Note to the reader: I have been working on this idea for a long time and have posted it twice, this last June and August, As The Politics of Compassion, Parts I and II. It is to save the Democratic Party and win the elections for a change, then get a supermajority in Congress. I wanted to re-establish the Democrats, because they are the most likely to show compassion in the allocation of the resources at hand. By compassion, I mean the Buddhist concept.
To recapitulate for emphasis: the Democratic Party needs a platform, propaganda, and voter turnout. These three legs of an election program are all critical to democratic success.
Fight for our legal rights
We will start by assuming an equal playing field but if the leadership of the Democratic Party learns that, for any reason, a level playing field is not available, special tactics must be introduced. Should gerrymandering be present, or active attempts at voter suppression, these must be dealt with by lawyers expert in these fields. When there are thugs beating up people in the street, physical force by protesters trained in street brawling should be enlisted. If the paper ballot is being corrupted by computer malware then expert hackers should be employed.
The Democratic Party Platform
The first leg of the Party should be its platform. This is most important because it is, after all, what we are fighting for. The platform should be egalitarian, democratic, and oriented towards the human rights of the individual member of the Party (and indeed the rights of all people) , particularly when the member is discriminated against because of color or gender (or gender preference, for that matter.) The platform should support strong central and state governments (local governments too) that collect taxes according to ability to pay up to, say, 50% of a high-earning individual’s income, but no more than half his income could be taxed away (a sop to those who fear the Roosevelt-Eisenhower days of 70% taxes.) When pressed, the Party can point out that the vast majority of the democratically voting population stands to benefit by higher taxes on the 1%, and economic studies have shown the economy to be stimulated significantly by higher taxes when fairly collected. In addition, we should say that the burden of taxes should fall on those with the greatest ability to pay. Then sometimes the IRS has to be militarized. No, just kidding.
One of the problems that low income taxes on the wealthy related to the poor cause is exaggeration of wealth inequality. Low taxes enhance inequality. High levels of inequality are associated with social unrest and civil rebellion and that is bad. The point is that the very poorest members of society desperately need some sort of social safety net to protect them from becoming homeless, with nothing to lose, and liable to throw their lives away in some desperate, violent act of protest. So taxes must, at least protect these members of society from their circumstances with a roof over their heads, a bed, a hot meal, and a job to go to.
Central and peripheral governments
These strong central governments will be oriented towards problems that affect the nation as a whole, particularly foreign affairs. At the same time, the federal government must have departments that embody the concepts listed in the Preamble to the Constitution in order to implement attempts to manage those problems. In addition, such things that already exist in some form such as a Department of Highways and Bridges should be included and should be oriented towards coordination of state efforts, supervision of the awarding of federal grant money, and so on. Peripheral governments will be oriented towards infrastructure maintenance and development; local policing; housing the homeless; local emergency planning; fire and medical services; and other strictly local problems. Sometimes it will be necessary to change our current government in fairly small ways, to add services for the homeless for example.
One of the canards of the Republican Party has always been that we have too much government, it should be shrunk and simplified, it is taking aways our Rights, and so on. Not to say that they are wrong, but we do have significantly less government than the European, or other civilized countries, with the exception that we seem to have many more men in prison than any other country. As Democrats we should be disturbed by this and in favor of the rehabilitation of the criminal and the protection of his rights (but not at the expense of his fellow citizens.) Drug treatment, humane confinement, parole, and the provision of jobs with living wages to ex-prisoners should be priorities of a Democratically-led penal system.
A necessary component of government will be an active Inspector General in each and every major department of government. Only regular and careful internal inspection can ensure that the departments are not wasteful of funds, do not show unfair preferences, and do not create an atmosphere of bribery or corruption.
Current deficiencies in the system
The Democratic Party has a platform but it is probably not well-known to voters. Elections have been about the politician, not about his plans for his office. Revision of the platform to make it simpler and clearer is important to the development of a plan for winning the election. Most people don’t realize that they are voting for principles of human equality, fair play, and support for everyone. They think that, in voting for Democrats, they are voting for “tax and spend” or rights for minorities with whom they are not connected– since the majority of voters are still white and privileged in some way. White women seem to show distinct attitudes of privilege even though they are still restricted by lower wages than white men. In the last election, 53% of white women voted for Don the Con.
The platform must make it clear that the principles of fair taxation and the need for redistribution of a portion of the nation’s income– a portion that everyone can afford to contribute. Currently, taxation takes away a larger proportion of the poor person’s income than of the wealthy person’s. This is not fair. Wealthy people should contribute their fair share towards the maintenance of the state: infrastructure, administration, and support of health, education, and food and housing. The wealthy are disproportionately greater users of the resources needed by all people, for example, the air, which they use for their private jets to take them wherever they want to go. In addition, the wealthy take up a larger proportion of the policeman’s time in guarding them and their houses. So for them to say they don’t need the government is hypocritical.
At the same time, the platform must support human equality and freedom. The country has come a long way in a very short time. Gay marriage has just been recognized as legal recently and not everyone agrees with the Supreme Court on this. So human equality and human rights are things that still need to be fought for.
Democratic propaganda
Democratic propaganda is traditional but now needs to place an emphasis on new internet-based methods of targeting and the production of new, short items such as six-second videos that will fit on social media, photos with pithy sayings, publication of news that is unbiased and points out Republican-caused weaknesses in the economy and incidents of discrimination, and on and on.
By “internet-based methods” I refer to the Republican use of Cambridge Analytica with Russian help to develop targeted lists of people who were sent specific types of advertising based on their profiles. Perhaps I should use “alleged” in the previous sentence, but I don’t think so.
Propaganda must be factual because there is no advantage in repeating obvious lies. If only factual information is spread, the listeners will gradually come to trust the source better than the enemy’s source.
Voter Turnout
Turning out the voter is a critical part of the process– it cannot be ignored if winning is contemplated. Using targeted voter lists to determine, and verify that every person has an opportunity to vote, local party organization should determine if they can provide necessary transportation. It may be economical to hire a bus to take groups of people who are contacted beforehand and express a need for transportation (or else the local party member has determined that they probably have a need, see also the targeted voter lists.) In fact, in some urban areas, it may be possible to hire a bus that will take almost anybody to the polls and provide propaganda on the bus.
Comment of the Day: A Failure to Govern
This comment came in response to an op-ed by David Brooks stating that Don the Con is a buffoon (like Abbie Hoffman) who is breaking up/destroying the “meritocratic establishment” which will have to be rebuilt…
M
Seattle 26 minutes ago
I don’t know. Mr. Brooks keeps missing the opportunity to address real crises in his party (Republican, I presume) and his nation. This week, the Republican party has been pushing an utterly and unequivocally disastrous piece of healthcare legislation that would not address any of the problems with the ACA, but which might well collapse our entire healthcare system. That is so irresponsible, it is hard to find the right words to express the sheer madness of it. Trump and the Republicans in congress are ignoring Americans in peril in Puerto Rico. Oh yeah, and Mr. Trump is toying with nuclear war with North Korea and stoking racial discord here at home.
It seems to me that the Republican party is suffering a grave moral failure, and that failure is placing our nation and even our planet in true, tangible danger. There is a failure of responsibility at every level in the Republican party, from the WH to the Congress to state/local legislatures to conservative punditry to individual Republican voters (including those motivated by racial grievances and those willing to stand by overt racism).
Instead of addressing the profound failures of the conservative movement at this historic moment, Mr. Brooks suggests that the responsibility falls on…well, everyone else. I think you need to take another look, Mr. Brooks. The athletes this weekend elevated the debate with grace, civic spirit, and unity. How can those on the right rise up to meet them?
Not to mention the lack of response by the highest authorities to real crises in Houston (flooding from a record rainfall and a hurricane) Charlottesville (rioting and a right-wing terror attack by vehicle) Puerto Rico (destruction of the electrical system by hurricanes) Mexico (two earthquakes) and so on… instead of responding to real crises, Don the Con manufactures fake crises over trivial issues that divide his base from the “meritocratic establishment” (whatever that is.)
From a Washington post article today detailing the subjects of ads placed on Facebook by Russian agents: divisive social subjects, not the election as such…
“Is it a goal of the Kremlin to encourage discord in American society? The answer to that is yes,” said former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael A. McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “More generally, Putin has an idea that our society is imperfect, that our democracy is not better than his, so to see us in conflict on big social issues is in the Kremlin’s interests.”
Incidentally, the $100 K in ads that were discovered by Facebook investigators probably represents the tip of the iceberg of such advertisements– since all of them were from accounts disguised to look like they originated in the US, and they were difficult to trace.
Kara Ben Nemsi
On the Orient Express 17 minutes ago
Let’s be clear: There is no first strike scenario that disables North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and prevents a nuclear retaliation except for a massive first nuclear strike from SLBMs with little or no warning for North Korea resulting in its total annihilation, including vaporizing all its inhabitants. The objective cannot be achieved with a conventional force. That would give Kim all the time he needs to lop a nuke towards the US mainland.
In the past, Kim could have relied upon the fact that no American President would choose that option, as it would make the US the pariah of the world. With Trump that calculus is out of the window. But as the analysts write here, if Trump is not following through now, he will look like a paper tiger, making Obama’s red line to Assad look like a small matter.
I am starting to get a little nervous.
Bruce Rozenblit
is a trusted commenter Kansas City, MO 19 hours ago
How can he negotiate if to Trump, words can mean anything which means words mean nothing? His followers still recite the “don’t listen to his words just pay attention to what’s in his heart” mantra. How can we determine what’s in his heart if he doesn’t tell us with words? How can we believe those words if they can mean anything?
Oh, but Trump has a vaccine for this madness. He says keep em guessing. He won’t reveal his true strategy because that would give away his hand.
He has no strategy, he has no plan. He doesn’t know what to do. All he can do is threaten and bluster and say crazy stuff that give his followers fits of joy. How many of of them can find the USA on a map of the world? Hint. One in five Americans cannot.
This strategy (insanity?) may have made him money in TV and real estate, but being president has nothing to do with either. What the president says has the greatest weight of any words in the world. Except now those words are just threats, bombast, and childish name calling. His followers love him for it.
The rest of the world expects our president to act like a president, not a schoolyard bully. They will respond accordingly.
If Trump reneges on the Iran deal, Iran will never negotiate again and will go full speed to maximize their armaments. They have no choice. Bullies cause you to do that.
N. Korea will follow likewise. Not only do they think Trump is nuts, but cannot be trusted at all. Words do matter for a president.
Well, here’s an interesting thing. Only 20% of Chinese own cars; they are buying them at the fastest rate of any country in the world. China is also investing more money in battery technology than any other country in the world.
Facts summarized from an “Oppenheimer Funds” blog post of March 29, 2017:
It seems that, around the beginning of the 20th century, cities were drowning in horse manure produced by the animals that they needed to carry them around. New York, for example, produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure a day in 1893. Not to mention the urine also produced in prodigious quantities. Because of the expense and noxious odor of the manure that had to be removed every day, people flocked to horseless carriages as soon as practical (or even impractical) models became available. By 1912, cars outnumbered horses in New York.
China is currently suffering extreme pollution problems (like manure, only in the air) in some of its cities and cannot tolerate any increases in emissions as the rate of car ownership increases. So battery-powered cars are essential for China’s development and their government is fully aware of this issue. Steps are being taken, money is being invested, and electric cars will be outnumbering internal combustion-motivated cars very soon. What about the US? Let Don the Con worry about that.
This article in New Scientist exposes the century-old fraud that prevented electric buses from getting a foothold in London when gas (petrol) powered buses were in their infancy. The electric bus presented obvious advantages over the gasoline-powered bus because of the noise and pollution that first-generation internal combustion engines produced. However, in 1907 when a battery-powered bus was introduced in London for the first time, the people in charge of the new bus company were swindlers. They promised 300 buses for the streets of London, silent and dependable, but only fielded 20. The rest of the money, 95,000 British pounds, or roughly $15 million in today’s dollars altogether, was siphoned off for the private use of the two principals. The service collapsed in 1910 despite being incredibly popular. Because of the rapid evolution of the internal combustion engine, the collapse of the leading battery powered fleet led to the adoption of gas-powered buses despite their noise and smell. A battery-powered bus fleet lingered in service in Brighton for another seven years.
Today, plans are being laid for a wholesale return to battery power because diesel fumes are becoming more and more culturally objectionable as we learn more about their effects. Europe and Great Britain are both moving strongly towards replacement of internal combustion engines with battery-powered vehicles over the next twenty to thirty years. The United States would do well to imitate them, and we suspect that independent adoption of battery vehicles will be extremely popular in this country regardless of what the government does.
As quoted in the New York Times today:
“Trump shot himself in the foot with his unabashedly undiplomatic United Nations General Assembly speech,” said Lee Sung-yoon, a Korea expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “By threatening to totally destroy North Korea, he created the impression around the world that it is actually the United States — instead of North Korea — that’s motivated by aggression. In effect, Trump gave Kim Jong-un a freebie for another major provocation. Kim will oblige, and claim that it was in ‘self-defense’ against Trump’s unnerving threats.”
Since the revelations about the meeting between Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr., evidence of the Trump campaign’s violations of the laws against accepting help from foreign governments has only mounted. Let’s hope Don the Con has a leg to stand on when he’s in the White House.
North Korea: the Peaceful Way
The world has been propelled towards a crisis by North Korea’s new tests of ICBM’s that could reach Hawaii or Alaska, and an enlarged nuclear weapon that could level a large city like New York. The North Koreans and our own Don the Con have been engaged in a Twitter war, although Don’s credibility was diminished one day when he threatened with warships that were headed the other way. The North Koreans have threatened to attack Guam, an isolated US airbase that is the most forward expression of US power and the home base of B-1B bombers that are reputed to carry nuclear weapons that project power over all of Southeast Asia. Fortunately, the last Twitter exchange between the two sides seemed to indicate that the North Koreans would temporarily delay their threatened launch of missiles at Guam while they observed our behavior. Don the Con tweeted back that he was glad to see the North Koreans showing good sense.
This sort of Twitter exchange is not an adequate substitute for private, personal negotiations between the governments of the two nations involved.
The way to prevent WW III from breaking out in Korea is to unambiguously tell the North Koreans that we will not attack them first, even in the face of outrageous provocation, but that we will strike back with overwhelming force if they attack us or any other country (South Korea or Japan, for example.) Then we can proceed to lower tensions by repeating those statements, with variations. In order to prevent war, we can reduce our level of aggression– avoid military exercises and overflights of North Korea, for example. The forces we have in Guam and Japan available to attack North Korea can be ever so slightly reduced. We can even offer to open bilateral talks, even if there is no progress to be made.
There is always the offer of “freeze for freeze”, which I am told the present White House is dead set against, as they are against any bilateral negotiations.
At the same time, we should continue the UN-approved sanctions and hold secret talks with the Chinese about infiltrating North Korea or even having the Chinese forcibly depose the Kim regime. The point is that we do not want to do anything that would be seen as a push towards war between the US and North Korea but, at the same time, we are prepared to continue crippling sanctions.
Then we should mount a massive propaganda campaign directed towards information-starved North Koreans. For example, cell phones and chargers smuggled into the country could be used if some method of spreading cell phone service to areas of the North currently out of reach could be managed. There is the example of the high-flying drones carrying cell phone antennae that can saturate the country with signals if flown in quantity.
The Problem
The problem is that we have allowed an insane person to build up a nuclear regime, with an estimated twenty to sixty nuclear weapons and an active program to mount them on ICBM’s (see last week’s New Yorker magazine for these numbers and a revealing visit by a reporter to North Korea only a month ago.) This mini-arsenal (less than half the size of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal) would, even if all the weapons were delivered, only produce horrific suffering at the their targets, with the vast majority of US military might undamaged. There is no possibility of North Korea even slowing the US down in such a war. A hundred American nuclear weapons, each ten times the size of the North Korean weapons, would turn North Korea and much of Southeast Asia into a radioactive wasteland– and the US has thousands of those and more powerful weapons, and the means to deliver them. The North Koreans don’t understand this and they think that they can credibly deter the US from attacking them– they are, by our definitions, insane.
The point is that there is a serious lack of knowledge of both sides about one another which should be addressed with high-pressure injection of truthful information and personal contacts.
As to the definitions of insanity, there are these beliefs:
The North Koreans actually believe that we started the Korean war and that they won it. Literally, they believe that we surrendered in the face of their superior resolve and abilities. They believe the most fantastic things because these “facts” have been drilled into them all their lives, over the seventy year life of the current North Korean government. They really think that they can credibly stop us from attacking them again with a couple of dozen nuclear bombs not much bigger than the Hiroshima weapon. They seem to not know that we have spent more than the next five largest countries in the world combined every year for many years on weaponry and that we have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all of humanity the world over.
The North Koreans are so deluded that they think they can start another war, invade South Korea, and deter us from attacking them with their nuclear weapons. That is their ultimate goal: to conquer South Korea and prevent the US from intervening with a threat. They have been drilled to believe in their right to possess the whole of Korea and the necessity of military means.
The North Koreans will never abandon their nuclear weapons because they believe that the United States would destroy them if they did. They point to the fate of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi: after abandoning his nuclear program in 2001 (after 9/11) he was eventually deposed and murdered by rebels supported by the US and Europe.
Because of this insanity, their regime is unstable and will eventually start a war or collapse catastrophically unless someone intervenes.
Because of this insanity and paranoia, it is necessary for us to treat them with kid gloves– to humor them. We should provide them with elaborate reassurances that we mean them no harm and give them a wide berth– but secretly we should be plotting to have them removed. The Chinese might be willing to do us this service if we give them appropriate incentives.
Our current problem, however, is the pathological narcissist in our Oval Office. Before we can make progress and peace in Korea, we have to impeach and remove the emolument-in-chief and his enabler Pence. Now that the emails promising Russian government help with dirt on Clinton have surfaced, the evidence that Don the Con broke election laws by “accepting anything of value” from a foreign government is strong enough– all that remains is to convince Republican congressmen that they are better off without Don than without a party.
Don the Con made a speech at the UN and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if they threatened the US or Japan. He has not thought this through. Attacking North Korea, obviously with nuclear weapons, would create a humanitarian catastrophe right on the borders of China and Russia, who would be on the hook for taking care of tens of millions of refugees. This is to say nothing of what would happen to South Korea, specifically Seoul, after an American first strike. To clarify, the “decapitated” North Korean Army would reflexively fire all of its artillery located on the DMZ at the South Korean capital, home to ten million people. Casualties in this enormous metropolitan area would be in the millions, as bad as in North Korea (which has a smaller, much more dispersed population that would not be killed outright by a nuclear attack) but without the radioactivity. The US would have to supply humanitarian aid to South Korea, and the world economy would immediately enter a severe depression which would make some venal politicians wish for more war to stimulate the economy.
The way this works out is incredibly bad. Attacking North Korea is a very bad idea. My first thought would be to hold secret talks with China and offer to stand by if they were to invade North Korea, remove Kim, and take control of their nuclear weapons factories and finished bombs. In this way, North Korea could not credibly attack South Korea because the South would not be involved. More importantly, China would not face the prospect of having a Western-allied country like South Korea directly on their borders if the US were to “destroy” the North Korean government and take over there. After over-running North Korea, the Chinese could install a puppet regime that surely would be better than Kim’s murderously repressive autocracy.
My final demand: lay off Iran. They do not sponsor significant terrorism, they are holding to a very good treaty preventing them from proceeding further to nuclear weapons, and their people are actually friendly to the US (incredibly.) Despite their government’s radical Shia Muslim faith and their belligerent words, they are relatively stable and far less repressive than the North Koreans. Most importantly, their government is not a pure autocracy but has at least a semblance of democratic mechanisms. Iran is not a threat to the US or the peace of the world under the current treaty or by the nature of her government. If we hold to the current treaty, so will they. If we withdraw from the treaty, it will still be in effect (it is multilateral, with China and Europe being co-signers) but no-one would ever trust the United States again.
North Korea is a threat to the world because of its autocratic, paranoid government. The US is a threat to the world because its leader is a talentless, narcissistic blowhard who is destroying the Executive Branch from within. Let us hope and pray that Mueller gets the goods on Don before it is too late, and further let us pray that the Republicans realize that Don the Con is an existential threat to their party (and see that impeachment is the only way to save themselves from a blow-out in the 2018 elections.) The Vice President, by the way, is a threat as well, and should be removed in the same impeachment proceedings because he was complicit in the collusion with Russia to throw the election for his boss.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 