Wolf Country Gazette — Banality of Contemporary Evil

Lacking a vision of something worthwhile to pursue — just pushing the boulder. 

Today’s world is constant spectacle and noise, and human beings really aren’t wired for that. Biological evolution takes a long time to change, and natural selection is a hit or miss kind of thing. The evolution of human experience is something entirely different. We are compelled to live life in something that resembles the old expression of the Olympic ideal, to be faster, go farther and be stronger.

No where, of course, does that address the idea of better. The Jesuits have a mantra of seeking “The More” or “Magnus.” We miss the point in our lives by interpreting that as accumulation of wealth or goods or stuff or recognition. The more is an internal thing, being more to become better to do more to be of greater service. Leadership theory in the US Military revolves around Victor Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs. In that theory, we achieve sufficiency at each level and then can address the next higher need. You can’t be part of a group if you can’t breathe, for example. Air, water, food, protection from the elements trump the need to have nicer clothes by far.

Maslov calls this “self-acualization” with the implied sense that we may get there briefly but life can intrude. It’s a goal rather than a target. Peter Senge in his The 5th Discipline refers it as “personal mastery” when the skills, knowledge and abilities needed are there to achieve some level of perfection. As with Maslov, it’s not permanent. It’s a goal.

However for a lot of people, the basics attained and fundamental social needs met, the problem becomes one of what next? This is a fundamental problem for a lot of Americans who seem to have lost a vision of an acceptable next step, stage or status to strive for.

The May 2018  Atlantic Monthly has a couple of important articles to consider here. The first is the discussion of a demographic study of Trump voters that appeared in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Written by University of Pennsylvania Professor Diana C. Mutz, it’s entitled Status Threat, not Economic Hardship explains the 2016 Presidential Vote. There’s a myth that the average Trump voter is a disadvantaged, disenfranchised member of the white working class. It’s a bit more complicated than that. For example, Clinton handily carried the white voters earning less than $50000 annually; that may have had a lot to do with the racial and gender makeup of that economic bracket. Rather, the study’s author found something a bit different, as staff writer Olga Khazin of The Atlantic describes it.

Khazin points out that the studies clarify the social science but are unsatisfactory as a source for politicians. If the average Trump voter isn’t just a victim of capitalism, what’s going on that the politician can address easily and satisfactorily without alienating other voters, angering the party leadership or upsetting the NRA or the Chamber of Commerce? As she writes:

Deep-seated psychological resentment is harder for policy makers to address than an overly meager disability check. You can teach out-of-work coal miners to code, but you may not be able to convince them to embrace changing racial and gender norms. You can offer universal basic incomes, but that won’t ameliorate resentment of demographic changes…it’s now pretty clear that many Trump supporters feel threatened, frustrated, and marginalized—not on an economic, but on an existential level. Now what?

Or, perhaps another way to think of it is that with artificial intelligence operating at full bandwidth in the future (SkyNet, anyone? Hawking, Gates, Musk and a lot others have publicly worried about that!) why would we need to have people? With more and more jobs being replaced by automation — like most jobs lost in Coal Country, as opposed to being lost to green energy — what gives your life meaning?

I find a connection between looking for meaning and the conversion of people to Trump voters. They’re not sure what exactly they’re incensed by in a lot of cases, but they know that they’re mad as hell and just want someone to “shake things up.” Well, Trump is definitely a disrupter, but he’s not a creator or an innovator; he’s a real estate developer and a marketing savant. So, how’d he get to be president?

One problem with democracy and populism is the overall lack of quality controls. If you needed to see something that in a rational world should have disqualified Trump as President, remember his promises on health care and replacing the ACA with something else. That something would wonderful, glorious, amazing, generous and full of love.

Great. He was planning on replacing our health care system with the Sisters of Mercy and assigning us all beds in their new Trump-Hospices. Government programs are rarely any of those things, and Health Care is an especially screwed up area in our economy. But the actual disqualifying incident was when he said, “Who knew health care was this complicated?” Well, anyone who ever tried to navigate the system; anyone who ever had a claim denied, or a prescription refused. Anyone who ever had to depend on the system and couldn’t just have a flunky waive an American Express Black card at the cashiers station. Or, had been negotiating health care coverage for a business; or helping someone sign up for Medicare. Or…anyone who’d ever encountered the program.

As I said, two great articles in the May Atlantic. The second article was written by journalist and CBS TV host John Dickerson and while not apologizing for anything Trump’s done, points out that he’s a symptom of a root problem; eliminating him or changing history and having Hillary Clinton in office would produce a different symptom but the root problem would still be there. His article’s title sums it all up quite well: The Presidency: The Hardest Job in the World. As it’s evolved since the Constitutional Convention, the American Presidency has become impossible for one person to handle, and yet it’s inconceivable that the duties, responsibilities and complexities can be eliminated without some massive re-thinking and re-engineering of the Constitution and structure of government.

A preview of Dickerson’s article appeared in The Atlantic’s Daily feed on April 23. A video, it gives an excellent foreshadow of what’s coming. The office is broken, probably beyond repair and no matter who thinks they are in charge, they’re playing a badly handicapped zero sum game. In the Presidency, Wilson Mizner’s remark that “Life is 60/40 against,” is not only true but probably optimistic. The game starts off 60/40 percent, but then you get blindfolded, blindsided and beaten as the rules change.

So, just on the basis of Trump’s normal behavior, he’s kind of set up for failure before taking any steps at all. He brings selling a vision to the market of ideas, but doesn’t really have one that is believable, attainable, coherent or congruent.

So, we’ll have to see how this goes. More on this in part 2.

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/558590/john-dickerson-the-presidency/

Notes:

1. Senge, P. The Fifth Discipline: http://www.panview.nl/en/change-management/fifth-discipline-psenge-summary
2. Maslow, V. HIerarchy of Needs.  https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html