Ode To Political Skill

Ode To Political Skill


Hi! Happy Saturday!

Two current events this week motivated me to write an ode to political
skill.

  1. Democratic Debates 
  2. Gay Pride & Anniversary of Stonewall Riots.

I was struck by two commentaries in the news this week, one was an
assessment of Kamala Harris winning the Democratic Debates this
week. T'other was a recounting of the events of the Stonewall Riots in
1969 that eventually became a gay pride march and gay pride month.


Ode to Political Skill


I've followed Kamala Harris' career in California. The sad,
disheartening fact is that even though she had an affair with and was
mentored by Willie Brown, she never learned his acumen for political
skill or diplomacy. Kamala Harris is just a bully, a bully no
different in lack of political skill than any other bully, including
Trump.  And this is just stinking sad.

What is political skill I cherish? One illustration is that this
country is now smoke free in public places. As a non-smoker I've
experienced first had a smoke-filled society and a smoke-free society
and I'm very grateful to the politics that got us here. And that
politics is in no small part due to Willie Brown.

California was on the leading edge of passing the strictest State laws
preventing smoking in public and Willie Brown was Speaker of Assembly
in California for thirty-years of that era.

After Willie was forced out of office by terms limits a reporter
interviewed him and asked him this question.

Report, "Speaker Brown, during your 30 years as Speaker of Assembly you simultaneously passed the strictest anti-smoking legislation in the country all the while taking records amounts of millions of dollars of lobbying money from the big tobacco companies. What's your secret?"

Brown, "It's called being a politician."

Sadly, Kamala Harris is no Willie Brown.

Politics, noun: 1. the skill of getting people to cooperate with the
same amount of willingness that you have for some political end.
Strong arming: 1. Using tyranny and oppression for getting people to
cooperate using fear and violence for some political end.

Sadly, Trump and Kamala are politically cut from the same cloth,
strong arming.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
--Salvor Hardin
"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is
generally employed only by small children and large nations." 
--David Friedman

Ode To Political Skill


This notion of strong arming ties into Gay Pride month by way of the
Stonewall riots of 1969.

I was listening to a re-telling of the Stonewall riots this morning
and was struck by two notions that came off as quaint with respect to
2019 sensibilities.

  1. The 1969 public attitude towards homosexuality. 
  2. In 1969 police not shooting at the first hint of fear. I mean, come on, if Stonewall happened today the guns would come out first thing and people would be dead, flat out.
It is the second one that I want to write about. I have been
anti-police my entire life for many reasons.
  1. I am pacifist emotionally as reaction childhood abuse of violence.
  2. I am pacifist intellectually because violence is stupid.  
  3. The blue code of silence ensures the police are the largest gang of law breakers and subsequently have the least respect for the law. 
  4. The 1989 Supreme Court ruling that created a "fear of death" non-standard standard for use of deadly force. Since we can't read minds there is no way to know if any person truly fears for the life and so it is that just reaching for a wallet can result in a legally justified killing by police. Fear of death is a non-standard standard.
In my life-time we have abandoned cooperation for violence and increased policing. Our prisons are getting fuller, our police are killing more, and the public still wants more.

And yet politically violence and stupidity are synonyms. You can't build a society on stupidity just like a revolutionary can't build a society using
destruction only, willing cooperation is key to any building. After the US overthrew Saddam we showed the world as a country that we had no building skills, just skills of destruction. We implemented The Marshall Plan after WWII. We are were impotent in rebuilding Iraq. We no longer believe or practice political skill. We are increasingly becoming a police state and trending towards strong arming government.

Ode To Political Skill


The means doesn't justify the ends can be restated as using violence
doesn't justify the ends, tyranny and oppression doesn't justify a
seemingly peaceful and ordered society.

Strong arming is human nature. It manifested prior to 1789 as monarchy
and empires. We have fifteen thousands years of tyranny across all
populations world-wide, cultures that shared nothing.  It is a human
failing to look to some "savior" who is a thug in your convinced favor
as a means to an ends. This is why no society until America had a historical
record of a middle-class, a political system that worked in favor of
more than just a very small percentage of people.

Oh there are historical patches of politics to be sure. The Chinese had a
world-wide mercantile system for example.

A lack of diplomacy is just the  means justifies the ends. Once the violence of tyranny and oppression  are used to control a body politic then that violence can never be let up.

Trump voters seemed to think that human nature doesn't apply to them.
They seem to think that a thug in their favor can bring about building
a better society. Well, guess what, Republicans had that same pipe
dream of human nature not applying to them when rebuilding Iraq after overthrowing Saddam. Flowers at their feet.  Similarly in 2016
Trump voters believed human nature doesn't apply to them when they  thought that by overthrowing the establishment then
Trump can build,  Make America Great Again. Destroyers are not builders,
violence is not intelligence, and the ends doesn't justify the means.

Ode To Political Skill

We have a long history in American of political skill. Today we have a society with a smoke-free environment because the skill of politics was used, not simply bullying.  Americans who think the means, justifies the ends do so
because they are too lazy to do the hard work required to learn
and practice political skill. They turn their backs on Americans in the past who did earn political skill.  Political skill is the lifeblood of building out a
society using cooperation. Republicans valued political skill as recently has Ronald Reagan, no more.

In 2003 we overthrew a thug, Saddam Hussein, and in 2016 we elected that
thug as President, Trump. Trump would be executing his enemies if he
could, which is why he cozy ups to Kim Jung Un and Putin. Trump is a
two-bit thug, a thousands-year-old, bully leader. There is nothing
special about Trump, he is the ultimate re-run of a retread tyrant.

Trump is the scorpion in the frog and scorpion fable. Trump voters are
succumbing to human nature's basest nature expecting the scorpion to
ride them and not sting them.

"A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog
hesitates, afraid of being stung by the scorpion, but the scorpion
argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers
this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The
scorpion climbs onto the frog's back and the frog begins to swim, but
midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog, dooming them
both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung, to which the
scorpion replies "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."

Americans are every bit as susceptible to the follies of human nature
as everyone else, except our national tradition of taking care to  recognize human nature folly and to work against it. We are becoming
less American every day by regressing to baser human nature we once overcame.

Ode To Political Skill


I did not watch the Democratic Debates but I did read reporting and
one question stands out for me: "How are you going to solve the Mitch
McConnell problem?"

This problem is simply stated as the Senate is controlled by
Republicans and so it is that none of the Democratic agenda will ever be passed.  This
means Democrats will not be able to pass Medicare For All, Free
College, or anything else.

And yet as a nation we will entertain this Democratic slate of
candidates making promises they can never keep as if those
promises can be. Which is more deplorable: believing the ends
justify the means as with Trump, or being in denial Republicans
exist at all?

All because we have abandoned any expectation of political skill.

Ode To Political Skill


We Americans have now come to believe that the ends justify the means,
that thuggery can build a society, that tyranny and oppression of ones
enemies will exclude you as one of the masses.

We are well on our way to becoming that which we despise most; an Iraq, a
Mexico, a Brazil, a Venezuela, or pretty much any Democracy in Latin
America.

You see Democracy alone is not enough. A fundamental belief and commitment
to political skill is required. Most Latin American countries are
Democracies and yet most Latin American countries have despot, strong-arm  leaders. The facade of Democracy does little to restrain the despotism and tyranny and so as with monarchy of yore, Latin American Democracy today has little to no middle-class.

Trump voters are fools to think somehow human nature does not apply to
them. Trump voters are fools to believe that a despot like Trump
running a Democracy will have an outcome any different than where it
is been tried in hundreds of countries across the millennia. 

This is an Ode to Political Skill


Has the door been closed permanently in America? Can political
skill flourish again? I don't think so. It is time to abandon
failed American politics and start over with Irreni World Scale. It is time to admit reality. It is time to admit that the Democratic Presidential campaigns of 2020 have no solution for the Mitch McConnell problem and we are denying the reality of our completely failed system.

This is an Ode to Political Skill

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