I know it's still early, but clearly the frenzy surrounding the 2016 presidential election has already started. First, I'll briefly note that I think it's ridiculous that election season for the highest office in the country really lasts this long, and I'll also point out how that's true in no other developed country in the world. US presidential campaigns are absurd, overlong circuses that we've become accustomed to because a lot of us don't know any better.
With that out of the way, since election season has started whether I like it or not, I'll go ahead and make some observations so far. We'll start with the Democratic side. We have, firstly (and most prominently), Hillary Clinton. I've pretty thoroughly detailed why I don't like her, and nothing has changed since then to make me like her any better. We've heard some economic populist sort of rhetoric from her, but, unfortunately, there's no reason to believe it's anything but rhetoric. Her record is not that of economic populist, it's that of a corporatist. In the speech launching her campaign, she cited her husband, Bill Clinton and President Obama as good examples of presidents who carried on the legacy of the New Deal and helped create an economy that worked for the middle class. This ignores the fact that the top one percent's share of the national income spiked under Bill Clinton, he repealed New Deal legislation (probably helping to lead to the financial crisis in 2009), and signed a welfare "reform" bill that essentially shredded the social safety net. As for Obama, I've already covered that.
So as I predicted, Hillary 2016 does, in fact, suck. But, interestingly, she has a competitor that has surged in some polls, and may prove more troublesome to her than originally expected. That competitor is, of course, Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist senator from Vermont. While I still have my disagreements with Sanders, he's certainly far preferable to Clinton, and does offer a platform that, if enacted, would take some major steps in the right direction, in terms of economic policy, social policy, and foreign policy.
Predictably, the shills for the Democratic Party mainstream (Allen Clifton, for instance) have offered up a thousand reasons why the Democrats should nominate Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, and even implied he shouldn't be running. Supposedly, he'll weaken Hillary Clinton and make a Republican victory more likely (just like how the fiercely competitive 2008 primaries left Barack Obama weakened and allowed John McCain to win the election, unless I'm remembering that wrong). To them, Hillary's nomination is inevitable--and, to be honest, I still think it's what will happen in all likelihood. But it isn't inevitable, and no one should settle for a candidate like Hillary Clinton, for all the reasons I (along with many more prominent people) have pointed out.
"But he could never win the general election!" Well, yes, he could, if enough people voted for him. Again, I consider Sanders a longshot for the Democratic nomination, but if he manages to win that, it hardly seems impossible that he could win the general election. He does describe himself as a socialist, as noted, but 1.) almost half of Americans say they would be willing to vote for a socialist for president, and 2.) much of Bernie Sanders's platform is widely popular, given the general sentiment that the middle class are being screwed over as Wall Street rakes in huge profits, meaning that some who might have first been unwilling to vote for a socialist could be swayed once they understand what Sanders's socialism actually entails (which is to say, basically the social democratic policies of the Nordic countries).
"But even if he won, he couldn't get anywhere with Congress!" How far has Obama gotten with Congress? Unless the Democrats have majorities in both houses (and probably only if they have a 60+ supermajority in the Senate), no Democrat will be able to get much done. The president has far more power than many people realize, given his ability to take unilateral actions in terms of foreign policy, choose how to enforce the laws, and make appointments to various positions. Were Sanders to get elected, he would almost certainly not be able to do everything he's proposed, but he would still make a far better president than Clinton.
There are a few other candidates for the Democratic nomination, but they're honestly so low-profile that I haven't looked too closely at them, so I'll skip over them. We can then move onto the Republican field which is, well, a total mess. The last number I heard was thirteen candidates, and that's likely to keep going up. They usually include at least fifteen in the polls. There's really not a clear frontrunner, either. If I had to guess, I'd say the nomination will probably go to Jeb Bush or Scott Walker, both of whom are completely terrible. The others aren't much better, with the exception of Rand Paul, who, as I've noted, says some decent things on some issues, but is still pretty awful on a number of other issues.
Mostly, the Republican field is so big and includes so many absurd candidates (Santorum again, Trump for real this time, Jindal, Huckabee) that it promises to be entertaining, though sadly there won't be anywhere near as many debates as there were last time. I don't have much to offer in terms of serious thoughts on the field, other than that it seems to indicate a total disarray and chaos within the Republican Party itself, which is nothing new. Whoever they end up nominating, it will very likely be another right-wing authoritarian corporatist who would ramp up the "national security" state, the war on drugs, and military interventionism.
I will note a serious concern that I have, though. ISIS, even though we haven't been hearing too much about it recently, is still very much a serious issue, and not about to disappear. It seems hard to fathom that it will be gone by that the next president takes office, assuming we continue our strategy of refusing to partner with Iran and Syria in the fight against ISIS and supporting Saudi Arabia as it fights against militants in Yemen who are also engaged in the fight against ISIS. If Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, or Scott Walker get elected, there is real reason to fear that our intervention there will escalate and Iraq War III will go full-blown. We do have the opportunity to make a meaningful choice in this election. And the impact could be enormous.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Thursday, June 4, 2015
We're Not So Bad
For all the differences between the devoutly religious and Ayn Rand-type social Darwinists, they seem to have a certain narrative in common: that human nature is selfish, unsympathetic, and downright cold. For the capitalist social Darwinists, this is the justification for sweeping away all sorts of social welfare programs and having an every-man-for-himself style free market--it's only natural, after all. For the fervently religious, it's why people need some kind of divinely sanctioned morality to live by, lest they succumb to their sinister inner nature and care only about themselves.
It's not just these two groups that have this conception, either; the popular consensus really does seem to be that human nature is pretty brutal. For liberals, it's why we need economic regulations. For conservatives, it's why we need to be tough on crime and value deterrence over rehabilitation. Even I've put out a couple blog posts that paint a less-than-glowing image of human nature.
And it's not that this conception is entirely wrong; sure, people can be selfish, cold, brutal, and downright monstrous. We see examples of that all the time in the news, from ISIS to Israel-Palestine to the chilling dispassion of those running large corporations to the lives of their workers and customers. But what we overlook is that we also see people working together for their mutual benefit, and even going out of their way to help others, on a daily basis. Often it's something small--holding the door for another person or letting them switch lanes in front of you in a traffic jam. But it's not insignificant.
And, although I've used the term "social Darwinist," it's really not quite appropriate seeing that Darwin himself called the human capacity for sympathy toward others "the noblest part of our nature." Zoologist and evolutionary theorist Peter Kropotkin also argued that mutual aid is the most important factor in evolution:
And, for that matter, people as a general rule do better for themselves when cooperating, rather than competing. That's why workers form unions and businesses form cartels--in each case, they understand it's better to cooperate with each other than to compete. Certainly, competition can drive people to do better; but cooperation actually enables them to do better.
The growing gap between the rich and everyone else can be traced, ultimately, to the fact that it's gotten increasingly easy for the rich to cooperate for their benefit and increasingly hard for everyone else to do so: while banks are allowed to become "too big to fail" and corporate lobbyists often find friends in Congress willing to make a deal with them, workers are forced to compete with each other for jobs without the benefits that unions used to offer. It isn't that the rich have simply come out on top through some grand competition; rather, they've stayed ahead by working together, while everyone else has had to compete with each other.
The point of all of this is that people do cooperate completely of their own accord all the time; so, no, the Hobbesian war of all against all is really not something that happens in real life, under normal circumstances. So the people who want to model the economy on that should understand that what they're proposing is not "natural" anymore than our current economy, or an entirely socialist economy, or any other. The people who are sure that without religion or morality we would all be murdering each other in the streets should ask themselves why, then, there are so many instances of people cooperating for their mutual benefit when morality and religion didn't come into play; or, for that matter, why there are so many examples of altruism among animals when they presumably have neither, at least in the human understanding of the words.
We do have the capacity to establish societies based on cooperation and mutual aid, rather than competition; they are not doomed to fail based on human nature, as so many have asserted. We also have the capacity to continue on our current course, where the few cooperate and the many compete, for the benefit of the former and detriment of the latter. Cooperation will continue either way; but who it will benefit is to be seen. The choice is ours.
It's not just these two groups that have this conception, either; the popular consensus really does seem to be that human nature is pretty brutal. For liberals, it's why we need economic regulations. For conservatives, it's why we need to be tough on crime and value deterrence over rehabilitation. Even I've put out a couple blog posts that paint a less-than-glowing image of human nature.
And it's not that this conception is entirely wrong; sure, people can be selfish, cold, brutal, and downright monstrous. We see examples of that all the time in the news, from ISIS to Israel-Palestine to the chilling dispassion of those running large corporations to the lives of their workers and customers. But what we overlook is that we also see people working together for their mutual benefit, and even going out of their way to help others, on a daily basis. Often it's something small--holding the door for another person or letting them switch lanes in front of you in a traffic jam. But it's not insignificant.
And, although I've used the term "social Darwinist," it's really not quite appropriate seeing that Darwin himself called the human capacity for sympathy toward others "the noblest part of our nature." Zoologist and evolutionary theorist Peter Kropotkin also argued that mutual aid is the most important factor in evolution:
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| Peter Kropotkin (from Wikimedia) |
"There is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species; there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defense...Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle."So it's not just some idealistic idea that the human species has a natural capacity for cooperating and sympathy with one another; rather, those things really are every bit as natural as competition and cruelty.
And, for that matter, people as a general rule do better for themselves when cooperating, rather than competing. That's why workers form unions and businesses form cartels--in each case, they understand it's better to cooperate with each other than to compete. Certainly, competition can drive people to do better; but cooperation actually enables them to do better.
The growing gap between the rich and everyone else can be traced, ultimately, to the fact that it's gotten increasingly easy for the rich to cooperate for their benefit and increasingly hard for everyone else to do so: while banks are allowed to become "too big to fail" and corporate lobbyists often find friends in Congress willing to make a deal with them, workers are forced to compete with each other for jobs without the benefits that unions used to offer. It isn't that the rich have simply come out on top through some grand competition; rather, they've stayed ahead by working together, while everyone else has had to compete with each other.
The point of all of this is that people do cooperate completely of their own accord all the time; so, no, the Hobbesian war of all against all is really not something that happens in real life, under normal circumstances. So the people who want to model the economy on that should understand that what they're proposing is not "natural" anymore than our current economy, or an entirely socialist economy, or any other. The people who are sure that without religion or morality we would all be murdering each other in the streets should ask themselves why, then, there are so many instances of people cooperating for their mutual benefit when morality and religion didn't come into play; or, for that matter, why there are so many examples of altruism among animals when they presumably have neither, at least in the human understanding of the words.
We do have the capacity to establish societies based on cooperation and mutual aid, rather than competition; they are not doomed to fail based on human nature, as so many have asserted. We also have the capacity to continue on our current course, where the few cooperate and the many compete, for the benefit of the former and detriment of the latter. Cooperation will continue either way; but who it will benefit is to be seen. The choice is ours.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Why I Like My Fiancee
Obviously, this is pretty different from my normal blog post, but I want to talk about my fiancee. Granted, for whoever's reading this, this post may be of limited relevance, but it is, after all, my blog--and maybe this post will be of relevance to you in one way or another. Who knows? Anyway, I want to talk about why I like my fiancee.
One of the biggest reasons I like her is because I can have a smart conversation with her, about a variety of topics. We have a lot of common interests, so we have a lot of conversations that would be interesting with anyone, but they're made even better by the fact that they're with the person I love and want to spend the rest of my life with.
Another big reason is that she has a sense of humor. She says a lot of things that I find really funny, and it's always easier for me to like someone if I find them funny. I can't imagine being with anyone without some kind of sense of humor, but thankfully my fiancee not only has one, but has one a lot like mine.
Also very importantly, I can tell she cares a lot about me. She goes out of her way to be nice to me, and always likes to spend time with me. I like my fiancee because I can tell she likes me, and wants the best for me. I want the best for her, too.
A little more superficially, but still worth noting, is that she's beautiful. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, but I can't imagine finding her to be anything but beautiful. Looks aren't everything, or even the important thing, but they don't hurt.
But, honestly, and most importantly, I like her because she's her. Sometimes you find a person who it just feels right to be with, and for me, she's that. Perhaps, dear reader, that's what you can take away from this--ultimately, when you find the right person, you'll know it, even if it's hard to express. And I do know it.
One of the biggest reasons I like her is because I can have a smart conversation with her, about a variety of topics. We have a lot of common interests, so we have a lot of conversations that would be interesting with anyone, but they're made even better by the fact that they're with the person I love and want to spend the rest of my life with.
Another big reason is that she has a sense of humor. She says a lot of things that I find really funny, and it's always easier for me to like someone if I find them funny. I can't imagine being with anyone without some kind of sense of humor, but thankfully my fiancee not only has one, but has one a lot like mine.
Also very importantly, I can tell she cares a lot about me. She goes out of her way to be nice to me, and always likes to spend time with me. I like my fiancee because I can tell she likes me, and wants the best for me. I want the best for her, too.
A little more superficially, but still worth noting, is that she's beautiful. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, but I can't imagine finding her to be anything but beautiful. Looks aren't everything, or even the important thing, but they don't hurt.
But, honestly, and most importantly, I like her because she's her. Sometimes you find a person who it just feels right to be with, and for me, she's that. Perhaps, dear reader, that's what you can take away from this--ultimately, when you find the right person, you'll know it, even if it's hard to express. And I do know it.
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