How American politics work

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On April 24th the New York Times reported that Mick Mulvaney – then interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the following to a group of bankers:

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
This is one of those things everyone in the political establishment knows but few dare say aloud. It’s both appalling and common knowledge at the same time. But most Americans know it. It’s quite obvious.

And we talk about corruption in Africa, India etc! It’s hard to cultivate peace of mind knowing that the level playing field has vanished and the fox is in charge of the henhouse.

Our collective memory is fading

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The famous quote by George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, is echoed by Yascha Mounk, who writes, “One possible explanation for why young people are disenchanted with democracy is that they have little conception of what it would mean to live in a different political system.”

Today most of the millions who fought against fascism in the second world war have since passed on, their children are in their seventies and eighties, and Remembrance Day is held only once a year. Confronted by this huge, and ultimately tragic memory gap, Mounk suggests that “civic education…should spend more time pointing out that ideological alternatives to liberal democracy, from fascism to communism, and from autocracy to theocracy, remain as repellent today as they have been in the past”. (Richard Orlando, Westmount, Quebec, Canada)

I am one of those elderly men whose father fought in the Second World War. He was one of the first Allied serving officers to encounter and enter a Nazi death camp in Northern Germany. He gave me a leather-thonged whip that he had taken from an arrested concentration camp guard, who had used it to whip women and children. My father’s words to me were, “Keep it, and never, ever forget”.

My British father was a product of his time, but he believed passionately in democracy, in benign capitalism designed to improve the lives of everyone. He believed in honesty and integrity, in getting along with everyone, in moderation, equal opportunity, and using taxes to ensure that the less well brought-up and educated were respected and had healthy lives. And he voted Conservative. Yes, he was a Conservative! I never knew my wife’s American father, but my wife tells me that he was a Republican with a world view almost identical to that of my own father. Whatever happened? Certainly, the meaning of “Conservative” has radically changed since both fine and honourable men passed away.

The crisis among young British youths

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Yesterday, my colleague, Owen Bell, wrote a post about millennials and their attitudes. Today I would like to comment on the group coming up behind them, teenagers of both genders.

More than 100,000 children aged 14 in the UK are self-harming, with one in four girls of this age having deliberately hurt themselves, according to a report from the Children’s Society. Experts have put the behaviour down to a combination of pressure from school, austerity and gender expectations. Nearly a quarter said they hear jokes or comments about other people’s bodies or looks all the time, while more than a fifth of those in secondary school said jokes or comments were often made about people’s sexual activity. The mental health campaigner Natasha Devon said more needed to be done to treat the causes of self-harm. “We need to look at the environment young people exist in at home and in school so these issues don’t arise in the first place rather than fire-fighting once they have manifested.”(The Guardian, August 29 2018)

I think the principle culprit in all this is social media, which has enabled the cruel, the bullies, and the twisted individuals to bully and exploit vulnerable youngsters, unpunished. Facebook et al offer a charter for the malicious, and are helping produce, arguably, one of the most screwed up generation in history. And to what end? I have no doubt that the initiators of social media sites had no ill intent when they set out. They naively thought they would bring people together, and in many cases they have done so. But they never imagined how their inventions could be used for mischief. As an Epicurean I refuse to have any social media site at all. If I can’t see my friends and have them sit in my Epicurean “garden”; if I can’t phone my friends or visit them, I just won’t see them. So be it.

Why are students and millennials increasingly left-wing?

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The popular conception of millennials in the conservative imagination is that they are a bunch of over-sensitive, politically correct crybabies. Young people are often referred to as ‘snowflakes’, that is, people who think they’re so special and unique, rather than simply being just like everyone else. Universities are seen as places where freedom of expression is under attack- where anyone who espouses traditional, conservative or nationalistic attitudes risks being shut down, ‘no-platformed’ or de-invited. Students are more concerned with being seen as well-meaning and tolerant than with the truth.  They feel entitled to a state-subsidised education and government handouts, without a proper sense of patriotism and responsibility towards wider society.

As a millennial, I have to admit that the conservative critique of our generation is not without merit. We millennials, particularly those lucky enough to attend university, think too much in terms of personal interest, and not enough about the broader consequences of what we believe in. For example, most students believe that higher education ought to be free. Now this policy may benefit students, but would it really be good for the country? Taxes would have to be raised, and the money would benefit graduates, who tend to be a fair bit richer than non-graduates. In other words, a policy intended to be progressive would be in reality, anything but.

Millennials are also guilty of fostering a culture of outrage. Dare to question the merits of the welfare state, gay marriage, mass immigration or pacifism, and young people will often become uncontrollably angry. Rather than engaging with the implications of what you may be proposing, they will engage in ad hominem attacks on you as a racist, sexist, homophobe etc. And while it’s true that some people’s views are motivated by prejudice, it’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt and believe in innocent until proven guilty.

More importantly, many millennials are unable to see any value in conservative ideas. Notions of hierarchy, order, tradition, a strong central authority and divinely-inspired morality are dismissed out of hand. Without a proper understanding of how conservatives, particularly older conservatives think, millennials are in danger of talking over their opponents, instead of seeking to persuade them. The lack of intellectual curiosity amongst some young progressives is at times astounding.

The problem with left-wing millennials ultimately comes down to wanting to be seen as the underdog: the little people fighting the authoritarian establishment. In a world where everyone wants to be seen as a victim, no one will stand up for the status quo. Combined with an increasing sensitivity towards minorities, the result is a toxic culture of playing the victim- a competition to be the most oppressed. Very few millennials will wear their privilege as a badge of honour.

Having said all that, conservatives need to understand the structural causes of my generation’s leftward drift. A slowing economy, increasingly unaffordable housing, tough competition for graduate jobs and few prospects for non-graduates have radicalised people who ought to embrace capitalism’s innovative and liberating qualities. More significantly, the young have moved left in reaction to the old moving right. While our elders used to defend liberalism, the international world order and globalisation, they now embrace Trump, Brexit, and a variety of right-wing authoritarian movements all over the developed world. America is the clearest example of this. It’s unsurprising millennial students call for the abolition of ICE when it forces parents apart from their children. It’s equally expected for young Britons to vote for a veteran socialist when the alternative is a party that has deported British citizens and compared the EU to the Soviet Union.

If we’re not careful, the generational divide could make our societies ungovernable. Partly as a result of it, it’s becoming harder for anyone to win over a convincing majority of voters. I very much doubt America will ever see a landslide presidential election of the scale of Reagan’s victory in 1984. In Germany and Spain, the two main parties are in decline, and in France and Italy, they have become virtually obsolete.

There are no easy answers to any of this, but I have a few suggestions. Young people should worry less about how offensive their views are, and instead focus on their practical implications. Universities should prioritise free speech and a diversity of opinions above the perception of prejudice. The older generations should try to understand why the young feel marginalised and not listened to. And the wealthy, both young and old, need to stop advocating for regressive state subsidies which the poor will have to pay for. The generational divide won’t ever be closed. But with a proactive dialogue and a willingness to listen, it can certainly be narrowed.

Social media sours the soul

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“There’s no such thing as the season of goodwill when it comes to political debate on social media. It’s all about fury and outrage. Even when tweets are funny, you can taste the “anger inside the sugar coating of smug satire”. Rage is contagious – it spreads like an infection across online forums, which have a vested interest in stoking it. It’s part of what has been dubbed the “outrage economy”. Shrill, divisive opinions attract eyeballs and yield a “double payoff” for publishers and platforms, as posts are then shared by people who both agree and violently disagree with them. Sharers come to enjoy, even grow addicted to, this easy way of displaying righteous indignation.

“And so the cycle of provocation continues”, as people yield to the temptation to correct perceived wrongness with “a caustic retort” online and one side’s scratch becomes “the other side’s itch”. Any sense of empathy or curiosity is lost in the “riotous rhetoric of online dispute”. We can’t do without our devices, but now and then we desperately need to log off for a few days to regain a sense of perspective.” (Rafael Behr, The Guardian)

Which is why this blog, while pointing up disagreeable and worrying trends, tries to argue quietly and and interperse the serious stuff with the occasional poem or tongue-in-cheek observation, even a joke. Successful approach? I have no idea! All that can be said is that either the crass and vulgar haven’t found this blog, or that the tone and the philosophy of consideration and kindness can be ignored by the extremists and anonymous haters ….so far. They are probably indifferent to Epicureanism and attempted reason in any case. But suggestions about the approach are welcome.