"How Democracies Die" and The Unprecedented Polarization of Our Nation

I recently read two galvanizing books: "How Democracies Die" by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, and "These Truths: A History of  the United States" by Jill Lepore.

In a surprisingly complementary way, they gave me powerful insights on challenges we face in our Nation today.

 I’ll start with the highlights of How Democracies Die.  Drawing on their broad knowledge of worldwide democracies and their failure, and sometimes recovery, Levitsky and Ziblatt identify four controlling factors:

1. A leader practicing authoritarian behavior comes to power.  They are characterized by four things:

a.     Rejection of or weak commitment to democratic rules of the game;

b.     Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents;

c.     Toleration or encouragement of violence;

d.     Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media.

The authors persuasively identify behaviors of President Trump that match with these characteristics.

2. The deepening polarization between the ruling parties; in the case of our nation, the Republicans and Democrats.  While there has always been a legitimate (and necessary) debate on policies, that contest today has morphed into a contest of individual and party moral correctness and integrity, leading to mutual disdain and destruction.  

This development didn’t start with President Trump, but his character and behavior have sharply accentuated it.

As the authors of How Democracies Die observe:  In 1960, political scientists asked Americans how they would feel if their child married someone who identified with another political party.  Four percent of Democrats and five % of Republicans reported that they would be “displeased.”  In 2010, by contrast, 33%of Democrats and 49% of Republicans reported feeling “somewhat or very unhappy” at the prospect of inter-party marriage.  Being a Democrat or Republican has become not only a matter of a political affiliation but an "existential identity."  A 2016 survey (by the Pew Foundation) found that 49% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats say the other party makes them “afraid.”  Among politically engaged Americans, the numbers are even higher—70% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they live in fear of the other party.  I’ll return to this issue below.

3. The importance of “guardrails.”  Countries can be shielded from the negative impact of an authoritarian leader by what the authors describe as “guardrails.”  They include, most importantly, members of the leaders’ own party pushing back on the authoritarian leader, the press, the judicial/court system, other arms of the government (e.g., CIA, FBI) and existing "norms and points of mutual accommodation.”

Today, all of these guardrails are under pressure and, in some cases, direct attack by President Trump.  Overall, encouragingly, they are holding so far.  While Republican establishment leaders have, with few exceptions, fallen in line with Trump, the judiciary and press are holding the line.  One has to note, however, that the Trump administration is working hard to appoint judges sympathetic to the administration’s views, though history  reveals that judges in many, if not most, cases are going to be guided by their own instincts and often that will not be what the leader who put them in placed expected or wanted them to be.

The authors note that authoritarian leaders in other counties (e.g., Venezuela, Poland) have taken steps to change the judiciary and, even, the constitution.

Successful delivery from the leadership of an authoritarian ruler has typically depended on:  a) the entry of a strong unifying leader, and/or b) previously opposing parties coming together against a common cause—often to confront an external threat (war) or to escape a crisis seeking social peace and economic normalcy.

History shows that the return to relative “peace and normalcy" has sometimes depended on papering over and putting aside a divisive issue which shouldn't have been put aside. For example that characterized the two parties coming together after the period of Reconstruction in 1877, setting aside the issue of race relations which to this very day cannot be put aside. 

4. Broadcast and, to a lesser extent, print media and social media like Facebook and cable television have become not only echo chambers of one’s own views and biases, but they add fuel to these views and biases.  What a contrast with 50 years ago when people typically got their news then from 3-4 television channels.  In order to survive, these channels had to appeal to a broad audience, which led inevitably to a much more balanced presentation of the news. 

As Jill Lepore aptly notes, the internet now functions as a “polarization machine:  fast, efficient and deep and all but automated.”

*****

I will now return to the polarization of the nation’s electorate—a polarization deepened by party identification taking on a moral dimension bearing on the perceived moral worth of the individual.  This is persuasively illustrated by the statistics I have cited above on the attitude of parents to the prospect of their child's marrying a person of the opposite party.  

I’ve asked myself what has accounted for this sharply widened polarization:

1. Gerrymandering, with its outcome of most elections being decided based on the primary. This has led to the ascendance of candidates competing on key issues on the far right and far left of their parties.

2. Big money, particularly but not exclusively on the Republican side, has fueled think-tanks and supported candidates with policies and positions often far right or left of center.   

3. Most importantly I believe, polarized views on particular issues such as abortion and gun safety have morphed from what, in the past, were policy and political disagreements and debates into issues of moral integrity.  Notably, and I find encouragement in this, the current sharply polarized views on a number of "litmus test" issues have not always been that way.  Here are a few examples:

1. On abortion, we now see a woman’s "right to choose" being pitted against a fetus's "right to live”.

Before the 1980s, women’s health was not a partisan issue.  Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger in 1916, found many conservatives, indeed more Republicans than Democrats, leading it.  For example, Barry Goldwater and his wife served on the board of Planned Parenthood of Phoenix.

Efforts to legalize abortion were begun in the 1960s not by women’s rights activists but by the doctors, lawyers and clergymen who ran Planned Parenthood.  In 1965, former Presidents Eisenhower and Truman, Republican and Democrat, together served as co-chairmen of a Planned Parenthood committee, signaling an across-the-aisle commitment to contraception.  Between 1967 and 1970, under pressure from doctors and lawyers, often supported by clergy, legislators began lifting restrictions on abortion in 16 states, including California, where the law was signed by Governor Reagan.

Roe v. Wade changed this.  Following the Court's decision by the Supreme Court in 1973, abortion became a political wedge prominently in the hands of President Nixon as he sought re-election.  Jerry Falwell rallied fellow Protestant Evangelicals to oppose abortion, fueled by the broader opposition to ERA and women’s rights.  Nixon, who previously had supported liberalization of abortion laws, changed course to capture the votes of Catholics and Evangelicals.  This represented a major change for many religious leaders.

Southern Baptists, for example, had earlier fought for the liberalization of abortion laws.  In 1971, the church’s national convention passed this resolution:  “We call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental and physical health of the mother.”

A strong majority of the American electorate would support this position today.  

2. Much like the issue of abortion, gun ownership and gun regulation were not historically partisan issues, nor had they been matters of extensive constitutional debate.  

The National Rifle Association, founded in 1871, had fought for state and federal gun safety measures in the 1920s and 1930s.  The NRA supported the 1968 Gun Control Act, passed after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., banning mail order sales, restricting certain high-risk people from purchasing guns, and prohibiting the importation of military surplus firearms.  During this debate, the Second Amendment played little role, since it had generally been understood to protect the right of citizens to bear arms for the common defense.  In the two centuries since the nation’s founding, Lepore writes, no amendment had received less attention in the courts than the Second, except the Third, which concerns the quartering of troops.  Republicans at that time were as likely as Democrats to support gun safety measures as part of law and order campaigns.

In 1972, Nixon, who had expressed the view that guns were “an abomination,” urged Congress to pass a ban on “Saturday night specials” and privately wished Congress would ban all handguns. He confessed he found the idea that gun ownership as a constitutional right to be absurd.

The idea that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to carry a gun rather than the people’s right to form armed militias to provide for the common defense became the official position of the NRA only in the 1970s. Gun rights became a conservative political movement, a "rights" fight especially for white men.

Lepore opines that the gun rights movement was tightly bound to anti-immigrant animus, which was building at the same time.  By 1970, somewhat less than 10 million American, less than 5% of the U.S. population, were foreign-born, the lowest percentage in more than a century and most of these immigrants had come from Europe.  Thirty years later, by 2000, the number of foreign-born Americans had risen to 28 million, constituting 29% of U.S. population, with most of the newer immigrants coming from Latin American and East Asia.

So now, women’s rights and the related issue of abortion, and gun rights—two previously bipartisan policy issues—have become ones defining moral identity. The moral dimension of the polarized views on these cuts deeper than the issues alone.  For many, they come to define the very moral worth of individuals.  Nothing could be more divisive than that.

So, what are we to do?  What should political leaders do to narrow the partisan divide which draws so much animus from the perceived or alleged moral convictions of the holder? What should each of us do?

I have to begin by underscoring the reality that some issues carry an irreconcilable moral choice which cannot and should not be ducked. There is no better example than slavery.  Today, slavery is viewed as an abomination.  It would be impossible to imagine a strong abolitionist in the 1840s and 1850s not characterizing a slave-holder as immoral in his belief. But make no mistake: many if not most slave holders felt their position was morally correct.  Looked at today, we would not see any way to compromise on the issue of slavery.  After all, you can’t say that some people should be enslaved, and others not, without denying the intrinsic right of everyone to personal freedom.

And yet, historically, we spent more than a century in our nation compromising on this issue of slavery.  Compromise was embedded in our constitution to begin with; compromises were legislated in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas and Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed the decision on slavery to be a matter of popular sovereignty in each territory. . Even Lincoln, while hating slavery and convinced that it would eventually be eradicated, agreed to its continuation in the Confederate states up to the midpoint of the Civil War.

Nazism is another example of an “-ism” that was inherently immoral, with its belief in the purity and sanctity of one “pure” race, and the attendant genocide of the Jews.  Hitler made no secret of his beliefs. They were writ large in Mein Kampf. Yet, for years, a host of German and leaders of other nations attempted to negotiate and compromise with Hitler, prepared to live with this abomination. 

 I write this is to express the obvious truth that man is capable of inherently immoral beliefs and bringing them to life through actions that deny the basic right to individual freedom and dignity to every human being.  These issues do not brook compromise.

However, there have been, and today there remain issues which have assumed the aura of an unbridgeable moral certitude so that a search for legitimate and constructive compromise is not even considered.

That is a mistake.

To take an example—prohibition.  In the 1920s in the United States, the abhorrence of drinking of any kind reached the point of being seen by many as an existential moral abomination that had to be outlawed.  A constitutional amendment was passed which forbid drinking of any kind in any place by any person (other than for medicinal purposes).  In time, common sense prevailed.  A person’s right to drink was recognized, but it had limitations—in age and point of distribution.

I have found that the biggest challenge we face is on those issues which pose two opposing rights. This presents the need to choose how to best balance those rights.  I doubt if we will find one simple everlasting answer to what that balance should be. .  New facts can modify the balance. A change in demographics and understanding of history can too. 

Take regulation of the right to smoke. With increasing knowledge of the impact of secondary smoke on other people, the need to limit smoking assumed a much greater priority; hence, the prohibition of smoking on airplanes and in other public places.  

On gun safety, we have the competing rights of hunting responsibly and protecting one’s self in self-defense alongside the right to be free of the violence caused by guns in irresponsible hands.  This is a classic case on which responsible leaders, aware of existing facts, should be able to reach a common-sense compromise which reduces the carnage we sugar from today. Leaders in other countries have done that. So can we.

Abortion is a particularly challenging issue.  You have a women’s right to choose whether to have a baby or not (this lies at the very heart of the right for contraception) and a fetus’ right to life.  How do you balance the right to safety and health for the mother and the right to life for the fetus? That it seems to me describes the task at hand.

Easy to write this. But, how do we attempt to reach a sound compromise on issues like these which involve conflicting rights but which on inspection fall short of involving a non-negotiable moral issue. 

  

1. Let me start with the easy response—“what not to do.”  You don't start out by simply characterizing another other person as "immoral."  While that may be your view, it is not likely to get you anywhere. You must address the issue—not the person's entire character.  

2. Seek first to understand one another, personally and their position on the issue at hand.   Get to know one another, really.  Be able to speak and understand each other’s language.  Only in this way will the magic elixir of mutual trust—the elixir to gaining agreement—start to be built.  

3. Identify those bedrock values and beliefs which almost all of us hold in common.  I believe you can start with our Declaration of Independence, affirming that whatever its source (God or simply human nature) everyone is entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Everyone.  No exception.  All people are entitled to justice and the opportunity through good education and health to fulfill their native abilities.

4. Turning to specific issues like abortion, gun rights and immigration that today deeply divide the nation, start by honestly recognizing that the challenge of resolving these issues grows from our allowing differences to morph into a moral judgment on other people's very character without genuinely attempting to understand and respond to the convictions of the other party, reaching a compromise that honors the bedrock values and beliefs on which our Nation was founded. 

While it will clearly be challenging, I think there is hope to be taken from the fact that the electorate’s position on many of these issues in the past was non-partisan.  I see no reason why well-intentioned leaders representing both sets of views can't achieve a non-partisan resolution that the great majority of people would agree to.

How to do that? Let me briefly, take gun safety regulation as an example:

1. Agree on relevant facts.  Get alignment on the incidence of deaths being caused by guns and their related cause (e.g., suicide, accidents).

2. Gain a common understanding of what other countries and some of our own States have done to regulate gun safety and what has been the impact on gun related deaths and injuries. 

3. Learning from this, identify concrete steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths and injuries while preserving the right to own and use guns by responsible gun owners.

It sounds basic. I can be accused of oversimplifying the process, I know. But as I have noted above, we have followed this path in confronting conflicting rights in regulating smoking and drinking in the past. We eventually negotiated consensus positions, even if not easily or quickly.  That must be our goal. 

*****

Still, stepping back, I need to be honest with myself.  Healing the deep social rupture, which is both a symptom and an outcome of the polarization of views which have taken on moral significance, will take much more than arriving at a common sense set of gun regulations.  For the rupture, which has grown not over a year or two but over several decades, goes very deep and affects almost every part of our life.

The moral dimension of how differences in views are held now gets in the way of conversations among people of almost every type.  Roger Putnam, among others, has commented, indeed has lamented, the decline of civil discourse and participation in community organizations over the past several decades.  It now occurs to me:  this should not be surprising, given the difficulty of having conversations with people who may be offended by what you say or who may offend you by what they say.  For many, this concern has grown so deep that you won’t begin the conversation in the first place.

This same phenomenon has affected what happens in our churches, at least many of them.  I belong to an Episcopalian church which I greatly value and whose pastor has greatly influenced my life.  It is a multi-ethnic church devoted to diversity of all kinds.  However, I have to confess that I don’t feel a person who believed in President Trump and his policies would feel comfortable coming to our church and hearing most of our pastor’s homilies.  To be sure, no one preaches the importance of love and of supporting one another more genuinely and with more passion.   But the rejection of what Trump stands for (and I share it) would be unmistakable and off-putting to a Trump supporter.

Obviously, the depth of the moral divide which separates our two parties has sharply curtailed the comradeship and willingness to work together of Congress members who would work together before.  There have been other causes of this.  People traveling home more, enabled by more convenient transportation.  Less time getting together informally.  But the basic cause is how people are viewing the other, morally.

Most sadly, this chasm has even affected family life.  It’s affected my family life and our conversations.  Try as we might, there are certain conversations that some of us feel unwilling to bring up with another member of our family because it will resolve nothing and lead to acrimony.

So what is to be done about this chasm in how we view and  regard  one another?  What will it take for us to make at least a small step to realizing that we’re in this together, that we share a common heritage, that there are values embedded in our Declaration of Independence and in our most fundamental religious beliefs that should unite us?  What will it take to bring us together, not fully, but far more than we are today?

In the short-term, I believe our greatest hope is to elect a new president who embodies the spirit of being together.  Who can communicate this reality credibly, avoiding the sense that it’s just “more politics.”  This has been done before.  Never for everyone.  Indeed sometimes, for what, in hindsight, was a small majority.  

More often than not, this coming together came in response to a gut-wrenching crisis. Never so prominently, as Lincoln's calling on the people of our Nation to come together after the still-not-ended Civil War in his stirring Second Inaugural.  But even then, we have to remember that many, particularly in the South, did not share this vision.  No, they had been raped and pillaged, as they saw it.  

Franklin Roosevelt rallied the country in 1932 to a unified vision in the midst of the depression.  But still, even then, a large number of people rejected it.

So we have to be realistic.  But equally we have to recognize that we do have a common vision and set of values in this country calling for justice and equal opportunity and a fair chance for all.  We were founded on this vision and, while never lived perfectly, we have never lost sight of it.  We need a leader who can enunciate and rally a majority of our people to it today.   

Do we have such a leader as we approach the 2020 election?  I'm not sure. 

Nothing Donald Trump has said or done offers me hope.  What about the Democratic candidates?  I believe that Joe Biden holds this belief and vision in his head and in his heart but whether he can credibly present it, I’m not yet sure. 

What about the other candidates?  We’ll have to wait and see. I don't write that devoid of hope. I remind myself the country had to “wait and see” with Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and President Obama, too.  Without any doubt, I felt Barack had this unifying vision in his mind and heart.  And he expressed it eloquently on many occasions.  But he had a Republican Party which, from the very beginning, was dedicated to ensuring that Obama didn’t have a second term and, though he tried hard, I think he could have tried harder, especially in the early part of his administration, to reach across the aisle and bring people together as only a president can.

In the end though, healing the rupture I have tried to describe will not be resolved by the president. No, it will fall on each of us and it will take time. It will depend on our being willing and sufficiently courageous to make the effort (and the effort will need to be intentional) to come to know another person as an individual, not as a preconceived member of a stylized class.

  It will depend on our seeking to understand each other's points of view and why we hold them.

 It will depend on our identifying, recognizing and honoring our common values.

 It will depend on appreciating that we are on this journey of life together, basically seeking and deserving the same things—peace, safely and opportunity among them…and that, in some important measure, we have the choice to help one another on this journey in our everyday life. 

Where Did My Republican Party Go?

I grew up a Republican. My parents were dyed- in- the- wool Republicans. They voted for Dewey over Truman. My Mother wrote the campaign song ("Get Out And Fight for Ike)" for Dwight Eisenhower in his 1952 Election.

Over time I have probably voted for as many Republican as Democratic Senators and Governors from my State of Ohio. I voted with enthusiasm for George H.W, Bush in his two Presidential campaigns and his son, George W. Bush in 2000.

George H.W. Bush, especially, was and will forever remain a personal hero of mine. I admired most of his policies. I admired how he worked with Gorbachev to help the peaceful transition of the Soviet Union.

 However, above all I admired President Bush's courage, his fundamental decency, his character, and his care for his fellow man.

These are the qualities we seek in all our leaders, above all the President of the United States.

Sadly, worryingly, we do not find them in President Trump.

When will, I ask, responsible Republicans return to the principles that marked the Republicans I respected?  When will they stop standing aside to let the meanness and cruelty and lying and rumor mongering of Donal Trump go unchallenged? When will they again insist that their candidates, especially for the Presidency, embody the highest values of our nation. starting with integrity and respecting the dignity of everyone.

Hearken to these words of then President Eisenhower: "The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk. I believe that so emphatically that I think far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the-wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ignore it and when necessary repudiate it."

The Power of Engaging With History

 

The power of engaging with history does note rest merely in the knowing and remembering of it; though, in any society, remembering is vital.

 

Nor is the power solely in the learning and applying of history’s lessons today; though, in the face of any injustice or challenge, doing so is imperative.

 

No, I believe perhaps the most powerful impact of engaging with history is also the most personal:  that to engage with history, is to know you are not alone.

 

The great American writer James Baldwin said this better than I or just about anyone else could:

 

“You think your pains and your heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.  It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.”

 

Baldwin was writing, in part, about the strength he drew from history when confronting the racism and anti-gay discrimination he faced in mid-20^th century America.

 

But in his eloquent description of personal inspiration, he captures the deep, profound, and universal impact that history can have on the individual standing up for change or facing a major challenge.  It has had that impact on me.  

When facing a challenge or addressing an opportunity like Procter & Gamble's entering a new country, I inevitably came back to recognize I was standing on the shoulders of giants, famous and unknown, who had taken on these challenges and opportunities before me.

 

This is one of the reasons I suppose that I’ve had  pictures of  my two most esteemed previous CEO's--William Cooper Procter and John Smale--on the wall of my office for years. When facing a tough decision, I have asked myself-- what would they have done.  In other words, what action will be in accord with the Purpose and Values of this great Company of ours?

  

"I Never Thought of Myself That Way Until You Said It"

 

This was the mind-opening perspective offered by the pastor of my church several years ago.   

 

He offered it to recognize the impact we have on others by what we say.  Innocently, I am sure, a parishioner was recalling being characterized by someone as "poor.”   To which he replied, "I did really not feel poor until I had been characterized that way.”  

This reminded me of the power of affirming the positive qualities of another person, reinforcing their positive attributes and, on the down side, the negative impact of characterizing them in a way which creates a dark shadow.

 

It takes me back over 60 years to my math teacher in high school.  Knowing I was #1 in his class, I was dumbstruck when he came to me and said I needed to work harder.  I replied, “But I’m already #1 in your class.”  

 

“I know,” he said.  “But you can do better, a lot better.  You’re better than you think you are.”  

 

This is just one example of many other comments from people who made me think about myself differently.  There was the time, for example, when my two-up boss casually said to me, “Someday, we may all be working for you, John.”  I had only been at P&G for about a year at the time.  I could hardly believe what he said.  Some days I was wondering whether I was even going to make it.  

 

But more than a half-century later, I still remember that comment, reminding me that a kind affirming word makes all the difference in the world.

 

 

 

A Timeless And Ever-So Timely Plea from Robert F. Kennedy

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago:  To tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world, let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”*

*This is a portion of the message delivered almost without notes by Robert Kennedy to a largely African-American audience at a campaign rally in Indianapolis in April, 1968. He had just learned of Martin Luther King's assassination. Little could we have imagined that only a few months later he, too, would be assassinated.

Little could we have imagined that fifty-one years later his plea for "love and wisdom" could be so relevant.

What We Most Need in Our Next President

What we most need in our next President:  Moral leadership which can unite our nation.  It has happened before. It can happen again.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s assumption of the Presidency in 1932 came amidst widespread unemployment and fear, affecting millions of people in this country.  It was also a time of great global upheaval flowing from the economic collapse around the world.  Many intellectuals of the period, witnessing the rise of communism and Nazism, thought democracy was done.  In 1931, Nicholas Murray Butler, long-time president of Columbia University and recipient of that year’s Nobel Peace Prize, told students that totalitarian regimes brought forth “men of far greater intelligence, far stronger character and far more courage than the system of elections.”

In 1932, fascism was socially acceptable and even a little trendy.  Mussolini was still hugely popular well beyond the Italian-American community, and some of the same anti-Semitism coming out of the Nazi party in Germany could be heard in the common rooms of great American universities.  The poet T.S. Eliot gave a lecture at the University of Virginia arguing that “reasons of race and religion combined to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.”  Crystal clear evidence how wise and famous men can get things so very wrong.  

Incoming President Roosevelt had a different view.  In an interview with The New York Times in November 1932, he said the Presidency is “preeminently a place of moral leadership.”  He reviewed the work of great earlier presidents and concluded that each of them were “leaders of thought in times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.”

We are at such a time again today.

As author Jonathan Alter wrote, “for all of his transformative influence, FDR was, at bottom, a vessel president—a carrier of all the qualities, admirable and less so, that presidents need to chart a course in choppy waters.  The vessel held not just personality traits, but the essential elements of the American character:  our faith in ourselves, our spirit of experimentation and our hope for the future.”  A list to which I would add the recognition of the need to tackle our challenges and opportunities, united, not divided—not pitted one against another, but together.

When these elements seemed nearly extinguished in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt restored them in a matter of months.  This was the work not of social forces, but of a man—a man committed to a moral purpose worthy of the beliefs and principles on which our Nation was founded. 

We need such a man—or a woman—today more than ever.

The Pursuit of Truth

 

One of the handful of mandates which I have tried to keep front and center in my mind—and in my actions—is the pursuit of truth.

 

When asked what I most took away from my education at Yale, it was the respect for the pursuit of truth.  When asked what I discovered at Procter & Gamble which most surprised me in the beginning and which was most foundational to my decision to stay with P&G for a career, I cite my recognition of the ever-present commitment to pursue truth no matter where it led and no matter how inconvenient the finding.

 

Little would I have imagined that now in my 80^th year I would have felt the concept of truth being so challenged or feel so compelled to reignite my commitment to taking the time to dig deep enough to try to find it.

 

Undoubtedly, the presidency of Donald Trump has driven much of this animus.  My appreciation of the challenge we face has also been deepened by my re-reading George Orwell’s novel 1984.  Now,  a few weeks after doing that, I have been further motivated by reading the “biography” of 1984, called The Ministry of Truth, written by Dorian Lynskey, This book describes Orwell’s life experience which led to his authoring 1984 shortly before his death in 1949.  It also illuminates the many writers whom Orwell had come to know who influenced his thinking.  Still, with all those influences, there is no doubting the originality of Orwell’s work.

 

The most influential chapter of Orwell's experience came from his participation in the Spanish Civil War.  He went to Spain to support Communists who formed part of the coalition fighting Franco’s Nationalist, Nazi-supported opposition.  His experience in Spain was sobering and disillusioning.  He came to see the cynicism, cruelty and dishonesty of the Communists.  He left this experience feeling there was really no difference between the debilitating totalitarian control of Communism and Nazism.

 

It is mind-opening, though probably not surprising, to see how 1984 has been viewed differently depending on the bias of the beholder.  Liberals viewed it as an indictment of Russia, which it surely was in part.  The right viewed it as an indictment of the liberal left, including the Labor Party in the UK.  The ambiguity in 1984 was part of Orwell’s design, but there was one constant overarching caution in his message, that being the recognition of the challenge we face in pursuing truth.  And how different forms of fanaticism and totalitarianism, enabled more than ever today by technology, can challenge the very existence of the possibility of truth.

 

Orwell’s pronouncement on the importance of the moral value of truth is registered again and again.  Without a consensus reality, Orwell argued, “there can be no argument; the necessary minimum of agreement cannot be reached.”  As Lynskey writes, Orwell was clear-eyed enough to know that one can’t always get to the objective truth but if one doesn’t at least accept that such a thing exists, then all bets are off.

 

 

The dangers of group think are also highlighted again and again.  As Franz Borkenau, an Austrian writer, scribed:  “Civilization is bound to perish not simply by the existence of certain restrictions on the expression or thought...but by the wholesale submission of thinking to orders from a party’s center.”

 

Orwell worried about fanaticism of any type.  In 1940, he wrote, “The future, at any rate the immediate future, is not with the ‘sensible’ men.  The future is with the fanatics.”  How right he was—and still is.

 

Orwell draws the “connection between personal happiness and readiness to believe the incredible.”  It is this “frame of mind” that has induced whole nations to fling themselves into the arms of a Savior.”

 

In 1984, Orwell describes a picture “in the earliest 20^th century” that could well describe today.

 

In an essay called “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” written seven years before 1984, Orwell understood better what he had seen unfolding in Spain:  “For the first time I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship was implied by an ordinary lie. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.’”

 

This was new, he thought.  Totalitarian regimes were aligned on such a grand scale that Orwell felt that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”  Orwell continued, “If the leader says of such and such an event, ‘it never happened’—well it never happened.  If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five.  This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.”  Orwell wrote. And well it should.  

 

Here is the moral and intellectual foundation of 1984.

 

Orwell’s generation experienced the consequences of Big Lies so absurd that they could only be sustained by the extreme control of totalitarianism, the kind depicted in 1984.  As Lynskey points out, and I agree, 21^st century authoritarians don’t need to go that far.  “They don’t require belief in a full-blown ideology, and thus they don’t require violence of terror police,” writes the historian Ann Applebaum, in a 2018 essay for The Atlantic.   “They don’t force people to believe that black is white, war is peace, and state farms have achieved 1000% of their planned production.”  Instead, they rely on “medium-sized lies:  all of them encourage their followers to engage, at least part of the time, with an alternative reality.”

 

All this brings Lynskey, at the end of his book, to Donald Trump.  “Donald Trump is no Big Brother,” he writes.   Nor is he simply a throwback to the 1930s.  “He has the cruelty and power hunger of a dictator but not the discipline, intellect or ideology.”  Lynskey depicts a more apt comparison being Joe McCarthy, “a demagogue who displayed comparable levels of narcissism, dishonesty, resentment and crude ambition and a similarly uncanny ability to make journalists dance to his tune even as they loathed him.”

 

 Lynskey cites chilling precedents in Orwell’s 1984.  For example, referring to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s call to his supporters to “lock her up.”  Trump meets most of the criteria Orwell used to define fascism:  “Sometimes cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist and anti-liberal.”

 

Capturing our own moment I believe, Orwell contended that such men could only rise to the top when the status quo has failed to satisfy people’s need for justice, security and self-worth.

 

Social media has undoubtedly made the process of disseminating “fake news” (ironically being used to attack “real news”) far easier as it has become the primary news source for millions of Americans without meaningful editorial oversight.

 

In conclusion, Orwell feared that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”  As Lynskey writes, perhaps Life magazine’s original review of 1984 identified the essence of Orwell’s message best:  “If men continue to believe in such facts as can be tested and to reverence the spirit of truth and seeking greater knowledge, they can never be fully enslaved.”

 

That outcome can never be taken for granted—not today, not ever. 

 

 

                                                  

Give President Trump His Due--But Don't Let Him Off the Hook For His Character

Message to Democrats (and Republicans and Independents, too) – Don’t fall into the error of not giving President Trump his due.

Face it:  The economy is strong.  Stronger than it’s been in a long time.  Sure, part of that strength flows over from the Obama administration.  Sure, presidents take credit for a strong economy more than they are entitled to.  They always have.  Sure, we still have rampant inequality.

However, the de-regulation steps taken by the Trump administration (albeit some of them flawed) and the tax cut (albeit leading to a massive increase in debt and disproportionately skewed to higher incomes) have played a role in the economic recovery—and it is an undeniable fact that the rate of joblessness is at a long-term low and average hourly wages have finally started to edge up.

Also, let’s give credit to the tough steps the Trump administration is taking to claw back some of China’s illegitimate trade practices, practices that have been going on for a long time.  To be clear, I worry we’re risking categorizing China as an existential geo-political threat when, in fact, it’s an economic competitor.  But the card on China’s illegitimate trade practices had to be called by someone and the Trump administration is doing it.  

There are other policies which the Trump administration has pursued which I vigorously opposed:  for example, on immigration (where we need wise bi-partisan legislation) and on the treatment of our closest allies.  

Giving Trump his due where it is justified is not only intellectually correct, it is politically smart.   If people assert that everything he does is bad, nothing would be credible and the spotlight on what I believe matters most—his deeply flawed character—will be diminished.

I won’t belabor here the characteristics of Trump’s character which utterly disqualify him for a position of leadership in any organization with which I’ve been associated.  I will only cite his utter and repeated disregard for the truth, his disrespect for and denigration of others and, for these reasons, his inability to unite the people of our nation around the values on which we were formed.

A final word of caution.  While presidential candidates cannot and should not fail to zero in on Trump’s flawed character, they must be able to also authentically present themselves and a set of economic and social policies which offer the promise of helping to bridge the poisoned atmosphere which separates the country today.

"Don't Let it Happen. It Depends on You"

The Ministry of Truth:  The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey

 

I’ve separately written an essay based importantly on this book, summarizing its fundamental message of the need for each of us to stand watch over truth.  I wanted to write further here in order to excerpt some of the most salient messages and quotations from the book and take another crack at summarizing its important message as I receive it.

 

On the fleeting nature of fame, Orwell’s concise review of literature that preceded Orwell’s book in both the late 19^th and 20^thcenturies vividly documents the fleeting nature of fame.  He reviews book after book, popular at the time, that have faded in memory.  None more significant than Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000—1887.  Published in 1888, it became the most widely read novel in the United States since Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the most imitated since Jane Eyre.  The book reframed the turbulence of Bellamy’s time as the painful but necessary precursor to a peaceful, socialist utopia.  “Bellamy is the Moses of today,” wrote one commentator.  President Roosevelt read and discussed Bellamy.  The Atlantic Monthly named Looking Backward the second most important book of the past 50 years.  The president of the Book of the Month Club described 1984 as “Bellamy looking backward in reverse.” 

 

*****

 

As a self-critic in the months leading up to the publication of 1984, Orwell talked down the novel, calling it “a beastly book, an awful book really, a good idea ruined.”

 

As one commentator offered on Orwell’s life:  “Nobody considered (him) a failure except for the voice in his head, without which perhaps he wouldn’t have achieved what he did.” 

 Isn’t that true of all of us to one degree or another.  I think so.

 

*****

 

Orwell writing on Gandhi.  Orwell admired Gandhi’s courage and intellectual honesty but recoiled from his abstinence and religiosity.  Who would want to be a saint?  “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.”

 

Thankfully, while I have encountered disappointments with people, it has been by far the exception.

 

*****

 

It’s helpful to recognize that, at a time of the kind of troubles which we have now, including Brexit, we have been there before and we overcame them.  It’s striking to read that, contrary to what I would have expected, the jubilation in Britain following the end of World War II was “short lived.”  Rationing, acute housing shortages and the sudden cessation of lend-lease money from the U.S. fostered a widespread sense of anti-climax and gloom.  One study showed that only one in seven Londoners was “happy or elated by the year’s end; 40% were worried or depressed.”

 

Already for some, including Orwell, the challenge of a divided world loomed large in the mid-1940's.  In a prescient newspaper column called “You and the Atom Bomb,” Orwell suggested that this weapon might lock the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (which had not even developed its own bomb yet) into a long and paranoid stalemate.  He pictured a state of “permanent Cold War.”

 

*****

 Orwell's Animal Farm, Lynskey writes, is a scrupulous allegory of Russian history from the Revolution to the Teheran Conference.  Each animal represents an individual:  Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, Mr. Frederick is Hitler and so on.  The book can be read as a thematic prequel to 1984.  First the revolution betrayed (Animal Farm), then tyranny triumphant (1984).  The commandments of the revolution are reduced to one famous oxymoron:  “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”

 

*****

 

Blackballing socialism.  The word socialism is being used today by Trump and other Republicans to instantly denigrate the views of several Democratic candidates.  Interestingly, no one did the blackballing better than Winston Churchill in 1945 as he sought to retain his premiership versus Clement Attlee in the Labor Party.  “There can be no doubt that socialism isn’t separately interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state,” Churchill railed.  “No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could allow a free, sharp or violently worded expression of public discontent.  They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.”

 

Could you imagine anyone saying that today?  Hyperbolic expression is not something we’ve invented today!

 

*****

 

On the need to feverishly hold on to reality.  Hannah Irendt said it succinctly in 1951:  “The stubbornness of reality is relative.  Reality needs us to protect it.”

 

One of the challenges in holding on to reality, more present today than ever, is the ever-present nature of social media.  Here is an uncannily prescient excerpt from 1984:  “The people are not going to revolt.  They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s really happening.”  

 

It gets harder and harder to really know what’s happening when there is such an abundance of exaggerated statements and outright lying before us.  It is truly Orwellian, Lynskey writes, that the phrase “fake news,” created by Orwell, has been turned on its head by Trump to describe real news that is not to his liking, while flagrant lies become “alternative news.”  

 

*****

 

In conclusion, Lynskey observed that the 70^th anniversary of 1984 falls at a dark time for liberal democracy.  Yet, he writes, “There is hope to be taken from the reality that millions of people in the ‘reality-based community’ push back against the ‘medium-sized lie’ to reaffirm that facts do matter, to fight for the preservation of honesty and integrity, and to insist that two and two really do make four.” 

 

For folks like me, 1984, and this biography of it by Lenskey, have a lot to offer.  As Orwell wrote in his preface to Animal Farm, liberal values “are not indestructible and they have to be kept alive by conscious effort.”

 

1984 was Orwell’s final, essential contribution to that collective effort.  In this statement he dictated from bed during his final months, he emphasized the fundamental reason why he wrote it:  not to bind our wills but to strengthen them.  “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one.  Don’t let it happen.  It depends on you.”