Purists are making allies an endangered species

Our polarized political tug-of-war has created an odd dichotomy in the middle. On one hand, more and more people are identifying as independents. On the other, these people “aren’t really all that independent,” as CNN wrote in a headline.

The percentage of voters identifying themselves as independents increased from 33 to 38 percent between 1994 and 2018, according to the Pew Research Center. This should have made the so-called “moderate middle” fertile ground for candidates in a general election. But it hasn’t. Instead, politicians have focused more and more about appeasing “the base” – those true believers at either end of the political spectrum.

These true believers, not surprisingly, are more engaged and motivated. Or, to use a term often employed by pundits, the base is “where the energy is.” In other words, people at the extremes are more likely to vote. A Pew poll in the fall of 2018 found that roughly 60 percent of party-affiliated voters said they voted; that compares to just 54 percent of Republican-leaning independents and 48 percent of Democratic leaners.

Because they don’t identify with one side or the other, independents don’t feel as though they have as big a stake in the game. Their concerns aren’t reflected in the shock-addicted media or acknowledged by either of the parties, so why bother? This attitude, however, creates a vicious circle: The less they vote, the less the parties will pay attention to them ... and they less relevant they’ll feel. More and more people feel ignored by the two parties, disengage, and see the parties confirm ignore them even more.

Instead of working together, the true believers are working from both sides to make gaps unbridgeable. Gender gaps, income gaps, gaps between faith and science, between urban and rural America. I could go on.

This hasn’t happened all at once. It’s been occurring over the course of years or even decades, propelled by a number of factors – many of which involve the fragmentation of how we communicate and our willingness to consider opposing views. Like prizefighters, we stay in our own corners (Fox or CNN, Breitbart or the Mother Jones) until it’s time to come out fighting. Then, the Marquess of Queensbury Rules be damned. The transformation from civil society to MMA-style social brawl has been insidious, like a boiling frog.

Those who insist on staying in the middle don’t matter.

This is why the power of “the base” is ascendant even as independents have become the largest segment of voters. It’s why Mr. Trump continues to target his ultra-conservative base, rather than worrying about how independents view him. They don’t matter, because they’re less likely to vote, anyway. And the more they feel marginalized, the higher the chances Trump will win re-election.

But the principle is in play on the left, as well, where intra-party feuding is rampant and political “purity” is reinforced by voter shaming and a series of litmus tests not all that different from NRA ratings an anti-tax pledges on the right. The latter can be traced to George H.W. Bush’s act of reneging on his “no new taxes” pledge. But instead of realizing how badly such pledges boxed them in, Republicans decided to make more of them and be sure they kept them, regardless of whether they were a good idea.

Their willingness to do so helped plant the seeds of the political purity movement we see today, and the resulting trend toward the extremes has been fairly well documented in the political realm.

Disaffected

What hasn’t been mentioned much is that the same dynamic is occurring socially. As with politics, tension has arisen between issues and identity. Many of those issues, indeed, are common to both the social and political realms, but social identities are different, and often less fluid, than political identities, which makes the social dynamic even more treacherous for those in the middle.

A Democrat can always re-register as “decline to state” (in California) or with a different party, and some states, such as Virginia, don’t even offer party registration.

Social identities, by contrast, aren’t that easy to change. Some of them – race, sexual orientation and, to a slightly lesser extent, gender – don’t offer any wiggle room at all. You were born with it, and that’s what you are. It’s slightly less difficult to escape class-based identities, but it’s still no easy task: Those who live in wealthy neighborhoods have a built-in head start on obtaining a good education, making white-collar job connections, and so forth.

It’s no coincidence that the economic middle has been growing less relevant, too (although, unlike the disaffected political middle, it’s shrinking, not growing). Political decisions affect economic realities and reinforce social constructs. So, as the political and economic middles become less relevant, the same thing is happening socially.

The rise of social “purity” on the right has led to a resurgence of newly emboldened white supremacists, nationalists and religious bigots. On the left, it’s led to censorship and political correctness, the free exchange of ideas be damned. The people left out of this are, socially as well as politically, the middle-grounders: the people who want to think for themselves and reserve the right to disagree, on occasion, with those they most often support.

The concept of a “loyal opposition” has gone down the toilet. Either you’re loyal or you are the opposition. That’s Trump’s mantra, to be sure, but the same principle is being invoked, only slightly less explicitly, on the left.

Allies go home

The shrinking social middle consists largely of allies: People who may not belong to a certain group, but support that group as a matter of conscience or principle. Like those in the political middle, they don’t – or can’t – identify with a given “side” in the culture wars, but they nonetheless agree that side should prevail. Maybe in most respects. Maybe in all. They are, however, not the social base. They’re not as personally invested in the struggle and, while they may believe in it, they’re often not as motivated to fight tooth and nail for it.

Plus, many have an aversion to following anything blindly. Even if they agree with most of the actions a group espouses, they reserve the right to think for themselves and politely disagree if they prefer a different course of action.

Increasingly, however, such politeness is met with skepticism and derision. Members of the social base have adopted a motto of “if you’re not for us, you’re against us.” They don’t trust independent allies because they don’t appear to be “all in” for the cause, whether that cause be racial justice, gender equity, LGTBQI rights, or raising the minimum wage. If they disagree occasionally, it’s seen as a red flag that they might not really believe in anything the group stands for. Disagreement is viewed as evidence they’re (at best) slaves to some subconscious social conditioning or (at worst) posers out to infiltrate the movement.

Some question whether a white male can ever really truly be all-in on gender equity or racial equality; whether a cisgender person be all-in on transgender rights; whether a person oriented toward the opposite sex be all-in on LGBTQI rights. There’s always going to be some underlying lack of understanding or potential conflict of interest when the rubber meets the road, or so the purists fear.

Disengaging

If you’re a social ally in the middle and your motives are repeatedly questioned, you’re likely to do exactly what political independents do: Disengage. If you feel shamed for your identity, you’re apt to withdraw. Race, gender and sexual orientation aren’t like political parties; you can’t simply reregister at the drop of a hat. So, you’re left feeling as though you don’t really belong anywhere. You can’t abandon your identity, but you won’t abandon your principles, and that tension isn’t something most people care to live with for long.

It didn’t exist, at least not to this extent, 20 years ago, but social purity tests have poisoned the well, just as surely as political polarization has proven toxic to government. (Lawmakers willing to forge alliances by working across the aisle are all but extinct, thanks to demands for political purity.) In the current environment, many allies become silent supporters, voting their conscience at the ballot box but otherwise keeping their mouths shut in order to avoid taking fire from both sides. They turn their attention elsewhere – to places where they feel like they are relevant: their families, their jobs, pastimes they enjoy. Places where they’re appreciated and feel like they can make a difference.

Political independents are checking out in droves for the very same reasons.

In alienating the social and political middle, extremists are accomplishing their ultimate goal: to create an atmosphere of social and political tyranny ruled by bigotry, censorship and intolerance. It’s the antithesis of what the founders sought to enshrine in the Constitution: a free exchange of ideas that acts as a crucible for progress and innovation.

So much for the American dream. In alienating independents and silencing the middle, we’re killing it. It’s dying from the inside out.

Samuel L. Jackson just made struggling artists feel like shit

I’m a fan of Samuel L. Jackson’s work, and that’s probably not going to change. I enjoy his acting. I’m also a critic of Donald J. Trump, and that certainly ain’t gonna change. I don’t enjoy his play-acting as president.

But what Jackson said in repudiating Trump stuck in my craw: “I know how many motherfuckers hate me. ‘I’m never going to see a Sam Jackson movie again.’ Fuck I care? If you never went to another movie I did in my life, I’m not going to lose any money. I already cashed that check.”

Emphasis mine.

Here’s the point: Jackson can afford not to care. Most actors, writers, visual artists and musicians can’t. Jackson doesn’t have to choose between his integrity and his bank account. Gee, that must be nice.

He goes on to say he does care about health care, but not because he wants the best for his loved ones. Because he wants to protect his bank account(!): “Some of this shit does affect me, because if we don’t have health care, and my relatives get sick, they’re going to call my rich ass.”

Ask me if I feel sorry for him.

Somehow, he’s got enough money not to care about pro-Trump haters, but not enough money to care more about whether his relatives get good health care than the prospect of having to for it.

Actually, I agree with Jackson on this issue, too. The prices for hospital stays and prescription drugs are obscene; the system is broken, and it’s causing people to lose their homes, their cars and their retirement savings. But let’s be clear here: That’s not going to happen to Jackson if one of his relatives gets sick.

Say, for example, one of them had to stay a month in the hospital. At $30,000 a day, that would be $900,000. Yeah, that’s a lot of money. Now say it cost another $900,000 for surgical procedures and meds. Let’s round up to the nearest million. That’s $2 million. Yes, that would break most people. But Jackson? His net worth, as of 2019, is 111 times that much: $220 million. It’s a drop in the bucket for the man who made the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-grossing actor of all time.

Gimme mine

Maybe Jackson’s just trying to be funny. He has, in fact, donated money to more than two dozen charities, including $1 million for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. But in spite of this, his latest comments come off as gloating. I’ve got my $220 million, and I’m gonna keep it.

And why shouldn’t he? He’s a good actor. He’s worked hard, and he deserves what he’s got. No argument there.

But there’s a flip side to his comments: A lot of people work just as hard and are just as good at what they do, but they struggle to get by. Vincent Van Gogh, famously, sold just one painting during his entire lifetime. He died a pauper. He killed himself. There are thousands of good – even great – artists, writers, actors and musicians you’ve never heard of who are in the same boat. Yet the notion persists that how much you have in your bank account defines your value as a person.

Bullshit, motherfucker.

Economic entitlement

In a world increasingly sensitive to attitudes of race- and gender-based entitlement, the concept of economic entitlement remains largely ignored. Health-care and education reforms are stymied. Sure, there’s talk about a $15 minimum wage, but that’s not even a living wage for most people. And indexing it to the cost of living? You might as well try planning a trip to Jupiter. Anyone who suggests leveling the playing field is accused of (gasp) socialism and de facto thievery.  

Because economic hardship isn’t always tied up in things like racial and gender identity, it’s assumed that those who don’t have money somehow deserve it. They’re a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings leeching off society because they’re allergic to hard work or don’t produce something of real value. Art? That’s dismissed as a “luxury.” But Jackson can’t very well say that, because he’s an artist too.

The work he produces is extremely valuable, but so was the work Van Gogh did. And he never complained about having to support a sick relative, because he never even had that option: His brother was the one supporting him.

This is why it’s so jarring to hear a rich actor issuing such a complaint, even if it’s to highlight the inequities of a broken health care system. Regardless of how talented he is or how many charities he’s supported, this is how it comes across: I’ve got my $220 million. You can’t have any of it.

Ironically, this is exactly how Trump thinks. He’s got his, and nothing else matters. Jackson is a Trump critic, yet he comes across as sharing the same attitude – unless he was just joking, in which case it’s not very funny. Because the joke is on creative folks who aren’t worth one one-ten thousandth of what he is.

I applaud Jackson for criticizing Trump. I share his views. But he doesn’t deserve any special pat on the back for voicing them when he has, by his own admission, no financial stake in the game. The people who do deserve props are the struggling artists who could lose a sale by speaking out – but do so anyway. The unknown Vincent Van Goghs of our time who might just, one day, change the world.

Donald and Bathsheba: Why so many evangelicals defend Trump

The following is an excerpt from my book Jesus, You’re Fired!, now available on Amazon.

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Why are so many evangelicals standing by Donald Trump in the face of actions that would seem to be directly at odds with the teachings of the Bible?

When it comes right down to it, as much as they talk about sin, specific sins are of much less concern to many evangelicals than the “work of the devil.” Sins themselves are viewed as inevitable, because each of us is – according to a doctrine set forth by Paul of Tarsus – born into a fallen state because of Adam’s original sin.

“We’re all sinners,” Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the Moral Majority founder, said in announcing he was still supporting Trump.

Sinful acts can be forgiven, and Christians will still sin (though, it is hoped, somewhat less frequently). So the endgame isn’t to stop people from sinning, it’s to redeem their fallen nature and make sure the devil doesn’t tempt them back to what Darth Vader might call “the dark side.”

Take the story of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John, who had already been married five times and was living with a man outside of wedlock. Jesus made note of this, but he didn’t condemn her for it. Instead, he used it as an opportunity to identify himself as the messiah – the rightful ruler of Israel and the kingdom of God.

This was the point of the scene, and it’s the point evangelicals are focused on, as well. They’re far less concerned about sinful acts (individual transgressions against God or his people) than they are about humanity’s sinful nature and the salvation from it they believe Jesus can provide.

As a result, evangelicals are caught up in a black-and-white struggle between the forces of good and evil. Salvation and damnation. God and Satan.

“Whoever is not for me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” - Matt. 12:30

“Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” - Matt. 10:37

These are the sayings of Jesus that resonate with many evangelicals. Loyalty is paramount; any sins that might be committed along the way are secondary – and may be excused (forgiven) as long as that loyalty is unwavering.

The politics of dualism

American politics represents a convenient parallel to the good-vs.-evil struggle of the evangelical mindset because, like the dualist battle between YHWH and Satan, the electoral system as it works in the United States typically presents voters with two choices. It’s easy for evangelicals to align those choices with the God’s heavenly hosts and Satan’s demonic hordes – the armies of light and darkness engaged in “spiritual warfare” on the eternal plane.

When the Republican Party co-opted the evangelical movement (or was it the other way around?) during the era of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1980s, the two became joined at the hip. Many evangelicals started to see Republicans as an earthly “army of light” corresponding to the heavenly host, while demonizing Democrats as tools of “the enemy.”

This is likely why, in the minds of many evangelicals, Donald Trump can be forgiven for his undeniably sinful attitudes and actions toward women, while Bill Clinton – and his wife, Hillary, whom they view as his enabler – cannot. No matter how many times Trump has engaged in fornication or boasted about abusive behavior, and no matter how many times he’s switched parties or positions, he has been redeemed in the eyes of many evangelicals by his association with the Republican Party. Clinton, on the other hand, is “outside the fold.” Calling himself a Christian and asking forgiveness aren’t good enough for evangelicals who have accepted the premise that the Republican Party is God’s chosen instrument in U.S. politics. He might as well be a Protestant asking forgiveness of the IRA.

Further reinforcing evangelical support for Trump is acceptance of the monarchial model that dominated politics in the ancient Near East. This is the model represented in the Bible, with God ruling from a throne in heaven as and anointing kings to act in his behalf on earth (hence the title “king of kings” as opposed to “president of presidents”).

The test of a king’s legitimacy wasn’t his righteousness, but his faithfulness to YHWH. Fornication? No big deal. Solomon did it. David did it. But David continually recommitted himself to YHWH, while Solomon earned the wrath of the prophets by allowing an Asherah pole – dedicated to a fertility goddess – to be placed in the temple of YHWH.

In fact, if one wants to understand many evangelicals’ continued embrace of Trump, one need look no further than David. Described in the Bible as a “man after God’s own heart,” he nonetheless slept with the wife of a loyal soldier named Uriah, then arranged for that soldier to be put in harm’s way so that he might be slain in battle – clearing the way for David to have the woman himself.

Such actions were probably not unusual in the days when absolute monarchs could sleep with any woman they wanted. But they’re less acceptable in the United States, which follows a model of government that owes its inspiration to Greek democracy, not the ancient Near Eastern model of the tyrant king.

Autocracy or democracy

The tension between these two systems remains palpable for some evangelicals, who see their relationship to God as one of a subject to an absolute ruler and may view those whom they identify as God’s chosen leaders in the same light. So if Trump brags of being able to do anything he wants to a woman because he’s “a star,” he’s boasting about something the Bible’s most famous king – David – actually did.

Of course, not all evangelicals – and certainly not all Christians – think this way. There are plenty of people of faith who put morality ahead of what amounts to loyalty (remember Jesus’ parable of one blind man leading another into a pit?). When Falwell Jr., who is now president of Liberty University, announced he was still with Trump, a group of students at the university claiming to represent a majority of students and teachers on campus issued a statement denouncing Trump.

But that doesn’t mean the behavior of evangelicals who have stuck by Trump is somehow inexplicable. In some ways, it makes perfect sense, and they really aren’t as hypocritical as they might at first appear. They’re just putting loyalty above morality and adhering to a model of government at odds with the representative democracy practiced in the U.S.

Is it surprising that they would gravitate toward a leader like Trump, who’s more autocrat than democrat? Not at all. In fact, it’s exactly what one would expect.

Note: The author spent more than a decade in the evangelical movement, attending evangelical churches, during the decade when the Moral Majority rose to prominence in American politics. He has written on philosophy, spirituality, ethics and the origins/development of Western religion.  

The Covington debacle: No adults in the room

We see what we want to see, and we believe what we want to believe ... even when someone else offers a different perspective. It’s truer now than ever, and nothing illustrates it better than the reaction to dueling videos of a confrontation involving students from Covington Catholic High School, black activists and a Native American drummer at the Lincoln Memorial.

Images in the initial video show a student wearing a MAGA hat smiling what looked like a smug, self-satisfied smile at a Native American veteran drumming less than an arm’s length in front of him. Other students are seen jumping up and down, chanting in the background. A second video, however, shows another group (unseen in the first video): four black activists angrily shouting nasty, degrading slurs at the students.

Those who had expressed outrage at the students after seeing the first video tended to react in one of two ways upon seeing the second. They either held fast to their initial criticism of the students, or they issued mea culpas for jumping to what they now said had been the wrong conclusion.

It’s these two divergent reactions that illustrate, even more than the incident itself, how polarized we are as a society. And how entrenched we’ve become in our reliance upon dogmatic, black-and-white thinking. The facts be damned: Our side is always right. That’s why the current president’s poll numbers barely move. They’re not based on his actions or any reasoned judgment about those actions. They’re based on tribal identity and an us-versus-them bunker mentality.

Hats vs. slurs

Regarding the incident at the Lincoln Memorial, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

Let’s start with the students. The MAGA hat has become a symbol that invites confrontation. To many people, it represents everything from xenophobia to racism, sexism to fascism. Wearing a hat like that doesn’t invite discussion, it shuts it down. It’s an in-your-face declaration of allegiance that encourages one of two responses: fight or flight.

Critics of the students said they heard them chanting things like “Build that wall!” in reference to Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the southern border. The students deny that, saying instead that they were shouting a school chant.

It doesn’t matter.

A wall chant wouldn’t have been surprising, but it wasn’t necessary, either: It was already plain as day how the students felt about Trump and his policies, thanks to their hats. It wasn’t the contents of the chant that mattered, but the fact that the students started chanting in the first place. Chants are, by their very nature, confrontational and intimidating.

The students said they received permission from their adult chaperones before starting the chant. The adults should never have given that approval. In so doing, they heightened tensions further and created even more room for misunderstanding. Chants, like lectures and shouted protests, are one-sided discussions that leave those on the receiving end feeling bullied, powerless and angry. They don’t defuse tensions, they heighten them.

But the adults’ culpability in the D.C. incident goes beyond this. Not only did they put the students in a situation where confrontation was likely to occur, they allowed – or perhaps even encouraged – them to wear provocative MAGA hats, all but guaranteeing that such a confrontation would take place.

The adults may very well have wanted just such a confrontation. They had come to protest, and they were itching for a fight. But is it ever OK to use teenagers as proxies to make a political statement? I don’t care whether you’re protesting against abortion, global warming, substandard wages or immigration. Putting kids on the front lines in a physical conflict is a war crime, so it stands to reason that you shouldn’t do it in a shouting conflict, either – especially when there’s nowhere to run. (The students, by their own account, had to stay where they were because they were waiting for a bus to pick them up.)

The results in any situation like this are predictable: The kids are attacked – which is exactly what happened here. The cowardly adults, meanwhile, benefit in more ways than one. They can hide behind their kids, using them as psychological human shields, while they pretend to be the grown-ups instead of manipulative instigators. Second, they can reinforce the dogma they’re trying to teach the next generation. Because, you know what? When people are attacked, they get defensive, and they tend to harden their stances against a perceived aggressor. The chaperones didn’t have to reinforce the kids’ prejudices; they allowed the situation to do it for them.

Staredown at a weigh-in

The four black protesters played right into all this, shouting homophobic slurs and calling the students everything from “crackers” to “a bunch of incest babies.” Regardless of the actions of the kids or their chaperones, this kind of language is abhorrent. Full stop. If you’re an adult, you don’t get to attack kids like this, even if they’re wearing MAGA hats, any more than a man calls a woman the “B” or the “C” word. It’s vile and disgusting, regardless of your race, religion, gender or anything else. If they’re breaking the law, have them arrested. Otherwise, leave them the hell alone.

The Native American drummer, meanwhile, stated that he tried to insinuate himself between the two groups, yet he faced the students throughout, not the four protesters. Even more to the point, he did so while banging a drum and chanting as he stared directly into the lead student’s eyes. There’s no reason to doubt that he was, in fact, trying to defuse the situation, but his actions had the opposite effect. Intentionally or not, he escalated the tensions by using the body language of challenge and confrontation (a staredown), and upped the ante by chanting and drumming.

The other students, in response, seem to have at least partially surrounded him, and the lead student’s smirking response sent a message (again, intentionally or not) that he wasn’t about to back down. He held his ground, as if daring the drummer to start something. Regardless of how he might have tried to justify his actions later, his body language said, “Bring it on!” The two looked like a couple of boxers at a weigh-in before a title fight.

The biggest irony in all this is that it took place on a weekend honoring Martin Luther King Jr., whose philosophy was the antithesis of everything that occurred. Can you imagine King yelling the kind of things the black protesters were shouting at the students? Or trying to provoke a confrontation by engaging in a staredown? King was all about nonviolent protests and passive resistance. Not a single party involved in the D.C. incident could be described as passive, and violence was very nearly the result.

Yes, the kids behaved badly. But that’s why you need adults in the room. Unfortunately, in this case, there didn’t seem to be any.

Corporate apocalypse: Feeding the hand that bites us

1920: The customer is always right.

2020: The stockholder is always right.

This ain’t your grandfather’s capitalism. The myth of American capitalism endures: If you have good ideas and work your ass off, you’ll get ahead. But the reality is very different: Instead of rewarding hard work and pursuing customer satisfaction, modern capitalism is designed to reward shareholders, and everyone else be damned.

Two things made this possible:

1. Corporations replaced small business as the dominant force in the nation’s economy.

2. Convenience replaced service as the most important element (along with price) in the consumer’s daily lives.

Convenience is king

As customers demand more convenience, business is motivated to provide it. But doing so requires technological advances that, in turn, require investment – often more investment than a small business can afford to make. It’s only natural (and sometimes, perhaps, essential) that such a business seek outside money to finance the necessary improvements.

The problem is that, once a business secures financial backers, it becomes responsible to them rather than its customers, much less its employees. Shareholders want a business to maximize profits and minimize expenses, regardless of the cost to worker morale, consumer service or even the company’s reputation. Just hire a glitzy PR firm and make some strategic donations to charity, and you can still look like a good guy even when you treat your employees and your customers like shit.

Andrew Carnegie used part of his fortune to create libraries, but does that make him a “good guy” when he earned that money by paying his employees a pittance and pushing them beyond their limits?

A return to the late-19th century world of Carnegie becomes easier when convenience and immediacy are valued more highly than quality and service.

When service doesn’t matter as much as convenience, the people who provide that service become expendable. When you pump gas yourself, you don’t need an attendant to do it for you. When you buy goods at self-service check stands, you don’t need cashiers anymore. When people demand news the moment it “breaks,” you don’t need copy editors to check for spelling or accuracy, you just need a program to make sure you’re online first.

The Matrix has you

But in demanding convenience, consumers have put themselves in a bind – and, in many cases, have cut off their collective nose to spite their face. How convenient is it, for instance, to navigate a phone tree, then wait on hold for an hour until the next customer service rep is free to take your call (or start all over again when you press the wrong button or you’re “accidentally” cut off)? How convenient is it to use one of those self-service check stands when the scanner keeps malfunctioning? Or to check the accuracy of a story via Snopes because journalism is done on the fly, rather than with care and precision?

Then there’s the identity theft that comes with using debit cards and computer programs vulnerable to hackers. Now that’s really convenient! (Note sarcasm.)

Here’s the rub: Convenience doesn’t always make life easier, at least not in the long run. It often just frees up more time for us to become busier, take on more commitments and, in the end, become more stressed out. We’ve devalued human interaction as consumers, and that interaction becomes the first thing we sacrifice in our personal lives when we start to feel overloaded. The result is a vicious circle of busyness and isolation.

We become, in a very real sense, dependent on – even addicted to – convenience and instant gratification. And, as with any addiction, the “highs” get less intense, the “lows” get lower, and the dependency grows stronger as time goes on.

Corporations know this and, as we become more dependent, they have less incentive to provide that high. Because. They. Have. Us. Hooked. Once they do, shareholder and consumer interests that once seemed aligned in the quest for convenience are no longer in sync. For corporations, convenience was always just a means to an end: maximizing profits for shareholders. Once it no longer serves that purpose, corporations will discard it like yesterday’s news.

Toxic capitalism

When’s the last time you stopped at a full-service gas station or were put directly through to a live operator willing and able to answer your questions? It’s probably been a while. That kind of service has largely gone by the wayside, and (in most places) you no longer have any option but to pump your own gas or navigate that phone tree. It all happened right under our noses, so gradually we barely noticed. But now, here we are, and we’re no turning back.

Once they’ve eliminated all our other options, corporations have no more incentive to provide service, convenience, low prices or anything else. The consumer becomes irrelevant, and only the shareholder matters. Instead of personal service, we get automated phone trees and overseas operators. Instead of quality, we get planned obsolescence. We were supposed to have learned this lesson more than a century ago, when monopolies were working employees to death (literally in some cases) and foisting off bogus “miracle cures” on consumers. But apparently, we’re going to have to learn it all over again.

Capitalism works well when it encourages competition; when it discourages it, it’s toxic.

Want evidence? What ever happened to Marshall Field’s or Rich’s or Filene’s or Jordan Marsh? They’re all Macy’s now. Every single one of them. In the 1960s, there were dozens of regional discount retailers; today, there’s Walmart. And Target.

As Facebook has all but cornered the market on social media access, has it become more flexible or more controlling? Have those controls become more in tune with the user or the shareholder? Since Facebook went public, its quest to maximize profits by allowing corporations access to personal profiles – and by looking the other way on Russian interference – has been widely publicized. But we still use it because most of our friends are there, not on Ello or MeWe. We’re addicted. We’re stuck.

Tainted government

The government, meanwhile, enables and accelerates this process. It’s no secret why this happens: The same corporations that have the money to invest in business have the money to lobby Capitol Hill – to their benefit, and to the detriment of their competitors.

Many of those competitors are small businesses, who then have little choice but to go public themselves so they can get money to pay for their own lobbyists.  

The 2018 tax cut is a great example of how this works. Whom did it benefit most? Small businesses that need help to compete or corporations that will use the advantages to consolidate their stranglehold and eliminate even more choices?

We know the answer to that question.

Before the trust-busters broke up Standard Oil’s monopoly at the dawn of the 20th century, cartoonists portrayed it as an octopus, with its tentacles wrapped around everything from the U.S. Capitol to statehouses to investors. Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, Google and others are on the brink of becoming today’s version of Standard Oil.

Customer service died decades ago. Convenience is on its last legs. Can a return to snake oil and sweatshops be far behind?

We've sacrificed our principles on the altar of tribal loyalty

Note: I consider this is the most important essay I’ve ever written. Read it. Be pissed off. I don’t care. Someone had to say it.

Call it the “H” word: Hypocrisy.

Some days, it seems like every other post on social media condemns the opposition for this cardinal sin. It’s little wonder in an age principle has taken a back seat to tribal identity and the quest to win at any cost.

Republicans, those free-trading, anti-Russian patrons of the Moral Majority, are foursquare behind a protectionist president who adores tariffs, loves the Russians even more and breaks the commandments like they’re going out of style. Oh, and about the so-called 11th commandment, voiced by none other than GOP patron saint Ronald Wilson Reagan – “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican”? They’ve brushed that under the rug, as well, to placate a president who routinely does just that.

But it isn’t just Republicans. Democrats do it, too. Only white people can be racists, and only men can be sexists – or so they say – as though bad (and good) behavior somehow morphs into something else depending on who’s doing it.

This hypocrisy transcends party or ideology. It goes to something more fundamental: We’ve exchanged broad principles for narrow judgments that benefit us ... and to hell with everyone else. These days, we view identity, not the nature of an action, as crucial in determining whether that action is right or wrong.

Violence is wrong, but it’s OK to “punch a Nazi” – without due process (another principle we enforce selectively). A hate-crime murder is worse than another murder? Maybe it is worse to hate someone than to simply have no regard for that person’s life, but tell that to the guy who just lost his daughter to the robber who shot her in the head because he wanted her purse.

Oh, and by the way, it’s just fine to condemn things like assaulting women and defaming your enemies, as long as their guy is doing it. When it’s your guy, you try to ignore it, make excuses and, if none of that works, flip the script by blaming the victim.

Whither the Golden Rule?

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”* Remember that one? It’s part of Jesus’ Greatest Hits, probably the lead track on Side 1. Confucius, Seneca the Younger of Rome and Hillel the Elder in the Talmud (among others) all said something similar, so you can’t beg off by dismissing it as Christian dogma. A whole lot of non-Christian folks have said the same thing.

Under this principle, if someone treats a white person unfairly, it’s just as bad as if someone treats a black person cruelly – because it isn’t the victim’s identity that matters. The behavior is cruel no matter who the victim is. Bringing the victim’s identity into it takes the focus off of the behavior, which is where it should be.

This is what apologists for sexual assault try to do, too. These sleazeballs say the victim was “asking for it” by dressing “too provocatively.” They flip the script, attempting to make victims responsible for an act of violence committed against them, because of the victim’s identity. As a woman. As someone who has the audacity to express some degree of individuality and expect not to be assaulted for it. Imagine that.

When we condemn people based on identity rather than action, we strike at the heart of principles – like the pursuit of happiness and freedom of expression – that this country was founded on. When we abandon principle for the sake of identity, those principles get discarded, too. What’s left is a dictatorship, or the building blocks of one.

But people are scared to death of invoking principles because they know it can come back to bite them. What if they have skeletons in their own closet? It’s much safer to demonize (or canonize) someone else based on his or her identity than it is to invoke a broad principle that can – perish the thought – be applied to little old you.

Political precedent

Politicians get away with this all the time. Case in point: Republicans who refused to vote on a Supreme Court candidate nominated by a Democratic president for nearly a year, saw nothing wrong with trying to force a hasty vote on an unpopular Republican nominee facing serious questions about his character.

But when principles are thrown out the window, character goes right along with them. Identity is what’s important. This guy is a Republican nominee. He’s golden, regardless of what he might have done. That Democratic guy? We had to block him because he was a Democrat. Republicans are doing the same thing in defending the current president against ethical charges after impeaching a Democratic president facing ethical charges of his own – a president whom, naturally, Democrats defended because he was a Democrat.

Loyalty is valued over conscience, and winning is esteemed more highly than playing by the rules. So much for what we used to teach our children: “It’s how you play the game.”

When you have no principles, its easy to argue that principles should be invoked selectively, because they’re no longer important in their own right. They’re weapons to be employed in fallacious arguments to destroy the opposition. But the more they’re used in this way, the less credibility they have. People aren’t stupid. They see what these politicians are trying to do, and they don’t like it.

The unfortunate byproduct of this, however, is that the principles themselves become tarnished because of how they’re (mis)used. When principle no longer carries any weight in an argument, people turn to something that does: identity politics. The term is most often associated with the left and conversations about race, but it’s far bigger than that. The right does it just as much and, sometimes, even more blatantly, dismissing anything negative as a product of the opposition’s “fake news” machine.

The right demonizes the mainstream media, regardless of whether the reporting is principled and the content is accurate. The left, meanwhile, demonizes white males, regardless of whether they’re advocates for equal rights or anti-immigrant, chauvinist pigs. What we don’t want to look at here is the fact that both sides are engaged in the same behavior: They’re putting identity ahead of principle.

The Fallout

This is how we get things we say we hate: things like negative campaigning and officeholders who refuse to apologize for anything they’ve ever done, no matter how questionable or even heinous. This is why we have to have a #MeToo movement instead of a society that respects women from the get-go. It’s why neo-Nazis feel emboldened and some people feel like it’s OK to pop them one: because we’ve abandoned our principles.

We’d rather demonize than apologize, because “the other’s” identity as our enemy is more important than our own principles. This is how armies behave during wartime: They churn out biased propaganda and dehumanize the enemy, so a soldier’s conscience – the seat of those principles – doesn’t get in the way of killing. The fact that we’re doing this during peacetime, against our own fellow citizens, illustrates just what’s happening to us.

We’re not just hypocrites, we’re heartless ones.

This is what happens when we mortgage our principles on the altar of our bitterness for the sake of mere convenience. If this is the kind of identity we want as individuals, or as a nation, history will judge us a colossal failure.

* Note: I like to add “if you were in their shoes” to this principle.

Read more political essays by Stephen H. Provost in Media Meltdown, available on Amazon.