You’ve probably heard about Elizabeth Lauten, the communications director of Republican Representative Stephen Fincher, who complained that Malia and Sasha Obama weren’t showing “class” while their father presided over the somber tradition of pardoning a turkey for Thanksgiving. After thousands of people on Facebook and Twitter accused her of bullying the First Children, Lauten realized she was wrong. She didn’t put it that way, of course; she said, “After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents and re-reading my words online, I can see more clearly how hurtful my words were.” Does anyone really believe that? I’m sure after the criticisms started coming fast and hard, she spent some time praying. Her Twitter description reads, “Loves GOD, cats & all things pink, green and pearls!” (See the photo!) It is amazing how enlightened all that God-love makes a person.

But I don’t really care. Lauten is yet another in a long line of conservatives who hate all things liberal. Remember when Rush Limbaugh complained about Chelsea Clinton being ugly? Of course, Limbaugh isn’t much of a Christian — if he is one at all. But Ms Lauten is ostentatiously Christian. And yet it didn’t stop her from dumping all over a couple of children just because she doesn’t like the political party of their parents. As I argue around here a lot: American Christianity doesn’t mean much; it’s just tribalism; it is very hard to find any actual theology in it.

What most struck me in Lauten’s little rant is something she has made no further mention of, “Then again your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter…” You’ve got to love this kind of facile disregard of the President and First Lady. How exactly is it that they don’t respect their positions? And the idea that they don’t respect the country is really too vile. Lauten is, after all, a member of the conservative political party. That’s the party of, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” This is the party of, “Love it or leave it!” This is the party of, “Better dead than red!” It reminds me of this David Cross routine:

That’s the thing, right? I discussed it recently, Conservatives Love “America,” Hate America. The conservative love for our country is totally contingent upon the country being a certain way. And this is why they claim that it was totally unacceptable to criticize President Bush even while they claim that Obama is some foreign “other” who hates the country and probably doesn’t even have a Constitutional right to be president. Really, it is all just the fact that conservatives have wrapped themselves in the flag for so long that the rest of us mistake that for patriotism. But the truth is that they love the flag and hate the country. And you can see this in the fact that they are more and more blunt in their love for the Confederacy.

Elizabeth Lauten, of course, is a good Christian who prays and asks her parents for guidance on what she should do when she publicly shames teenage girls for the sin of not being born to Republican parents. But that doesn’t make her different from any other Republican. That just shows that the the whole Christian “family values” routine is just as much of an act as we always thought. But don’t worry about Lauten! Conservative Christians are extremely good at forgiving themselves. For example, Lauten seems to have forgiving herself for the time when she was arrested for shoplifting when she was 17 years old. And she’ll forgive herself for this. What’s more, the Republican Party will forgive her. I’m sure she’ll soon have a good paying job in some other paleoconservative’s office.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been gone all day today. I had to help my father. Last week, his bank told him that the State of California served a tax levy to his bank for almost $3,000 in back taxes for 2010 and 2011. The problem is that my father is on Social Security and doesn’t work. So it seemed unlikely that he could owe any money. After various attempts to use the phone to contact the state, we went to one of their regional offices in Oakland. I figured the problem was that there was something that went on because of the death of his girlfriend at that time or that they got him mixed up with me, because we have the same name.

It turned out that it was much more vague than that. The state seems to have looked at him and decided that he had too high a standard of living for his declared income. And given that my father has a contractor’s license, they figured he must be working under the table. They asked us questions such as, “What is your mortgage?” Well, my father has no mortgage; his house has been paid for for a long time. And they wanted to know how he supported himself. Given that my father is 82-years-old, one would think the answer would be obvious. Anyway, they sent us off the Social Security office to get proof that they really are supporting him. So I’m supposed to put that information together with a cover letter and send it off to them. And then, if we are good little boys, the money they just summarily removed from his account will be returned to him.

All the people that we dealt with today were friendly and efficient. And the whole system was efficient — very much like the DMV were you take a number and wait. It’s amazing, therefore, that a government that could do such a good job of dealing with the needs of its citizens would be so callous as to just take money away from an eighty-something without any due process or even warning. The bank informed my father just two days before the transfer was to be take place (even though it had received the levy 13 days earlier). And the State of California didn’t even send notice of the tax bill until the day before the money was taken; the notice wasn’t received until two days after.

Now it looks like the money will be refunded (although we have no idea how long it will take). But we don’t know why the state decided to take the money out for these two years. My father has been retired for fifteen years. What’s more, we don’t know where they came up with the tax liability. And why didn’t they know that my father was on Social Security? It’s all just terrible. And I wonder what would have happened if my father hadn’t had me to help him navigate this whole thing. It is only when dealing with things like this that I am reminded just how old he is. His level of frustration and confusion is high and quite understandable. In this case, the state seems to be taking the position of, “Woops!” But that doesn’t fly when they are so abusing the old and weak.

The State of California is known for its hardball tactics when dealing with taxes. I understand the situation — the government needs money to do the things that the people demand. But this kind of behavior is a direct result of our governmental system that is so skewed toward the interests of the rich. We can never tax the rich more, because they will use their money to destroy any politicians who counter them. So the state is put in a situation where it is more savage in its attacks on the weakest members of society. We’ve seen the same thing in Ferguson where the poor are being economically bled to provide low taxes for the “job creators.” And there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it.

I came upon a great article that Rick Perlstein wrote earlier this year at The Nation, From & Friends. It is a review of Al From’s memoir, The New Democrats and the Return to Power. In case you don’t know, Al From is one of the most vile political operatives of the last 30 years. As the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), he stands as one of the most important figures in creating our modern dysfunctional political system. And the particularly great thing about From is that he sees himself as a great hero — the man who saved the Democratic Party.

What I’ve argued for a long time is that the DLC “solution” to saving the Democratic Party both destroyed the party and caused the Republican Party to make a hard right turn. According to From, without the Democratic Party becoming conservative on economic issues, we would have had a string of Republican presidents from 1992 onward. And implicit in From’s argument is that the Democratic Party lost the 1980, 1984, and 1988 elections because it was liberal. This is patently false.

The economic fundamentals were such that nothing the Democrats could have done in 80, 84, and 88 would have won then the presidency. The economy was tanking in 1980 and that is why Reagan beat Carter. The economy was roaring back in 1984 and that is why Reagan beat Mondale. And in 1988, the economy was still doing very well and that is why Bush beat Dukakis. And as Perlstein discusses in some depth, none of Carter, Mondale, nor Dukakis were liberal. They were all proto-New Democrats. The only reason that From doesn’t consider them as such is because they lost. That is apparently what it is to be a New Democrat: you have to be economically conservative and you have to win.

As for the elections after this period, the 1992 election was Clinton’s to lose. The fundamentals were even better for him in 1996. In 2000, Gore had a minor advantage in terms of the economy. But as we know, Gore actually won that election. The fact that the Supreme Court gave the election to Bush doesn’t mean anything. In 2004, Bush had as big an economic advantage as his father had against Dukakis in 1988. But the most telling election was 2008, when the economic fundamentals were even stronger in the Democrats’ favor than they had been in the Republicans’ favor in 1980. Yet while the Republicans took the opportunity to elect an extremely conservative president, the Democrats took the opportunity to elect a moderate (conservative Democrat) who was more interested in “bipartisanship” than liberalism.

That is the legacy of Al From. Now, even when the Democrats win presidential elections, liberals still lose. Our choice for president is now a modern Democrat, who is more conservative than an old Republican, or a modern Republican who is more extreme than Barry Goldwater and far less intelligent. Yet From’s 288 page awesomeness essay came with an introduction by Bill Clinton. And if we are very lucky, in 2016, we will elect Clinton’s wife who will continue the DLC tradition of offering us ever more neoliberal economic policy. Al From is a great political hero — for the conservative movement. Why any liberal would celebrate him, I can’t say.

The following wonderful TED Talk is, How Economic Inequality Harms Societies. In it, Richard Wilkinson begins, “You all know the truth of what I’m going to say. I think the intuition that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive has been around since before the French Revolution. What’s changed is we now can look at the evidence — we can compare societies — more and less equal societies — and see what inequality does.” I couldn’t disagree more that we all know the truth; as a society, we are incapable of seeing the truth.

Wilkinson is mistaking himself and other like minded people who look at evidence and assuming that they represent the society over all. And it is funny that he would be giving this talk to the power elite at TED, because they above all don’t believe such things. Remember when Nick Hanauer gave his TED Talk about how the rich were not “job creators”? What happened was that the head of the lecture series decided not to release the video of the talk because it was thought to be divisive. “Divisive,” of course, is what the oligarchs that support TED Talks call anything that questions their position as the noble “free market” aristocracy.

The biggest intellectual problems stem from hidden assumptions. And over the course of my life, I have see the most pernicious assumption ossify into unquestioned truth. That assumption is that the economy is a kind of social Darwinian system that must be left as it is or else we will decay into a terrible world where everyone lives in poverty except the very top. We will become a third world economy — a “banana” republic. The idea that economies are artificial constructs that are never “natural” is anathema. And along with that goes the idea that the economy ought to be designed to work for everyone and not just the very top.

Richard Wilkinson shows that the more equal a country is, the better off its people are in pretty much any way that you can think of. What’s more, the more equal a society is, the better off the rich are. Rich people in equal societies live longer. So we have a situation where the rich should rationally want a more equal society. Of course, that is exactly the opposite of what they will work for. They more than anyone believe the big lie that the economy works the way it does because it must — because it is “natural.” And believing this lie flatters them: it says that in some objective way they are better than most people. They never grapple with the idea that they just happen to be doing well in our society because they happened to have been born into a society that rewards what they are good at. Warren Buffett is one of the few who gets it, “I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions.”

I think of Wilkinson as those people at the end of Fahrenheit 451, holding onto knowledge for a later time when society is open to them. It reminds me of David Frum who has argued that he would be in favor of cannabis legalization if he could be convinced that it would not have any bad effects or lead people into “harder” drugs. It always struck me because it is a position that pretends to be reasonable but is completely closed minded. Just the same, the power elite may look at Wilkinson’s overwhelming evidence for having a more equal society and they will find a way to justify keeping things they way they are. Like Frum, they would require that there be some kind of assurance that there would be absolutely no down side to the change. But what they are really arguing is that nothing be done — because the current system works well for them.

So I see Richard Wilkinson as a noble but tragic character in our society. And we all suffer because our society is too far gone to see the obviousness of what he has to teach us.

War is really not about killing. Rather, it is about wielding power. Countries often use physical violence to get other countries to do what they want. But there are lots of other ways that a country can do the same thing. And although war is a particularly awful way to yield power, we shouldn’t just cast aside other abuses of power as though they didn’t matter.

The United States is especially bad in this regard. We have no problem bringing in our military, but we meddle in just about every country on earth. Much of the time, violence is implicit. But we also use our economic power against countries all the time — directly as well as through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund. And as we move into the future, I’m sure that powerful countries will use this tactic more and more. As a result, I think we have to get past this idea that just because people are shooting at each other, the powerful are not abusing their power. More and more it seems that economic extortion is the rule rather than the exception.

Many people have noticed that I have a fairly bad opinion of Germany. I think their behavior in the EU has been absolutely terrible. One of the reasons for forming the EU was to integrate the region so that they didn’t have any more world wars. That’s a laudable goal. Just the same, we seem to have ended up with the same thing. It is just that no one is shooting. And I’ll admit: that’s a positive change. But the fact remains that Germany has the largest economy in the EU and the country uses it to push the rest of the countries around.

The best example of this has been how Germany has acted since the financial crisis of 2008. Instead of looking for the best way to heal the entire economy of the European Union, Germany has spent the time complaining that other countries — especially in the south — are just not as virtuous as they are and if only these countries would act more like them, all would be fine. If this sounds vaguely racist and not too different from German thinking during the lead-up to World War II, I don’t think it is surprising.

What Europe needs is for the countries who are doing well to spend more and increase their inflation rate to allow the countries that are doing poorly to produce more and climb out of debt. This is the most basic of economic concepts: everyone can’t simultaneously save or it will just cause further depression of the economy. It even has a name: paradox of thrift. But Germany has done exactly the opposite of what it should: it has kept wages down, making it even harder for other countries to compete and break into the German markets. And to top matters off, Germany is smug about what it’s doing. So they claim they are virtuous, even as they are causing enormous amounts of pain throughout Europe and to a lesser extend worldwide.

Paul Krugman put together this helpful graph to show what’s going on. It shows how much wages have increased since the monetary union was established in 1999. And what you see is that during a time when German wages should have been rising faster than in Italy and France, they have been rising at less than one-third the rate of these countries. And this is not just some accident; this is German government policy. Krugman put it well:

But the German people would be shocked to hear that they aren’t playing by the rules. Their government and their media are not only telling them they are behaving exactly as they should but also that all the problems in southern Europe is caused by those countries not being enough like Germany. So let me be clear: Germany is a bully. And praising them for not invading southern Europe is a pretty low bar of accountability. Carl von Clausewitz said that war “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.” That is what German is doing now. They just don’t need the violence anymore.

Darren Wilson has resigned from the Ferguson Police Department. In a statement, he claimed that he did not want to put the “residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk.” And I suppose that is a better way to put it than, “I will be too busy with my ghostwriter and video acting courses.” And who can blame him? One needs to take advantage of these opportunities. I mean, how likely is it that he is going to get another opportunity to kill an unarmed teenager and walk away from even an indictment? I’ve predicted a six-figure book deal, but it is entirely possible that he could get over a million dollars. There are a lot of conservatives for whom he is now a hero.

I was surprised, however, to have a conversation with my father Thanksgiving night. Despite his hour per day of Fox News, he completely sided with Michael Brown. He didn’t find Wilson’s story credible. And interestingly, what he had a problem with was a minor statement. According to Wilson, the first thing he said to Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson was, “Hey guys, why don’t you walk on the sidewalk?” My conservative father just couldn’t get past that. Despite the fact that my father has never been in any trouble (he’s never spent a moment in jail), his interactions with the police have generally been very negative. And one thing is for certain: officers never ask people to do something, they tell them what to do. And Dorian Johnson’s quote sounds right, “Get the f*** on the sidewalk!”

What bothered me at Thanksgiving was that there was a lot of mention of the size of Michael Brown — by mostly non-political people. Michael Brown was 6'-4" and 290 pounds. No one was aware that Darren Wilson was also 6'-4", although lighter: only 220 pounds. The information that seems to have made it into the minds of the casual news consumer is, “I felt like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan.” It is poetic, but as such, it should be taken lightly. (There is the other way of looking at it: Darren Wilson is so used to manhandling smaller people, that dealing with someone larger really did frighten him.)

Despite my experience with my father, my takeaway from Thanksgiving is that the whole Michael Brown shooting will be remembered inaccurately and badly in the public sphere. It will be that Brown was a thug who maybe didn’t deserve to die, but who brought it on himself. And even worse, it will be seen as a case where the police officer acted appropriately. It will be yet another instance that separates the white and black communities. The white community will continue to think that cops are generally okay guys doing a hard and dangerous jobs. And the black community will continue to think that cops have chips on their shoulders and treat people of color as though they are guilty until proven otherwise. No one who reads this site can be confused about who I think is right.

There was always a problem with the Michael Brown case. The problems with policing and the criminal justice system are not about any particular person, police force, city, or region. People tend to overestimate the age of black children and to assume they are more dangerous than white children. This is not a problem with bad people. It is a systemic problem — dating back hundreds of years. It requires systemic solutions, and they start with economics. If we don’t look broadly at the problem, we will continue on with the white majority continuing to learn the wrong lessons from these pointless deaths.

Afterword

I think that dealing with our economic problems is the most important thing to do because it has the broadest effect. But there are more specific things that we should do that would have greater immediate effects. In particular, I think that the police officers and prosecutors should be held accountable for what they do on the job. For example, Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman were shown to be innocent and released from prison 39 years after the crime. Regardless of what happens to them, nothing will happen to the police and the prosecutors who railroaded them. People claim to be for the death penalty because it disincentivizes murder, but no such concern exists when it is government officials using the system to kill innocent people. But the big problem is that the white community by and large thinks such things are just unfortunate errors in the system rather than what they are: explicit designs of the system.