https://www.peterkuper.com/stock_jpgs_j/images/dissent_j.jpg

UPDATED 11/15, 11/29

I’ve been thinking about the following for some time. Not many links right now, but there likely will be. And as I do I will update and move this post forward.

Historically governments generally lasted between 200 and 400 years before collapsing from a combination of incompetence, corruption, and inability to adapt to change. For many years I thought democratic governments might be able to break than jinx. After all, unlike dynasties they had an internal mechanism for rejuvenation: elections.

I still think this outcome is a possibility for democracies, but I am increasingly uncertain it will hold for the first major experiment with democracy: the United States. The country seems to be suffering from extreme political sclerosis at a time when this might be fatal to its continued flourishing. Here are some examples:

Media Breakdown
The media exists as a key institution for keeping sunlight on the doings of politicians and bureaucrats. But several factors have come together to undermine the media’s capacity to do this.

The first problem here is media corporatization, which means that pursuit of profit overwhelmingly trumps all other issues. Better to report on fluff than news because fluff attracts people, does not upset them, and costs nothing to report. Unlike the politically corrupt, fluffetes like Paris Hilton and Ann Coulter seek media attention. For public corporations, profit is not the main thing, it is the only thing.

This has real costs for citizens and democracy. A April, 2007, PEW survey indicated that the best informed citizens watch the Daily Show and Colbert report, the worst informed, Fox. In general, no group getting its information from corporate television came close in their knowledge to those reading newspapers or watching PBS and NPR. This study confirmed a 2003 University of Maryland study showing Fox viewers to be by far the most ill informed citizens on basic facts of current affairs. But corporations such as CNN are also deliberately undermining the content of presidential debates and citizen questions to candidates. In fact, as of this writing (Nov 16) over 1500 questions have been asked by media representatives during presidential candidate debates. There has been ONE question about wiretapping, no questions about habeas corpus, none about telecom liability, but Brian Williams (NBC) did ask Democratic candidates how they would dress for Halloween. Go here for even more details. Contrast these overpaid trained gibbons with the intelligence of average Americans here.

Corporations have proven themselves unqualified to own new media needed to serve citizens. Period.

Second, top journalists increasingly identify with Washington’s power brokers through marriage and socialization. David Broder is the most pathetic example, but hardly alone. Alan Greenspan’s wife is media figure Andrea Mitchell. Campbell Brown of CNN is the wife of Dan Senor, a Bush spokesman in Iraq. Her bias is obvious. See also here. There are many others, but I don’t have the time right now to track them down. Unfortunately this cozy arrangement is in harmony with corporate desires for more profit. When the media and those in power see their interests as in greater harmony than either have with the American people, tremble for your country.

Third, the corporations owning the media have their own interests that they make sure do not get reported when a conflict between their pocketbook and the American people arises. Disney gets copyright laws changed to protect their profit and, not so oddly, there is little to no coverage. When privileges are given to telecom industries, news coverage is unusually light.

The watchdog is largely asleep, or perhaps more accurately, sleeping with those it is supposed to watch.

Political Oligopoly
Our constitution was written before the rise of political parties. For most of our history the existence of parties did little harm and probably some good. The national government was weak until the 1930s. In addition, parties tended to be ideologically diverse and with weak national organizations. In addition, the number of issues nationally were relatively limited. That the two parties made it difficult for third parties to amount to much had little impact whe the parties themselves were so weak and internally varied.

Today the Republican Party is more like a disciplined European Party than a traditional American one. When they controlled Congress and the Presidency we saw a complete breakdown of the logic of constitutional government because separation of powers was overridden by party discipline.

Parliamentary systems evolved with strong parties and have their own checks on them. We do not. The result was tyranny in the classical definition of the term: arbitrary rule. If Democrats become more like Republicans to fight the threat of a right wing totalitarian movement, the result will be a kinder, gentler, undermining of our constitutional order.

Polarization
Democracies require that all sides acknowledge that disagreement is inevitable and legitimate. As Tip O’Neil, the Democratic Speaker of the House under Ronald Reagan repled to a newly elected Democratic representative who asked him how to deal with “the enemy.” O’Neil asked him who he meant. “The Republicans.” He replied. O’Neil corrected him, saying, “The Republicans are the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.”

This is the logic of the separation of powers. It is the logic of our Constitution.

Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay, and many other leading Republican politicians now use the language of war to describe their political opposition. Politics then becomes a zero sum game of winners and losers – and when this happens the social capital that sustains democracies begins to wither.

Added to this development is an increasingly geographical polarization of “red” and “blue” populations in our country. The more we do not encounter people with different beliefs, the easier it is to think the worst of them. When we think the worst of them, allowing them to win comes to be unthinkable.

Aristocracy
The contemptuous behavior of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi towards members of their own party who are critical of their knuckling under to an unpopular president seems to indicate they think they have more in common with fellow incumbents than they do with the people who elected them. How else explain liberal Barbara Boxer campaigning for the re-election of one of the most dishonest Democrats of our time, Joe Lieberman? Their sphere of reference seems to be Washington’s beltway, not their constituents – a problem made far worse because they not only spend most of their time there except when raising money, Washington is also where many stay when they leave office. They do so inorder to become still more wealthy through lucrative lobbying contracts.

And of course they keep this in mind while serving as our “representatives.”
Oligarchy
There are now 30,000 mostly overpaid lobbyists in Washington. Many have close personal ties with incumbents, having once been politicians themselves. They serve mostly the wealthy and powerful. Their job is to help them get legal privileges not available to other Americans, and they are doing a very good job indeed.

The most recent examples, and among the worst, is the incredible corruption among contractors in Iraq. Nor is this just a matter of money. The crimes committed by mercenaries acting in our name have alienated the Iraqi people, whom we were told we were supposed to help.

Also very bad, the wealthy who are served politically receive their perks not because they are productive but because they are well connected. They no longer need to adapt to changing market conditions, they only need adapt to changing political ones, where their wealth gives them special influence.

They have also learned to game the market system. For example, Charles Prince III was CEO of Citigroup, our largest bank, when it lost $64 BILLION, He was responsible for the losses, and resigned under pressure as CEO and chairman. Responsibility enforced? Well, his severance included a $12.5 MILLION cash bonus. His previous year’s bonus was $13.8 million. He $68 million, a $1.7 million pension, and an office, car, and driver for 5 years. He had previously received $53.1 million during the years Citigroup lost nearly $70 billion. His example is not all that unusual. CEO salaries in the US are way out of line with their historical rates. In 2002 CEO’s on average received 145 times the income of an average worker. In 2004 it was 240 times. Their income also vastly exceeds the rates in other parts of the world. You can download a report from the Center for American Progress here.
But gaming the system is apparently not connected to competence in the market. CitiBank is scarcely alone as one huge organization after another, over paid CEOs and all, teeter and totter, losing billions and sliding towards bankruptcy and the inevitable bail out by the taxpayers.

As government ever more single-mindedly serves the wealthy, the decline of our middle class is the result.

As the middle class disappears, the rich and poor form two distinct populations with little in common. This is explosive for the future of our democracy.

Incompetence
The old saying goes that first rate people hire first rate people, and second rate people never do. There is considerable truth to this, and we see it illustrated in the extraordinary incompetence demonstrated by the Bush/Cheney administration. Because the mediocre have only their connections to insure their keeping plum jobs for which they are otherwise ill suited, they weave strong networks of mutual support, insuring that no one loses due to poor performance. That would be a bad precedent from their perspective. Anyone at all attentive to current events will see that this is the new American norm.

Dynasties
While it was bad for the Founders it was probably good for our country that, except for John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, none of their male children survived to adulthood. Early in our history we were spared the common tendency of people to support political dynasties, at least nationally. Now we see the emergence of this plague. It is quite possible that the all presidential elections from 1992 to 2008 will be between Clintons and Bushes. In a nation of 300,000,000 people.

Court Culture
Along with the incestuous relationship between big media personalities and the politically powerful, James Carville and Mary Matalin symbolize court culture at its worst. The former is a major consultant for the Democratic Party, the latter for the Republican Party, and they are married. They make their living as political consultants, and a good living it is. Consultants justify their fees by getting political candidates to do what they otherwise might not. In short, they guarantee in many cases that winning through manipulation is all that counts, for only then can they justify making their bucks.

The result is an increasingly stagnant political system , one apparently increasingly incapable of adapting to challenges. We know something is wrong when those who events have proven wrong continue to cling to power and those who time and again are shown to be correct are marginalized. And we see this time and again in many of our most basic institutions, especially in politics and the media. For example, those who have been shown time and again to have been wrong about Iraq dominate national discussion of the issue whereas those shown time and again to have been wrong rarely get a national forum.

This is systemic stupidity, and in the real world stupid systems do not survive.