After the Election

 

Irony for All

 

            In June 2016 I quit the Republican Party.  Here’s part of what I wrote then:

 

As far as I can tell, Donald Trump believes in nothing except Donald Trump.  According to him, he has the world’s greatest memory, one of the world’s best brains, a more than adequate penis, and an easy answer for every one of the nation’s problems.  What he obviously does not have is humility. 

Donald Trump is now the titular head of the Republican Party.  Therefore I cannot be a Republican.  I hope to someday return to the fold, but not until the party has repaired this disaster.

 

The election is over now, and Joe Biden will be our next president.  However, as I wrote a month ago, Donald Trump is so much a captive of his ego that he cannot bring himself to concede.  Instead, the president claims over and over that the election was stolen.

I’m much more concerned with the Republican Party than Mr. Trump.  One way or another, he will fade into insignificance.  As he goes, though, his ego tantrum may greatly weaken the immediate GOP future.  The irony of it must delight Democrats.

 Mr. Trump claims, with no evidence, that the election was stolen by fraud.  His own Attorney General denies this, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s safe to say that millions of people—millions of would-be Republican voters—will believe Trump.  “It’s all rigged, anyway,” they think.  When you believe that, why bother to vote?  As a result, two senatorial run-off elections in Georgia may well go to the Democrats.  The Georgia senatorial races were extremely close, so it would only take a few thousand discouraged Republican voters to give the run-off elections to the Democrats.  If discouraged Republicans stay home, the Dems win.  And if the Democrats win those races, they will organize the Senate, giving them much greater opportunities to enact “progressive” policies.

The irony gets richer.  Despite polls that suggested a strong “blue wave” in which the Democrats would take the White House, control the Senate, and increase their control of the House, the 2020 election was actually very good for Republicans.  The GOP gained seats in the House, they held their slim lead in the Senate (pending Georgia’s two seats), and they did very well in many state legislatures.  How could they lose the presidency and still do so well down ballot?  The answer is obvious.  Some voters—not a huge percentage, but a few million voters nationwide—split their tickets.  They voted for Republican candidates at the state level and for Congress, but they voted against Mr. Trump.  On the whole, the president did significantly worse than his party. 

Nevertheless, Republican leaders continue to kowtow to Trump.  They need to recognize the damage his ego is doing to their party.  They need to say out loud: You lost the election fair and square, Mr. President. 

Republican leaders need to defend the integrity of our system of elections.  (Yet another irony: the Georgia Secretary of State is a Republican.  And Trump accuses him of not stopping massive fraud.)  If they don’t restore faith in our elections, they deserve the electoral defeats that will follow.

Democrats don’t complain about electoral fraud.  Their excuse (which many believed before the election) was “voter suppression.”  We could debate at length how much voter suppression there really is.  But notice that when people believe someone is trying to keep them from voting, many of them will try harder to vote.  Worries about voter suppression motivate people to vote.  But worries about electoral “fraud” discourage people from voting.

I would like to rejoin the Republican Party.  But its leaders need to wake up and smell the irony.

 

 

 

What will he say?

The Speech We Need to Hear

 

Let’s go back twelve years.

My friends, we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Sen. Barack Obama — to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

Thus began John McCain’s concession speech, November 4, 2008.  It was a gracious speech, in which he praised Barack Obama and urged his fellow citizens to work for a better future for their country.  McCain didn’t paper over policy differences.  Instead, he called for hard work and compromise.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

McCain ended his remarks with a note of hope.  Ironically, Obama had made “audacious hope” a central campaign theme.

 And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties but to believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.

Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America.

            How distant McCain’s words seem!  In 2020 we can safely say that many people sincerely believe that only voter suppression and intimidation can prevent victory for Mr. Biden.  On the other side, many people—including Mr. Trump, apparently—think that only massive fraud can prevent the president’s reelection.  Thousands on both sides are ready to protest.  According to solid polling data, millions of voters on both sides regard the other side not just as wrong but as diabolically evil.  The election is pictured as a crusade for social justice or a last chance to stave off state socialism.  To use McCain’s words, many have despaired over our difficulties and lost belief in the promise of America.

            Election Day is two days future.  What the country needs is a good concession speech.  It is certain that one of the two candidates will lose, but I don’t think either Biden or Trump is prepared to deliver the concession speech we need.  I fear Biden is too much a captive of the “progressives” in his party to call on them to compromise and work hard with a reelected president.  I fear Trump is too much a captive of his ego to admit that he lost or congratulate the man who defeated him.

            If I am right, that neither candidate will make the speech we need to hear, what can we do?  The next best thing is to write that speech ourselves.  Suppose your candidate loses.  What should he say to the winner and the country?  What should you want him to say?

            McCain gave us a road map.  First, thank the victor for loving America enough to endure a political life and a campaign for the White House.  Second, state without equivocation your belief that local and state election officials around the country have done their best to count votes.  Remind your followers that while no election apparatus can be perfect, you accept the outcome of the vote.

Congratulate the winner for his victory.  Praise him for communicating a vision for America’s future.  Assure him that you desire that good future as much as he does.  Remind him that you are still not persuaded by his policy proposals, and scores of millions of citizens voted for you.  Pledge to him that you and your supporters will work hard for the country’s future, you expect strong differences over policy to lead to new and better proposals, and in some cases both sides will have to compromise.

            Never vilify those who voted for the victor.  Resolutely reject rancor.  Remind everyone we are fellow citizens and that we need to listen to each other.

            Conclude your speech with your heartfelt confidence that America’s best days are ahead of her.  The campaign has shown us how great are the challenges we face, but you pledge to work with the victor and the whole country to meet them.

 

 

On Wishful Thinking

 

I Just Want to Go Back to Normal

 

            For many it is the defining emotion of the Covid year.  “I can hardly wait to get back to normal,” or “Why can’t things be the way they were?” or “I just want to be able to go to the park (or to the pool or to the museum or . . .)”

            Normality, of course, isn’t static.  We live in certain ways and get used to our experiences of life.  “Normal” is what we expect.  As we change and our experiences change, our expectations change too.  The fourth grade boy experiences one normality; six years later he is a teenager in high school whose normal world differs greatly from what he knew back then.  The boy himself is changing so fast he may not notice changes in the world around him.

            In adulthood we change more slowly than teenagers.  We “settle down” and we think we’ve got a pretty good bead on the world.  We know what to expect.  We know what is “normal.”

            Then something changes.  Not something in me (that’s the child or teen’s experience), but something out there.  Not something small or gradual—naturally the world is always changing in small ways, which we rarely notice—but in some important, attention-grabbing way.  And when the change hurts, that’s when we want to go back to normal.

            Some world-shaking changes are welcomed by everyone.  No one says, “I want to go back to the good old days before the polio vaccine.”  But changes that take away comfortable and familiar experiences—especially changes that introduce anxiety, disrupt our routines and threaten our lives—these changes make us wish for the past.

            Remember 9/11.  If you were an adult you knew something big had intruded into our lives, even for those who lived thousands of miles from New York and Washington.  For a week, air travel was grounded.  And since then, airport security has become the new normal for travelers.  We’re used to it now; we expect long lines and x-ray machines.

            I’ll confess: I liked air travel better before 9/11.  In May that year, Ron Mock and I led a study trip to Europe.  Our students had to stand in line at customs, and we had to plan ahead to cash traveler’s checks (there’s a change I don’t regret; who uses traveler’s checks anymore?), but we breezed through the airports.

            And now we have the Covid year.  (For months, the newspapers used all caps—COVID-19.  We’re used to it now, and I simply type “Covid.”  I predict it will be one of the year’s new words.  Watch for an announcement from the Oxford English Dictionary.)  Covid’s got all the features of unwanted change: it’s big, it’s out of our control, it forces us to change our routines, and it induces anxiety.

            Not surprisingly, people wish they could go back to normal.  We have “pandemic fatigue.”  We want to get out of the house.  We want our kids to attend school.  We want our jobs back.  We want to go to church.  And we don’t want to wear masks.

            Wishful thinking—using one’s imagination—isn’t always bad.  Just think of the wonderful stories we classify as “fantasies.”  But we have to be careful.  Human beings have great powers of self-deception.  We can easily move from “I don’t want it to be true” to “It isn’t true” or “Masks aren’t really very helpful.”  Sadly, when it comes to Covid, there are plentiful voices that urge us to believe such things.  There have been and always will be people who tell us what we want to hear. 

            When the semester started I told my students I hated wearing a mask.  As a baseball fan, I regard the 2020 season—shortened to 60 games, played in empty ballparks—as a great loss.  I am deeply saddened by the damage done education all over the country.  Just as much, I am saddened at the economic damage caused by the Covid recession, which has hit the working poor much harder than the rich and the middle class.  I wish it hadn’t happened.  I just want to go back to normal.  But I can’t believe what I wish.

            Things will get better.  We expect multiple vaccines to prove themselves safe and effective.  If enough people take the vaccines (or build their own antibodies by being infected and surviving) the human population will achieve “herd immunity.”  The virus will infect thousands every year, not millions.  We won’t always have to wear masks.  Children will return to school.  It will be a new normal, not the one we remember.

           

           

Let's tell the truth

 

Election Worries 2020

 

            Election Day, November 3, is sixty-three days away.  Republican and Democratic voices tell me it will be the most important election in our lifetimes—or the most important in the history of the republic.  It’s typical election rhetoric, no more true this year than in the other elections I have witnessed.

            Of course, some elections are more important than others, coming at crucial times in history.  But without the perspective of time, it’s hard to say which electoral choices are the really important ones.  I highly doubt this election will be as important as 1860, when a bitterly divided country elected Abraham Lincoln, an ugly Illinois lawyer who turned out to be the leader the country needed.  Again: is our choice this year as momentous as the election of 1932, when we turned away from strict laissez-faire economics to experiment with social security, wage and hour laws, and other government interventions in the marketplace? 

            (Some people tell me that this election is all about “socialism,” that the Democratic candidate stands for the end of capitalism.  Depending on your definition of “socialism,” we became socialist in the 1930s with the New Deal, or in the 1960s with Medicare, or when we adopted national health insurance.  It seems to me we ought to debate actual policy proposals without worrying about labels.  If it matters, I’m a practicing capitalist.)

            I want to tell you what I am worried about this year.  There are two narratives, widely believed by many people.  Neither of these narratives is true, but because so many people believe them, I fear they will lead to grave trouble.  You can hear one story from people who support President Trump, the other from Biden people.

            The first narrative goes like this.  President Trump is going to win.  The polls you read about in the mainstream press, also known as fake news, are all wrong.  Remember four years ago, when similar polls predicted that Hilary Clinton would win?  They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.  President Trump is doing great, and patriotic Americans know it.  The only way he could fail to win reelection is through FRAUD.  And the Democrats are expert at FRAUD.  Their trick this year will be to claim that people need mail-in voting because of COVID-19—and everyone knows that mail-in voting is rife with FRAUD.  The pandemic argument is either an excuse or old-fashioned cowardice; after all, what danger is there in going to the polls on just one day?

            The competing narrative goes like this.  President Trump is a national disgrace.  He doesn’t even pretend to be a unifier; he appeals strictly to white voters in rural areas and the suburbs of big cities.  Opinion polls of likely voters consistently show that there are not enough of these white voters to reelect Trump.  So Vice President Biden is going to win.  The problem is that Republicans know this.  They know that if the people who support Biden actually vote, Biden will win.  That is why Republicans work so hard, in so many ways, to keep people from voting.  They want it to be hard to vote, because only by VOTER SUPPRESSION can they win.  Trump’s head of the Postal Service (a big donor to Trump’s campaign) is doing what he can to slow down mail-in voting, and that’s just one version of VOTER SUPRESSION.  There are lots of other tricks in the Republican VOTER SUPPRESSION toolkit.

            Both of these narratives are false.  This is important, so I will say it again.  Both of these narratives are false.

            Each side claims that we know now that their candidate will win.  Based on this “knowledge,” each side is preparing its accusatory rationale for how the other side stole the election.  I fear that many people, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people on each side, believes their narrative.  And I fear that of those hundreds of thousands there will be hundreds, perhaps thousands, who are willing to act on the basis of their “knowledge.”

            In America our political discourse is dominated by protest.  (As a philosopher, I should acknowledge that Alasdair MacIntyre explained the reasons for the ascendancy of protesting as a political act in After Virtue.)  No matter which candidate wins the election, there will be hundreds or thousands who will protest the result.  Filled with outrage, but not surprise, they will scream, “We knew it!  We warned you about (fraud/voter suppression), and now it’s happened.”

            You see what worries me.  It is very likely that in the days after November 3, America’s streets will witness protests.  It is only a little less likely that those protests will turn violent.  Still a bit less likely, protesters will be killed or kill others (or both) in our streets in November. 

            Dear friend, no matter how you plan to vote in November, please counteract these false stories.  You do NOT know who will win the election.  You do NOT know that the other side will steal the election.  When people make such claims, speak up and tell the truth.

           

 

21 Days Until . . .

A New & Unusual School Year

 

            Fall semester at George Fox begins three weeks from today.  Other universities have different start dates, but for faculty at all of them Fall 2020 presents challenges like no other.  We’re scrambling to plan for classes in the midst of a pandemic.

            GFU plans to open for face-to-face classes, while lots of other schools (including some very large state universities) have opted for online courses only.  None of us thinks all our students will be in class; some have already asked to “attend” via zoom, and others will almost certainly contract COVID-19 and be quarantined for some portion of the semester.  So my plan for the semester has to include the students who can be physically present and those who cannot.  It would be disingenuous to say the latter group will get as good an educational “product” as the first.  Face-to-face is just better.  Of course, each student also contributes to the quality of his or her education; the remote student who pours herself into the work may benefit more than the in-person student who “skates.”

            Preparation starts with an attitude adjustment.  On my part, that is. I’ve had to abandon nostalgia for the good old days (six months ago, in a different world) when I knew how to teach.  “Normality” may never return, and it certainly will not return this fall.  The pandemic world is the real world.  It’s my job to teach as well as I can in it.  Once I surrender my desires for the old, I get excited about the new.

            Change and challenge can bring unexpected opportunities.  My students are very aware, perhaps more than ever, of the price they are paying for college.  Thus, I can appeal to their self-interest; the degree of cooperation between professor and students will go a long way toward determining the quality of their education.  In particular, I will invite their criticisms and suggestions about classroom practices.

            Distance students will have to attend via zoom.  If my in-class students have their phones or computers, I can create zoom breakout groups mixing them.  The electronic chat feature may encourage otherwise quiet students to contribute to discussion sessions.  I plan to record many of the zoom sessions.  Students may then ask for access to the recordings as a way to review.  I don’t want to encourage students to skip class sessions and depend on recorded video.  That opens the door to asynchronous, everybody study on your own, online learning.  Taking a cue from Andrea Scott, GFU Provost, I am adopting “remote” teaching, not “online.”  The focus of the class is in the classroom, though we strive to provide remote students something worth their tuition.

            I will have to plead for good electronic citizenship.  Bringing technology to class presents obvious temptations: private chats, web browsing, and other distractions.  Somehow I have to get my students to “buy in” to the challenge ahead of us.  Together we have to fight distraction and focus on the material.  It helps, of course, that I am genuinely excited about my “stuff”: Intro to Philosophy; The Good Life (my version of HUMA 205, Literature and Philosophy); Logic; and Peace Theory.

            I’ve not taught Peace Theory before.  Back in 1992 I taught Philosophy of Peace and War (at UO, not Fox), the closest analogue to this new assignment.  Tomorrow, though, Gina Miller Johnson will give me pointers from her past work in the class.

            You know what?  I think this is going to work.

Independence Day Thoughts

On Symbols and Politics

            In liberal democracies we vote to elect legislators and executives (mayors, governors, presidents).  In many cities and states, we also vote to decide certain policy questions (tax measures, initiatives, referenda, and recalls).

            We don’t “just” vote—as if voting were a random event punctuating an otherwise apolitical life.  We talk to each other in many ways: questioning, arguing, cajoling, threatening, pleading, etc. so that we may persuade each other (and be persuaded) about political decisions.  Political discourse is sometimes explicit, as when a candidate for office makes a speech asking for my vote.  Other times political speech is subtler, as when an academic reads a professional paper on a supposedly neutral topic—a philosophy paper, let’s say—but illustrates his academic point with politically suggestive examples.

            Political speech includes slick television ads, low-tech yard signs, protest marches, hunger strikes, twitter tweets, bumper stickers, public vigils, blog posts, letters to the editor, and conversations around the dinner table.  And more.  Human beings often invest very simple cues with complex meaning; we make symbols.  (Not only in politics; think of religious symbols or sports team logos.)

            Symbols are conventional; that is, people have to agree that a particular symbol “stands for” some idea.  There is nothing intrinsic to the shapes of the letters in the Latin alphabet that requires that this shape stands for this sound.  Greek and Cyrillic letters express similar sounds with different shapes.  But once symbols have been given meaning, they give us powerful tools for political speech.

            Compared to the letters of an alphabet, a political symbol may have a very short shelf life.  In 2016, the Trump campaign adopted “Make America Great Again” as its theme, and MAGA caps have proliferated across the country.  In ten years, though, even if Trump wins reelection this year, MAGA caps will be trivia of political history, akin to “I Like Ike” pins from the 1950s.

            Other political symbols assert longer lasting influence.  Every year, millions of school children are instructed in the symbolism of fifty stars and thirteen stripes on the flag of the United States.  Understanding the symbol, they will not be surprised if a fifty-first star is added some day (if Puerto Rico were to be admitted to the Union, for example).

            Consider the Statue of Liberty, a fascinating political symbol.  Intended to represent American values, it was actually a gift from France.  The size, beauty and symbolism of the statue have made it an American icon; you can find it on personal checks, business cards, and advertisements for assorted companies.  And yet, the overt message of the Statue of Liberty, expressed in the poetry of Emma Lazarus (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free . . .”) has at times been contradicted by U.S. policies that discouraged immigration by foreigners thought to be undesirable, whether that be Chinese in the 19^th century or Mexicans in the 21^st.

            Recently, in the uproar over the phone-recorded murder of George Floyd, an African American, by a white police officer, there has been a renewed push to take down statues of Confederate leaders and to change the name of military bases named for Confederates.  The energy behind such changes—and the energy resisting such changes—shows the importance of symbolism.  Symbols matter because people care about them.

Why do people care about Confederate symbols?  Why do some oppose them while others support them?  People understand the symbols in different ways.  One side says Confederate statues represent slavery; the other says they celebrate history.  If we inquire into the actual history of Confederate symbols (that is, the history of the symbols themselves, not the history they purport to express) the question becomes clearer.

Confederate statues were erected some decades after the Civil War, roughly from 1890-1920.  This is the era when white voters in southern states reasserted their political power in those states, what is often called the “Jim Crow” era. 

In the years immediately after the war, the U.S. government enforced “reconstruction” on the former slave states.  Black men—citizens now—elected Senators and Representatives to Washington.  But when reconstruction ended and Federal troops were removed from the South, white people voted uniformly for white Democrats; the “solid South” was created.  Black men might vote in the South—but very quickly new voting restrictions disenfranchised many of them.  Not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was it possible for African Americans to win statewide office in the South.

When they had achieved power, the Jim Crow governments adopted symbols of the South they believed in.  They erected statues for the leaders of their heroic, but lost, cause.  Along with the statues came a revisionist history, in which most slave owners were kind to their slaves and in which the Civil War was the “War for Southern Independence.”

I submit that the actual history of the symbols shows their intended meaning.  They were erected by white legislatures to honor white leaders who fought a war against the United States, even though every member of those legislatures had sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.  Never did the men who erected these statues erect any statue to honor slaves who had been freed.

Consider the meaning of Confederate statues to the people who first saw them, sometime in the Jim Crow era.  To white people, they might have symbolized a bygone world.  But to Blacks, they had to be symbols of white power, not just the power of slave owners back then but the power of the white government now.

Doesn’t it seem strange that an Army base, such as Fort Hood in Texas, should be named for a general who broke his oath of allegiance to fight against the United States?  “Gallant Hood of Texas,” John Bell Hood, did his very best to kill U.S. soldiers.  Why should U.S. soldiers honor his memory?

           

           

A Lament for 2020

Greed, Racism and Stupidity

            Because of COVID-19, Major League Baseball shut down in mid-March, about a week before the regular season was to begin.  Now, in early June, the owners and players are bickering about financial arrangements for a shortened season.  The general public scorns both sides equally: “billionaires squabbling with millionaires.”  More attentive baseball fans realize the story is more complicated than that.  Most baseball players are minor leaguers, unrepresented by the major league players association.  The millionaires (MLBPA) don’t defend the interests of minor league players against the billionaires (the owners).  So the owners are using the excuse of pandemic to greatly reduce the draft while eliminating a quarter of all affiliated minor league teams.  There’ll still be a few big signing bonuses for a few dozen top draft picks, but overall there will be fewer players in the system, and they will be paid less.

            One might think such greed on the part of the billionaires would be self-defeating.  After all, the quality of a baseball team depends on the talents of its players, and the cheapest way to develop and control baseball talent is to stock and train minor league teams.  The owners are betting that baseball talent will develop on its own through youth leagues and college teams and that they can still control the best players by drafting only the cream of the crop.  It may work.  After all, there are still lots of families willing to pay for the advanced youth leagues, camps, and all-star games where 17-20 year-olds pursue the dream.

            Unfortunately, American families able to pay for the baseball dream are mostly while, suburban, and middle-class.  Over the last three decades, fewer and fewer African Americans have made it to the big leagues.  Major League Baseball does have lots of minority players, but most of them are international players, especially from Latin America.  These players do not come into professional baseball through the draft.  Instead, teams sponsor baseball academies in the Dominican Republic and other countries, where they collect and develop talented players at far less cost than in minor league baseball in the United States.

            Until 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, major league baseball discriminated openly against black players.  Now the discrimination is subtler, and the owners almost certainly don’t recognize it as discrimination.  Every owner would insist vehemently that he wants the best possible players on his team, and the major leagues sponsor programs to promote baseball in African American neighborhoods in many American cities.  (I speak of the “owner” for simplicity’s sake, when in fact many teams are owned by ownership groups.)

            The owners’ protestations are true, but they miss the point.  By cutting back on minor league baseball and reducing the draft, organized baseball saves money, but it pushes the cost of developing baseball talent onto families.  On average, African American families have lower incomes (and much lower wealth) than white Americans.  Organized baseball’s cost saving measure links up with America’s economic stratification to keep blacks out of baseball.  The owners don’t intend to discriminate against African Americans, but their policy has that effect.

            A week ago, on Memorial Day weekend, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck on a Minneapolis street.  Mr. Floyd had already been handcuffed and was not resisting, but the officer kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes.  The murder was recorded on cell phones by observers, who can be heard asking the officer to stop.  Mr. Floyd said that he couldn’t breathe and asked for mercy.  The police officer continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck for more than two minutes after Mr. Floyd ceased speaking.

            Floyd was black; the officer is white.  Three other officers were present and did nothing to stop the murder.  Two of them are white; one is Asian.  The officer who killed Floyd has been charged with murder and manslaughter; the other three have not yet been charged.

            Almost all Americans are outraged and saddened by the killing of George Floyd.  But like major league baseball owners, many white Americans can’t see that their policies contribute to racist results.  Every year police in America kill unarmed African American men, lots of them.  No one knows exactly how many, because few killings are recorded on cell phones, and sometimes police officers lie.  They say the victim was armed when he wasn’t.

            Protests against police racism have erupted in scores of American cities, day after day, since the murder of George Floyd.  Hundreds of thousands of people have cried out for justice and for change.  People want real change.  They want police to treat black Americans the same way they treat white Americans.

            Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters give effective cover to thousands of rioters and looters.  In city after city, peaceful protests have been hijacked by criminals; they bomb police cars, smash businesses, steal merchandise, and commit assaults and murders.  George Floyd’s family has called for the violence to stop, for the three unindicted officers to be arrested, and for people to go home. 

President Trump has derided governors who are “weak” for not “dominating” the protesters.

            The protests coincide with COVID-19.  Thousands of demonstrators, mostly young adults, have been screaming their frustration and anger while marching in massed groups.  Other than singing in a choir in a closed space like a church or shouting in a packed crowd at a baseball game, there is probably no better way to spread the corona virus than these protests.  Young adults may survive the upsurge in COVID-19 cases we expect.  More likely, the protests will kill the protesters’ grandparents.

            Stupidity reigns in the White House and on the street.

           

           

More Thoughts While Housebound

Education and Virtue

            The reported death toll from COVID-19 in the United States has climbed past 60,000, the highest number by far in any country in the world.  Without even checking, I suspect that some voices on the Internet will say this fact “proves” interesting conclusions: (a) the US health system is both too expensive and not as good as single-payer health systems, (b) the US was deliberately targeted by our enemies (probably China) who produced the virus in their secret labs, (c) President Trump’s dithering in January and February prevented us from responding quickly to the threat of pandemic, (d) God is punishing the US for its many sins, especially sexual sins, and (e) a skillful conspiracy of opportunistic terrorists spread the virus in the US.

            Obviously, not every purported implication of some fact really is an implication of that fact. 

            As I say, I haven’t surfed the web to see if all these ideas are out there.  It would be nice to be wrong.  Unfortunately, our ubiquitous web of electronic connections gives a platform for all sorts of tendentious, fallacious, and inaccurate statements.  And outright lies, of course.

            Everybody knows this.  Our world is so rife with contradictory claims that some people abandon the search for truth.  Or they become zealots for ideologically pure doctrine.  (Don’t let anyone make you doubt our cause!)  It doesn’t help when national leaders dismiss unwanted facts as “fake news.”  But the problem is far greater than one person or his influence.

            What should we do?  Many in my business (college professors, especially philosophers) have argued that the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation in our world, especially in social media, underscores the need for a liberal education.  We need to train young people to critically evaluate evidence, to recognize and reject fallacies, to understand the methods and procedures of science (statistical procedures in particular), and to become familiar with trustworthy sources of information.

            Notice my word: “train.”  It is not enough for a student (or professor, for that matter) to know about intellectual skills.  We need to practice them until they become habits, habits of the mind.  In other words, we need to grow into intellectual virtues.

            Education is not just about learning stuff.  It is about training persons in virtue.  It is important to insist on this point, because some educators fail to see it.  When they hear a phrase like “training students,” they immediately worry about indoctrinization.  They fear narrow-mindedness or rigid orthodoxy of any sort: political, religious or philosophical.  So they resist the call to promote intellectual virtue and they refuse to think of themselves as instructors in morality.

You see the irony, I hope.  Most educators who resist their role as moral teachers do so out of fear of intellectual vices.  The responsible way to reduce the vices of narrow-mindedness or credulity is to promote intellectual virtue.  I urge them to read Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, just one of dozens of books in the field.

It’s possible to avoid the self-contradictory thinking of the educator who fears intellectual vice so much that he refuses to promote virtue.  A hard-headed epistemic skeptic (Nietzsche comes to mind) could refuse to recognize either virtue or vice.  Education, he might say, is simply a game some of us play with words.  We use our “mobile army of metaphors” to do whatever we like, provided we can get away with it—that is, so long as the students will pay.  Of course, when Nietzsche says, “Let us be honest with ourselves”—which he does—he gives away the whole game.  The genuine skeptical educator would have to be more consistent than Friedrich Nietzsche.

Intellectual virtues are not just for students.  We all need to train ourselves in open-mindedness, persistence, firmness of belief, logical procedures, charity of interpretation, faith, and other intellectual virtues.

Are you surprised that I include faith among the virtues?  Read Why Faith is a Virtue.  In that book I argue that faith is a moral virtue, but it’s a very small step to including it among the intellectual virtues.  Or maybe it’s no step at all.  Linda Zagzebski argues that there is no real distinction between moral and intellectual virtues.  I suspect she’s right.

Trump might be right

Some Thoughts While Housebound

            A new coronavirus struck humanity late last year, so we call it COVID-19 to distinguish the disease from other illnesses caused by viruses in the coronavirus family.  The virus passes from infected persons to others via coughs, sneezes and touch.  A cough, for instance, leaves micro-droplets of fluid in the air, and the virus can live for hours, suspended in air, until someone breathes it in.  So the COVID-19 virus is highly communicable.

            Most infected people develop mild symptoms, and a significant percentage—perhaps as high as 15%—show no symptoms at all.  But for another significant percentage of infected people, as much as 20%, the disease requires hospitalization.  With good medical attention, most of the severely affected recover.  The death rate may be as low as 1 or 2%. 

            Problems arise because the disease is so easily spread.  When large numbers of people are infected, the number of people with severe symptoms overwhelms the medical system.  We have already seen, in Italy and Spain, terrible consequences.  There are not enough emergency rooms or life saving equipment such as ventilators, so many people die who could have been saved.  With a shortage of protective equipment (gowns, masks, etc.), medical personnel, catch the disease from their patients.

            Some governments were slow to recognize the crisis, but by now it is acknowledged worldwide.  We have no vaccine.  We have no drug proven to fight the disease.  So the main thing we can do is try to slow the spread of the virus.  Governments everywhere have ordered people to stay home except for those whose work is essential (medical people, grocery clerks, firefighters, etc.) or for essential trips (to buy food or medicine).

            The goal here is not to stop the disease.  Given how contagious it is, it is extremely likely that virtually the whole population will eventually be exposed to the virus.  COVID-19 will spread everywhere.  But if the disease spreads rapidly, we won’t have the hospital resources needed for huge numbers of people and many will needlessly die.  So around the world we are engaged in a desperate attempt to “flatten the curve.”

            Churches and schools are closed.  Restaurants offer take-out only.  Gyms, theatres, bars, physical therapy centers, and many other businesses are closed.  In the United States, about 10 million people have applied for unemployment in just two weeks.  Our unemployment rate, which was at a historically low number at the beginning of the year—roughly 3%—will rise to 15% or 20% or even higher.  We are entering an economic contraction greater than any since the worldwide depression of the 1930s.

            The US government has already responded to the economic crisis with mind-boggling spending.  The “CARES Act” authorizes $2.2 Trillion to give directly to individuals, finance loans to small business, and bailout big business.  The Federal Reserve has reduced interest rates to basically zero.  Everyone expects even further government spending to try to prop up the economy.  No one knows how effective these governmental actions will be.

            Researchers around the world are working frantically to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.  It will probably take from 12 to 18 months to find, test, and manufacture mass quantities of vaccine.  Until then, we “shelter in place” and practice “social distancing” to buy time for the hospitals and medical professionals.

            Health consequences have to be weighed against economic consequences.  We are entering an enormous economic downturn.  When poor people lose their jobs, they die.  A recession/depression kills through homelessness, mental distress, drug abuse, lack of access to medicine, and starvation.  So there is a tipping point—no one knows exactly—where the policies of keeping people home actually kill more through poverty than they save from disease.  At some point governments must encourage people to go back to work.

            When should that be?  I think the key variable is hospital capacity.  If we had an unlimited supply of good ER beds, with doctors and nurses to work them, and with an unlimited supply of ventilators, PPEs, and other supplies—if we had all those things—we wouldn’t need to practice social distancing.  Remember, this virus is so contagious that virtually everyone will be exposed to it sooner or later.  Without social distancing, the contagion would race through our population.  But with a “super-adequate” hospital situation, every severely sick person could still get the best care.

            Of course, we don’t have an unlimited supply of doctors, nurses, beds and machines.  Our hospital capacity is far less than we need.  But it is growing.  Industry is ramping up to produce massive amounts of ventilators, PPEs, and other necessaries.  All the while, most people who catch COVID-19 survive, and it seems that at least some of them do so because they develop sufficient antibodies to be relatively immune to the disease.  Taken as a whole, the population is slowly gaining immunity.

At some point, the increasing hospital capacity will catch up to the need.  This will happen at different times in different cities and state.  Governors and mayors will need to relax their social distancing rules.  Almost certainly, when a state reopens for business, there will be a new surge of COVID-19 cases, as previously unexposed people come into contact with the virus.  Even more certainly, state and city leaders will be criticized for relaxing their rules.  Such leaders need to state the case clearly that poverty can kill as certainly as a virus, though in different ways.

I’m not an economist.  Nevertheless, I think it would be disastrous to try to maintain “shelter in place” until a vaccine is ready.  Twelve months or longer of induced economic contraction would be a worldwide catastrophe killing millions.

Not Resuscitation, but . . .

Resurrection Life

            Last night I dreamed about Karen.  It’s been more than three years since she died.  I’ve been married—happily—to Sarah for more than a year.  The dream didn’t grow out of dissatisfaction with my situation.

            Admittedly, I don’t remember many of my dreams, so it’s possible I dream about Karen often.  But I don’t think so.  When I woke up I realized this dream illustrates an interesting philosophical/theological question.

            In the dream some small animal—a dog? cat? gopher?—somehow found a bit of Karen’s body and used that bit to reconstitute Karen.  (Bizarre?  Sure.  It was a dream.)  She was alive again, Karen just as she was fourteen months before her death!  (Another weird feature of dreams; somehow I knew it was fourteen months, not a year.)

            Karen was reading something; my “Last Walk” essays perhaps.  So Karen in the dream knew she was dying, knew when the doctor would tell her she was dying, and knew when she would die.  At the same stage in real life Karen knew none of that.  Back in 2015, fourteen months before she died, Karen’s doctors were pretty confident.

            So there she was—a resuscitated Karen, with more than a year to live.  But dream-Karen was unhappy.  I asked her: Didn’t she want to live?  Her answer: No, not like this.

            And there’s the question.  What do we want—what do Christians hope for—in the afterlife?

            In my dream, the magic happened by means of the little animal.  Dog, cat, or wombat doesn’t matter.  If you like, you can exchange the animal for a mad scientist, an extraterrestrial invader, or an angel.  In the TV series Stargate, the aliens had a sarcophagus machine that could restore dead bodies.  I’m not worried about the means; I’m interested in the results.  What do we want in an afterlife, if there is one?

            Christian theologians and Bible scholars insist that real Christian hope centers on resurrection.  The same power that raised Jesus from the grave can give life to our bodies too.  Of course, we will be changed; we will have “spiritual” bodies.  (See 1 Corinthians 15.)

            And that’s the problem with dream-Karen.  She was resuscitated, not resurrected.  Somehow the animal or magic had rebuilt her body as she was fourteen months before her death, cancer and all.  She was not changed.  She had to live her dying months all over again—only worse this time, since in the dream she knew what was going to happen.

            When I hope for resurrection, I hope for new life.  Not just “new life” in the abstract; I want to live.  I want to live with others, people I have known and especially Christ himself—I want community.  So, somehow, I hope that the real me, along with real others, will live again.  But I do not hope for resuscitation, a kind of bare-bones new life.  I want something better.

            The New Testament promises a new heaven and a new earth.  The community is symbolized as a city, the New Jerusalem.  Since God is an infinite being, I imagine we will be learning forever; our fellowship will be always deepening.

            Dream-Karen was right to reject resuscitation, even if she were to be resuscitated over and over.  Don’t misunderstand my point.  I am not saying our life now is valueless.  The life God has given us here and now in this world is a wonderful thing.  But Christian hope is not just for more years.  We would not be satisfied if alien machines or magic animals gave us an unlimited number of do-overs.  We want true resurrection, in which the power of God translates us into a new kind of life.