who enjoys great respect.

It is important to recognize, however, that Trump’s allegations of a rigged election are not about the election. They are the desperate efforts of a man who has derided others as losers to deflect attention from the fact that his own inept campaign, hobbled by his own deep character flaws, has turned him into a seeming loser in a campaign he thought he could not lose. Unable to handle or accept responsibility for possible defeat, Trump is driven to find some cause outside himself to blame for it. The problem can never be Trump himself. If he is going down, he will try to take the system down with him. The problem is that he has too many followers willing to follow him into that abyss.

There are other characteristics of Trump that raise serious questions. His thin skin for criticism, which causes him to lash out, has made many people very uneasy with his candidacy. His behavior too closely resembles that of a schoolyard bully who has never matured or moved beyond a brand of egotistical narcissism that is deeply troubling. More experienced politicians with a better perspective on what matters, for instance, would easily have decided that Gold Star parents, through the loss of their child in this nation’s service, have earned the right to express their opinions and that it would be best to simply respect their feelings. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has said as much. But most other candidates would also have had more restraint—and respect for the U.S. Constitution—than to have made the comments about Muslim citizens that provoked the Khans’ objections to Trump in the first place. In the view of a bully, however, such criticism is intolerable and must be squashed.

I also must say that Trump violates one of my own fundamental values—my appreciation for factual accuracy and scholarship. I understand that almost no politician is likely to be entirely truthful 100 percent of the time, in part because no one lasts very long that way. But on the spectrum of perfect honesty versus indifference to the truth, Trump veers so far toward indifference that he has scared the wits out of many Americans who care about honesty. When I hear anyone, politician or otherwise, use hyperbolic rhetoric with words like “huge,” “everyone says,” “so many people tell me,” etc., I begin to cringe with a sense that the speaker is almost immune to the influence of serious information. As a writer and communicator, I understand the need to digest and focus and condense information for popular consumption, but this type of rhetoric is not about that. It is about disguising the speaker’s lack of commitment to learning and to understanding the importance of knowing what you do not know. When absorbing technical information outside my area of expertise, I may well ask an engineer or scientist to concentrate on the essentials without burying me in minutiae, but I still care about the accuracy of what I am learning. And I have learned, sometimes the hard way over the years, that the catch phrases I have cited above are typically those of a bullshit artist. This same reaction is undoubtedly what led CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria earlier this summer to publish his daring op-ed in the Washington Post, “The Unbearable Stench of Donald Trump’s B.S.”

Is there any precedent for such a candidate? I think there is, but not where people have been looking. I have heard some comparisons to Mussolini or Hitler, and at one point wondered whether the former was an apt comparison. I think not. For one thing, despite his troubling rhetoric, Trump lacks the discipline both in his campaign and among his followers to imitate these fascist leaders. Fortunately, we see no brownshirts, no jackboots, not even a clear ideology. There is merely a campaign based on numerous grievances, some more legitimate than others, among a portion of the electorate that is hungry for a strong leader who they believe can “make America great again.” He is certainly firing up their fears and paranoia, and that may have some lasting consequences for both the nation and the Republican party. But it simply is not the same thing. Let’s dispense with that sort of hyperbole from the left.

Nor, despite Trump’s apparent admiration, is Russian President Vladimir Putin a valid comparison. Russians at the moment appear to prefer Putin’s strong, silent type of leadership over the brash, talkative role model that Trump embodies.

Instead, I would suggest that the real comparison lies south of the border, in the very nations that are supplying so many of the immigrants that Trump promises to wall out of the U.S. There has long been a style of Latin American politics known as “personalismo” in Spanish, for which there is not a direct translation in English, although “personalism” would be the apparent operative term. Personalismo is built around the messianic appeal of a charismatic leader who basically proclaims, as Trump famously did in the Republican convention this year, “I alone can fix it.” The appeal typically resonates with people who have grown deeply skeptical of the political system and its ability to solve deeply rooted problems. Examples could include Juan Peron in Argentina, and perhaps Eva Peron later as well, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Omar Torrijos in Panama, and Alberto Fujimori in Peru. One might even add the current example of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. These leaders are quite distinct from leaders of the once frequent military juntas in Latin America, who were often distinctly uncharismatic and relied on guns, not votes, for their rise to power. Personalismo produces leaders who rise as a result of a rapid surge in popularity built upon rhetoric often eerily similar to “make America great again,” such as Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution” or promises to wipe out crime and rebellion through strong-arm tactics. Personalist leaders often acquire military support, but it is not at the root of their popularity.

The problem is that such exercises in messianic leadership almost never end well. In fact, they almost always end badly and do little to strengthen democracy. If there are rigged elections, they almost invariably happen not in the rise to power, but as el lider’s popularity eventually declines and a need emerges to find ways to prolong his reign. This is largely the route being followed now by the remnants of Chavismo under the far less charismatic successor, current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Losing power is tough to tolerate for a politician who rode to power on a wave of populist enthusiasm. However, as I noted earlier, the U.S. electoral system is loaded with safeguards against such an outcome precisely because it is federal and widely decentralized. Political systems in most Latin American nations have traditionally been more centralized at a national level.

Where does that leave us? The rise of a candidate like Trump, for one thing, does serve a purpose. It exposes the fact that a substantial portion of the U.S. electorate feels disenfranchised and disempowered at some significant level. While many are grasping at straws in embracing Trump as a problem solver, this does not mean the problems should be ignored. The loss of blue-collar jobs creates serious issues of social equity, and the rise of the Bernie Sanders candidacy in the Democratic party should have alerted Clinton to the fact that her presidency may face serious obstacles to success if she does not address them. Clinton could blunt the power of Trump’s following by finding ways to effectively handle the displacement of jobs in mining and manufacturing, but it will take a more deliberate effort than we have seen so far. Communities in places like Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio that have flocked to the Trump candidacy will be hard sells for such programs, yet no president—not even Trump if he is elected—is likely to reverse the long-term decline of coal, or the widespread systemic changes in the steel industry. Some communities will have to be helped to embrace a more promising future. But many of these workers have been offered little hope for a long time, and they are understandably frustrated. There are opportunities to address that frustration, however, and failure to do so will only breed more of the same cynicism that brought us to our current choices. What remains to be seen, if she is elected on November 8, is whether a President Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, Donald Trump) has the capacity to be bold enough, and courageous enough, to confront this gap between reality and aspiration in a bid to erode such cynicism. And whether Republicans in Congress will help lead, get out of the way, or obstruct progress.

 

Jim Schwab

Reflections on Independence Day

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Yesterday we celebrated Independence Day. In Egypt, protesters celebrated the removal from office of an elected president by the military. On the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is worthwhile to reflect on all the ramifications of that event over the last two and one-third centuries. Those ramifications are not always as obvious as most Americans, including political commentators, may think. The wheels of history often turn slowly, and sometimes they seem to switch directions with lightning speed, but there is an underlying logic that bends that arc toward freedom, born of desires that run deep in the human psyche.

This essay is decidedly not a book review, though it is the product of decades of reading and thinking and, at times, direct involvement in protest and politics and community affairs, plus whatever knowledge was instilled in me by degrees in political science, journalism, and urban planning. Readers can find a plethora of writings on the topics of political movements and protests and revolutions, ranging from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine in the 18th century to Samuel Huntington and Fareed Zakaria more recently. For my own benefit, I recently completed a 16-year quest to read, sequentially, biographies of all the U.S. presidents, Washington through Obama. The exercise taught me respect for the forces that launch men (and, hopefully, women) into high office and either keep them there or cause their removal. National leaders only seem to be in control of events. They can bend the needle of history, and often do, but ultimately they are also the lucky few in the right place at the right time.

That brings me first to the subject of just who led the American Revolution. These men clearly pledged their “Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of independence, a noble sentiment in view of what many were in a position to lose. These were not the paupers of American society. Paupers undoubtedly served in the revolutionary army, but they did not lead it. These were men of the middle and upper classes, educated men who understood the revolutionary ramifications of their aims. Americans, at the time of the revolution, were already relatively prosperous by global standards of the times, raising the question of what they had to complain about. They had had some taste of liberty in governing their own local affairs, but they wanted more. That word more is critical to the theme of this essay. To spur protest and revolution, two ingredients are essential: first, some sense of what is possible in life; and second, some sense that gaining more of it is possible despite some present political obstacles. The reason that protests do not occur more often in the very poorest of societies is that the element of hope is typically missing, replaced by acceptance or resignation. One can change a society’s expectations, of course; Mohandas Gandhi was a genius at doing exactly that. But the expectations are vital in creating the urgency for protest in the first place.

Repeatedly, we have seen emerging societies with growing economies and a mushrooming middle class explode in protest. It is a theme common to both the American Revolution and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and many other movements in between.

What is particularly interesting today is that the new element is the speed of communication among protesters, facilitated by social media like Twitter and Facebook. It has been a common element in recent protests from Turkey to Egypt to Tunisia to Brazil and even to China. It is fair to say that the Chinese leaders’ biggest nightmare is a social media-driven protest that spins out of their control. In the midst of this phenomenon, it is worth noting that, while one need not be wealthy to have access to such tools, it certainly does not help to be desperately poor. The use of social media depends on education and a modicum of wealth every bit as much as the dissemination of revolutionary tracts did in George Washington’s day.

There are variations and exceptions. It is worth noting here that the very first successful anti-colonial rebellion in North America, in 1680, occurred when the Pueblo Indians rose up against the Spanish in what is now New Mexico. The social media of their day were well suited to their environment. Long-distance runners, common to the Pueblo culture, disseminated the news of the planned uprising, with its identical timing in all pueblos, by counting the number of days it took for each runner to reach his destination, so that all could strike at the same time, thus catching the Spaniards off guard. It worked, and the Spanish did not return again until 1692, somewhat chastened by the experience (but probably not nearly penitent enough). People work with the tools available.

So let’s return to the policy dilemma facing the West regarding events in Egypt. Here we have, under a president elected just a year ago, a sagging economy where the public was looking forward to improvements following the end of the Mubarak regime. President Mohammed Morsi, somewhat an accidental president, led an administration dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged from decades of repression and imprisonment under authoritarian regimes and with little sympathy from the military. With this history, it is entirely natural that leaders of the Brotherhood felt their time had come, and that it was now their privilege to govern the country as they saw fit. The problem was that their priorities were at odds with those of vast segments of the Egyptian population, which was more interested in economic gains than in Islamist ideology. The protesters had tasted better, even briefly, just a year ago, and had both the education and social media with which to conceive of a path forward, however sketchy it may sometimes seem. Morsi’s leadership, instead of providing a democratic outlet for those frustrations, seemed instead to become a growing obstacle, and the fire was lit. The problem is that their vision of leadership was cramped. An Egyptian-American friend commented to me that Morsi was “intransigent,” and that “there is more to democracy than the ballot box.” Yet the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to view their election as a form of entitlement. Their entitlement, however, meant a form of disenfranchisement for their opponents. Democracy works that way to a certain extent, of course; the question is just how much, and the ability of leadership to compromise and to navigate through troubled waters. In a true democracy, electoral majorities are seldom permanent or long-lasting.

In contrast, consider the case of Nelson Mandela. He had every bit as much reason to view election as entitlement after years of imprisonment, but he used those years to craft a vision of a post-apartheid society that would be inclusive and forgiving. Like Washington, who set the two-term precedent for U.S. leaders, Mandela chose to step down after serving once. He had set the tone, and that was enough. Clearly, South Africa has a long way to go, and Mandela’s leadership only scratched the surface of the problems it sought to address, but he did not suffer from hubris. Quite the opposite. Likewise, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, facing protests both unexpected and widespread, chose not to crack down but to respond with measures seeking to respond to the more reasonable grievances. Brazil has made enormous progress in the last 20 years; the protests demonstrate that Brazilians, given a taste of prosperity, have learned that they can push hard for even more—without the military repression of half a century ago. Given her commitment to improving public transit infrastructure, some of Rousseff’s promises may serve to improve Brazilian society anyway, much as the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights measures were an entirely sensible response to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.

I am not saying any of this to comment directly on whether military involvement in Egypt’s struggle to achieve a functioning democracy is good or bad, a step forward or back. The relationship between the Egyptian public and the Egyptian military is fraught with features unique to Egyptian history, which is worth studying before one jumps to too many conclusions about what it all means. But I am saying that there is a relationship between our Independence Day and their protests, and there is a common cord in humanity that responds to the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the fact that we can see through the tunnel to perceive that light in the first place that motivates us.

 

Jim Schwab