Elites and The People

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Following the Brexit vote, the rise of Donald Trump, and numerous other political trends around the world, I’ve heard two equally plausible narratives for the increase of populist sentiment.

In one version, “the people” populist movements purportedly support are easily misled. While some versions of this narrative are generally dismissive of so-called average people as lazy, stupid, or uninformed, it’s important to note that disparaging “the people” is not required for this narrative to work.

In the UK, for example, Brexit leaders actively misled voters and rescinded key promises shortly after the election. Whether you attribute people’s belief in those promises to mere stupidity or to reasonably placing their faith in political leaders who only later turned out to be corrupt, the net result is roughly the same: there was a failure of popular opinion.

Walter Lippmann, who famously decried populist rule, eloquently summed up the many issues which may lead public opinion astray:

Thus the environment with which our public opinions deal is refracted in many ways, by censorship and privacy at the source, by physical and social barriers at the other end, by scanty attention, by the poverty of language, by distraction, by unconscious constellations of feeling, by wear and tear, violence, monotony. These limitations upon our access to that environment combine with the obscurity and complexity of the facts themselves to thwart clearness and justice of perception, to substitute misleading fictions for workable ideas, and to deprive us of adequate checks upon those who consciously strive to mislead.

Even if you had ideal citizens, Lippmann argues, public opinion should not be trusted: it is simply not possible for even an intelligent, well-informed person to truly understand the nuances of every issue. Add to that the facts that even well-intentioned citizens are too busy to devote significant time to becoming fully educated and that there will always be corrupt leaders seeking to mislead, and it quickly becomes clear that popular opinion ultimately means nothing.

Any derision of the intelligence or ability of average people simply cements this view.

In my charitable reading of Lippmann, he is not a strict technocrat, rather encouraging a system where people engage on this issues that they are informed on and stay silent on issues they know nothing about.

Either way, though, it seems fair to say that Lippmann’s core argument is that “the people” – as a mass entity – should not rule. Today’s proponents of this view point to the rise of populist movements as proof of this claim. There would be far less chaos and instability if educated elites instead orchestrated political matters.

A different narrative comes from the other side: today’s political uncertainty is not the fault of the people; rather the blame lies primarily with elites.

Populist movements may or may not be ultimately good for the people who support them, but just as the first narrative doesn’t require a distain for the people, this narrative doesn’t rely on the validity of certain political outcomes.

Our global economy is in turmoil. People have lost their jobs with little hope of finding a new one or of successfully retraining for the new economy. Feeling trapped and hopeless in the grips of poverty, people are justifiably angry and looking to reclaim a sense of autonomy. Perhaps their electoral choices will relieve their trauma; perhaps they are desperate enough not to care. Perhaps upsetting the system – which has failed them so miserably – is enough. At least that way they know they can still affect something in their lives.

I’ll leave aside here issues of racism or xenophobic nationalism as motivators for these movements. While its no coincidence that hate groups are on the rise in the US and that far-right parties in Europe are flourishing on racist rhetoric, this is a topic which could well cover a whole post on its own.

Furthermore, the issue of racism can similarly be told through these two narratives. On the one side, “the people,” acting out of hate or a sense of dwindling power, are not to be trusted to lead. In the other narrative, the explicit hate professed by some in populist movements can be better interpreted as an expression of the broader, systemic racism we are all complicit in. That is, in the U.S. context, blatantly racist rhetoric may be distasteful, but let’s not pretend that Northern, liberal racism is not a thing. We’ve all got a lot of work to do.

This second narrative is not intrinsically populists, but rather urges an understanding and appreciation for the current actions of large portions of the population. Elites may have led us astray, but it remains uncertain whether “the people” will be able to guide us back.

If the core element of the first narrative is that the people cannot be trusted, the core element of the second is that elites cannot be trusted.

“The people” may have a great deal of flaws, but the greatest destructors of society are elites who assume they know what is best.

The danger of this line of thinking is well described in James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State. The worst disasters of the twenty century, he argues, were brought about by elites who were “uncritical, unskeptical, and thus unscientifically optimistic about the possibilities for the comprehensive planning of human settlement and production.”

Bolstered by power and a weak civil society, leaders around the world engaged in “utopian social-engineering,” audaciously believing that humans generally, and themselves in particular, had the capacity to plan and build a better world.

“The Great Leap Forward in China, collectivization in Russia, and compulsory villagization in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia are among the great human tragedies of the twentieth century, in terms of both lives lost and lives irretrievably disrupted,” Scott argues.

What I find interesting about this perspective is that it is less concerned with arguing that elites led us into this mess to begin with, but is deeply concerned with how we get ourselves out of it.

In this narrative, diminishing the power of the broader population may seem like an appealing response to current affairs, but that impulse is incredibly dangerous – even more dangerous than the unfettered rule of the people.

I’m afraid I have no satisfying conclusion to this post, but perhaps that is for the best. If there is one thing Lippmann and Scott have in common it is a distrust of human rationality. Perhaps, in the end, none of us can be trusted.

Language and Democracy

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

One of the most intriguing sessions as last week’s Frontiers of Democracy Conference was on “democratic reading and writing,” a topic inspired by Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration.

I’ve only just begun reading Allen’s book, but I am struck by the core of her argument.

“The achievement of political equality requires, among other things,” she writes, “the empowerment of human beings as language-using creatures.”

This seems like something of a bold statement. Not that language is explicitly not required, but there are so many great barriers to political equality, it is easy, perhaps, to dismiss language as the least of our problems.

But words do have power.

In How To Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin argues that words can, in the fullest sense, be actions. The performative act of an utterance goes beyond the physical action of speaking; something is actually accomplished by the words themselves.

“Saying something will often, or even normally, produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons,” Austin argues, “and it may be done with the design, intention, or purpose of producing them…”

Not all utterances are performative acts, but some words do have this power. Words may bind one into an agreement, or may have a real impact on the listener.

The American Declaration of Independence, which Allen close reads in her book, is one example of the power and action of words. It “brings to light the incandescent magic of human politics: the fact that it is possible for people, with ideas, conversations, and decision-making committees – both formal and informal – to weave together an agreement that can define our common life.”

The process of reading and writing democratically is messy, frustrating, and hard. But from it, Allen argues, emerges a greater whole, something better and stronger than would have existed otherwise. “The source of sturdiness is solidarity,” she writes.

The Declaration, Allen finds, “is as much about how to solve the central conundrum of democracy – how to make sure public actions can count as the will of the people – as about anything else. It is about how to ensure that public words belong to us all….I believe the Declaration succeeded, and succeeds still, because it took on the task of explaining why this quantity of talk, this heap of procedures, these lists of committees, and this much hard-won agreement – such a maddening quantity of group writing – are necessary for justice. The argument of the Declaration justifies the process by which the Declaration came to be. It itself explains why they art of democratic writing is necessary.”

In short, as Allen argues: this country was built on talk.

Discontent of the Commons

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

In a session on “The Politics of Discontent” at this year’s Frontiers of Democracy conference, democracy scholar Alison Staudinger proposed considering “discontent” as a common pool resource. I am deeply intrigued by this idea, and interested to understand just what that might mean.

In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin popularized the concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons,” describing the game-theoretic prisoner’s dilemma which communities of people face when utilizing some common resource:

Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain….the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another… But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit–in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

This idea has been applied to a wide variety of resources which can be broadly categorized along two spectrums: excludable and subtractable. As the names suggest, excludable indicates whether or not people can be easily excluded from a resource while subtractable indicates whether use of a resource by one person restricts use of the resource by another.

The clothes I am wearing are both excludable and subtractable – I can prevent your use of them, and you cannot use them while I am using them. Wikipedia is non-excludable and non-subtactable – I cannot prevent your use and my use does not diminish yours. If Wikipedia added a paywall or if a State blocked its use, it would become excludable.

Seen as a common pool resource, discontentment would seem to fit in this non-excludable, non-subtactable category. I cannot stop you from feeling discontent, and I can be discontent without infringing on your ability to also be discontent.

Yet, this is perhaps not the most helpful framework. The political challenges we face today are not so much that people feel discontent – rather the challenge is the causes and repercussions of that discontent.

It is a fundamental aspect of a pluralist society that not everyone will agree all of the time. We each have different needs and wants, and our desired outcomes will at times be in conflict. We can’t all get what we want.

Under a simple definition, then, a person is discontent if they do not get their way. Since not everyone in a pluralistic society can simultaneously have their way, it is intrinsic that some portion of people will be discontent with any given issue.

This presents at least two possible social challenges connected to discontent. If discontent is inequitably and systemically distributed, those who have more discontent with have reason to see the system as unjust. If people experience the system as treating them unjustly, they will have reason to try to change the system – minimizing their own discontentment while making someone else more discontent.

Here, discontent seems to no longer be a resource – rather can be better interpreted as the absence of a resource.

The word that comes to mind here is power.

People with power can get the outcomes they desire, minimizing their discontent; people without power are subject to the whims of those with power – increasing the likelihood that they will not get the outcomes they desire and increasing their discontent.

Power, I would argue, is an excludable and subtractable resource. Those with power have certainly been known to exclude others from acquiring power, and if I have power, it does, I think, diminish your ability to have power.

This model unites people from all sides of the political spectrum who feel discontent under current systems and institutions. Some may feel they are losing power, some may never of had much power in the first place.

And the highest elites may feel most secure in the continuance of their power if everyone else is busy fighting over who gets whatever scraps are left.

Elinor Ostrom, the brilliant economist who argued that the drama of the commons need not be a tragedy, traveled around the world empirically studying communal and institutional management of common pool resources.

In Covenants, Collective Action, and Common-Pool Resources, Ostrom argues that conflict and destruction arise when “those involved act independently owing to a lack of communication or an incapacity to make credible commitments.” On the other hand, if members of a community “can communicate, agree on norms, monitor each other, and sanction noncompliance to their own covenants, then overuse, conflict, and the destruction of [common pool resources] can be reduced substantially.”

Managing common pool resources, then, is difficult but not impossible.

“If those who know the most about local time-and-place information and incentives are given sufficient autonomy to reach and enforce local covenants,” she argues. “They frequently are able to devise rules well tailored to the problems they face.”

In addition to this autonomy of the people, communication is essential:

“When symmetric subjects are given opportunities to communicate and devise their own agreements and sanctioning arrangements, then the outcomes approximate optimality,” Ostrom writes. “These findings are surprising for many theorists, because the capacity to communicate without an external enforcer for monitoring and sanctioning behavior inconsistent with covenantal agreements is considered to be mere ‘cheap talk’ having no impact on the strategic structure of the game.”

In seeing the rise of populism, in watching discontented people making bad political decisions, in seeing the mismanagement of a common pool resource, the liberal impulse is often to solve the problem through stronger regulation – to create institutions nominally managed by the people which can step in with rules and authority in order to overcome the destructive self-interest and poorly-informed actions of individual actors.

But perhaps Ostrom’s work on common pool resources ought to give us pause – “the people” may not collectively be wise, but they have the ability to surprise us; to work out their differences and to successfully self-manage in ways that external enforcing institutions could never accomplish.

Whose Voice Matters?

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

There’s a certain, reasonable narrative of the Brexit vote which sees it as a democratic victory – even if you disagree with the outcome, it does represent the will of the British people.

As I wrote yesterday, there are also plenty of good reasons to find this popular vote a democratic failure, but today I want to focus on a different piece of the issue: whose voice matters?

72.2% of UK’s registered voters cast a ballot in last week’s referendum, with 17,410,742 (51.9%) going to Leave and 16,141,241 (48.1%) favoring Remain. While this is a rather narrow victory, the result ostensibly embodies the collective will of the British people.

This story is complicated, however, when you look at the breakdown of the results. Voters 18-24 voted overwhelmingly (73%) for Remain while voters over 65 largely voted (60%) Leave. All age groups under 44 favored Remain, while those over 45 voted Leave.

Citizens under the age of 18 weren’t allow to cast a ballot at all.

So while the vote may represent the will of (some) people, younger voters, who will likely bear the brunt of the fallout from the decision, had their will overturned and may not have even been allowed to vote.

Furthermore, there is the broader question of exactly which people ought to have input into this kind of decision.

I would consider democratic systems to be those in which the people most affected by an issue play a role in shaping the response to that issue.

That role may be mediated by elected officials or other mechanisms of indirect democracy, but ultimately, the democratic spirit is one which gives weight to the voices of those whose interests and rights are most at stake.

A 2015 report from the UK Office for National Statistics found that nearly 3 million (2,938,000) people living in the UK are non-British EU nationals – about 5% of the UK population and 7% of the workforce. These residents have suddenly found their legal status in jeopardy – as their EU citizenship may no longer be sufficient.

Another 2,406,000 UK residents hold neither British nor EU citizenship.

Of these nearly 6 million residents without British citizenship, those who are migrants from Commonwealth countries – essentially former British territories – were allowed to vote. This includes the UK’s large population of Indian (793,000), Pakistanis (523,000), and Irish (383,000) nationals; but notably excludes the UK’s 790,000 Polish residents and 301,000 German residents not to mention many others from non-Commonwealth countries.

So those people who are now facing threats to “go home” and slurs of “no more Polish vermin” were not allowed to vote. They had no say.

Of the 1.2 million UK-born people living in other EU countries – who may also face residency issues if they lose their EU citizenship – only those who have lived abroad for less than 15 years were eligible to vote.

And none of this is to mention the broader population of 443 million other EU citizens whose economic and political infrastructure is deeply at risk following the vote, nor the millions of other people around the world who are feeling the expansive repercussions from this vote.

Around 33 million people cast a vote; 17 million expressed the “will of the people;” and yet so many, many more who had no vote and voice will suffer the lasting impacts of this historic election.

The “voice of the people,” indeed – but only if “the people” are British nationalists.

Is Democracy Broken?

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

If my side won a contentious political fight I would no doubt call it a victory for democracy. If I felt passionately about the issue, I imagine I would hardly even care about the immediate negative ramifications. A lot of things are hard, transitions especially, but that doesn’t intrinsically mean they are not worth doing.

I start with this reflection because I do try to be aware of my own political biases – that whether or not I happen to agree with an outcome can have a significant impact on my interpretation of the process and result.

The United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union came as I participated in an annual conference on the Frontiers of Democracy. On Thursday night I watched with shock – though, I suppose, not entirely with surprise – as the results came in. And while I grappled to accept that a Leave vote had actually happened, I found myself thinking – isn’t this exactly what we are fighting for?

The people had spoken.

In announcing his resignation the next morning Prime Minister David Cameron, who fought hard for Remain, praised the vote as a noble exercise of the democratic process:

…the country has just taken part in a giant democratic exercise, perhaps the biggest in our history. Over 33 million people from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar have all had their say. We should be proud of the fact that in these islands we trust the people for these big decisions. We not only have a parliamentary democracy, but on questions about the arrangements for how we’ve governed there are times when it is right to ask the people themselves and that is what we have done.

Perhaps this is the sort of hollow and passive aggressive praise you might expect from a seasoned politician, but the fact remains: this is what democracy looks like.

Arguably, anyone dedicated to the ideals of democracy – particularly those of us who are neither UK nor EU citizens – ought to respect the outcome of vote. With an impressive 72% turnout, it seems fair to say: the people have spoken.

It is reasonable to argue, though, that the question should never have been put to a popular vote in the first place. Cameron – perhaps foolishly – promised the referendum in 2013 as a way to keep his coalition together. If he hadn’t had been so politically short-sighted and naïve, the vote would never have happened.

Importantly, one need not distain democracy in order to disfavor putting such big, important issues to popular vote. Democracy is about far more than voting. Democratic engagement means working with people to solve collective challenges in an ongoing and multifaceted way. Votes and polls may be useful tools of democracy, but real democratic work must take place every day in our schools, workplaces, and communities.

This provides a meaningful path for side-stepping the issue; remaining a champion of democracy while decrying the outcome of a given referendum. Without the deep infrastructure required for real democracy, without opportunities for people to civilly discuss the issue with those who disagree with them; without unfettered access to accurate, unbiased information, without providing the tools necessary for making a good decision, it is foolish to ask the people to decide.

After the referendum, UKIP leader Nigel Farage quickly retracted his pledge to redirect £350 million from the European Union to the National Health Service (NHS). Among the slew of stories about Leave voters who regret their decision, then, one narrative finds that Leave voters are reasonable people, experiencing real economic loss, who were lied to and misled by corrupt politicians.

If they regret their decision, it is not a failure of democracy, but a failure of democratic infrastructure. It is that broken infrastructure that democratic proponents seek to fix.

But there’s another narrative out there, perhaps even more widespread. Stories of foolish voters who never wanted to leave the EU, but who voted Leave in protest, never thinking Leave might actually win. Naïve voters who had never considered that the vote might have broad and lasting ramifications. These voters come off as stupid, foolish, and too lazy to educate themselves about the importance and impact of their vote.

Under this narrative democracy is broken: the people cannot be trusted.

This is a classic debate in democratic theory.

In designing a political system, should we trust the democratic wisdom of everyday people – building systems that promote their education and thoughtful engagement, or should we be skeptical of their – and our own – capacity; building systems that favor the input of those most knowledgeable and effected?

This is an important discussion that gets to the heart of what the Good Society ought to look like.

But while the Brexit referendum seems to perfectly highly multiple theories of democracy – whether you see it as democratic victory, a democratic failure, or a failure of democratic infrastructure – it is just one of many moments poised to have real, dramatic, and long-term repercussions.

The work of civic studies is the work of thinking about how our collective world is and should be structured. Looking around at the pressing problems of our communities, it is working together to ask and answer the question, what should we do?

In truth, I don’t know that I have any answers, but, in these challenging, complicated, and disturbingly dark days, it seems there is no better question.

Dark Times

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

This weekend, I’m attending the annual Frontiers of Democracy conference, which this year is themed around “the politics of discontent.”

I’m afraid it’s a timely theme.

17,410,742 people just had a profound and long-term impact on European politics and global economic markets.

535 people in the U.S. Congress can’t get anything done.

In his thoughtful opening remarks, Peter Levine quoted Bertolt Brecht:

Truly I live in dark times!
A sincere word is folly. A smooth forehead
Indicates insensitivity. If you’re laughing,
You haven’t heard
The bad news yet.
What are these times, when
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many misdeeds,
When, if you’re calmly crossing the street,
It means your friends can’t reach you
Who are in need?

There is so much work to be done.

Okinawa and the Shadow of U.S.-Japanese Relations

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Yesterday, some 65,000 people in Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, gathered to protest U.S. military bases on that island.

The protest was sparked by the recent rape and murder of 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro, a crime which has been linked to an American military contractor, and is reminiscent of the 1995 protests which followed the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three American servicemen.

Among Okinawans, there is a widespread perception of U.S. bases as “hotbeds of serious crime,” though, as the New York Times points out, “defenders of the military point to statistics that show American soldiers and sailors in Okinawa are charged with crimes by the Japanese authorities at lower rates than locals.”

The strain between the U.S., Okinawa, and Japan, however, runs deeper.

Teacher and protestor Noboru Kitano, 59, is quoted in the Japanese Times as succinctly explaining the heart of the matter: “Japan is still a military colony of the United States. This base symbolizes that.”

The U.S. has had a continuous presence in Japan since the end of the second world war. Following the post-war occupation, the 1952 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan – which has been active in its current form since it was updated in 1960 – provided for the permanent presence of U.S. forces on Japanese soil.

The majority of those forces are on Okinawa.

As of January 2016, the Japanese census puts 1,432,387 people living on Okinawa, including about 50,000 Americans – making it home to about half the American soldiers and sailors stationed in Japan. About three-quarters of the acreage taken up by U.S. bases in Japan is on Okinawa.

But, here’s the thing – Okinawa and the Ryukyu Island chain of which it is a part, has its own distinct culture and a long history as a political pawn between Japan and China. In 1879 – around the same times our own U.S. civil war – Japan’s Meiji government annexed the then-sovereign Ryukyu Kingdom, creating the Okinawa prefecture we know today.

During the second world war, just 66 years after its annexation, Okinawa was the scene of one of the bloodiest skirmishes in the Pacific, and the largest military engagement in history. The brutal, 82-day, battle claimed the lives of 14,000 Allied forces, 77,000 Japanese soldiers and somewhere between 100,000 to 150,000 Japanese civilians died.

Nearly all those civilians were Okinawan, and many of the Japanese soldiers were in fact Okinawan conscripts, drafted by the Japanese government against their will. The shocking death toll of this battle would then be used to justify U.S. use of nuclear weapons – as the American government became convinced that a land battle on the Japanese mainland would be just as horrific as the Battle of Okinawa, if not more so.

It’s entirely unclear if this is true, however. Seen as Japanese by the American troops and considered second-class citizens by the Japanese troops, Okinawan civilians suffered atrocities at the hands of both sides. Caught between the two superpowers, it was Okinawan civilians who suffered – one of the reasons for the horrific toll.

Following the war, the Japanese had little choice but to cede to American interests – which included establishing a strong presence of military operations in the east.

Okinawa, then, provided the perfect setting for rebuilding U.S.-Japanese relations. A strong U.S. presence there mitigated the risk of loosing the island prefecture to China – a manuver in the interest of both U.S. and Japanese officials. Furthermore, the Japanese lost little by ceding Okinawan land, while simultaneously ameliorating their U.S. occupiers. It was a win all around – except for the Okinawans.

This is a history that’s critical to understanding today’s Okinawan protests of American military bases. It’s almost beside the point whether local perceptions of American military crime are accurate or exaggerated. Just a few generations ago, the Ryukyu Kingdom was a proud, independent nation. Desired by China, annexed by Japan, and then colonized by the U.S., Okinawa has found itself continually caught between the interests of these global superpowers. And while great games of politics play out across the world stage, it seems it’s always the Okinawan people who suffer.

That is why they protest.

A Moment in History

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Last night, Secretary Hillary Clinton made history by becoming the first female to be the presumptive presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party.

Republican commentator Ana Navarro commented on Twitter, “Confession: Thought woman thing wouldn’t mean much to me, but yes, feel something I can’t quite articulate seeing 1st woman nominee #History”

Among my own circles, I saw mothers and fathers alike thrilled to be able to share the moment with their daughters. Who watched with pride and hope as Secretary Clinton declared “tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.”

It’s a historic moment for women in this country, and I’m glad that many are finding it so moving and powerful.

But, for me…it feels oddly flat.

Ezra Klein posits that many have met this moment uninspired because Secretary Clinton is “winning a process that evolved to showcase stereotypically male traits using a stereotypically female strategy.” Or, more generally, “there is something about us that makes it hard to appreciate the magnitude of her achievement.”

In Klein’s view, the strength of a candidate is traditionally measured by how rousing their speeches are; how fiery their rhetoric. But those aren’t Secretary Clinton’s strengths. Not only is she “not a natural politician,” but – as a woman – she would be socially penalized for being too loud; too outspoken.

Instead, Secretary Clinton’s strength is that she’s a relentless coalition builder; “arguably better at that than anyone in American politics today.” This relationship-building is a critical political skill, but it’s also what makes her seem so establishment. She seemingly had the primary locked up before it even began – establishment, perhaps, but the result of decades of painstaking relationship building.

Klein argues then that if Secretary Clinton’s victory feels hollow it is because of the norms we’ve imposed – because we undervalue the traditional feminine skill of relationship building while overvaluing traditionally masculine oratory.

This argument is intriguing, but still somewhat misses the mark. I’m skeptical of Klein’s gendering of rhetoric and relationship building – do those really break down as a masculine/feminine dynamic?

Of course, this in part is what makes patriarchy so intrenchant – the nuances of sexism and double standards are so subtle as to be commonly overlooked entirely. The biases are so pervasive that I honestly couldn’t tell you how these misguided norms warp my own view.

Yet, as I reflect on my own dispassion for Secretary Clinton’s victory, I like to think that it’s neither personally nor politically motivated. Indeed, I have a great deal of respect for Secretary Clinton.

Instead, as we mark this historic moment, as Americans declare their pride at finally selecting a female nominee, I’m reminded of the many, many, many women who have served as heads of governments and heads of state around the world.

Despite what several articles have written, Secretary Clinton is not the first woman to be nominated by a major political party – rather she is the first in the U.S.

Not to downplay the significance of that achievement, but I suppose I’m having a hard time feeling the thrill of a liberal victory when the fact that we’re just now getting to this moment highlights just how painfully un-progressive our country can be.

As Steven Colbert cleverly quipped, electing a female candidate “is something you could only see in a sci-fi novel…or any other country in the world.”

So while I suppose that later is better than never – this momentary breath of parity seems like little to preen ourselves over.

And while there may be important symbolism in this moment, I can’t help feel that symbolism does me little good if nothing really changes.

Just last week a white man was given a light six month sentence for the violent rape of a woman while the perpetrator’s father complained that even that minimal sentence ruined his son’s life for “20 minutes of action.” You can read the woman’s own powerful statement here.

And this story is just one of far too many incidents of rape and sexual assault which occur regularly across this nation. RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) estimates that 1 in 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. And nearly 2 out of 3 rapes go unreported.

So forgive me if I find myself unmoved by symbolism; if I want more from my country.

Following the election of President Barack Obama, there was much hope that entering an era where a black man could indeed become president meant we had entered an era where we could truly confront and dismantle our country’s deep racism.

Unfortunately, over the last eight years the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddy Gray, Eric Garner, and far, far too many other people of color show just how little progress we have truly made. There is so much work to be done.

I am satisfied with the nomination of Secretary Clinton, and I am optimistic that come January we will finally have a woman in the white house. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking this moment means as much as we would like it to mean.

This is a historic moment, perhaps, but one that is scandalously far past due. And with the deep, entrenched and often violent misogyny unrelentingly still faced by women in our country today, it is a moment which highlights not how far we have come – but how shockingly further we still have to go.

Hiroshima, Apologies, and American Exceptionalism

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima since the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped 64 kg of uranium-235 over that city, creating a blast equivalent to the detonation of 16 kilotons of TNT.

He is not expected to apologize.

Or, more specifically, he is expected not to apologize. The White House has openly said as much, instead describing how President Obama’s historic trip will “highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

The political calculation of not formally apologizing is hardly surprising. On the one hand, the Japanese Times is reporting that most Japanese people don’t expect or need an apology. Whereas, here at home, the resistance against such an apology is clear. As American Legion National Commander Dale Barnett said in a statement:

We are heartened that the White House promised today that President Obama will not apologize for the bombing of Hiroshima. We share his sorrow for the many innocent civilians who were lost that day. But we temper that sorrow with the joy for the many more American, Allied and Japanese lives that were saved because the war was finally brought to an end in the short aftermath that followed.

And thus the visit will “honor the memory of all who lost their lives” during the war.

In a news segment the other day, I heard U.S. sentiment on this matter described as a bit of American exceptionalism – we made the best calculation we could and we stand by our decision and our right to have made it.

I rather expect we will never apologize.

As I’ve been thinking about President Obama’s visit this week, I was reminded Akiyuki Nosaka brilliant short story American Hijiki.

Nosaka, whose father died during the 1945 bombing of Kobe and whose sister died of malnutrition following the war’s devastation of Japanese fields and food supplies, wrote passionately about life in post-war Japan. His work captures the shock of defeat and highlights America’s constant, ill-conceived attempts to be good.

The whole story is really worth reading, but I including a notable excerpt below:

In the summer of 1946 we were living in Omiyamachi on the outskirts of Osaka, near a farm – which may have been why our food rations were often late or never came at all. More or less appointing herself to the duty, my sister would go several times a day to look at the blackboard outside the rice store and come back crushed when she found nothing posted. Once, we turned the house upside-down but found only rock salt and baking powder. We were so desperate we dissolved them in water and drank it, but this takes bad, no matter how hungry you are. Just then the barber’s wife, her big, bovine breasts hanging out, came to tell us, “There’s been a delivery. Seven days’ rations!” This was it! I grabbed the bean-paste strainer and started out.

…We all watched as the rice man split open a carton with a big kitchen knife and came out with these little packets wrapped in dazzling red-and-green paper. As if to keep our curiosity in check, he said, “A substitute rice ration – a seven-day supply of chewing gum. That’s what these cartons are.” He pulled out something like a jewel case. This was a three-days’ supply.

I carried off nine of these little boxes, each containing fifty five-stick packs, a week’s rations for the three of us. It was a good, heavy load that had the feel of luxury. “What is it? What is it?” My sister came flying at me and screeching for joy when she heard it was gum. My mother placed a box on the crude, little altar of plain wood. The local carpenter had made it in exchange for the fancy kimono my mother had taken with her when we evacuated the city. She dedicated the gum to my father’s spirit with a ding of the prayer bell, and out joyful little evening repast was under way, each of us peeling his gum wrappers and chewing in silence. At twenty-five sticks each per meal, it would have been exhausting to chew them one at a time. We would through in a new stick whenever the sweetness began to fade. Anyone who saw our mouths working would swear they were stuffed with doughy pastry. Then my sister, holding a brown lump of chewed gum in her fingertips, said, “I guess we have to spit this out when we’re through.” The second I answered, “Sure,” I realized we had to live for seven days on this gum, this stuff that made not the slightest dent in our hunger. Anything is better than nothing, they say, but this anything was our own saliva, and when the hunger pangs attacked again, my eyes filled with tears of anger and self-pity. In the end, I sold it on the black market – which was on the verge of being closed down – an bought some corn flour to keep us from starving. So I have no reason to be bitter. One thing is sure, though: you can’t get full on chewing gum.

American exceptionalism indeed.

On Trolls and Dissenters

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Sarah Shugars

Community meetings of all types and topics are frequently endangered by a common complication: that guy.

The person who speaks longer than anyone wants them to, who raises concerns that are unpopular amongst the broader public, or who unfailing uses every public platform as an opportunity to promote their pet issue, whether it is on topic or not.

Many a meeting has been derailed by this character’s irrelevant ravings, and many a community member has been silenced – fearing that if they spoke up they might appear as mad.

But there’s an interesting dilemma in this portrayal: of the many actions, motivations, and outcomes which could be lumped into this category some of them productive and some of them not.

Manin persuasively argues that debate of conflicting views is a necessary condition for successful deliberation – with groups otherwise likely to default towards prevailing norms. Diversity of views is not enough; “disagreement in face-to-face interactions generates psychic discomfort” which groups will avoid given the opportunity.

Good deliberation, then, requires disagreement and debate as a core element – not as something which may arise or not as the context decides.

How, then, can one distinguish the actions of a counter-productive troll and a valuable dissenter? Many times, the unpopular thing needs to be said.

Rachel Barney’s excellent [Aristotle], On Trolling – written, as the name implies, in the spirit of Aristotle, lends some helpful guidance to this question.”Every community of speakers holds certain goods in common, and with them the conversation [dialegesthai] as an end in itself; and the troll is one who seeks to damage it from within.”

The troll, then actively seeks to destroy a community, to set “the community apart from each other” and introduce “strife where before there was scarcely disagreement.”

Barney/Aristotle is careful to note that the troll can be distinguished from the productive dissenter which Manin imagines:

One might wonder whether there is an art of trolling and an excellence; and indeed some say that Socrates was a troll, and so that the good man also trolls. And this is in fact what the troll claims: that he is a gadfly and beneficial, and without him to ‘stir up’ the thread it would become dull and unintelligent. But this is incorrect. For Socrates was speaking frankly when he told the Athenians to care for their souls, rather than money and honors, and showed that they lacked knowledge. And this is not trolling but the contrary, exhortation and truth-telling— even if the citizens get very annoyed. For annoyance results from many kinds of speech; and the peculiarity [idion] of the troll is not annoyance or controversy in general, but confusion and strife among a community who really agree.

Thus the troll takes the guise of a productive dissenter, whom a democratic peoples would do well to embrace, while actually seeking to destroy, not improve, a community through their dissension.

This may be a meaningful epistemic distinction, yet it can be challenging to define in practice. As Manin points out, a “community who really agree” may have simply come to agree through the processes of group dynamics.

Importantly, this type of agreement is not intrinsically related to issues of power and oppression. That is, while one may argue that agreement arrived through coercion is not really agreement at all, Manin is primarily concerned with instances where a group can be genuinely said to agree. The root of this surface agreement may not be coercion at all, but rather an unfortunate result of the fact that individuals tend to be biased and, worse yet, “groups process information in a more biased way than individuals do.”

That is, without some gadfly perturbing the system, groups tend to systematically shift toward consensus, “regardless of the merits of the issue being discussed.”

If we, like Barney/Aristotle, are to take trolling as inherently bad, more productive forms of dissent, exhortation, or truth-telling must then be distinguished. Therefore, following Manin, I’d be inclined to push back on defining a troll as one who sows discord amidst a community which agrees. If agreement was achieved through systematic social processes, perhaps a little discord could be good.

One then might seek to capture trolling through a broader definition of motivation: a troll seeks to destroy while a dissenter seeks to improve.

Importantly, though, destruction is not intrinsically beyond a dissenter’s concern: indeed, a dissenter may seek to break corrupt institutions and social structures. To smash context rather than settle for reformist tinkering, as legal scholar Roberto Unger would say.

More accurately, then, a dissenter can be seen as seeking to improve the human condition, apart from the specific context of political structures, while a troll – like Eris – seeks solely to sow discord.

In his 1992 address to Wroclaw University Václav Havel argues in favor of breathing “something of the dissident experience into practical politics.”

“The politics I refer to here cannot be enshrined in or guaranteed by any law, decree, or declaration,” Havel says. “It cannot be hoped that any single, specific political act might bring it about and achieve it. Only the aim of an ideology can be achieved. The aim of this kind of politics, as I understand it, is never completely attainable because this politics is nothing more than a permanent challenge, a never-ending effort that can only in the best possible case leave behind it a certain trace of goodness.”

This permanent challenge is the noble undertaking of the dissenter, whether in the form of sweeping revolution or more mundane provocations.

In the mundane world of practical politics, then, this leaves us still with the problem: how do we distinguish the permanent challenge of the dissenter from the wanton destruction of the troll?

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