Endorsing Tribalism and Gay Rights

I submitted a brief editorial to AND Magazine regarding the liberal reaction to President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality.  Hopefully it will go up tomorrow.  Having thought about the topic a little more, I feel I would like to use this space to post something of a supplement to my previous comments.  In my AND piece, I pointed out that there was a tumblr blog launched almost immediately after Obama’s television interview, which consists entirely of animated gifs emphasizing celebration of the newfound vocal support for gay marriage.

My first criticism of this sort of reaction is that it’s making a celebration out of something that doesn’t really warrant it.  It shouldn’t have taken this long to get President Obama to make a basic statement of support for the gay community, and even now that he did, that is now what they need; they need legislative and judicial action, which the President can push for and support.

But apart from the fact that their singing and dancing is an overzealous response by some liberals to a very modest change, what may actually be more significant is that it demonstrates a hideous tendency in private citizens’ engagement with the political process.  The people making the gifs for tumblr and otherwise celebrating yesterday’s announcement must be aware of the fact that nothing has substantially changed.  The celebration, then, isn’t about progress; it’s about popularity.  The sad fact is that in the modern political landscape, we are so caught up in the excitement of the process that we consider high-profile endorsements to be tantamount to actual political victories.

The most damnable feature of our typical approach to social issues and governmental procedure is the impulse towards tribalism.  There are few better examples of such tribalism than widespread rejoicing over the affirmation that our ideas have a place among the powerful and the popular.  That is something much different from cheering over the affirmation that our ideas are correct.  But the more we indulge this impulse to gloat over demographics rather than substance, the less clear that distinction will be to us.

I hope that as gay activists continue to express this misplaced pride in who is coming over to their side, they will approach a breaking point whereby they realize that the fallacies of appealing to popularity and authority only serve to make them more like their irrational political opponents.  Hell, anti-gay activists largely believe that they have Jehovah and most of human civilization on their side.  Even if that were true, it wouldn’t make them any more correct, and it wouldn’t prevent progress towards equality.  That kind of certitude provides nothing other than a sense of self-congratulations, which has no place in politics if politics is to be a rational, productive endeavor.

Of course, it is thoroughly at home amidst the sort of politics that we actually do have in this country.

Poverty in Politics - Either Used or Forgotten

I originally wrote this piece to be posted elsewhere, so the comments and events it refers to are a week or so old now. I still thought it worthwhile to post it here.

I think it’s honest of me to identify myself as coming solidly from the left with all of my political writing. But I certainly don’t make a conscious effort to fit myself into a particular camp, so even while I acknowledge my liberal tendencies, I won’t hesitate to begin an editorial with my own criticisms of fellow liberals or the Democratic Party. One party obviously contradicts my ideals more often than the other, but I have no love for political parties in general. And there is plenty of common ground on which I think both Democrats and Republicans routinely fail to serve the country’s interests.

It’s cheap politics for the DNC to utilize Mitt Romney’s remark that he’s “not concerned about the very poor” and to make a campaign ad out of it. In that ad, the quotation is very conspicuously cut off, and anyone who views such things objectively ought to immediately recognize that it both mischaracterizes Romney’s remarks and allows the Democratic Party to dodge the need to present a clear distinction between their policies and his. Taken out of context, Mitt Romney’s comment sure does portray him as callously out of touch. And indeed, I believe he is just that. But he didn’t say what he’s being accused of saying.

What Mitt Romney really said was, “I’m not concerned about the very poor; we have a safety net there, and if it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” That’s quite different from simply declaring that you don’t care one bit about a particular segment of the population. Romney’s not saying that society has no responsibility for the poor; he’s saying that we already do enough for them. I don’t think one needs to twist that argument in order to criticize it. It would be cartoonishly villainous for a presidential candidate to say, “I don’t care if the poor starve to death,” but it’s not exactly saintly to say, “as long as the poor don’t starve to death, I’m satisfied.” It worries me that the Democratic Party feels the need to mischaracterize Romney’s remarks so they sound like the former statement, because that implies that they don’t see the latter as being sufficiently divergent from their more liberal views.

It says something about the alienation of liberalism in modern American society that commentators like Rush Limbaugh unabashedly deride Romney for defending the very existence of the social safety net while Democrats merely pretend that he doesn’t defend it and make that the focus of their criticism. If liberalism were genuinely at home in American politics, somebody would be quoting Romney’s words exactly as he said them and using them to express indignation at the idea that the poor are sufficiently taken care of. Not only is no prominent politician or commentator saying that in this case, no one ever says it.

After his misleadingly shocking sound bite, Romney went on to say, “We will hear from the Democrat Party: ‘the plight of the poor.’” But will we? Honestly, I can’t think of any Democrat who has reliably expressed lofty ideals about ending the epidemic of homelessness or providing assistance to the poor that goes beyond food stamps and unemployment insurance and that attacks the actual system that keeps people poor, by providing public works employment, for instance.

“You can choose where to focus,” Romney said, ostensibly differentiating his campaign from that of Democrats and other Republicans. “You can focus on the rich – that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor – that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.” I don’t believe him when he says that his focus isn’t on the rich, but that aside, I find that everyone in politics today pronounces their focus to be entirely on the middle class. And that’s easy to understand, since not many votes are found on either extreme of the income scale. In fact, given how broad and flexible different people’s conceptions are of “middle-income,” that’s where all of the votes are. Frequently, Americans, whether sitting comfortably within the top five percent of income earners or walking the poverty line like a tightrope, view themselves as middle class. So when a politician talks about defending middle class Americans or putting his political focus on their interests, citizens will tend to think that he’s talking about them. And there’s little doubt that politicians know this.

President Obama’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast regarding the Christian obligation to help the poor were striking precisely because they are so anomalous in mainstream politics. The sentiment seemed earnest and was well-placed at the event, but the fact that the DNC ad was released on the same day compels me to view it with a great deal of cynicism. The ad is a transparent attempt to score points by leaping on an easy way of portraying the Democratic Party, fairly or unfairly, as having more compassion for the poor than their opponents. I can only hope that the prayer breakfast speech was genuine, and not a more subtle example of the same – a quick response to Romney’s ostensible gaffe the day before.

If it was intended as a response, that illustrates the very problem with political treatments of the issue of poverty and economic disparity. The best that the Democratic Party can do most of the time is wait for a Republican to say something objectionable, and then issue a response that says, “We’re not like that; we care about everybody.” I’d be far more convinced if they took the lead, if they actually demonstrated their commitment to solving society’s ills from the bottom up, rather than from the middle out. As it is, the commitment to helping the poor is only something that is claimed, and rarely something that decides policy.

The DNC ad was framed entirely as part of a negative campaign. It cites nothing that Democrats have done or plan to do in order to eradicate poverty, homelessness, or hunger. It points out the initiatives that Romney would likely undertake that would hurt the poor, and it is right to do so, but a preponderance of negative campaigns risks miring us in negative government, wherein the avoidance of harm is considered a good unto itself. I trust the Democratic Party to avoid willingly making life worse for the nation’s poorest citizens, but I do not trust them to undertake truly original initiatives to mend what is broken within American society.

So long as I have reason to believe that the choice in American politics is between the party that doesn’t care about the poor and the party that cares about them only enough to make themselves look good, I won’t be much inclined to take empty pronouncements on the topic seriously, not matter which side they come from.

So Long, Chris Collins

Well, I didn’t vote on Tuesday, but between then and now I’ve actually managed to gather enough information on the former and incoming Erie County executives to know that I should probably feel pretty good about the result. Even though I’ve still seen no evidence that Poloncarz has an actionable vision for improving Erie County, I can at least be confident that the candidate who was personally less deserving lost the seat.

I’ve gotten a clearer sense of Mr. Collins’ evident contempt for the poor, and I’ve heard valid criticisms of his duplicity in cutting government amidst pronouncements of urgency while also giving raises to his own staff. I’ve recently been reminded that he described New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as the third anti-Christ after Napoleon and Hitler – comments which I find disturbing because they ideologically link him to a peculiar blend of evangelism and the New Age movement.

Since the election results came in, I’ve also gotten the definite impression that Chris Collins is a somewhat less than magnanimous human being. Now, I would never vote purely on the basis of personality, but I’m not above cheering somebody’s loss on that basis.

“The public has spoken,” Collins said in his concession speech on Tuesday night. “I don’t quite know what to make of that, but they did. So we accept that.”

He doesn’t quite know what to make of it? How many different ways are there to interpret the fact that he lost? I think what’s to be made of it is probably either that the people of Erie County didn’t like the job that Chris Collins was doing, or they liked the other guy better. “I don’t know what to make of this but I accept it” is the sort of statement a person makes when trying to deny personal responsibility for an outcome. In this case, that outcome belonged in equal measure to the Collins and Poloncarz campaigns, and to nobody else if you don’t conceive of the electorate as a separate part of the equation.

“We accept that” in this context doesn’t really sound like “I concede.” It sounds more like he’s implying that he acknowledges what the results claim, but has doubts about why he lost. Specifically, it sounds like his talking down to the electorate, and suggesting that they made an illogical, unintelligible choice. Such a concession speech is indicative of one hell of an ego.

I suppose his comment could have meant “I don’t know what I did wrong, but I know it was something, and I’m curious to figure it out.” But there’s something in his tone and in the personality that he put on display elsewhere that suggests that he simply doesn’t understand why Erie County doesn’t understand how great he is.

What really floored me, though, was his appearance before the cameras of WGRZ-TV. In covering the outcome of the election, the evening news says:

"I do wish him well, if he needs help in a transition I'd be more than happy to offer that," Collins said moments after conceding the race.

However, Collins also conceded, that at that point he'd yet to formally offer an olive branch to his foe.

"No, Mr. Poloncarz and I have not spoken really in four years...I see no reason to do that tonight either," Collins said.

They haven’t spoken? Have they literally just never run across each other’s paths in four years, or did one of them always duck into an open room when they were about to pass each other in the hall? Four years, incidentally, was the length of Mr. Collins’ term, so I can’t help but wonder whether he actually made a deliberate effort to sever ties with Mr. Poloncarz once he was elected to office. Did he feel that he suddenly outclassed Poloncarz afterwards and that to be seen talking to him would hurt his reputation? Was it pure pettiness?

Even if they started running with vividly incompatible crowds after Collins was sworn in, it can’t have come as a surprise when Poloncarz became his challenger. Wouldn’t speaking to the opposition have been not only civil but politically expedient to get a direct impression of what one is up against? What reason could there have been for not calling and having a word with the man in the run-up to election season? But now that the whole thing is over, does Collins really not see any reason to begin talking to Poloncarz? How about to determine whether there’s common ground shared by the two men’s policies, and thus to see how you can help to set the stage for those initiatives you agree with? How about for the sake of guaranteeing a smooth and beneficial transition, for the sake of the county you apparently just spent four years serving? Or how about just to be a civil human being?

But then, Poloncarz is the guy who made the good people of Erie County foolishly turn against an incumbent who totally had done everything right, he swears. Yeah, fuck that guy.

I recognize that both men are at fault if they have truly not spoken for the past four years, but it’s the self-righteous commitment to seeing that the streak is not broken that makes Collins especially despicable. So on that basis alone I’m glad that he’s out, but ultimately his comments remind me of what I find so frustrating about modern politics overall. It’s why I still don’t know what fifty-four percent of the county voted for, other than a Democrat.

It's Election Day!

My lack of enthusiasm about Election Day belies my faith in the electoral process. I hesitate to say this, but I may actually waive my right to participate in democracy this time around. Uninformed people are better off avoiding the polls, and frankly uninformed is just what I am with respect to local politics. In my defense, it’s not for lack of interest, or for a complete deficiency of effort. But since I don’t read local newspapers, don’t have television, don’t really associate with people, and can’t find any local campaign information online, I had actually found it impossible to get a complete account of who is running.

Of course, I have been aware of the major race, the one being discussed by anyone who’s talking about local politics. But I haven’t been able to discern any reason why I’m supposed to vote for one candidate or the other, other than on account of the parenthetical letters that follow their names on the ballot. I attended a terrible play in the last weekend of October, and before it began the director spoke to the audience about his company’s season and then brought up election season as a final comment, and instructed the small audience to “vote Poloncarz.” Most of those sitting around me applauded vigorously, and I felt sort of left out thinking that these people all shared some kind of firm opinion about the office of County Executive, the job that the incumbent has been doing, and the changes that the challenger could bring about.

Despising partisan politics, I was alienated by the tribalism surrounding me in that room. If a person on stage wants to turn the topic to politics, I think the least he can do is say something substantive. I would have actually been really happy with that bit of grandstanding if it hadn’t followed the formula: mention a popular personality; hold for applause; depart the stage. The assumption seems to have been that everyone in that crowd already agreed with him, and that the reason for mentioning it was just to reinforce how right everyone was. Of course, if they all have such a firm basis for confidence that theirs is the winning horse, surely it would have been pretty easy to mention any one particular thing that we could expect to actually change if Poloncarz takes over as County Executive. In absence of any such statement about the issues, I can only assume that they simply weren’t on the speaker’s mind.

His comment probably had about the political effectiveness of a campaign sign, which is a phenomenon I just don’t understand. I’d be all for campaign signs if there was implicit in them an invitation to knock on the door in front of which they’re displayed and ask, “Why?” But lawn signs are never an invitation to court discussion; they just stand there, broadcasting a name that is probably well familiar to all the passersby already, and conveying no information. Each one is purely a declaration of support – a function which I thought was already fulfilled by voting. Every election season in this area, in addition to the wide array of carbon-copied lawn signs, I encounter a handful that are something like six feet tall and eight feet wide. Are these, I wonder, more effective at their purpose than the normal, non-monstrous signs? I can’t help but look at them as an obnoxious testament to the idea that the physical dimensions of one’s political viewpoints are more important than what they are grounded in.

Since I think so much about the social significance of campaign styles and perspectives on electoral politics, I naturally feel bad about my civic engagement apparently being limited or only intermittent, but I think I ought to take ownership of that situation and allow myself a little pride at the fact that I’m not interested in voting for district judges or comptrollers unless I’m personally invested in or exceptionally well-informed about those races. I’m okay with it being a personal rule that I don’t participate in the elections that are based on nothing other than name recognition and party affiliation.

It seems explicit to me that that is the case with at least the current batch of Erie County elections. The term “negative campaign” is tossed around a great deal, so the deeper meanings that might be conveyed by it are sometimes lost. What little exposure I have had to the local elections has been negative campaigning through and through, and of an especially cynical sort. I’ve received a handful of robocalls over the last week or so, and I’ve found that they tend to place all of their focus on the mission of ousting an incumbent or repelling a challenger, to the extent that whom they are running against is presented as being irrelevant.

I’m not exaggerating. The last such call that I received actually discussed how important it was that we keep a particular candidate out of Erie County government and then ended without ever mentioning the name of a challenger. That was the most stunning example of this skewed emphasis, but it’s typical of what I’ve been subjected to during this election season. I receive these calls, listen carefully to them because I’m interested in the platforms (not to mention the damn names) of the persons on the ballot, and when the recorded voice says “thank you,” I’m left listening to silence for a few seconds, like an idiot, wondering “Is that it? Is there any reason why I should want candidate x other than because I’m supposed to hate candidate y?” The kind of negative campaigning that I remember from television ads for national campaigns at least tended to conclude with a statement about what the alternative was.

I’m curious as to whether the exclusive kind of negative campaigning is specifically designed to exploit the culture of Buffalo and its surrounding areas. I don’t see a lot of nuanced political or developmental thinking around here. Instead, the persistent attitudes of both politicians and their constituents appear to be based on the belief that each of the region’s myriad problems have one solitary cause, and that getting rid of it will in itself provide an all-encompassing solution. Is it any wonder that amidst this thinking our local political campaigns treat getting rid of the incumbent as important in its own right, regardless of whether the person who replaces him has any actual solutions?

Of course, my cynical attitude toward Buffalo is showing through, as I know it’s not fair to suggest that that’s any different from the logic that tends to operate on a national level. Whenever things seem bad, we figure we need to get rid of whoever is currently in charge, and when delivering the country from the hands of party A into the hands of party B doesn’t fix everything, we switch back to party A and apparently never collectively wonder if our limited choices or methods of selection are problematic.

Buffalo seems to be taking the myopia and present bias to another level, though, by only running challengers in cases where there is already enough preexisting public frustration. All eight of the district judges that are up for reelection in the region are running uncontested today, except for one who has to content with a challenge from a write-in campaign. There are also no challengers in the races for County Legislator, City Comptroller, and District Council Member. In the last mayoral election, Buffalo’s terrible, terrible Mayor Byron Brown won election at the point of the primary, because the Republican Party put forth no challenger, despite being petitioned for endorsement by at least one would-be candidate.

Call me naïve, but shouldn’t the opposition party at least put someone’s name on the freaking ballot, even if they have no interest in spending money on a campaign? Why not allow an ambitious member of the party, in this information age, put his platform up online, shake hands at a polling place, start a political career, and give people an opportunity to express their support for alternative ideas, even if by voting for a candidate that has no chance? I recognize that I am being presumptuous again, but the message that I get from this repeated agreement to not oppose incumbents is that if the person currently holding the job hasn’t caused outrage or demonstrated incompetence, there’s no point to trying to come up with better ideas.

If both politicians and constituents think that there’s no point to that and that there’s no point to campaigning on the basis of ideas in the first place, I just can’t see what the point is of voting today.