- How issues in politics 100 years ago resemble those of today;
- How Republicans and Democrats live in radically different universes;
- What the “genius” of the American Founders were thinking;
- Zbigniew Preisner’s film score for Damage
Once you see it, or someone points it out to you, you see it everywhere. (This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or more colloquially the frequency illusion, a cognitive bias, a variety of confirmation bias.)
Still, that doesn’t mean a sudden awareness of how everything fits together *isn’t true*. Right? Great scientific breakthroughs have occurred this way.
Two items from today’s NYT.
For all that progressives like to think that we progress, have progressed over the centuries and decades, maybe we don’t, except in isolated pockets that shrivel up and dry over time. A hundred years ago, the issues in current American politics were similar to those of today.
NY Times, Dan Barry, 5 Jul 2024: Divided and Undecided, 2024’s America Rhymes With 1924’s, subtitled “Hearing echoes of Independence Day a century ago, when Americans were clashing over race, religion, immigration and presidential candidates.” (shared link)
A lengthy convention that lasted 16 days and 103 ballots. Here’s the key point:
At play were the tensions between the rural and the urban; the isolationist and the world-engaged; the America of white Protestant Christianity and the multiracial America of all faiths; the America that distrusted immigrants and the America that saw itself in those immigrants, and wished to extend a hand.
Exactly the forces in play today. As I anticipated and more recently have concluded, human nature is well-established by evolution over millions of years, and is not likely to go away any time soon. The tension between inner and outer will always endure, but if the attention of inner prevails, humanity might well succumb to problems it cannot solve locally.
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NY Times, Peter Baker, 5 Jul 2024: Varying Treatment of Biden and Trump Puts Their Parties in Stark Relief, subtitled “Republicans and Democrats live in radically different universes, interpreting the same set of facts through radically different lenses.”
One of America’s political parties has a presidential candidate who is really old and showing it. The other has a presidential candidate who is a convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser, business fraudster and self-described aspiring dictator for a day. And also really old.
One of the parties is up in arms about its nominee and trying to figure out how to replace him at the last minute. The other is not.
The spectacle of the week since the nationally televised debate between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump has thrown into sharp relief two political parties that agreed to be led by flawed putative nominees whose vulnerabilities have become even more painfully apparent just months before the election.
But the distinction of recent weeks has been striking. After Mr. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies by a Manhattan jury in May — a verdict that came after civil judgments against him for personal and professional misdeeds — there was no significant groundswell within the Republican Party to force him out of the race in favor of a less-tainted candidate. Even though many Republican officeholders and strategists privately loathe him, they fell in line and made clear they would stick with him no matter how many scandals piled up.
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And this look back at history provides some perspective.
Washington Post, Gordon S. Wood, 2 Jul 2024: Opinion | What explains the genius of the American Founders?, subtitled “Looked down on by England’s ruling class, they reacted by redefining what it means to be civilized.”
What is striking in this piece is how the Founders aspired to be the things current Republicans reject.
[The Founders] inspire in us both a sense of awe and an acute sense of loss. We know that they possessed political and intellectual capacities well beyond our own, and we know that we will never see their likes again. What accounts for the originality and creative genius of this singular generation of political leaders?
Well first of all, this point is nonsense. There is no reason to believe the Founders, or anyone else in history, were somehow superior to anyone living today. If they had a greater effect, it’s because of circumstances, and a smaller population. That’s why it’s difficult to think of anyone today who’s had the impact of the Founders; but that doesn’t mean there aren’t just as many, more proportionally, today. (See my thoughts about this at Wise Men)
The writer acknowledges this but doesn’t understand it.
It is astonishing that such extraordinary leaders were produced from a population of just a few million. Every colony on the eve of the Revolution had its share of brilliant politicians. Massachusetts had John and Samuel Adams. New York had Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. Pennsylvania had James Wilson and John Dickinson. But Virginia had the most.
On the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the colony of Virginia contained only about 350,000 White inhabitants — roughly the size of present-day Wichita, Kan. — yet this relatively small population created a dazzling array of leaders: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, George Mason, John Marshall, James Monroe and others.
But let’s go on. What were the Founders’ motives, or goals?
These Virginian leaders and the leaders in the other colonies knew they lived in enlightened times, and they were eager to adopt the new prescriptions for becoming polite and civilized, prescriptions that were associated with classical republicanism. Traditional monarchists still defined aristocracies by the pride of their families, the size of their estates, the lavishness of their display and the arrogance of their bearing. But others increasingly downplayed or ridiculed these characteristics, instead emphasizing those involving graciousness and civility. Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” was all about getting these proper, enlightened values straight.
(Note that by “enlightened times” they referred to the benefits of the Age of Enlightment, and its promotion of science, rationalism, and democracy, among much else.)
Long piece. The Founders aspired to a higher order of society, of reason and intellect and civility. All principles absent in the current Republican Party and its MAGA followers, even as they worship the Founders and the Constitution, without understanding them in the slightest.
Concluding paragraphs:
[A] second-level Founder, William Livingston, New Jersey’s first governor, who at the very outset of the Revolution set forth prescriptions for proper enlightened behavior:
“Let us abhor Superstition and Bigotry, which are the Parents of Sloth and Slavery. Let us make War upon Ignorance and Barbarity of Manners. Let us invite the Arts and Sciences to reside amongst us. Let us encourage every thing which tends to exalt and embellish our Characters. And in fine, let the Love of our Country be manifested by that which is the only true Manifestation of it, a patriotic soul and a public Spirit.”
These prescriptions for a healthy and civilized society seem relevant today.
As I’ve been saying, it seems like democracy and the civilized values espoused by American’s Founders have become, in the long arc of history, a passing fad, while here in the 21st century Americans are experiencing a reversion to the norm of basic, tribal morality. Just as in many other authoritarian societies around the world.
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Zbigniew Preisner, score for the film Damage, 1992, one of his best. Slow, mournful, intense.
