Selective Political Amnesia

Americans are not very good at recalling history.  Ask them when the Civil War took place and many cannot identify the century.  They surely cannot tell you much about the Great Depression or the president who presided over it.  It is the same with more recent events.

There is, however, an important qualification.  What people recollect is often linked to their political affiliations. Just as selective perception is a psychological phenomenon, so is selective memory.  We usually have an easier time remembering congenial episodes, such as those in accord with our political leanings.

Most Democrats, for instance, can summon up the details of the tape of Donald Trump boasting of his sexual exploits.  It is doubtful, however, that they can do the same for the accusations of rape Juanita Broderick leveled at Bill Clinton.  The first item makes them look virtuous, whereas the latter does the opposite and is repressed.

For me, a current episode drove home how biased these reflections can be.  By distorting what happened, inaccurate recollections can reinforce outright lies.  In this instance, former president Barack Obama revised history so egregiously that it was barely recognizable.  Nonetheless, his partisans remembered events the same way he did.

Not long ago, on his “gee whiz, wasn’t I a wonderful president” tour, Obama stopped off at Rice University.  There he explained that while most Americans did not realize it, production of oil and gas rose every year during his tenure in office.

Barack made it sound as if he deserved full credit for our becoming energy independent. Somehow his policies were responsible for this development.  His audience agreed.  They applauded warmly when he made this claim.  Yes, this assertion was true—except that those darned conservatives refused to admit it. 

Only it wasn’t true.  It wasn’t even close to true.  During his years in office, Obama did all he could to reduce the production of fossil fuels. In line with his belief that global warming was destroying the planet, he sought to make carbon based energy more scarce, while simultaneously subsidizing alternatives such as solar power.

 Barack attempted to achieve this in many ways.  For one thing, he blocked the Keystone pipeline.  Although a slew of studies concluded that this conduit was environmentally friendly, he set these aside whenever he was required to approve the project.

Then there was his practice of reducing the amount of government land open to oil and gas exploration.  He would not make this additional territory available to Big Oil.  Indeed, he would roll back what had previously been authorized.

Next was his campaign against fracking.  This novel technique for extracting crude oil and gas from what had once been regarded as played out wells dramatically increased our fuel reserves.  Nonetheless Obama sniped at it every inch of the way. He agreed with the critics who argued that it was dangerous for the atmosphere.

In fact, our former president made it a policy to criticize carbon-based products at every turn.  This included coal.  He did not care that this would put thousands of miners out of work or significantly increase the costs of energy to the consumer. 

Events on the ground plainly contradicted most of Obama’s contentions.  He did not mind.  He was proud of his skills at distorting reality.  Amazingly, his partisans did not notice how profoundly his words departed from what occurred.  They applauded what amounted to easily refuted lies.

The same blindness to other facts was on display when Obama bragged that no one had been indicted for criminal behavior during his administration.  Somehow he left out the part about how his Attorneys General refused to bring charges against obvious wrongdoers.

How could this be?  Wasn’t Barack aware of the revelations about attempts to manipulate the presidential election by FBI and DOJ operatives?  Of course, he was.  And what about the IRS suppression of conservative tax exemptions?  Ditto.  What actually mattered to him was whether he could make his denials sound persuasive.

The more important question was whether his audience realized they were being duped. Had they forgotten the evidence that contradicted their hero’s allegations?  My guess is that it was a little bit of selective amnesia and a willing suspension of disbelief.

Either way, our politics have lapsed into a netherworld of fiction.  For far too many Americans, the truth is less valuable than promoting their partisan interests.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University

George H.W. Bush and the Loss of Civility

Much of what I am about to write has been said by others.  The contrast between George H.W. Bush’s character and that of some of his successors is so glaring that it could not be missed.  His recent death reminded us of what an honorable and gracious man he was.

Bush never insulted people publicly.  Today, turn on CNN or MSNBC and you will be treated to a festival of insults.  Bush did not tell lies to the nation.  Contemporary politicians, especially liberals, do little else.  Bush was kind, with impeccable manners.  Being crude is nowadays conflated with being genuine.

Incivility has exploded in the almost thirty years since Bush left office. H.W. would never have referred to a woman as horse-faced the way Donald Trump did.  Nor would he have promoted uncorroborated accusations to prevent a Supreme Court nominee from being confirmed.  

So what happened?  Why do falsehoods permeate the media and political discourse?  Why are people who have ideological differences unwilling to sit down and hold a respectful conversation?  Not only do people on opposite sides not listen to each other; they do the equivalent of spitting in an opponent’s face.

The cause of this decline is to be found, not in the stars, but in our hearts.  We brought this decay upon ourselves.  Bush came from the old school.  His mother taught him never to boast and never to be discourteous.  He was supposed to serve others; not think in terms of himself.

Who learns these lessons nowadays?  From the tattoos with which we festoon our bodies are to our widespread desire for fame, millions of us do not care how vulgar we have become.  What is worse, we are not offended by efforts to outdo one another in crudeness.

So I ask again, what happened?  A turning point in our moral decline occurred when H.W. was confined to a single term as president.  Despite his amazing record, an untested and patently dishonest governor from Arkansas supplanted him.

Remember that Bush presided over the dismantlement of the Soviet empire and won a nearly bloodless war against Saddam Hussein.  Although these were significant achievements, he did not boast about them.  The biggest gripe against him was that he raised taxes, which helped extricate us from a recession at the end of his term.

And who succeeded him?  Bill Clinton. Clinton was blatantly mendacious and given to non-stop immodesty.  He told us that he did not have an affair with Gennifer Flowers, yet he did.  He also insisted that he had not smoked pot because he had not inhaled.  He may even have raped Juanita Broderick while Lt. Governor.

Moreover, once Bill was in office, the White House went from dignified national mansion to frat house.  He literally had oral sex in the oval office.  Meanwhile his wife was a screaming Harridan.  Those who served Bush and Clinton agree that the Bush’s were uniformly respectful of their staff, whereas the Clinton’s, and especially Hillary, were crassly inconsiderate.

And yet Clinton was loved.  His peccadilloes and lack of achievements were overlooked.  I have been told that this is because Bill seemed more human than H,W.  Americans could identify with him.  If this is so, what does it say about us?  Are we too brash louts who assume we can talk our way out of any indiscretion?

In my book A Principled Society(which is on Amazon), I argue that our unparalleled prosperity has enabled us to get away with terrible mistakes. We are so rich that we can recover from imprudent behavior.  The same may be true of our tolerance of incivility.

We allow lies to flourish because they don’t jeopardize our economic security. We call each other names because we do not fear an invasion by a hostile power.  We seek entertainment rather than investigate hard truths because we depend on others to provide for our comforts.

The legacy of George H.W. Bush is currently being reassessed.  For the moment he is being praised for his rectitude.  But soon we will go back to sniping at one another.  He will forget that he set a standard we cannot match.  Instead of kindness and gentleness, we seem determined to surpass recent profiles in incivility.

So who is at fault for throwing out Bush and replacing him with a charming rogue?  We are. And we keep doing it.  If we are to have genuine reform, it must therefore come from us.  We have to be more principled!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State university

How the Republicans Can Win the Next Election

Let’s face it, the Republicans lost the mid-term election. This wasn’t a complete wipeout, but the damage was significant.  Despite a roaring economy and an illegal immigrant invasion, the Democrats were able to capture a majority in the House of Representatives.

The question is why?  It is not enough to blame this defeat on the pattern of mid-term wins by the party out of power.  Nor can fraud or media bias explain how Nancy Pelosi’s troops swung nearly forty seats over to their side.  The lack of an attractive legislative platform should have doomed their chances, but didn’t.

What saved them was Donald Trump.  He may have rallied reds states to his cause, but he was anathema to well-educated women living in the suburbs.  They regarded him as immoral.  So far as they were concerned, he was racist, sexist and uncouth.

Herein, however, lay the seeds of turning the electoral results around. Americans are idealistic.  They want to be moral.  Young women especially hope to support candidates who elevate the standards we live by.  This is why attacks on Trump’s character succeeded.

The answer to this approach is to turn the tables on liberals.  Fire must be fought with fire.  Their campaign of making conservatives look immoral must be answered by a campaign of painting progressives as immoral.  Given that they are unprincipled, this is absolutely possible.

Those of us who have been paying attention know that liberals are world-class hypocrites.  What is sauce for the goose is never sauce for their gander.  Hence they can lie with impunity, but catch a conservative is a fib and he or she is the devil incarnate.

Those on the left also reveal their anti-American bias with regularity.  They have no difficulty with tolerating electoral fraud or portraying law enforcement agents as villains.  Nor do they care one whit about maintaining the integrity of our borders.

This anti-patriotic bias ought to have condemned them to the political wilderness, but has not.  They openly protect law-breakers in sanctuary cities; yet get away with this by claiming to be compassionate.  A means of exposing this moral turpitude is obviously needed.

For some time now, I have been arguing that a mass society, such as our own, can only be held together by widely endorsed principles.  I have further maintained that these values should be: honesty, personal responsibility, fairness (defined as the same rules for all), liberty, and family stability.

As it happens, Democrats spurn all of these.  They are incredibly dishonest.  They encourage irresponsibility by advocating dependence on the federal government.  They reject fairness and replace it with affirmative action.  As for liberty, they shackle us with regulations for everything.

Radical liberals even hate the family.  They intend to supplant it with diversity.  So far as they are concerned, individuals should be allowed to do whatever they please.  Ergo, promiscuity is no problem.  Neither is asking the government, as opposed to committed parents, to raise our children. Remember Hillary’s village.

In any event, the liberal agenda is totally immoral.  It is not compassionate.  It is not intellectually consistent.  Were we to adopt it in toto, the social fragmentation that is well under way would reduce us to a literal war of all against all.

This message needs to get out into the larger society.  Good people who want to be good must distinguish what is right from what is wrong.  The socialist promises of the left are horribly wrong-headed.  Ordinary folks, especially the young, must understand that talk of radical equality eventuates in slavery.

Hence Republicans, who hope to win at the polls, must drive home the message that their opponents—irrespective of what they say—are immoral.  Time and again, they must make it clear that Democrats are dishonest, irresponsible, unfair, anti-freedom and anti-family.  

The difficulty in doing this, of course, is that Republicans do not control the media.  Because repetition is often the key to legitimizing a message, they have fewer opportunities to hammer home the iniquities of their opponents.

Nonetheless, this must not prevent conservatives from plowing ahead. They need to include the complaint that liberals are unprincipled in their communications the way that leftists accuse those on the right of lacking compassion.  Only this can locate the immorality allegation on the feet where it belongs.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University

Fraud as a Way of Life

We all saw the electoral fraud perpetrated in south Florida.  It did not succeed in altering the results, but gave a lot of us heartburn.  When I say us, I mean conservatives because liberals were not perturbed.  They were hoping that their shenanigans would work.

When I spoke to a liberal friend about these events, she shrugged and wanted to move on.  When I further suggested that huge numbers of registered voters in California later avoided jury duty by indicating that they were not citizens, she expressed disbelief.

Whether or not this allegation is true, Americans who believe in democracy ought to be seeking answers.  Instead of dismissing fraud as impossible, we should want to get to the bottom of these matters.  Only this can give us confidence that our votes determine who our leaders will be.

Nonetheless, those on the left have long endorsed dishonesty as a way to gain political control.  Boss Tweed, of New York’s Tammany Hall, used to pay voters to go to the polls. Meanwhile, contemporary Californians pay vagrants to register to vote.  Clearly, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

This reminded me of my own attitude when John Kennedy won a squeaker over Richard Nixon.  Back then it was widely reported that the Daly machine in Chicago provided the margin of victory.  Apparently many of the dead made it to the polls, while large numbers of the living did so several times.

I did not realize it at the time, but electoral games were also being played in south Texas.  Lyndon Johnson was able to make sure that some counties produced more Democratic votes than the number of adults residing within their borders.

In any event, I, as a progressive adolescent, was happy with the results.  Nixon could not be allowed to win.  As every good liberal knew, he was worse the Joseph McCarthy.  A victory for this shady partisan would have set the nation back by a century.  So what if it took a little “honest corruption” to protect our future.

In those days, I was a confirmed socialist.  I believed that cooperation, as opposed to competition, would benefit us all.  If we helped one another, rather than fought each other, life to be kinder and fairer. This was common sense.

The problem was that too many Americans did not see it that way. They were dedicated to capitalism and therefore to partiality.  These folks had to be resisted for their own good.  If it took a little hanky-panky at the polls, this was essential to make democracy work.

Liberals have always believed that they knew best.  They have likewise always regarded democracy with suspicion.  For all their talk about respecting the wisdom of the people, they have assumed the voters frequently need an assist to come to the correct conclusions.

As a teenager, I too thought this way.  Having recently read Plato’s Republic, I was infatuated by the idea of the philosopher king.  Some people were undoubtedly smarter and more public spirited than others.  Naturally it made sense that they should rule the community.

Just as naturally, I regarded myself as philosopher king material. Wasn’t I an extremely good student? Didn’t I want the best for my country? Why then shouldn’t I, and those like me, have more of a say about public policy than every yahoo who was eligible to vote?

Liberals continue to think this way.  Don’t they make it plain at every turn that they consider themselves superior human beings?  Aren’t they supposedly more intelligent and compassionate than those “deplorables” who reside in the nation’s heartland?

Recently I heard an entertainer opining on television that the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals are more flexible.  They learn from experience and therefore make better decisions.

If my own history holds any lessons, this is decidedly untrue.  I am always amazed by how closely the tactics and beliefs of contemporary liberals parallel those of my student days.  Leftists brag about being progressive, but they are remarkably backward looking.

Because liberal arrogance knows no boundaries, liberal fraud knows none either.  Theirs is a way of life that feeds its own mistakes by assuming it can make none.  What is a little deception if it enables their heroes, namely themselves, to come out on top.  Don’t they deserve it? 

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University

The Biggest Liars of All

Everyone acknowledges that there was an electoral mess in Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida.  Irregularities in how votes were counted cannot be denied.  Nonetheless there is a huge gulf in explaining what went wrong. Conservatives blame fraud, whereas liberals cite incompetence.

That there is a question about which of these interpretations is correct is, however, a sign of a bigger problem.  Were the observed “mistakes” evenly distributed across party lines, the incompetence construal might make sense.  The breakdowns could have been due to sloppiness.

But that is not the situation.  Going back decades now, questionable actions have always broken on the Democratic side.  This includes finding new ballots in back rooms, getting people to submit forms after an election is over and tabulating non-citizen submissions.

These illegal actions were not accidental.  They were conscious attempts to influence who won.  As such, they were no different from counting the ballots of the dead, or allowing people to cast multiple votes the way Mayor Daly’s Chicago did, or buying votes as in Boss Tweed’s New York.  This chicanery is fraud—pure and simple.

Yet liberals deny it.  Instead they accuse those who brought dishonesty to public attention of undermining confidence in the democratic process.  Meanwhile, those who engaged in falsification are allowed off the hook. 

This should come as no surprise.  Those on the left have taken to specializing in lies.  Almost every day there are new examples of deceit. Anything that makes liberals look bad or conservatives good is open to conscious misrepresentation. 

Although this is brazen misconduct, Democrats have succeeded in convincing most Americans that lying is uniformly distributed among political activists; that everyone does it.  This is itself a lie.  Progressives would never be able to persuade ordinary citizens to elect them if they did not hide embarrassing truths behind a facade of falsehoods.

The tactic of accusing conservatives of being liars is part of this policy.  Liberals correctly conclude that the best defense is a good offence.  If they can focus on alleged rightwing mendacity, their own fabrications disappear from view.

Thus, how often has Donald Trump been charged with dishonesty? Almost anything he says that offends the left is immediately classified this way.  When, for instance, California’s “camp” fire got out of control and the president blamed poor forest management, he was castigated for telling a whopper.

The same thing happened when he cited the caravans traveling toward the U.S. border as including felons.  According to the liberals, innocent women and children dominated these processions.  As for the alleged Middle Easterners among them, this was a hoax.

When subsequent evidence demonstrated that Trump was correct, not a word of retraction was issued by those who castigated him just days before. This sort of silence, however, is a liberal specialty.  It too is a form of lying.

Lies come in many shapes.  One of the most insidious is lying by omission.  In withholding information from the community, false impressions are propagated.  To illustrate, the economic benefits of the Trump tax cut are barely mentioned in the mainstream press.  The objective is to make sure he does not get credit for reviving our prosperity.

This, of course, is opposite the treatment Barack Obama received.  In his case, laggard economic figures were downplayed, whereas his personal attractiveness was celebrated.  From what the public was told, his administration might have been one of the most effective in history—and the most honest.

The Democratic penchant for lying has a long pedigree.  It was on exhibit when George W. Bush was accused of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  We saw it when the women who denounced Bill Clinton for sexual improprieties were vilified.  Decades earlier, it was front and center when Alger Hiss was defended against charges of spying for the Soviets.

Even so, thanks to the explosion in media channels, we have never experienced such a flood of lies as those in which we are currently drowning. Nor will the spigot be turned off as long as ordinary Americans cannot tell the difference between truth and falsity.

Hard-core liberals will not change.  They reap too many benefits from a culture of mendacity.  It is therefore up to the rest of us to end this madness. If we don’t, the trust that enables our nation to function will be lost—as will our social cohesion.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University

CYA and the Socialist Ideal

Many years ago, when I first went to work for a government vocational agency, a colleague advised me on how to do my job.  We were both out-stationed at a psychiatric hospital where she took me aside to inform me about the organization’s facts of life.  Never forget, she said, “CYA.”

At the time, I was an innocent and had no idea of her meaning. What she was telling me, however, was that first and foremost I must cover my posterior.  If I hoped to get along in my new position, I had to go along. Rocking the boat would only make trouble.

What she did not tell me was how to be an effective counselor.  This was not at the top of her priority list. Nor did it take precedence for the other counselors I was later to meet.  Much higher among their vocational considerations was personal security.

This is a widespread bureaucratic phenomenon.  Indeed, before I was hired, my favorite uncle repeatedly recommended a government job because it would be easy and reliable.  I would not have to worry about being fired and in the end would wind up with a top-notch pension.

Nobody, except some of my liberal high school teachers, ever suggested that a government job would be a good place to innovate.  Neither had I been informed that I should work hard in order to move ahead.  The primary goal was to keep one’s head down and avoid trouble.

But me, in my naiveté, I wanted to excel at my work.  I actually hoped to develop new techniques for assisting clients.  My assumption was that if I achieved this, I would be performing a valuable service for others.

To this end, I created a therapeutic modality I called Resocialization.  So far as I could tell, it was working rather well.  But after I explained it to one of my supervisors, he told me to stop using it. When I asked why, he said it was because he didn’t understand it.  Whether it was effective was irrelevant.

Soon thereafter I published my first book to explain, and advocate, for my methodology.  This put me deeper in the doghouse with my bosses.  My job, as I had earlier been advised, was to refrain from producing discomfort.  Making changes, however advantageous, was not welcome.

Bureaucracies, as I discovered, are not hotbeds of invention. They are not even especially concerned with benefiting their clients.  Their number one objective is stability.  Keeping the organization alive and growing counted for more than anything else.

One of the means of achieving this is public relations. Glowing reports about how much good has been accomplished are periodically issued.  Whether these are true matters less than whether they are believed.  At my agency, we therefore bragged about how we converted tax users into taxpayers.

Nonetheless, bureaucrats are not risk takers.  They are not interested in progress, but stasis.  This is why in places like the old Soviet Union they copied ideas from the West instead of developing them at home.  It is why Khrushchev’s boast about burying the United States was never a serious threat.

 Socialism and communism are about CYA.  They may brag about helping the poor and downtrodden, but are really about maintaining control by their elites.  These systems claim to be run by—and for the benefit of—the working classes, whereas bureaucratic imperatives decide what gets done.

For all the talk about collectivism promoting social justice, the proletarian regimes they promise cannot be implemented without huge bureaucracies.  This dictates rule driven operations that discourage innovations as detrimental to organizational stability.

Capitalism, in contrast, is dedicated to Schumpeter’s creative destruction.  Like Andrew Carnegie, this policy tears down perfectly operational steel plants in order to erect more efficient ones.  This produces havoc among those who are comfortable in their jobs, but it is also the main source of economic progress.

If this is true, we have to ask ourselves what we want.  Do we crave a growing economy that is forever introducing new and improved products?  Or are we willing to settle for modest comfort.  Likewise do we hope to increase our incomes or is what we currently have sufficient?

Socialist security is not about doing better.  Nor is it about complete equality.  Its central concern is CYA.  In protecting us from risks, it thereby prevents us from improving our situations.  Dreams of progress are sacrificed on the altar of the status quo.  Is this what we dream of?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University 

Who Is Really Divisive?

With the death of liberalism, Newspeak has come into flower. The meanings of words have been turned on their heads so as to persuade voters that black is white and vice versa. A prime example is the strange transformation of the term of “divisive.”

During this past electoral cycle, Democrats repeatedly used it to describe president Trump.  He was thereby condemned for splitting the nation into hostile camps.  In the process, liberals implied that they were not disruptive; rather they were bringing us together.

Nonetheless, leftists have an odd way of reconciling our differences. Their strategy for finding common ground is to get everyone to adopt their outlook.  Compromise has nothing to do with their aims.  Convinced that every jot and tittle of their beliefs are correct, the only reasonable way to obtain unity is for their opponents to capitulate.

That this provokes resistance and is therefore divisive escapes their notice.  To the contrary, they are certain that they have a right to use whatever tactics they choose to impose a resolution on their terms.  If this requires increasing the differences between people, then so be it.

A case in point is political correctness.  Anyone who has a different idea about solving race-related issues is automatically labeled a racist. Insist on enforcing law and order, for instance, and this label is affixed.  And when it is, a person is scorned as beyond redemption.

Thus, how many times has Trump been castigated as a racist?   And yet, upon what evidence does this charge rest? For many, it is because he wants to exclude illegal aliens whose skin happens to be brown.  Does this, however, imply that discussions of immigration policy are out of bounds if they involve non-Caucasians?

Apparently it does.  The same is true of other policies, such as affirmative action.  Liberals are unwilling to entertain the possibility that people who disagree with them might do so in good faith.  These adversaries are instead derided as deplorables—as beyond the ken.

Is this any way to heal social schisms?  Does it bring people together or encourage honest deal making? Unquestionably not.  Nor does calling one’s opponents names or picketing their homes and shouting “we know where you live.”  These are threats, not invitations to civil negotiations.

To be divisive signifies “to divide.”  It pigeonholes people and thenceforth treats them differently.  When, for example, liberals identify all whites as benefiting from “while privilege,” they are saying these folks must be barred from power.  They need to be split off from the good guys.

Likewise, when Trump says he is a nationalist and wants to make America great again, he is derided as a “white nationalist.”  In other words, his offer of an olive branch is summarily rejected as insincere.  Ironically, this effort to unite is interpreted as an attempt to divide.

Sadly, as long as seeing the worst in our opponents persists, there can be no mending of political differences.  As long as liberals regard themselves as the sole guardians of moral rectitude, they will never admit to spawning factionalism.

Nonetheless, the resistmovement is all about division.  It is about never compromising.  The stratagem is not to agree, irrespective of the merits of the other side’s proposals.  As such, it erects impenetrable barriers that impose strict divisions.

For several years, I have been arguing that liberalism is dying. Its ambition of using the government to resolve every social problem has been found wanting.  This is because huge bureaucracies are not equipped to achieve complete harmony.  They are too rigid and impersonal.  Furthermore, those who control them are more concerned with their careers than the needs of those they are committed to help.

Our current social gridlock is thus a consequence of having adopted administrative methods that will not work.  They never can.  If liberals refuse to recognize this, they must remain intransigent—and, as a result, committed to maintaining social partitions.  This is the only way they can maintain their group identity.

But conservatives should not be too smug.  An unfettered free market will not work either.  It has been tried and failed; hence it is time to rethink how we address the myriad challenges of our post-industrial affluence.

Regrettably, we are destined to remain at knifepoint unless we realize no one can win unless we change our collective directions.  If we don’t let go of outdated perspectives, we will continue to do battle until we all burn out.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Kennesaw State University