The Long View — Oath of Office

“. . . Well I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right . . .

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am

Stuck in the middle with you . . .”

Okay, so Stealers Wheel was a Scots group, not an American one. I’d bet, though, that their words provide a pretty accurate rendition of what a goodly number of us Americans are carrying around in our minds “tonight.” Together we’re “stuck in the middle” of a confluence of interconnected messes, any one of which is disturbing in itself, the implications of the full set being downright dire.

Let’s tick off a few of the most crucial items — for us in the US only, though several of them constitute worldwide phenomena.

First we have obvious climate change, it being an update of what we have heretofore decided were, I don’t know, maybe “ignorable climate irregularities.” The realization is — finally! — sinking in that we are beginning to reap the harvest of our denial. Incipient steps are — finally! — being taken, thus far mostly by the private sector. But there is a long, long way to go, and the projected cost of our failure to act sooner will likely be huge in both financial and human terms. Then the “racial reckoning” that has been awaiting us for centuries and — again finally! — is being faced (assuming the traditional naysayers don’t get their way once again).

Then the pandemic: awful in itself but galling because it could have been held substantially in check here if leadership had just dealt with it sensibly from the outset instead of creating the politically-fraught mess, vaccination-denial and all, that we are now living through. Then the increasingly-evident fact that national wealth disproportion has become a huge problem and is now affecting many social functions and looming as a major threat in our immediate future. We rank about twenty-fifth in median wealth among world countries despite being, in aggregate, the wealthiest country, the top 1% of us owning more wealth than the bottom 92%. Furthermore, we rank dead last among high-income countries in population access to appropriate health care — because such health care is now beyond the financial reach of so many of us. It seems clear that we won’t be able to continue on in our current form if we don’t tackle that problem.

Moreover, in order to address such issues we have to navigate the ongoing internal conflict over the shape and functioning of the very democratic process upon which we were founded as a country, in which we regularly proclaim our pride — and through which we should be directing our efforts to address the above “situation.” (Henceforth I’ll be using “situation” to refer to this confluence of problems — which, to be sure, includes issues other than those specifically mentioned above).

The current focal point for said internal conflict, as we all know, is interpretation of last year’s presidential election and the violence (both literal and broadly understood) that has ensued. At the core of the matter we have a former political party, now metamorphosed into some sort of tribal grouping, busily denying the obvious, using that denial as an excuse for avoiding major aspects of governance and polluting the environment with often-absurd, self-protective language that all but totally ignores our “situation” — although it is precisely their job to deal with it.

Moreover, this “tribe” is using the conflict itself as a rationale for turning the logic of elections on its head: instead of working to appeal to electors for support at the ballot box, it is working — quite openly — to keep the franchise from those electors who they suspect will not cast ballots for them. It is a pathetic sight: closed-circuit, mutually-validating relationships are being set as primary and carried out through words and deeds that violate sense and logic — and do harm to the general interest.

Overall, this aspect of the “situation” has spawned literally thousands of pieces of analysis, nationally and internationally, about the “waning of democracy in the US.” Our example, which — along with our aid — has over the years had the real-world function of helping stabilize democracies, our vital allies, world-wide, is now transformed into a counter-example, to the detriment of those others and ourselves. Our new international standing in this regard is nothing less than a gift to authoritarian regimes, our adversaries, lending credence to increasing-bold claims that “democracy’s time has passed.”

Then, of course, there is the general freakout — let’s accede to formality and call it “existential panic” — which doubtless reflects the toll taken on us all by the “situation.” On a daily basis we witness: incivility — or just plain glumness turned-snarly — where before there was enjoyment; repeated interpersonal violence, some of it involving death threats and some of it just plain deadly, a scary portion of the latter being carried out by law enforcement — much of it on a particular sector of us (see again “racial reckoning,” as above); and the deliberate sowing of discord for personal-political gain.

I confess myself afflicted with the aforementioned “existential panic” (in case you couldn’t tell by now). So let me start by interrogating my own senses and emotions. What is my reaction to the “situation?” First is just weariness before it, and an awareness of feeling overwhelmed — which in turn leads to sadness at being overwhelmed. Can’t I just tell myself that the structures will hold, it’ll all calm down, return to “normal” on its own? Second, a sense that my/our will is being tested and thusfar mine is revealing itself to be flimsy. So . . . to be honest with myself I have to admit that I know it’s not going to just turn around on its own. It’s time, I tell myself, to start grappling with that reality, unprepared for it though I/we may be.

And . . . at least we know where we stand (from now on I’ll use “we” instead of adding “I,” even though “I” will still be there too, and though even that usage will vary a bit according to the specific context). “We” stand right here “in the middle,” together. And “we” know that all this is far from “normal.” Let’s take the matter of “normalcy” first, then go on to “in-the-middleness.”

What do we refer to when we in the US say “normal” with regard to matters such as constitute our “situation?” Well, I have scribbled about this issue a couple of times before (see, e.g, “It’s Time to Start Thinking Legitimation,” Medium, August 2020). In legitimation theory the “normalcy” we want to invoke would be termed “moral legitimation” — more specifically, one aspect of it.

Seen in that perspective, “moral legitimation” manifests itself as an ongoing general trust in the operations of the state, in their honesty and their overall efficacy. Moreover, it is a trust that is solid enough that it becomes cultural presumption rather than something that, say, requires regular monitoring. I.e, we may not agree with things — even, to our minds, major things — happening at a given time, but we have an ongoing, unspoken — likely unanalyzed — conviction that the state apparatus contains within it the resources necessary to keep matters within the generally-expected bounds, which include a standing space in which issues can be addressed.

I don’t think we can honestly say that we have such trust today. Indeed, our “existential panic” displays our loss of it — and our wish to recapture it.

Now what are the specifics of our second factor from above: our current “in-the-middleness,” yours and mine? Well, as the basic sense of the term suggests, we are being bombarded from every side by voices bearing everything from stolid facts to wild opinions, the latter often claiming to be the former, about the issues I have mentioned and the others related to them. Why are we thus bombarded? Because we are being fought over quite fiercely by the various bombardiers. We, collectively, are the prize, the coin they need in order to legitimize their agendas. In short, they need our assent. There is nothing wrong with this, of course; it is how (representative) democracy works — though, in my lifetime, it has never “worked” this frantically and incoherently before.

Now many of us middle-dwellers are used to regarding our positioning passively. We have relied on the aforementioned “normalcy,” seeing our role as merely one in which we are periodically called on to vote and do so (or not). In my view, that approach, which has rested on the implicit sense that we are “all in this together” (I see its recent incarnation as, in gross historical terms, the result of the collective sense of purpose emanating from the Second World War), has generally served the country well (though see — again, again — “racial reckoning,” as above). But, given what has happened we can no longer afford the luxury of seeing “middleness” that way. In fact, unless I am mistaken, the times themselves will not let us get away with that any longer. We’re either going to have to change our practice or forfeit . . . well, a whole lot.

So . . . where to? Well, being “in the middle,” the “coin of the realm,” as it were, we have power. Power that we can use in ways we collectively are only beginning to explore (see, e.g, Stacy Abrams and her co-workers). Ultimately, we have power, of a sort, over the political class. They — collectively but, what is more important, individually — continually need our assent. We can make much greater use of that arrangement — call it “leverage” — than we are used to doing.

Around the country there are several new initiatives in process built on what is being called “civic education.” They are products-in-reaction to the institutional wreckage that the Trump administration created and then left behind it. Those initiatives have at their root the notion that a major cause of problems lies in insufficient public knowledge about American institutions, a result of a national deficiency in education in that area. While the goal seems a laudable and worthwhile one — in my view, the initiatives should be supported and relied upon — the orientation seems too top-down to me and the plan too slow.

In contrast, we — henceforth, let’s dub ourselves “the necessary middle-dwellers” (in the sense that we are needed for the system to function) constitute a greater, ready-at-hand bulwark against the problems that constitute our “situation” as well as potential facilitators of paths toward solutions. Simply put, “we” can already practice what the educational initiatives are designed to teach.

Harrowing as the fall-out from the last election continues to be, I was fascinated by how “we” acted during it. Watching many on-line interviews with people in Georgia, or Florida, or elsewhere as they waited, sometimes in hours-long lines, to vote early, I admired those who said various things that all boiled down to “I want this to end” (and said enough more to make it clear that they were talking about the practices of the then-current administration). “That’s why I’m here and am going to stay here until I register what I think.” The ultimate margin in the presidential election (six-million-plus, roughly 4%, in the popular vote) was, I think, created in considerable part by “necessary-middle” people like that. People who thought about the good of the public endeavor, had obviously been thinking about it for a while, and acted, sometimes in the face of adverse circumstances, to register their judgment in the way immediately open to them.

What we can do is carry on that basic resolve. The route immediately open to us is the same one those people used. I know, I know, we’re always nicely told “remember to vote” — in a tone of voice that suggests that voting is a little, rote thing. But it needn’t be. All we have to do is tell ourselves that we are not just insignificant single-vote-casters; we are one of legions of vote-holders. And we can make use of that office — yes, we in effect hold an office. We can use our vote-holding quite actively if we have a mind to. Now would be a very good time to do just that. We can turn our relationship with “normalcy” inside out: we can, if we choose, perform it rather than routinely fit into its expectation of us.

What does it mean to “perform [our relationship to] normalcy?” Well, a starting point would be to ask who the audience is for our “performance.” I think of three audiences. First, our elected representatives, then our fellow vote-holders, and finally ourselves. Let’s take them in reverse order.

Ourselves. We can literally demonstrate to ourselves that what we are doing is vital: we are going to perform for our friends, neighbors, family, etcetera — and our elected representatives — our understanding of the “situation” in which we find ourselves. To do that we’ll first need to be as well-informed as possible (given all else in our lives) — by keeping up with the news: watching/listening/reading and discussing with others (for whom we will simultaneously be performing what we have ourselves acquired thus far and reacting to what they bring forth).

How to judge the reliability of news sources? This is key in this age of “alternative facts” and screaming heads on the tube (that’s part, the “texture” if you will, of what I mean when I say we are being “fought over”). First, look for facts underpinning the analysis, the opinions, the editorializing, the hype. Technically-speaking there are few actual facts out there, and most of them are pretty uninteresting: measurements, some kinds of logical statement, outcomes of mathematical procedures, results of scientific processes, accurate reporting of things we do or see done, and the like. Dull stuff, by and large. In addition, what we commonly mean by “facts” includes narratives — reportorial, analytical, etcetera — that tie actual facts together in explanations that are well thought out and demonstrably consistent. (Henceforth I’ll use the word “facts”/ “factual,” in quotes, to refer to the combination.)

One way to separate the “factual” from the “non-factual” in today’s news is for us to ask ourselves if we recognize any “facts” in, or underpinning, what we read/are being told. If there are none (which, sad to say, is frequently the case) we can just dismiss what is being alleged. Even if the answer is “yes,” “factuality” can be — and often is — used to mislead, or at least to editorialize. I have myself editorialized once above (purposely — in part in order to be able to say this here). Let’s use my editorializing as an exercise.

When I said above that “the top 1% of us own more wealth than the bottom 92%,” I was repeating a statistic I got from something written by one of our major national political figures, namely Bernie Sanders. (I don’t know where he got it.) Now it’s likely that the statement is statistically accurate: it fits with numbers coming from other reliable sources. But why such an odd statistic? Well, aside from being useful to demonstrate the proportions of the wealth imbalance in our country (which is the other reason I used it), it does something else very specific: it plugs into the recognizable sound-bite/argument about “the 1%.” In order to do that, it has to make “1%” its point of departure, thereby producing the weird arrangement where 7% of the population is unaccounted for. For my purposes, I’d have preferred the whole 100%. It would have been more thorough, even though it probably would have produced something un-soundbitey like, I would guess, roughly 1.5% at the top and 98.5% below. But, as it is, it plugs into a recognizable narrative already out there, pre-emotionalized. One of its goals all along, then, has all but surely been to reinforce the prior sound-bite and summon up the emotion already attached to it.

I took that detour — admittedly to a relatively benign example — to remind “us” first that “facts” too can be put to anti-“factual” purposes and, second and more importantly, that we can cultivate a mind set in which we scrutinize what we listen/watch/read for attempts to load the rhetorical dice. “Factuality” has to be the bedrock of how we perform our office, but even it, or the uses to which it is put, should be interrogated as we go.

In simple terms, emotion is “factuality”’s opposite. We can, to my mind, take it as a rule that when we see some talking head trying to play on emotion, especially fear, theirs and/or what they think is ours (I think mostly of conservative radio and television, though there are emotion-purveyors all across the political spectrum), we should presume flimflammery and either altogether ignore what they say as non-news or try to check out its claims. But certainly not just accept it. If someone is trying to play with our emotions, it’s very likely that’s all they’ve got to offer. If we don’t have time to investigate — which, I’m sure, happens frequently with most of us — we can just go with the flimflammery conclusion pending further developments. After all, they are responsible for making their case and thus far haven’t done so.

On the flip side, “we” can focus on “facts” as we work to consolidate our knowledge and as we communicate with others — perhaps especially when we communicate, directly or through their staff, with our elected representatives. By acting that way with regard to the challenges of our “situation,” we shall at the same time be communicating the degree of our commitment to the country and our collective future.

For my part, I think that out of all possibilities, this form of social organization, this unique representative democracy, huge, multi-ethnic, continuously-open, most accords human dignity to each of us and communicates it to the rest of the world. To be sure, if we’re honest with ourselves we have to admit we’ve done quite poorly by it so far (“racial reckoning,” yet again, and other matters as well), but we can keep working on it. In a perverse sense, the current “situation” offers us a signal opportunity to do just that. Moreover, as is obvious from the foregoing précis of our “situation,” the stakes couldn’t be higher than they are right now.

As with ourselves, so with our fellows and with our representatives. Obviously, one of our goals with both is to demonstrate our presence and our orientation as well as to make it clear in direct language that we know the “facts” and understand the arguments. We make clear too, by how we act and speak, that we are people committed to a productive way of identifying and addressing problems, one that emphasizes “fact,” study and logic. We will ask questions, make principled statements, and openly question any attempt to emotionalize, distract, ignore, bring up irrelevancies — or outright make stuff up.

Then there is the question of how. Again, I have written a little bit about that before (“The Performative Dimension,” Medium, Nov. 2020). Also, I have done a lot more work on it during my lifetime. For present purposes, two or three points are paramount: 1) especially since we are advocating a “fact”-based approach, we stay calm and use even, matter-of-fact tone and volume in speaking and organized argument in writing. We let the “facts” speak. 2) We stick to the subject. Especially if we are communicating with someone who wants to get their way by sidetracking or by emotionalizing the issue(s) involved. If we choose to follow them there, they will, in several senses — including in their own mind — have “won.” But if we stick to the subject and to “factuality,” we might discomfort them, perhaps move them a little off their square, certainly put them on notice about what we expect from them and what we disapprove of in them. And if there are third parties to the encounter, we might move those parties too — or reinforce them in adherence to our view. In either case, “our” example shall have been effective. 3) We recognize, as we are doing this, that it’s psychologically easier, for lots of reasons, to dismiss a shouter or an intimidator than to dismiss calm, rational discourse. Imagine the emotionalized arguments just whizzing past your head while you prepare to stick to facts and logical argument despite contrary impulses. To be sure, remaining calm, etcetera is hard; for most of us it is a skill we have to learn and then practice. (I have to confess that I am not myself always able to accomplish it, even after years of practice.)

Particular attention should probably be given to communication with our elected representatives. (Here, by the way, my use of “we/our” breaks down a bit. “I,” living in DC, don’t have elected senators or representatives. I do have one “non-voting delegate” to the House of Representatives. They can advocate DC interests but have no vote. Over the years, however, I have previously been a registered voter in five US states, so I do have experience with what I say here.) For most of “us,” when we interact with elected representatives everything said above clearly applies, and it will be important, in addition to sticking to fact-based language and calm, deliberative demeanor, to demonstrate purpose — or even to say things like “I want to cast my vote for somebody who . . . ,” or “I speak for a number of people whose vote will go to the candidate who . . . ,” etcetera.

In sum, something like this can be “our” “oath of office”:

I will learn the “facts” about issues of public importance and separate them from ungrounded opinions, theories or stories. For myself, I will make every effort not to use such language but instead to rely on “facts” and reasoned conclusions grounded in those “facts.”

I will work with others, both those who share the positions I develop and those I hope to convince of those positions. When I judge it appropriate, I will collaborate with others to advance our mutual outlook. At the same time, I will be open to differing positions that might cause me to modify, or even change, my own position in a principled way.

I will make my positions known to others forcefully but calmly and respectfully. This applies to interactions that I might seek out with my elected officials, in which I will make known what issues are important to me and how I think about them. I will also make it known (if it applies) that I speak for others of like mind. Most of all, I will make it clear that my/our vote is important to me and it depends, in some considerable part, on the outcome of the present exchange.

“. . . Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am

Stuck in the middle with you . . .”

Washington DC

August 2021