In 1759, Voltaire published the novel Candide, which featured a character Professor Pangloss. Though a great many calamities follow Candide and the Professor in their travels, Professor Pangloss never alters his philosophy of life. Nor does he ever lend a helping hand, neither first nor in return, even to those who saved his life. His beliefs are summarized as “whatever is, is best.”
A century and a half later, L. Frank Baum published The Wizard of Oz, a story with which every American is likely familiar. Young Dorothy, much like Candide, is in the throws of a great adventure full of difficulties. She is likewise both helped and persecuted by strangers. Fortunately, she survives because she is helped by courage, intelligence and compassion, embodied in the characters of the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man. Without these compatriots, Dorothy would have perished. Her faith in goodness, her willingness to meet the requirements of the fraudster Wizard, and Glinda the Good Witch’s counsel would not have been enough for the young and naive girl to defeat the evil character of the Bad Witch. Had Dorothy needed the help of Pangloss, it would not have been forthcoming.
Another book, written in the early 1600’s, is Don Quixote, which features a character, a dreamer, who wants a world where men are chivalrous, noble and honorable. His motto could have been, “whatever is, isn’t nearly good enough.’
And then there is the Declaration of Independence, which ends with the words, “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” These rebels were quixotic, and simultaneously demonstrated courage, intelligence and compassion. They were far from perfect, but they must have had a decent understanding of human shortcomings. They attempted to form a government which would check their worst impulses, whether it was greed or panglossian indifference. The Declaration was soon followed by the Articles of Confederation, and a dozen years later, the US Constitution.
The Constitution has endured because it shares biblical wisdom. In Mark 2:21-22, Jesus speaks about putting new wine into new wineskins. If you put new wine into an old wineskin, as it ferments it expands. New wineskins can stretch. Old wineskins can’t, and as a result they burst and all the wine is lost. The Constitution is designed to be a new wineskin, to perpetually allow new people and new ideas the room to expand and improve upon the past. Its very existence replacing The Articles is proof of an attitude of continuous improvement. The Civil War was the result of a mistaken attempt to preserve the folly of slavery rather than accepting the lessons dating back to Moses. Courage, intelligence and compassion were lacking in The Confederacy.
Unfortunately, greed and indifference continue to be an obstacle to ‘a more perfect union.’ Despite the best efforts of The New Deal to create a just society after the economic collapse of The Great Depression, a large number of systemic failures plague our times. Health insurance was invented as a way to ensure everyone got the healthcare they needed. Today, health insurance prevents people from getting healthcare. Yet, the republican party offers only obstacles to fixing the problem. Like Pangloss, they embrace ‘whatever is, is best,’ and ignore the struggles others experience. Their panglossian approach is sadly consistent, but that is what the word ‘conservative’ has always meant. Liberals have always wanted to fix problems; conservatives have always been content letting them fester, caring only about their own comfort and nothing else.
The list of ways that conservatives and republicans have betrayed American idealism is woefully long. They claim to be unwilling to negotiate with terrorsits, but in fact won’t negotiate with Americans. When women in the military complained over sexual harassment or worse, they were content to blame the victim. While they give lip service to the sacrifices of soldiers, they allow them to be subject to low wages, poor facilities, and prey of loansharking. They give abundant praise to the small business-owner, but reject the contribution of their laborers, and give every possible favor to large public corporations in which they hold stocks. Citizens pay taxes on their full income, while businesses only pay taxes on profit. The equivalent would be for citizens only to pay taxes on what they saved, yet it is always businesses that get more tax breaks.
The title of Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations, refers to the social contract. Without a social contract, a nation is poor and miserable. He also wrote, ‘a nation with the highest rate of profit goes to ruin the fastest.’ He was never an advocate for greed, and continuously condemned the collusion between business and government to exploit others. Like Don Quixote, Adam Smith yearned for chivalry and better character in men. The American Revolution was less about the King, though he got a lot of blame, and more against the Lords of Trade, who set up monopolies that feathered their nest.
Now we have had the rise of Donald Trump. His tenure was marked with repeated excess, greed, indifference and cruelty. Incompetence writ large. Zero statesmanship. Trump is another of history’s charismatic megalomaniacs, gifted in convincing others and intimidation simultaneously. Those that believe his lies need intelligence, those afraid of him need courage, and those angry at whom he demonizes need to learn compassion.
Since about the time of Nixon, when the republican party was infused by the fleeing racists of the former democrats, republicans have consistently been a party of obstructionism and hypocrisy. The dignity of Eisenhower is but a distant memory. Like Pangloss, unwilling to lend a hand, worse than Pangloss, stopping others from helping others.
Soon the republicans will stand in judgement of an impeached president. They will need to decide how they want to be remembered. Will they embrace the courage, intelligence, compassion, chivalry and idealism that have been beacons of light for mankind, or will they choose to be Pangloss? A vote to acquit is not nearly good enough, and is dishonorable.
Brilliant post! If a failed presidential attempted coup doesn’t warrant conviction, what does?
Thank you for this beautiful essay. I’d like to ask permission to share it with my family and friends, but will obviously respect it if you would prefer that I not. I realize that this blog suggests to “share widely”, but I feel better asking your permission.
Yes, please do. Thanks for the compliment.
I see an apparent strategy emerging from Senate Democrats that may help this argument. A growing number of Constitutional scholars suggest that the 14th Amendment can be used to block Mr. Trump or his co-conspirators from holding federal office. The 14th Amendment does not speak to the specific rules that would apply in the Senate, and the argument is that this creates an opening to accomplish the feat using a simple majority vote.
The threat of such a conviction may be enough to persuade reluctant GOP Senators to vote for conviction on the second impeachment.
The two week period before beginning the trial also provides time to gather additional evidence of guilt. The apparently felonious attempt to force the DoJ to interfere in the Georgia voting results is difficult to explain away. Once that attempt is tied to Donald Trump (and it surely will be), it is very difficult to avoid convicting him.
That’s going to be a tough case to make. It seems there would have to be some formal finding that an individual “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” This is not as an objective a standard as the age and residency requirements. If a Secretary of State refuses to put a name on the ballot on this basis I suspect the lawsuits will fly.
In this case, the formal finding is a majority vote of the Senate (under section 5) that Mr. Trump committed sedition (as defined in section 3). Once that step is taken, it would then take a 2/3 majority vote to “remove such disability”.
The issue at hand is not what any individual Secretary of State did or did not do — it is instead what Donald Trump (and perhaps his co-conspirators) did.
I don’t think it will be hard to marshal a majority of the Senate that agrees that Donald J. Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.
There is already graphic video and audio evidence that Mr. Trump actively and intentionally fomented the insurrection.
Re: DOJ
I’m not sure you could convict him for discussing committing a crime which he never carried out. It could be dismissed a brainstorming strategy session and a passing but rejected idea, much like ordering martial law, etc. It would certainly put the proceedings into thoughtcrime category.
Re: 14th Amendment
Section 3 seems to require a 2/3 vote to allow a seditionist to be allowed to serve again, whereas section five does seem to allow a conviction with a majority vote. Very interesting…and a bit scary. Every majority could void the minority, and it would take a 2/3 vote to reseat them. It certainly makes the Court be something more than a wonky bystanders observing the proceedings. But the greater issue seems to be upon us. If people insist upon a civil war, they will create one.
Attempted bribery is still a crime, even if the attempt is rejected.
As I understand it, the contemplated crime is attempting to use the DoJ for personal/political purposes, and attempting to coerce the DoJ into committing a crime.
Indeed. So, again as I understand it, a majority of the Senate could vote that Donald Trump (and other federal officials) committed sedition. It would then take a 2/3 vote to “remove such disability”.
A majority of Republican voters currently supports insurrection. I’m not sure whether that constitutes “civil war” — there have been other insurrections and they have been handily put down.
I am perfectly comfortable with using whatever coercion is needed to put down this White Supremacist insurrection.
But the bribe wasn’t attempted, it was only discussed.
What to do with this?:
“CNN)Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.”
We might as well put Timothy McVeigh in charge.
I invite you to re-read the New York Times reporting on the most recent attempt, involving Jeffrey Clark. From the 22-Jan-2021 piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/politics/jeffrey-clark-trump-justice-department-election.html, emphasis mine):
These were brazen attempts to force acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Trump appointee Jeffrey Clark to illegally use the force and power of the DoJ to advance Donald Trump’s personal political agenda.
That meeting is an explicit example of an attempted bribe, just as the infamous Ukraine call was an attempted bribe. The reporting of the New York Times has already been confirmed by NBC News and CNN (according to each network). This reporting has to be confirmed — after all, it took years to confirm the impeccable reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — a confirmation that is surely possible given a cooperating Department of Justice. White House calendars are available that will show whether the reported White House meeting took place.
Mr. Trump has spent four years trying to force the DoJ to do his bidding. That is illegal, and was much more than just a discussion.
Ah, Adam Smith. Republicans/Conservatives/Free Market types love to quote his “Wealth Of Nations” in ways similar to Evangelicals quoting the Bible; if it suits their narrow agenda, it is sacred text but pay no attention to any passages that might not fall in line.
Smith supports a living wage when he writes:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
But then Smith never imagined that today’s American capitalists have discovered a way around that by externalization of labor costs. We are all familiar with the Walton family, and many of America’s corporations simply externalizing a portion of the cost of their employees health care, housing, food, and care after retirement to the government. Margaret Thatcher famously said the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. American capitalists do not seem to have that problem so long as they place the right people in government.
How big is the National Debt? Lol. We ran out of money under capitalism a very long time ago.
People think Marx and Smith were opposites. I think they agreed on almost everything of substance.
Smith did imagine exporting jobs overseas. That was why he favored tariffs. When he argued “the invisible hand” it was that a social contract is local, and cheap imports are bad, because people would want to live in a just prosperous community. Cheap imports would disrupt the balance of the invisible hand.
He probably didn’t imagine the gated conclaves that exist today.
Are you advocating a return to the gold standard?
FDR eliminated the gold standard in 1933 because the lack of liquidity it created caused the wave of bank failures that destroyed the American economy — especially for working-class families — that year. The government literally did not have the gold needed to stop the banks from failing.
A healthy economy requires an enormous volume of money to be in circulation (the “money supply”). The result of an insufficient money supply is a catastrophic deflation (as America learned in 1933).
The national debt is not the result of running out of money, at least not in the sense that you appear to be using it (if I correctly understand your comment). It is more like an accounting fiction needed to keep spreadsheets in balance in a context where that balance is neither possible nor appropriate.
Runaway deflation is far worse than runaway inflation. In particular, it destroys working-class families.
It is worth noting that pretty much every first-world nation has a “socialist” economy (in the sense that Ms. Thatcher and the old-school “conservatives” use it). It is also worth noting that the impact of Ms. Thatcher’s economic policies was devastating to working-class families in the UK. In particular, wealth concentration increased dramatically on her watch.
I agree with the concluding paragraph of your thread-starter. I also agree with Paul Krugman about the role of deficit spending, the depraved hypocrisy of the GOP “debt hawks” (except when a GOP president is in power), and the fundamental dishonesty of literally everything about the GOP since Ronald Reagan.
I predict that the Senate Republicans will vote to acquit because they know full well that they are signing the political death-warrant of their party if they do anything else.
One of the basic facts that they consequently must stay in denial about is that their party is already dead — their insane behavior is the only way to maintain even a pretense that it is a viable political entity.
Runaway deflation is far worse than runaway inflation. ”
I call the gold standard the ‘colored dirt standard” which was replaced by ‘the colored paper standard’ and now is primarily the ‘electronic digits standard.’ Each is equally meaningless. It’s like saying a football game can run out of points. It’s all absurd and make-believe. The game isn’t real, the score isn’t real, the winner and loser isn’t real. It’s all an artificial (aka intellectual) construct.
Within this baseline absurdity, there are multiple sciences proposing a cause and effect philosophy. Most of it is more akin to alchemy than to the scientific method, as it relies on an interpretation of data rather than observation of the data. A subtle but significant difference.The interpretations tend to be wholly political, aka “more for me, less for you.” All are justifications of greed. Kids in college want debt forgiveness, business owners want lower taxes, seniors want social security, etc., and so on. The ‘problem solving’ seldom extends beyond their own nose. The various political stripes are simply an extension of the various economic dogmas. Since we have a complex division of labor, there are all lot of different interpretations of ‘me first.’ The mortar that holds it all together is the belief that money is real. I abandoned that belief a while ago.
Your thought that deflation is worse than inflation reflects a common misunderstanding of what either are, and what is going on. First, deflation does not exist.
At best, deflation is a slower inflation. This occurs when somebody lowers their profit margin. All profit is inflation. Changing my markup from 200% to 100% is not deflation, it is less inflation. Sometimes/often “deflation” is cutting out a step in the process. As an apple moves from tree to table, every hand that touches it adds profit. The consumer pays the profit for everybody that touches the apple. If you buy direct from the grower, you could possibly reduce the profit embedded in the apple. In practice, the farmer usually just sells the apple at close to the former retail price, and pockets a lot of extra profit. However, his harvest is too much for the Pick Your Own crowd to deplete, so chances are he will send a fair amount to a wholesaler. These apples will go through the usual steps to land in the fruit aisle of your local grocery store. The effect is the same. The consumer who eats an apple pays for all the profit attached to that apple. In no way can the price of the apple deflate. It is a free gift from God and Mother Earth. It can’t be less than free. We add a numerical value to it, and if money is colored dirt or colored paper or seashells or electronic digits, it is HOW we count that matters. Rather than following the money, we need to be following the math.
Take for example the Louisiana Purchase. It was a direct result of the experiment involving paper money, which started in France in 1720. It quickly collapsed, and led to the sale of the former Mississippi Company (aka the Louisiana Purchase) for @ $25 Million. My town built a high school about 15 years ago for $25 million. It’s quite a difference going from a vast area of land to a single building. That’s a lot of inflation! But, inflation hasn’t stopped. Then we built a new middle school, that cost about a whopping $50 million. People focus on a gallon of gas, while all these absurd numbers swirl around them ignored. I recently found a 40 year old box in my basement. The shipping cost on a pair of Timberland boots was $1.65 in 1980. Today that would be about $16.00 In those days all the data and billing was by hand. Today it is all computerized. How could we be more efficient and the cost go up 10 times more? The boots have probably gone up 5 or 6 times, and are now made overseas.
So, why and what is the National Debt? The Debt is simply the accumulation of all the inflation recorded in private transactions. We are playing football! But the game never ends, everybody is their own team playing against other teams. And, as you said, there needs to be a robust supply of money (aka points) to keep the game going. Since only the government can issue points, it must be in debt. (And because Orwell has a sense of humor, we call it a treasury). It makes no difference how you value the points. Colored dirt or colored paper, it is the math that controls the game. And, the laws of mathematics don’t care about majority rule. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, it won’t be enough because inflation is always faster automatically.
The problem, of course, is that we must consume to survive. There is no alternative to remove oneself from the mathematical madness that we created and perpetuate, unless it is done collectively and simultaneously. What troubles us is easy to fix, but we seemingly don’t even have enough sense to be able to count votes anymore.Yes, we are in a very bad crisis!
If that made sense, or at least sounds like it might, a fuller explanation can be found in my book on my website (free, of course) at http://www.behappyandfree.com
Tell it to the millions of Americans who lost everything in the bank collapses of 1933.
I agree with you about how Republicans should be treated. I suggest we stop there.
Have you ever played a game of Monopoly? Everyone starts out even. Everyone gets paid the same. Everyone takes turns. Yet, the game ends in total collapse. There is a boom (bank spending) and then a bust, which is beyond the banks ability to address. That is what inflation does. Deflation doesn’t exist. People run out of access to money, and the regulated pricing of real estate wasn’t enough to protect them. Inflation is faster because you must consume. In Monopoly your only reprieve is to go to jail and hope to collect rents while there. Real life generally doesn’t have one.
You appear to live in a different universe from me.
More than likely. lol But is that a bad thing? You might like my universe better.
btw, the game Monopoly was based on the ideas of Henry George, another economist with a particular point of view, but he could see beyond the end of his nose. There are people today who think of themselves a Georgeists, but they are actually quite different, and worse. As it turns out, the model is actually better than his analysis, because it could just as easily be called a perfect socialist or a perfect capitalist model.
I thought it was Richard Nixon who took us off the gold standard as part of the Bretton Woods reforms.
Nixon took us off the gold standard but FDR collected all the gold so basically private ownership ceased. At some point that was repealed. The same thing happened in France. The experiment with paper money was a failure, but it was all supposed to be backed by gold. Since there wasn’t enough gold to keep pace with inflation, they made owning gold illegal. It all had to be handed in. Long before the French Revolution and the Troubles, crazy paranoia went through society. All you had to do to take revenge on someone was to accuse them of having gold. You could plant it or bribe a government official. Paranoia was rampant. If you get any conservative mailings, then you will see this paranoia is alive and well, especially among libertarians. They have Liberty coins and other such BS. They can’t and won’t see that money is make-believe. They complain about dollars (colored paper) but gold (colored dirt) is “real.”
FDR disconnected most of the linkages between the gold supply and US currency. Richard Nixon removed the remaining vestiges that were left.