Category Archives: politics

A Big Beautiful Wall

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, politics, Trump

 

Today,  I considered 2 reports on the border issues in Arizona.  First, I read a brief report in the Arizona Republic newspaper which I decided to subscribe to today for the balance of our visit. I think local news is important. We should not rely entirely on Comedy News.

The newspaper reported on a group of mostly Guatemalan asylum seekers that breached the U.S.-Mexico Border yesterday. A smuggler helped a group of 118 asylum seekers by providing a ladder so they could climb over the wall near Yuma Arizona. that sounds like a lot of people. They were caught on video surveillance scaling the wall yesterday. About 86% of them were families travelling together, Customs and Border Agency reported. The video showed a number of people dropping to the ground after scaling the fence that was about 18 ft.

As the members of the group dropped to the ground they huddled in a group. The person who supplied the ladder, on the Mexican side, was shown leaving the scene in a hurry. According to the report, the people were “brazen  A spokesman for Border Security said, “It shows how brazen these smugglers are and the fact that they’re unafraid I wondered, ‘were they brazen, or were they desperate?” This incident happened about a mile from where 376 asylum seekers dug  holes to tunnel under the border fence last week. That too sounds like a lot of people.

Is this an emergency as Trump alleges? Does it warrant spending billions on a wall? Does it warrant shutting down the American government? Some would say yes. That group in Yuma was the single largest authorities had encountered in the area.

Some say that the wall there is “only” 18 ft. high. We should build it 30 ft. high some say. Of course, if a wall is built 30 ft. high does that mean the next smuggler will get a ladder 31 ft. high? A border guard interviewed by the Arizona Republic said, it might not be so easy because the smuggler would need two  30 ft. ladders. One on each side of the fence (wall). The video showed that an 18 ft. drop was pretty high. Particularly for young children. There are always young children. We have to remember that. These were families with young children. Do we not care about that?

On the radio today I also heard an interesting interview with Santa Cruz Sheriff–Tony Estrada. He is 75 years old and was recently elected for his 7th term as Sheriff.  That county includes Nogales Arizona and Nogales Mexico where  Chris and I lived near  for a month 3 years ago.

Estrada  said he was  the longest running Sheriff in Arizona. He seemed very knowledgeable.

Estrada is not a fan of Trump’s proposed “Big, beautiful, border wall.”  In fact he thinks it is a fantasy. “The wall won’t help,” he said.  Estrada said that almost all illegal immigrants come through at points of entry. Those are the legal border crossings that people use when they cross a border. Those places all have border walls already! They don’t need more walls.

Estrada also said that illegal immigrants were not the big problem, illegal drugs were the main problem. Meth in particular had in recent years become the main problem. This reminded me of Manitoba. Meth is a problem. But a wall won’t help. Those drugs also come in through points of entry, according to Estrada. The real problem is demand! In the US demand for illegal drugs is extremely high. Estrada said, the US has 5% of the world’s population and more than 50% of the world’s drugs. Americans can afford to pay and they demand that they get them. That is the problem. It is not a wall or lack of a wall that is the problem.

Sheriff Estrada said the border authorities could use money in the new proposed bill that Trump insists be signed before the government is reopened. It could be used for better technology (even though they already have the best technology!) and more boots on the ground, but spending money one a wall would be a waste. (Other border guards agree with Trump that building a wall is a good idea.)

Estrada pointed out that once in a while people cross the border with ladders as happened in Yuma, but this is rare. It is also rare that some people dig under the wall. I think he was saying if we wanted stronger borders we have to be smart. Building a ‘big, beautiful wall’ is not smart. I agree.

It’s always better to be smart.

Something Nice About Trump

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Extremism, politics, Trump

 

As some of my critics have pointed out, I don’t often say something nice about Donald Trump. That is true. Today is an exception.

As everyone knows, the American government has been partially shut down for more than 4 weeks. Not everyone knows this has caused serious problems. It causes serious damage to the American economy as many things can’t be done, that should be done. Even more important, it has caused serious damage to many Americans. About 800,000 American government employees are not being paid. Many of them are still expected to go to work. That is inherently unfair.

I blame both sides. Not just Donald Trump, but certainly including him. Trump has said he won’t approve spending that does not include money for a wall on the southern border. This is an absurd position. It is highly unlikely that a wall will do any good. It is just window dressing for his ego. He is asking for about $5  billion at this time. This is small  beer in terms of American political spending. The Democrats say they were elected on the basis of opposing the wall. But Trump also got elected on the basis of promising a wall. Both sides should get over it.

This stand-off  shows how crazily dysfunctional their system of government is. This keeps happening over and over again, particularly as the chasm between Americans deepens. I damages the American international reputation. Extremism is on the march. This should be resolved. That will required either statesmanship or compromise or both. Since statesmanship is conspicuously absent, that means the parties must compromise. That means both sides have to agree to a settlement that is less than ideal from their perspective. So be it. Politicians willing to compromise in America appear to be a species on the endangers species list.

I listened today to  a small part of an interview with Joseph Stiglitz a respected American economist. I really just heard one small part of his talk. That was enough. He said there were figures out there that indicated that 40% of Americans have less than $400 in their accounts. 25% have less than $1,000 That means such a shutdown has serious consequences for these people. I have heard that Air traffic controllers have been working over time at second jobs with Uber so that they pay their portages. Americans need to be fair to their civil servants (even though many of them don’t respect civil servants). Many other people have lost their jobs because they depend on working with government employees. All of this is a serious drag on the American economy.

Today Donald Trump offered to approve a temporary extension of protection for people facing deportation on the basis that they are undocumented, so that both parties in Congress have more time to come up with a solution for this serious problem, but only if Congress approves a spending bill that includes money for the wall. In the circumstances Trump has made a reasonable offer. This will help thousands of people in America who are anxiously awaiting a return to work so they can feed their families and pay their bills. It will  postpone many deportations for at least 3 years. This is good. Not perfect, but good. Democrats should not let perfection be the enemy of the good. The Democrats should compromise, even though that will be painful for them. It will be good for the country. It will be good for many individuals and families. That is more important. Much more important.

The Sleep of Reason

Philosophy/Ideas, politics, , , ,

 

Goya, the famous Spanish painter was well known for dark art.  No one ever accused him of seeing only the sunny side of life. Goya inscribed one of his works with the following words: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” I find that profoundly true.

Voltaire the child of the Enlightenment, one might say a Fundamentalist Enlightenment thinker, said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Our species has impressive powers of reasoning. It is what sets us apart from most species. Yet we give up our advantage all the time. Why do we do that? Why do we allow reason to go to sleep? More importantly, why do we do that when it is clearly against our own interests to do that? That is a very big question. One I would like to answer.

One of the worst things that we can do is to abdicate our power of reasoning. If ever—ever–we give up our rationale for beliefs we are doomed.  We must always insist that all beliefs are based on reason and evidence.

Our reasoning power may be weak. It is certainly far from perfect. For each and every one of us our power of reasoning is flawed, but we never have a better tool to justify belief. Any belief. Beliefs based on evidence and reasoning are not guaranteed to be true. They are not certainly true, but they are the best-grounded beliefs we can have.

Reason goes to sleep whenever we don’t base our beliefs on reason and evidence.  The bars to reason are many and varied and include the following among many others: faith substituted for reason, indoctrination, fear, prejudice or bias, laziness, ignorance, herd instinct or wish to conform, wishful thinking, ideological blinkers, and advertising or propaganda.

 

I am going far beyond religion now. Beliefs based on something other than reason, like faith, or feelings, or wishes, can have dangerous consequences. This can lead to crazy beliefs. No where is that more obvious than the United States. There is a good reason for this. America is in my opinion the most religious country in the west. At least by conventional definitions of religion. Kurt Anderson described this phenomenon this way in his book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire(2017): “Unlike the Earth’s other moderns, we have rushed headlong back toward magic and miracles, crazifying some legacy churches, filling up the already crazy ones, inventing all kinds of crazy new ones.]Because the US has given itself over to beliefs without reason to such a fantastic extent for so long it has become vulnerable to believing all kinds of crazy things. Americans have become vulnerable to all kinds of crackpots from the ludicrous to the deranged.

For example it is astonishing how many Americans believed, without any evidence whatsoever, that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizzeria that had no basement. Or that there is a government conspiracy to spread toxic vaccines. Or that Satanic child molesters are everywhere.  That Obama is the anti-Christ, a  Muslim and was born outside the United States. That the massacre of elementary school children in Sandy Hook by a lone gunman was a scam promulgated by paid actors. That climate change is a hoax. That the high school students at Parkland Florida who were terrorized by a gunman were also paid actors.

The gullibility of millions of Americans is truly astonishing. Where did this come from? I believe that it is the result of checking reason at the door for decades if not centuries.    When reason sleeps monsters are indeed brought forth.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court and Trump’s Muslim Ban

politics, religion, ,

 

On January 27, 2017, within a week of his inauguration, the American President Donald Trump tried to fulfill a very popular election promise to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”  That was one of his famous promises that he made during his campaign. This was all part of his design to “Make America Great Again.” He tried to fulfill this promise by issuing Proclamation 13769 that was swiftly turfed out by lower courts. Instead of appealing those decisions Trump came back with a new Proclamation 9645 in September 2017  that he himself called a “watered-down version” of his original proclamation that he actually preferred.

To those of us who always believed the United States was the epitome of religious freedom this was shocking. A number of Human Rights groups immediately launched legal action to stop the second Presidential directive as well and the case ultimately arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court. There were 9 judges who heard the appeal and 7 of them upheld the President’s proclamation.   While this surprised many, the opinions of the court are lengthy and complicated, and many judges weighed in, but I want to comment on the decision of the American Chief Justice Roberts speaking for a large majority of the court and an interesting dissent delivered by Justice Sotomayor. I will comment first on the decision of the majority and then the dissent.

Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that the proclamation claims to be seeking to improve vetting procedures for foreign nationals travelling to the U.S. by identifying ongoing deficiencies in the information needed to assess whether nationals of particular countries present a security threat. The American agencies developed a “baseline” for the information they required in order to confirm the identity of individuals seeking entry into the US and to determine whether those individuals posed a security threat.

The American agencies determined that 16 countries had deficient information sharing practices and presented security concerns as a result. During a 50-day period in which Homeland Security made diplomatic efforts to encourage foreign governments to improve their practices it determined that 8 countries remained deficient. Eventually Trump determined that 1 country had improved enough to be taken off the list.

The Proclamation placed varying entry restrictions on the nationals of 8 foreign states whose systems for managing and sharing information Trump deemed inadequate. Most of these countries were countries in which a majority of people were members of the Islamic faith.

The President’s directive caused all kinds of chaos and harm to people around the world since it was implemented without warning, catching travelers and their families unawares and stranded.

The State of Hawaii and 3 individual Americans with foreign relatives who were prohibited from entering the US, argued that the Proclamation violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Establishment Clause of the Constitution which prohibits the government from establishing or favoring any religion.

The majority decision was actually fairly straightforward. It held that the President is given broad discretionary authority to suspend the entry of “aliens” into the US. Courts should defer to the President who is given the power to suspend entry and for how long and under what conditions. The word “aliens” may seem harsh, but that it the wording in INA. It vests the President with “ample power” to do what he did.

The Supreme court noted that President Trump had first ordered Homeland Security and other governmental agencies to conduct comprehensive evaluation of every single country’s compliance with the information and risk assessment baseline and then based on that review he found that restricting aliens who could not be vetted adequately by American officials on account of failures of their own government, was in the national interest. The Proclamation made it clear that the conditional restrictions would remain in force onlyso long as necessary to address the identified inadequacies. Finally, the class of aliens identified were a group of people linked by nationalityand not religion.

The majority of the Supreme Court rejected the claim that the President’s statements showed that the President’s stated concerns about vetting protocols and national security were only pretexts for discriminating against Muslims. The Proclamation was expressly based on legitimate purposes so the court should not interfere with the President’s legitimate exercise of his powers under INA. It really was that simple in the view of the majority of the court.

All of that seems simple and almost unassailable. One might wonder what all the fuss was about. But wait until you hear about the opinion of the dissent. I will cover that in my next post.

Whisper words of Wisdom

Moral Humility, Philosophy/Ideas, politics, Truth Seeking, ,

I am still struggling with the concept of moral humility–an elusive but important goal.

A good friend of mine, much smarter than me, told me that he does not feel he can do more than ask gentle questions. He is very effective at avoiding excessive arrogance. He practices moral humility. I aim to move in that direction.

That does not mean I should be silent. I think that if we see someone acting badly, particularly if that person is in power, we should speak. We should do that respectfully, but we may and should do that. I am trying to teach myself to criticize gently, without pontificating. That is not easy.

Today I learned something valuable for a fellow walker in our walking club.  He is a strong Christian—even an evangelical Christian I would guess—and said he had learned something valuable recently.  He said when talking to someone he never tried to convert the other person. Rather, he said,  “I ask questions,” he said, “all I want to do is leave a stone in the other person’s shoe”.

I know that I have been pontificating too much. For example, I have been very critical of capitalism.  I have never denied that capitalism has done a lot of good. It has pulled hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty into poverty. That is a momentous achievement. We need to do even better, but that is not nothing. It is a lot. I doubt that I have converted anyone.

Yet that does not mean we must give capitalism a free pass. We cannot allow capitalists free rein to destroy life on the planet as sometimes they seem bent on doing. We must criticize, but do so with humility always remembering that we mightbe wrong. Recall the uncertainty principle. Act as if we might be wrong.

As the Beatles said, “Whisper words of wisdom. Let it be.”

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Books, Philosophy/Ideas, politics, Truth Seeking

Like the Republic of Imagination that I read last year, this book, Reading Lolita in Tehran that I read this year in Arizona, was brilliant. Both are written by Azar Nafisi. This one is an odd little book. It is written by a young Iranian professor of English literature who now teaches at an American University, but tells us about her first years as a professor in Iran during and after the time of the Iranian Revolution. She started sort of a book club at her home when she felt suffocated by the oppressive regime while teaching  in the University of Tehran. She went home to escape and took some of her female students with her. The professor and her students rebelled. They rebelled not with guns, bombs or conspiracies. They rebelled by reading American and English literature! In their hands that was a revolutionary activity.

All of the women lived in a totalitarian society where officials were wary of the Professor but didn’t really know what to do about her. Some of them learned how to resist. Some of them suffered serious consequences, but that is not really what the book is about. The book is about literature as rebellion.

Nafisi denied that a book was in the ordinary sense moral. She did say this, “it can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.”

One of the most amazing scenes in the book is when her class at the University decides to put the book The Great Gatsbyon trial.  Her students play the roles. The prosecutor is a strict straight-laced Muslim regime supporter. The defense counsel is one of her more radical female students from her book club. It is a remarkable achievement. According to Nafisi, “a great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals , and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.” It is a revolt against moral hubris in favor of what I have come to call moral humility or restraint.

The Iranian officials tried to prescribe what all the people should do, how they worship, how they love, what they read, and what they think. It tried to restrain them totally.  The women became revolutionaries not by any overtly political acts, but only by readingand thinking. None of them fired a gun. Yet, the women learned how literature can defeat ideology. This is what Nafisi in her second book called “the Republic of Imagination.” Nafisi sees literature as revolutionary force opening the mind to possibilities. Imagine please, Jane Austen as a revolutionary!

Its books like this we should read when we are forced to confront authoritarianism. Times like now.

Jonathan Haidt on Moral Humility

Extremism, Moral Humility, Pessimism, Philosophy/Ideas, politics, reason

I have adopted the notion of moral humility from Jonathan Haidt, one of the speakers at Arizona State University this year as part of their year long series of lectures on free speech. He is  professor of psychology. He had some interesting things to say on a number of topics. One of them was “moral humility.”  He urged all of us to practice more of it.   He contrasted it with extremism.

The classic failure in the 20thcentury to follow modest and humble goals was of course Communism.  They practiced an extreme form of utopianism.   Albert Camus, another of my favorite political thinkers had a similar way of thinking. He opposed thinking without limits. He wanted political leaders to be modest. Humble in other words. The failure to be humble, he thought, is that it leads to an abundance of graves.  That is the problem with utopian zeal or revolutionary terror.

British philosopher John Gray said, “Terror has been used in this way wherever a revolutionary dictatorship has been bent on achieving utopian goals.” Or as he also said, about the Communists, “the scale and intensity of Bolshevik repression, which was the result of attempting to reconstruct society on an unworkable model.” They wanted to create the perfect human—an impossible goal.

Gray finds even more examples of dangerous Utopian thinking. He finds it on the left and he finds it on the right. He finds in religion–in Christianity, and in Islam. He even finds in the Nazis ideology. They wanted to create the pure Aryan race.

Part of the problem with utopian thinking is that it leads to orthodoxy. After all, if you know absolute truth, then there is only one way to the truth and nothing can stand in the way. There is no need to be modest or restrained when you know absolute truth.

The Buffalo Springfield also got it right when they sang:

“A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and carrying signs

Mostly saying, ‘hooray for our side’ ”

There is no need to be humble when your team is cheering you on no matter what you say. That is a license to be extreme. You can call Hillary Clinton “Satan.”  You can compare Donald Trump to Hitler. You can suggest that Justin Trudeau is the devil. Then you can desire to burn the others at the stake. And you will feel joy at the prospect. This is about as far from humility as you can get. No matter what you say, your side will applaud. And if you listen only to your side, you will naturally begin to think that you are a genius. You deserve the applause. It’s hard to be humble when your side gives you a standing ovation.

Donald Trump is of course a perfect example of this. Recently he said at a rally in front of his fans, “Some have asked me, “Did you have anything to do with the Korean leaders getting together?”  He shrugged, grinned mischievously and said, “How about everything.”  Not much humility there.  Then his fans chanted repeatedly “Nobel. Nobel. Nobel.” And Trump grinned again, as if that was a reasonable suggestion. When your side is cheering you on, no matter how absurd, you accept the fawning.

What amazes me is Trump’s fans accept his abject lack of humility. He says he is the smartest. It does not matter how dumb he is. They lap it up. America, it seems to me, has given up on humility. I wish they hadn’t. Many of us could use more of it. Including me.

The Uncertainty Principle

Moral Humility, Pessimism, Philosophy/Ideas, politics, reason, religion, Truth Seeking, violence

Moral humility is born out of uncertainty. Bertrand Russell, the great British philosopher was inspired by John Locke. Locke always emphasized that all knowledge is uncertain.  People should always take into consideration that they might be wrong. This should be remembered whenever we deal with others who have different opinions from us. This leads directly to tolerance in practice. Live and let live. Reject fanaticism in favour of moderation.

Russel called this the liberal outlook. it lies not in any particular beliefs but rather in how they are held. Instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively with the understanding at all times that new evidence may show we were mistaken and will then abandon our beliefs. This is the opposite of how theologians hold beliefs.

Critical thinking is not utopian. It adopts instead what I have called the Russell principle, after Bertrand Russell. He said, “it is wrong to inflict a certain harm to achieve a dubious good.The more uncertain the future goal one is trying to achieve, the less the harm one must employ to obtain it.” It might be permitted to inflict violence to avoid a certain greater harm, but it makes no sense to inflict a certain harm to avoid an uncertain future harm unless that future harm is much, much worse than the means. This always requires a rational analysis of the probabilities. The more dubious the future goal the more gentle must be the means employed to obtain it. The problem with many modern revolutionary utopians is that often they inflict a certain substantial present harm to achieve not just a dubious future goal, but an impossible goal!

I prefer modest goals and modest means.  Many believe such views, especially in religion or politics, is too tame. They prefer missionary zeal. I don’t. I prefer moral humility.

 

Moral Humility is not Utopian thinking

Moral Humility, Pessimism, Philosophy/Ideas, politics, reason

Moral humility is the opposite of utopian thinking. It recognizes limits. It recognizes ourlimits, The concept of moral humility is associated with the concept of modesty/pessimism of John Gray one of my favorite modern philosophers.

His concept is a logical consequence of a sceptical attitude.  If one is uncertain then one should be careful about claiming moral superiority over another person. One should hesitate to judge others. That does not mean we can never judge others. It does mean we should not be too quick to judge others. I think I have been too quick in the past.  I yearn to ease up. As Gray said, “ Utopias are dreams of collective deliverance that in waking life are found to be nightmares.”

Utopian projects are by their nature unachievable. As Hume put it: ‘All plans of government which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind are plainly imaginary.’” That is why we must be modest. We must be constrained in our optimism. Too often it leads to dire troubles. That is why Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia—a term he coined—meant both ‘a good place’ and ‘nowhere.’ That was why he set his imagined community in a far-off land.

We are very unlikely to find Utopia and are much more likely to find dystopia when we try.  Just like heaven is an illusion, unless it is here and now, so too with Utopia. That is a fundamental flaw with utopian thinking. It looks for a non-existent heaven and then frequently imposes great misery on us in a hopeless effort to achieve what cannot be achieved. That was why Gray’s advice was to be wary of those who argued for Utopia. Instead, Gray urged, “it is dystopian thinking we most need.”

Moral humility requires that we abandon the search for perfection and accept the limitations of the human.  As has often been said, but no often enough, perfection is the enemy of the good.

Obama often told his advisors that “better is good.” We can seldom (never?) do the perfect, but we can usually do something that is better or worse. We should always choose the better and we should often be satisfied that this is all we can do.

We can always make things worse. And as Obama also said to himself, “Don’t do stupid stuff.” Going to war in Syria would have been stupid. One look at American misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan make it clear that is very easy to do stupid stuff by going to war in the Middle East.  And the costs of stupid stuff can be horrendous.

It is always important to think things through before jumping into a fray. It is often very stupid to jump in, no matter how tempting it seems. This takes time. This may make a leader look weak. It actually makes a leader look smart.

Utopian thinking is the opposite of critical thinking. It accepts impossiblegoals so it justifies the most brutal means. Nothing is too extreme when the object is perfection. Or as Bob Dylan said, “For you don’t count the dead with God on your side.” The religious pursuit of perfection should be rejected for exactly the same reasons. Murder is always justified if the goal is a higher form of human. Lets abandon that goal.

On Being Judgmental

Moral Humility, Philosophy/Ideas, politics, Truth Seeking

I know moral humility is something I have to learn. I wish I had more of it. often it is too easy to be judgemental. From my blogging post it is too easy to pontificate. High horses are difficult to get off with grace.

This is what a friend recently posted on my Facebook page in response to one of my epistles, “Some years ago, while working through some structured Spiritual Exercises, I came to the awareness that there is so much depravity in me… that anyone else’s shortcomings were just not properly on my agenda.” (I have changed his words slightly. I think this was a mild rebuke of me. And I appreciate it. I will tell you why.

I hate to use the defence that Trump’s new lawyer  Rudy Giuliani recently used when he basically admitted his client was guilty of all charges. Not the best defence for a lawyer to use.  Yet that is exactly my defence.  I agree with this subtle charge. Not only is this right it is profound.  I should look at my own shortcomings before looking at those of others. After alI have plenty to go around. It is too easy to be judgmental. Remember Omer Simpson’s prayer, “Please God let me go to church regularly so I can learn to be more judgmental.”

Moral humility requires that we abandon the search for perfection and accept the limitations of the human.  As has often been said, but not often enough, perfection is the enemy of the good.

I think one of the most profound passages in the Bible is Micah 6:8 which says, “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”Right now I want to emphasize “humbly”, though the other two are important too.I really need more humility and I need it badly.

I have been pontificating too much. That does not mean I won’t criticize others when I see something is wrong in my opinion. I think that would be abdication. After all I think we should point out important errors others are making, particularly if they are powerful people. We all benefit from criticism. But I must always remember that it is just my opinion. I have not found absolute truth. I must remember my own flaws first before pointing a finger at others. If you know absolute truth how can you be humble? If you don’t you mustbe humble.

But I wil continue to speak. I just hope more wisely.