Nobody But Us Chickens

It was once a movie cartoon cliché.  The fox was in the hen house seeking a yummy chicken dinner.  Outside the dim watchdog heard something and shouted, “Who’s there?”  To which the fox replied, “Nobody but us chickens.”  The hound quickly responded, “Oh, OK.”

Today it is the Democratic Party that is playing the role of the fox and much of the American public that of the guard dog.  The Dems are in the political hen house running riot, while most people are passive observers who take the desperadoes at their word.

We have just witnessed the Democrats close down the federal government and immediately blame the Republicans.  What is worse is that many ordinary Americans were taken in by this ruse.  Polling showed that they too believed the Republicans responsible.

Chuck Schumer and his merry band of outlaws say this is so because the GOP controls the presidency and both houses of congress.  This, however, is an egregious falsehood.  While the Republicans have majorities in both houses, they do not possess the sixty votes needed to get a finance bill through the Senate.  The Dems can—and do—filibuster.

The Dems also feign disgust that federal financing now depends on temporary continuing resolutions.  Why, they ask, are the Republicans not doing their job?  The reason, of course, is that the Democrats blocked previous attempts to pass a budget.

In other words, to use another analogy, the Democrats are like the man who killed his parents, but then plead for mercy because he was an orphan.  You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t be both the victim and the perpetrator.

Yet a large percentage of the American public seems not to notice.  They shake their heads in agreement as the villains and their media henchmen spin fairytales about how president Trump and his allies want to shutter the government.  The liberals know this isn’t true, but they say it anyway.

So why don’t regular folks see through this charade?  Why don’t they realize that if you voted “No” on the continuing resolution, you were voting to close down the government?   Since the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted in the negative, whereas most Republicans voted “Yes,” it is perfectly plain who did what.

We don’t need tortured explanations about when the DACA program will expire.  Indeed, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the Democrats sought the leverage to legalize young illegal migrants.  They were prepared to put the military and every other federal activity in jeopardy to do so.

They also sought, whenever possible, to make president Trump look bad.  Their unmistakable goal was to embarrass him into capitulating to their demands.  If this entailed misrepresenting their own proposals, this was a small price to pay.

So, to return to the hen house analogy, what are people expecting?  Do they need to see the fox with a chicken in his mouth?  Will it be enough to notice feathers all over the coop?  Or must there be a verbal confession?  Does the fox have to say: “I done it”?

Well, the Democrats will never admit they were guilty.  Neither will their media cronies.  These folks will go to the grave asserting their innocence.  Moreover, they will do so surrounded by a cordon of lies.  Nearly every day there will be a new set of fabrications intended to deflect suspicions.

So why do so many Americans believe this rubbish?  Are they as dim as that watchdog?  Do they lack the intellectual capacity to recognize they are being deceived?  Or are they simply not paying attention?

While I believe the latter is partly at fault, I also believe that millions of basically decent folks are suffering from ideological blindness.  Thanks to years of being force-fed neo-Marxist pabulum, they genuinely consider the Democrats the party of the people.  Counter-evidence does not get through this filter.

As a result, we are experiencing a period of unprecedented dishonesty.  Never, in my more than seventy years, have I witnessed as much hypocrisy and mendacity.  There is so much deception that it has become business as usual.

The problem is that along with this duplicity comes a lack of trust.  Because it is difficult to be sure whom to believe, we doubt nearly everyone.  This is how great societies decline and fall.

P.S.  The can has again been kicked down the road.  Stay tuned.  There will be a rerun in two weeks.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Can Racism Be Overcome?

You have heard it ad nauseum.  I have even written about it before.  President Trump is regularly accused of being a racist.  Whenever the subject of immigration comes up, this old chestnut is trotted out.  The tyrant must therefore be stopped before he can reverse the results of the Civil War!

This is such egregious nonsense that it ought not be necessary to refute.  Trump is merely trying to gain control of our borders.  He wants to shut down illegal immigration and replace it with a merit-based system.  Although Canada, Australia, and England already do this, the mere suggestion that we might follow suit is greeted by howls of revulsion.

Liberals want porous borders so that they can increase the number of low skilled citizens who will eventually vote for them.  This is an open secret in Washington.  Oh yes, progressives deny it.  They also resort to a bogus humanitarianism to support their case.

Because so many ill-educated illegals are Hispanic or Black, it is assumed that this is an excuse for excluding them.  That there might be other motives for changing our immigration policies leaves the critics cold.  Indeed, a desire to make their opponents look immoral supersedes every other consideration.

Democrats do not care if illegals take jobs away from lower class Americans.  They do not care that undocumented migrants increase the crime rate.  They are likewise unconcerned about the hazards of unlawfully crossing the border or the difficulty many have in integrating into our country.

Worst of all, liberals are indifferent to the effect on respect for the law.  When they thumb their noses at federal statutes, they do not understand that this undermines other statutes.  Lawlessness is, as it were, catching.

But back to racism, Trump and his allies are smeared with this epithet because of identity politics.  If Democrats can make minorities feel they are in jeopardy, these erstwhile victims can be persuaded to support policies that go against their interests.  A case in point is blacks who do not realize their jobs are threatened by illegals.

Despite claims to the contrary, racism is not nearly as virulent as it once was.  Minorities have many more opportunities available to them.  They are also less subject to thoughtless disrespect.  This, however, does not prevent rampant hyperbole.  Individual abuses are routinely inflated to national proportions to make them appear ubiquitous.

Nor is tortured logic scrutinized to reveal its inadequacies.  A racial activist recently informed me that racism persists because whites are genetically unable to understand the plight of blacks.  Because they have never been black, they cannot appreciate the extent of the indignities.

When asked if this meant that blacks could not understand the feelings of whites because they have never been white, this sincere young person answered in the affirmative.  Sadly, that this implied racism could never be overcome went entirely unrecognized.

Let me be perfectly clear, if the races are biologically incapable of sympathetically understanding each other, then prejudice and discrimination can never be eliminated.  Neither race will recognize when it injures the other and hence both will inflict unintended harm.

But this is as absurd as the politically inspired accusations that Trump is a virulent racist.  His actions belie this allegation, whereas it is evident that individual blacks and whites are perfectly capable of interracial empathy.  Each side can imagine themselves in the shoes of the other so as to envisage the other’s challenges.

We are all—to be as blunt as I can be—human.  Furthermore, our humanity is more salient than our racial identities.  We all have the same emotions.  We all want to be loved.  We all hope to be successful.  None of us likes to be disparaged or regarded as inconsequential.

If this is so, it is time to stop building artificial barriers between the races.  Neither side should hurl baseless accusations at the other.  It is especially vital that opportunistic politicians cease exploiting vulnerable populations for partisan purposes.  Making people feel threatened when they are not cultivates a perilous defensiveness.

We need instead to listen to each other.  We need to do so compassionately and with an eye to being mutually supportive.  Only in this way can actual racism be tossed onto the ash heap of history.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Fulcrum of a Balanced Society

As I have previously written, we are in the midst of an ideological crisis.  There amounts to a three cornered war between liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism.  Adherents of each side are convinced that they are in the right and that the only way for society to be saved is for them to win.

Unfortunately all of their conceptual frameworks derive from times very different than our own.  None furnish answers to problems significantly unlike the ones their dogmas were designed to solve.  Their ideas developed in less complex times, whereas we live in a mass techno-commercial civilization.

Thus, religious conservatism traces back two thousand years to the agricultural empires, libertarianism arose during the enlightenment when commerce began to flourish, and liberalism, better described as bureaucratic collectivism, arrived on the scene concurrent with industrialization.

Their mismatch with post-modernism is therefore striking.  None supply the tools needed to maintain social integrity in extremely populous states where millions of people are dependent upon strangers for survival.  Neither love, nor social justice, nor prosperity can do the job alone.

This is not to say, however, that each cannot make valuable contributions.  The world would be in desperate shape if any one of these ideologies completely vanquished the others.  In fact, if they collaborate—much to the distress of their sponsors—they can complement each other.

The question then remains as to how we can achieve this balance.  What is the fulcrum upon which these idea systems might find an equilibrium?  As I have previously suggested, I believe we are moving toward “social individualism.”  Each of us must become personally strong enough, and realistic enough, to make choices as circumstances transform. 

There may be times when government interventions are necessary, but there may be others where the free marketplace requires greater latitude.  Similarly, for some, their religious convictions provide the guidance to endure what seems unendurable.

The best solutions vary with the time, the players, and the challenges.  So how are strong individuals to decide?  What qualities do they need in order to choose wisely?  These radically diverge from those required of our ancestors.  Moreover, they are not easy to cultivate.

First, social individualists must be emotionally mature.  They need to be adults who can deal with powerful emotions without falling apart.  More specifically, their passions cannot be so intense that they cloud their judgment.  Whether they are afraid, or angry, or sad, they must not revert to the primitive impulses of children.  In other words, they need self-control.

Second, they must be principled realists.  They require a moral compass that enables strangers to resolve their inevitably clashing interests.  This entails a commitment to honesty, personal responsibility, fairness as defined by universality, liberty, and family values.  Without these trust is impossible.

But they must also be realists.  Their idealism must be tempered by the constraints placed on us by nature and social imperatives.  They have to understand, for instance, that universal love is impossible, as is complete equality.  For humans, love is always circumscribed, whereas we all want to be winners, which ensures that some will be losers.  What counts is unobstructed social mobility, not exact parity.

Third, more of us must become professionalized.  Both at home and at work, we need to be self-motivated experts at what we do.  If we cannot make competent decisions in environments of uncertainty, others will make these for us.  When this is the case, they control our destinies.

All of this is a tall order.  Social individualism is not automatic.  It must be cultivated and protected.  For us to achieve it, whether for ourselves or society, we have to begin by understanding what is needed and recognizing that it will not be attained unless we tenaciously pursue it.

We are today better educated than our ancestors.  We also live more comfortably.  As a consequence, we have the time and the resources to nurture our best selves.  But this is up to us.  No one can do it for us.

Happily, this means there is a way out of our ideological predicament.  Yet it entails seeing what we may want to see and doing what we may not want to do.  Nonetheless, our salvation is in our own hands.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Partisan Conformists

The Trump administration has been a three-ring circus.  There is always something going on to distract our attention.  Trump has himself been blamed for much of this.  What he says and how be says it is supposedly the cause of the nearly constant hullabaloo.

I believe, however, that the mainstream media are far more responsible.  Washington journalists, in particular, are partisan conformists who habitually highlight incidents that advance their liberal agenda.  They are not neutral observers who evenhandedly decide what is important.

Furthermore, events must often be interpreted for them to make sense.  This task too can be skewed by one’s political allegiance and the viewpoints of those with whom one is in contact.  Reporters may seem to be individualists, but many are slaves to the conventional wisdom.  They merely repeat the opinions of their peers.

A case in point was the s---hole controversy.  It was reported that, in a closed door meeting with bipartisan legislators, Trump said some places from which immigrants originate are s---hole countries.  Largely from Africa and South America, they were disparaged for their poverty and crime.

The press went into an immediate uproar.  Virtually all the television networks, including Fox, led with the story.  They indicated that not only was the president’s language inappropriate—it was racist.  Indeed, it was this racist meme that dominated the subsequent discussions.

Commentators from nearly every point on the political spectrum crawled out of the woodwork to blast Trump for hating blacks and Hispanics.  Not only that, but he had revealed his clandestine agenda.  He intended to reinstitute slavery.  At minimum, he would reanimate prejudice and discrimination.

This argument has been made ever since the Donald came down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy.  Once he asserted that he intended to close down illegal immigration, the recitation that he is a racist was set in stone.

But let’s look more closely at what happened the week before last.  It began with what was described as a love-fest.  The president had invited a large number of legislators to the White House to discuss the DACA problem.  But instead of holding this meeting behind closed doors, he allowed the press to remain for a full hour.

Trump’s goal was to demonstrate that he was not crazy and in control of his administration.  Having recently been castigated for being virtually insane, he hoped to prove this untrue.  In this, he succeeded.  Talk of his alleged mental difficulties soon receded.

But he accomplished something else as well.  He made his position on immigration seem reasonable.  This achievement appalled his Democratic rivals.  Plainly, when he went up, they went down; which reverberated against their negotiating position.

During the Obama years, transparency was celebrated.  Nonetheless, it was not actually implemented.  The negotiations over ObamaCare, for example, were held strictly in secret.  Now, Trump was, in fact, being open; which made the Democrats look bad.

The pictures from the White House meeting were striking.  There sat Steny Hoyer and Dick Durbin flanking the president, looking absolutely miserable.  They had been ambushed.  The whole world could now see that they were not open-minded or especially compassionate.

It was necessary to get even.  That’s what Durbin intended when he leaked the president’s supposed language at a subsequent get-together.  That’s what the press did when they glommed on to the racist meme and proclaimed it to the heavens.  Trump had to be brought down to earth!  He had to be punished for his successes.

This was the story!  This was the interpretation that an impartial press core would have told.  But no, reporters spoke to other reporters who reinforced their biases.  It helped that the construal of events they settled upon was consistent with their prejudices.

As an ex-New Yorker, I have got to tell you that Trump’s language was mild for a New Yorker.  Behind closed doors, the lingo can get much more raunchy.  This is part of being candid.  It helps prevent moralistic posturing.

Yet Durbin betrayed this trust.  His treachery was far worse that what the president did—or did not—imply.  It presented a serious obstacle to honestly negotiating political differences.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University