Gods of Old

It is perhaps not surprising that the part of the American political spectrum that incessantly chants about their own piety and reverence of god should be the same group that deifies certain figures of the past, but it certainly is hypocritical.  After all, though many tend to forget it, the Ten Commandments don’t open with the thou shalt not steal business.  No it begins, “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”  And just to ensure that not even the idea of god gets praised before god himself it continues with a condemnation of the creation of graven images.  So much for all those crucifixes people where around their necks.  But leaving aside that hypocrisy let’s look at exactly who the political Right deifies, why they do it, and who is excluded from the lofty heights of that pantheon of founding fathers.

George Washington is truly first in the hearts of his countrymen, among other things, so it seems only fitting to begin with the first person ever elected to Presidency of the United States under the Constitution.  Washington and his compatriots are revered above all others as the visionary creators of the best, freest, most awe inspiring nation to ever be brought forth upon the face of this earth.  As you may have noticed I had to tone down the rhetoric that surrounds the cult of Washington.  Not that this is a new cult mind you.  If you haven’t seen the statues of Washington in the form of a Zeus-like god, you should really check it out for a laugh.  Among all the founding fathers he is held up as the most impressive and the most virtuous.

This is understandable as Washington represents everything the Right looks for in a president.  He was a successful general, extremely rich, focused on domestic policy, and one of the few theistic founders, even if he was a freemason.  He commanded respect from everyone who saw him with his height and fashionable clothes, his gleaming white horse and considering his achievements, a very modest man.  However he attained his near mythical status for his act of stepping down after the second term of his presidency despite great popularity, a Cincinnatus for the new Republic.  What the Right tends to omit from the record is that he was a slave holding, homophobic hypocrite(one of his most important generals under Washington Friedrich von Steuben was gay), although I must say that two out of three would still apply to a great swath of the modern Republican Party.  Perhaps more to the point of why I am surprised the Right likes him is because he was an adamant defender of taxes and elitism.  He crushed the Whiskey Rebellion to ensure they payed their taxes, and the “people” didn’t elect him, unless by people you mean white, land-owning men, which again two out of three ain’t bad.

But to talk about him as if he were a human being with faults that tarnish an otherwise impressive life is insulting to his memory apparently.  Others of his same period receive similar reverence, if perhaps to a lesser extent.  There is a crowd among the Right that occasionally like to champion Thomas Jefferson as their representative of the small government they adore.  But like the ebbing and flowing of the tides, there is an inevitable push back when they remember that aside from being a slave owner, he was at best a deist(possibly atheist), government expanding, learned francophile.  The last bit being the unforgivable sin on the Right.  It is for that reason that though he is deified on the Right, he is also often pushed to the back of their attention so they can gloss over his faults.  And let’s be clear here, all people have faults, but there is a whitewashing force on the Right that doesn’t want to talk about nuance.

Recently it’s been interesting to see how the Right has begun to turn against their own party’s real founding father, President Lincoln.  Perhaps it has something to do with the Republican Party gaining so much steam in the Deep South that the tide has turned against that damned Yankee.  They criticize him, not for suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus, but for somehow being responsible for the outbreak of the Civil War.  Again this rewriting of history creates a narrative that in many ways is the mirror image of truth, as it was South Carolina, the first state of the Confederacy that opened fire on the Union stronghold of Fort Sumter.  It was the South that attempted to secede that began the conflict, and began the Civil War for the despicable cause of slavery.  And again the Right has tried to reframe the issue, not to remind people that Lincoln didn’t actually free anyone with the Emancipation Proclamation, but to say that the Civil War was about State’s Rights.  Number one the obvious question is, “The state’s right to do what?”  And beyond that, we live in a federal republic where the federal government does indeed supersede the authority of the states, which is why there are no more legal sodomy laws for example.

No Lincoln, being the “perpetrator” of the “War of Northern Aggression,” still is not among the pantheon of the Right, even if they occasionally like to parade his image around to pretend that they still care about the rights of minorities.  Certainly he isn’t as venerated as the true savior of the Union and democracy, Ronald Reagan.  President Reagan the Hollywood actor who cut deals with Iran and Nicaraguan terrorists, the guy who raised taxes eleven times as president, the guy who embraced open immigration policies, the guy who drove America deep into debt, he is the god amongst gods.  Or rather the idea of him, because again things like history and facts don’t necessarily lead to easy answers, just accurate ones.  

But why does the Right do this?  Why do they seek out high and mighty examples of perfection to follow to the ends of the earth?  After all the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of individualism and independence from political figures.  I think the best way to understand the answer is to look at the figures on the Right that don’t treat these gods of old as sacred cows.  The people on the right who I actually learn from, who think through their beliefs, who are reasonable people with whom I disagree do not blindly follow these dead leaders.  People like Jon Huntsman, who don’t ignore science and history are not terribly popular among conservatives, but are people that I could actually stomach voting for.  And though he is a religious man, he does not pray at the alter of these gods and heroes.  Why?  Because he knows what he’s talking about.

So much of the problems the Right has have to do with their vilifying intelligence and education.  They call for “the right to be wrong,” instead of trying to learn and perhaps coming up with good reasons to believe what they believe.  But because they don’t want to put the effort into actually thinking they need easily digested and memorized slogans and tidbits to make them feel informed.  What’s worse is that media organizations have noticed this same trend in society at large, regardless of political orientation, and have catered to it.  So now instead of real conversations with each other about the reality of the people that helped create the country that exists now, learning the lessons from our successes and failures, and otherwise being honest with each other, we are stuck in the echo chambers of our own ideologies.  And instead of calmly talking with each other, we are stuck talking past each other at straw men caricatures on shallow blog posts.  Scoring points by showing only one side of the story and criticizing the very people that have been so formative in the creation of their ideologies.  And just to hit the hammer on the head here, because even heavy sarcasm is too often missed on the internet, yes this last paragraph is supposed to be self referential.

International Outrage

There are some within the left side of the political spectrum that conflate tolerance with inaction.  This to me is one of the worst things a person can do, because they clearly don’t lack the intellect to be reasonable about a subject, but they lack the the moral fortitude to stand up for their morals.  I am now risking any kind of, well objectivity would be the wrong word, but the perception that I am being partisan about this issue so I will clarify exactly what I mean.  But the idea I take issue with is the idea that all cultures and countries are completely equal, and if we don’t agree with the policies of a different country we need to just accept those differences.  This is nearly as bad as the view that one culture is utterly superior to others and needs to be enforced on others, which is surely what I will be labeled as believing in to anyone that doesn’t read the whole of this essay and merely picks and chooses throughout.  

So let’s begin with one of my basic tenants, that diversity is good and necessary, and any person who would try to rid the world of diversity outright is condemning themselves to long term failure as well as short term bigotry.  I don’t think that a single type of government will be universally applicable in all situations, although I would argue that there are certain qualities that any government would need to contain if they want to be seen both as a legitimate representation of the will of the governed as well as a system that effectively performs the role governments are expected to play.  I have seen through traveling, studying, working that there is no limit to the number of opinions that are possible, and that there is usually a grain of truth in any ideology, otherwise no one would adhere to it.  But I also have seen that there is no uniquely correct ideology and it makes no difference if the person recognizing those faults is a naturalized citizen or an outsider.  And this is what I want to talk about today.

The People’s Republic of China, although a beautiful country filled with wonderful people, is not a perfect government.  Having studied there I saw the two-tiered system that exists to placate outside observers and silence local dissent.  I noticed the many cameras constantly keeping an eye on the citizens, the guards of varying degree on every street corner, the lack of popular opposition and discourse.  But there are many, within China itself, that view the current government as being a greater good to society as countless lives have been lifted out of abject poverty.  I would say and have said that these beneficial economic qualities of the current communist party is not a measure of the overall goodness of the Chinese government, but proof of the adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  The communist government, though based on the ideals of representing the true will of the people, does not allow, let alone encourage, its people to speak out about the problems in the system.  The government does not view the freedom of speech as a right of the people and will reap what it sows in the long term, as even now the economy is slowing down.

Where do I get off saying this?  I am just an American citizen who hasn’t even been within the borders of the People’s Republic for even one whole year.  I do not know the particulars of living in China, or what the Chinese people truly want for themselves.  This is true but I am a human being and I can see suffering wherever and whenever it occurs.  It does the Tibetans no good for us to pretend that nothing is going on in that part of China, nor the migrant workers.  We accept that we may not have the authority to truly change the system in China, but we must surely condemn the problems within it, at the very least if we want to be good and honest friends with them.  China has come a long way since the Qing dynasty, the Kuomintang, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward, but it has so much yet to accomplish and we cannot simply pretend we do not see those issues just because we are on the other side of the Pacific and needing someone to buy our debt.

What’s more China is not a unique example of cultures with ills we must surely stand against.  In the many parts of the world the rights of women are not guaranteed, above all I consider the Middle East to be particularly egregious in this subject.  With notable exceptions, the governments of the Middle East are far too reliant on religion and theocracy to adequately represent and provide for the people.  The freedom of speech, religion, and autonomy are not a guarantee in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Qatar, or Pakistan to name a few.  The last one on that list is the most depressing to me as Pakistan has made some great strides in electing a female head of government and supposedly defending the right to freedom of beliefs even in an Islamist country.  But the Middle East is not alone in its poor treatment of people, most especially of women.  There are large parts of Africa where girls must still fear their own mutilation in the name of “female circumcision.”  In India women remain second class citizens and burdens on their families because of traditional dowries.

There are too many countries and too many issues to cover, and even the ones I have already paid lip service to are only the very tip of the iceberg.  And I am not, by any measure, trying to argue that the US is above reproach.  I feel that the vast majority of my posts on this blog should speak to the great work that lies at the feet of all Americans to improve this great country.  But America is not the only great country in great need of improvement, and the fist step in taking care of these problems is addressing the reality of them.  I cannot stomach the level of discourse that now is being expected of the education system in the US, where students are expected to think critically and examine their own biases, but never use what they learn to recognize the faults that exist in all countries and cultures.

This is an occasion where I can say that there are many on the political right who are indeed right on this subject, if for entirely the wrong reasons.  But I speak more to my compatriots on the left who are wrong, if for however noble reasons.  Diversity is a great thing, and it is no coincidence that I say this and that my music collection includes at least six different languages, since last I checked.  But an appreciation of diversity and the defense of people rights to say and believe freely are not polar opposites.  We need not choose between embracing the differences between our countries and being able to honestly discuss the issues that exist beyond our borders.  In fact, I am convinced that in this case it is only by recognizing the plank in our neighbors eye that we will be able to recognize the one in our own.

Hobby Lobby Politics

As we near the end of March and with it one of the final deadlines of the implementation of the ACA, although as people have noticed it is something of a soft deadline, the big story is shifting from who gets covered to who can deny coverage.  At the forefront of this debate are two different, but supposedly similar groups, churches and corporations claiming religious beliefs.  This is the result of treating corporations as if they were people, that now aside from merely claiming freedom of speech in the form of monetary donations, they claim to have religious convictions.  It is these convictions that make it impossible for these corporate citizens to accept that they need to pay for healthcare plans that cover birth control and abortions.  Now I will get back to the churches that are claiming the same right in time, but for right now let’s just focus on the weight of the argument of whether corporations, companies, for profit groups have the right to deny such coverage to their employees.

The issue of the right to safe abortions, despite being settled in courts, remains a volatile issue in America.  It is understandable why so many religious people have felt so compelled to make this a cornerstone issue in the political world, because in their opinion they are defending the right to life of the unborn.  And although I have mentioned in the past how I find it ironic that so few of these people seem intent on defending that right when it comes to prisoners, adults, and even poor children, this is not the thrust of today’s essay.  Today I will assume that the people defending Hobby Lobby are doing so with the absolute best intentions.  The right to life must be defended for all people, and in this case extended to the unborn.  If you are of that belief, then it is not a matter of not making the choice yourself, you must prevent others from having abortions because that would be terminating the life of an innocent.

I can respect the sense of morality and duty that goes into such belief, even if I disagree with the basic premises.  But there are at least three big problems with this particular case before us.  The first concerns whether or not a corporation is capable of having religious convictions.  The second concerns the rights of the workers in such a corporation to seek legal healthcare services.  The final and most fundamental concerns to what extent religious beliefs would be allowed to determine the healthcare that a business is required to provide.  

To the first, no.  Despite the convictions of such notable groups as the Supreme Court or such figures as Mitt Romney, a corporation is not a person.  The reason the Supreme Court gave to rule in the way it did during the Citizens united case largely concerned precedent, upon which American law is firmly entrenched.  However, the basic precedents that they referred to come from the Gilded Age, when corporations were on top and the worker forgotten.  This was not a time when many good decisions were reached by the federal courts in my opinion and certainly times change.  But again to be generous, the belief that a corporation is a person comes from a logistical challenge of how to treat a corporation in terms of taxation and litigation.  I remain of the opinion that the best answer to this is not to charge the corporation as an aggregate in such occasions, but to regard only the individual components, which yes does mean that I am not necessarily in favor of a corporate tax as such.  But even if for the sake of legal matters we want to construct the idea of a corporate person, it is in no way the same thing as a human being, or as we tend to call one a person.

Corporate persons do not have beliefs, religious or otherwise.  They are not entitled to the same freedoms of speech as the individuals who comprise them.  To give them such rights undermines the people not part of corporations and directly dehumanizes real people.  So to state that a corporate person is a pious person with reservations about birth control is nonsensical at the onset as it isn’t a person in that way in the first place.  No, a corporation is not capable of morality or religion.

People on the other hand are.  In particular the workers within that corporation and the country as a whole.  As citizens we accept that there are times that the government does things that we do not like, but we put up with such things because we understand that it exists at its most basic level to ensure a fair playing field.  Such an environment cannot exist if the corporations in which people work are capable of feigning religious convictions at the expense of the legal and natural rights of the workers themselves.  If the workers are not in favor of birth control, they are free not to use it.  They are also free to try and convince their fellow workers that it is not a good thing, but they just like the company they work for, are not entitled to deny such legal goods and services.

But as I mentioned earlier the people who firmly believe that abortion is murder, believe that inaction is tantamount to allowing a murder to be committed if they do not stop it.  Unfortunately the line becomes much blurrier when you begin to talk about medical procedures that other religions and sects view just as abhorrent as abortion.  The easiest examples I can think of come from Jehovah’s Witnesses.  In that religion, which aside from merely being an occasional annoyance on a peaceful day at home, there are some specific beliefs that restrict what followers can and cannot do.  The most relevant here, aside from not voting, is their beliefs on blood transfusions.  It is a sin for followers to allow the blood of another to enter their body, and so they refuse it when they go to the hospital as is their right.  But what happens to employees working for a company headed by a Jehovah’s Witness?

If he were to claim the same right to deny certain parts of healthcare plans that conflict with his beliefs, then that would mean no blood transfusions will be covered for the workers.  At this point it should be mentioned that there is an argument that workers have the right to quit their job if they disagree with those beliefs.  This is the worst Hobson’s choice that I can imagine, especially in a time of such economic hardship, wherein the US still has no national healthcare.  If you don’t like our company healthcare that’s fine, go and try and find a job elsewhere.  This is what I take exception to most in this whole ordeal. It is that by pretending to be a question of morality from the top, the people at the bottom are completely forgotten. But so it goes, we shall see if the Supreme Court is finally willing to stand up for the truly oppressed people in this country, or if we are merely entering the Second Gilded Age.

Capitalism’s Gun

I get criticized sometimes for being “too critical” of capitalism or free markets.  People ask me, “what’s wrong with free markets?”  And I’m here to answer, nothing.  There is nothing wrong with capitalism, it does exactly what it was designed to do and it does it very efficiently.  But don’t let this be used as an endorsement of a world without regulations, because the same could be said of another golden cow of the right, guns.  There is nothing wrong with guns, they do what they were designed to do extremely efficiently.  The problem is that what both these things were designed to do is not necessarily what we want them to do.

Guns are designed to kill.  Whether it was designed to kill people or animals, the primary function of a gun is to kill, and it performs this function very well.  Can guns be used for other things? Of course, they can hit non-living targets, they can be used for military salutes, and heck they can even be used as a deterrent to other violent acts.  But these incidental qualities of guns do not make up for their primary function, nor do they negate the inherent flaws of that primary function.

Ok, analogy over for now.  What was free market capitalism designed to do?  Give individuals the ability to access capital and create profit.  I am the first to admit that free market capitalism does this extremely efficiently.  The invisible hand has blindly followed the trends of supply and demand, has led to the post-industrial world we enjoy today, and has above all allowed individuals to profit… monetarily.  Because here’s the problem with a completely free market, like some disembodied board of investors, the only thing that matters is the bottom line for the individual’s pocket book.

This is not to say that people who work in markets aren’t moral people, far from it.  Extremely successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett care very dearly about the well being of the poor and disenfranchised.  They give to charities and set up new organizations to address problems that would otherwise go unchecked.  In fact it is because of the great wealth that they earned that they are able to now spend it and do so much good in the world, but this is the goal of individuals within the system and not the goal of the system itself.

One of the problems I need to address before I continue is the ever present problem with many people, myself to fall into the trap of treating free market capitalism like it is a living creature.  We say things like “this is the will of the market,” or “the market has chosen the winners and losers,” but that’s skirting the real issue.  The markets, like the currencies we use to facilitate its functions are more ethereal than physical.  Markets don’t choose to do anything, they are the logical outcomes of decisions by human beings.  This means that markets are amoral.  The choice of words there is entirely deliberate because I didn’t say immoral, which would imply that they are somehow evil, just that ethics and morality are of no concern to something that can’t act or decide things independently.

The markets don’t do anything, we do and use the puppet of the market as either a representation of everything good with economics or as a monster to be feared.  But to paraphrase a line so often use by the gun lobby, markets don’t kill people, people do.  See the problem with free market capitalism is that there is nothing to keep in check the power that can be accrued by having wealth.  Without the ability to have a rule of law to supersede the will of the wealthy, using the guise of the markets, those at the bottom will suffer what they must.  Free markets are an ingenious way for wealth to be created, but there is no guarantee that wealth will be created by and for everyone.

Again I should step back and say that in a capitalistic society people are freer to improve their lot than in any other economic system, but the attachment of the words free market means that there is little recourse to counteract what the market has already done.  And here’s what I mean by that, if two people invest in a company and over the course of ten years the value of those stocks doubles, both of them have clearly doubled their money.  But if one of them invested a dollar and the other invested a hundred, then the first now has two and the second two hundred.  Both of them are better off, but the person with a head start gets much more of the new pie.  And this goes for people who earned that initial capital and those who didn’t.  Inheritance means that a more industrious person may not have the same opportunities as the potentially lazier child born with a silver spoon in their mouth.  The person born without the advantages has to work that much harder to just make it even with what the inheritor started with, while at the same time the person born with capital can merely earn interest from what they were born with and still come out ahead.

What’s more, in a system with no governmental mediator between the power of the markets and the people who work within it, services for people born without means are severely limited.  Proponents of the free market say that charity goes up when people know that there is no social safety net, and I’ll grant you that may be the case, but by basing assistance on the good nature of people there is no guarantee that the services will be provided.  I’ve already brought this concept up before so I’ll get to a slightly new point on it, the charities that are provided may not be offered to all people if they are based out of individual consciences.  The Salvation Army does a lot of good in helping the poor, but it does not necessarily give that assistance to gay people, because it is a “Christian” organization.  The scare quotes will remain there so long as the organizations that claim such a title refuse to live up to the namesake.  In Greece the Golden Dawn has emerged as a new group to be reconciled with, and while they don’t have a ton of political representation, they have been quite visible in the public.  They set up many charitable organizations to give food and aid to native Greeks, and that’s it.  No foreigners are allowed, no Jews, no one that isn’t up to their standards.  Again these don’t represent the majority of charities, but in a world without the blind justice of the government, many people go without because of who they are and not merely a lack of resources.

Now to those cold enough to say that the world would be better off without the people who can’t make it in a world of free markets, I don’t know that there is anything I can say to persuade you.  It is true that the world is an unjust place and that governments are incapable of ridding the world of all its ills, but it can help.  And it is the duty of all people to care for the less fortunate for virtuous and selfish reasons.  Wealth can only be created when there is demand, and demand only exists so long as buyers exist, even poor ones.  But beyond that, if you can really look into the eyes of the starving and homeless, the sick and needy and say that they are not worth our time or effort, then I would say that clearly the problem doesn’t lie with them.  And what’s more the boom and bust cycle of those free markets can turn capitalism’s gun on anyone in a sadistic game of Russian Roulette.

War on Poverty

Now let’s be clear on something, I am not the biggest fan of the LBJ administration.  Certainly President Johnson was an ambitious man who worked his entire life to create the kind of political clout that made him able to get things done, but that same ambition made him arrogant and in many ways callous to the lives of the soldiers he sent off to die in Vietnam.  Certainly his successor, President Nixon, was no less callous in his ambition and attitude to people in the course of war, but he at least didn’t start the conflict.  But I must say this for LBJ, despite all of his many personal faults, his heart was in the right place when it came to spending political capital. Whether we talk about the passing of Civil Rights legislation or his commitment to what he call the War on Poverty, he truly did care about protecting those targeted by the status quo system.

Today we are faced with a large number of people who are using their waning political capital to undo much of what has redeemed LBJ’s legacy.  Whether by court decisions to take out the parts of the voting rights act’s ability that allow it to truly protect minorities or through new legislation to put even greater financial pressure on those at the bottom, the political Right is using its last moments to ensure a failure of the war on poverty.  So now it falls to us to look back at history and our owns consciences to decide exactly what we must do when it comes to poverty both domestic and international.  I remain, as ever, a defender of the principles of the war on poverty even if I am not a defender of the man that created it or necessarily the actual policies that were enacted.  There are some, if not many, policies created out of the original war on poverty that I wholeheartedly defend, but where there are policies and programs that lead to outcomes that worsen the problem I am not above rethinking my position.

The first thing we must recognize is the same basic fact that has been looming around ever since the founding documents of this nation were penned.  “All men are created equal,” and although I would replace men with humans so as not to confuse any person that all people are equal even among the sexes, this is the point that has been lost on too many.  It does not matter what race you are, nor class nor sex, nor gender, nor sexuality, nor ethnicity, nor age, nor class, nor even nationality.  We must remind ourselves that just as there is no fundamental difference between any person in our own country, as far as equality is concerned, there is no difference between any person in any country.  We are all equally deserving of the blessings of liberty, but some people live in systems that deny them their basic human rights.  Again these are not American rights, but human rights, common amongst all humanity, even if their own institution deny them those rights.

So if we want to confront poverty on all its fronts then we must surely start with the most basic and effective means of ensuring its demise.  The rights of women are denied too often in too many countries, and beyond simply the degradation of the dignity of humanity this results in greater poverty across the globe.  The full enfranchisement of women in all countries is integral to the improvement of both local and international economies.  This enfranchisement means the right to birth control.  Women who are obliged to bear tens of children, both in the act of birth and the caring for them as they grow older, are in bondage.  We must make it our goal that all women have access to safe and effective birth control measures, which may sometimes mean abortion as well.  Sandra Fluke was entirely right in demanding that birth control pills, which have benefits beyond simply the necessary primary function, be included in healthcare plans in the same way that viagra and male enhancement drugs are.

The full enfranchisement of women is not, however, limited to control over their genitals, but also their brains.  Women must be entitled to education worldwide, in the same way that boys are.  This new influx of educated people will increase innovation and economic productivity, and it is the duty of all humans and not merely those of the people in those countries to ensure such education is available.  Which brings us to a larger issue, too many in the United States are convinced we spend too much on international aid as it is, when in fact we take much more than we give.

Groups like the IMO promise many things to developing countries in the form of loans, but the things that are demanded in return for such loans leave these very countries in even greater poverty as they try to pay off debts with the resources that could otherwise be used to develop and improve and profit.  As it stands the Western world still takes more money and resources from the developing world than it gives in the form of aid.  If we are truly interested both in the empowerment of all people as a principle and of the international economy as a reality then an amnesty of such debts must be granted to allow for the growth of these countries and the destruction of abject poverty internationally.

But now we come back to our own shores, because for many of the people living in poverty here, these policies seem utterly useless.  Poverty still exists in the US, and although I’ll grant you that it could be worse, that is no excuse to stop making things better.  The answers to the problems of domestic poverty are not so different from the answers of international poverty though.  We cannot allow the religious right to deny the rights of women through legislation that would ban not merely abortion but nearly all forms of the birth control pill.  Just as it is throughout the world, the ability of a woman to control whether or not she becomes pregnant is one of the surest ways to ensure a decrease in poverty.  Beyond that we must again ensure a quality education for all people regardless of where they live.

The education system of the United States has failed too many, and although merely spending more money will not solve the problems we face, we cannot allow public schools to become defunded relics of a passed time of virtue.  We must defend the rights of the students and the teachers, but also accept that changes need to be made to give students greater access to their teachers after hours.  Schools need to be safe places where students want to go, and not just to catch up with their friends.  A good education is integral in the modern economy and will become even more so as the rest of the world embraces education.  This is the birthright of every human being and must no longer be denied lest we lose this terrible battle against the greatest scourge of humanity, poverty.

Gentrification: The Good, the Bad, and the Expensive

Change is the eternal constant of the universe and there is simply no avoiding it.  It fall on us, therefore, not to fight the fact of change but to adapt to it.  Among the social changes that are going on right now is the return to the cities from the suburbs of many in the Millennial Generation.  While the last great movement of populations to the cities was due to the falling numbers of agricultural jobs and the growing umber of industrial jobs, this new wave to the cities has a much different carrot and stick.  On the one hand the generation that grew up in the suburbs has found the idyllic bastion of older generations to be a bubble of false promise and premises, and on the other the cities are emerging once again as the place to reinvent oneself, grow, and become wealthy.  But the movement of this new generation into the cities is not without some unfortunate consequences for the people living there, and the tide of gentrification is only getting started.

First we have to identify our terms and understand the phenomena that are causing these rather drastic changes.  As the term implies gentrification is the trend of once poorer areas being populated by a more gentile class and the results of that trend.  There are, however, some significantly different groups to consider when one talks about a gentile class.  There are the descendants of the rich who choose these poorer areas not because they need something affordable, but because it has been made a popular concept by others.  These others can include artistic communities, the starving artist coming to some truth at least in the short term.  But it may also be a demographic shift of groups like the LGBT community.  In either case these groups, in general, tend to bring with them tastes that are not satisfied by the existing shops, restaurants, etc.  However, and again this is a generalization, even groups that are not necessarily from money, like the LGBT community tend to have disposable income that the locals may not have had.  And the excess capital they bring along with the demand for more expensive things causes a dramatic shift in the makeup of the community as well as the price of living there.

Now here is where we shift focus from the people moving in and the people who had originally been living there.  If you own a tenement then you will be ecstatic to see a new wave of people capable of paying rent and willing to pay more for the right place.  This results in higher tax revenue for the local governments, so often they are also in favor of the movement toward a higher economic class.  Certainly the communities themselves become safer, cleaner, and more integrated into the larger society than they had once been, but this often comes at the direct expense of the people who had been paying rent.  For those who lived in these areas out of obligation to their family or necessity, the dramatic rise in rent and prices for goods in their area can be an impossible change to deal with.  The locals, perhaps justifiably so, see the new wave of inhabitants as invaders seeking to drive them out of their homes by legal economic means, however.  

What’s more the new wave of gentrification often means the destruction of the things that had made the local community different.  Gentrification often means the introduction of franchises and rushes the effects of monopolized culture in turning any city into every city.  The streets that had once had a particular local significance are redone to make travel easier and shopping more enjoyable.  The buildings that had once been representations of the materials that were used for functionality and utility rather than novelty or artistry, are often knocked down in favor of the cookie cutter buildings that dot so much of this country now.  The best that can be said of these uniform buildings is that they are pretty, but lacking any kind of history or depth.  But as I said earlier, ours is not to stop the tide of change, but to take the good from it and try to mitigate the bad.  And there is much to be said for the good of gentrification.

I brushed over it earlier in an attempt to fully flesh out the arguments against this trend, but gentrification means higher levels of safety in the community.  This is not just a quality that is appreciated by weak yuppies and cowardly hipsters, but by anyone trying to simply get by in life and certainly trying to raise a child.  The worst part of the projects is, arguably, the unconscious segregation it foments.  These communities split between races and gangs are not the first place that a police officer wants to spend time patrolling.  However, the influx of new money means a better funded police department and a more attentive effort to keeping the streets clean and safe.  For a person that can remain able to afford living in such a place this is the best that could be hoped for.  A safe community with good schools, the perfect place to raise a child.  If you can afford it.

The biggest problem with gentrification is not the change in demographics, as such.  In fact if it were simply a matter of moving younger people with some disposable income into an area, I’d say that is a great step forward in integration, but that isn’t exactly what happens.  Again the people that live in the areas that are becoming gentrified could have chosen to live in areas with safer communities and better schools, and the reason they didn’t has nothing to do with their ability to raise children.  The projects emerged as they currently exist as the result of the lack of real opportunity for too many people to find gainful employment.  Certainly these people would like to raise their children in an area without gang violence, but those areas are too expensive.  And by raising the rent prices in these areas, you may help a small section of the locals but many will be forced to move again to the next generation of projects.

This is yet another issue for which I do not have an answer.  On the one hand I think it is a great thing that more people are moving to cities, in which public transportation flourishes and opportunities abound.  I am glad to see that this new generation is unafraid to move into areas where they might be in the minority and renew the vision of the American melting pot.  But, and you knew there was a but looming overhead, this reintegration and reinvigoration of local economies often comes at the direct expense of the people who already had few options in life.  Rent control has been shown to be a less than fruitful way of mitigating this trend and can in fact work to stifle economic growth.  The only way I can see this trend being turned into a complete good for society is to ensure that there is an economy capable of keeping the less fortunate heads above water.  This means a great expense of capital, either public or private, to create new industries and markets capable of providing gainful employment.  And because the invisible hand seems unwilling to create such industries it falls on the government to make a new New Deal of public works to reinvigorate these communities and bring all people into the greater society that is the American public.

Healthcare and Movement

There are so many problems with our current healthcare system, not the least of which being the costs associated with it.  But today I’m going to take a slight divergence from the path that I normally take in talking about the right to healthcare.  Today I am merely going to talk about the practical idiocy of a system that is so fractured over 50 states.  Perhaps more to the point, I am going to be addressing the basic fact that we are a United States and not a confederacy of states.  In nearly every country, doctors are approved by a national certification board that brings them into the larger flock of doctors and medical care providers.  This means that a prescription a doctor writes in London will be accepted if the patient moves to Leeds, the medical procedures of Rennes will be executed by hospitals in Tours, etc.  This is not the case if you move from Boston, to Chicago, to Savannah, to LA, to Anchorage, to Austin, etc.

I have moved across this country quite a bit since I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and more to the point given my first infusion of Remicade or Infliximab.  Perhaps it would be useful to describe what that particular drug is before I continue with the story.  Crohn’s disease, being an auto-immune disease can be treated through the use of immunosuppressants.  Among the drugs, one of the most most used for these purposes is called Azathioprine a drug that I have been using with some mixed success and continue to use.  But beyond that some immunosuppressant treatments seek to replace the now weakened immune system with replacement antibiotics, and that is what Remicade is.  Remicade binds to and inhibits a particular molecule responsible for the inflammation response of the immune system.  The result of this is a much less dangerous and effective calming of inflammation throughout the gastrointestinal tract, meaning less ulcers, fistulas, abscesses, blockage, pain and nausea.  In short it is a very effective drug for treating Crohn’s with very minimal side effects, there is however one downside.

Remicade, like all biologic agents used to treat Crohn’s, is not a one time deal.  I have to go in for infusions of the drug about every eight weeks do reintroduce a fresh dose of antibodies.  If I miss an infusion, take it too late, or indeed am simply unlucky my body will create an effective defense against these antibodies and make them utterly useless.  If that were to happen I would have to try and find a different agent to do the same job.  I, and many people who are in a similar situation, like Remicade quite a bit, particularly when compared to the alternatives.  Patients using Humira or Cimzia often report a great deal more pain than those using Remicade.  Humira also needs to be administered much more frequently, although the infusion time is much shorter.  In either case once you find a drug that works for you, you tend to try and not upset the situation if you can avoid it.

Now I’ve had to get these infusions in four different states and have found it to be the single biggest challenge to deal with in my life.  Minnesota was the state in which I originally got the prescription for Remicade, so once I got tarted up there was no problem, but I was only in Minnesota for college which meant a change after graduation.  When I returned to my home in Illinois I had to find a whole new set of doctors to get a new prescription, which wasn’t too big of a hassle because I knew where I was going to be for the foreseeable future and was surrounded by a supporting family to help me through the logistics.  I then got a temporary job out in Virginia which happened to coincide with an infusion date.  The ordeal I went through to finally get that infusion nearly meant missing the deadline to get the treatment done and risked losing the effectiveness of the drug.  I am now in Massachusetts and dealing with the same problems and it is no less stressful to think that I may soon be returning to the hospital not for a routine infusion, but through the ER to deal with the truly terrible effects of untreated Crohn’s.  For more graphic details you might want to read my post “Why I Care,” https://cojsmithblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/why-i-care/

Now this experience is just to give some context for what I am about to say, the American healthcare system puts patients at risk because of the lack of national cooperation.  Each state has its own set of rules and regulations.  Doctors may only be able to prescribe certain drugs and procedures to certain hospitals, and almost uniquely to those within their borders.  If someone moves to a different state, they might as well have moved to a different country, because you have to start from square one all over again.  Medical records must either be collected by the patient and held with them at all times to give to their new doctors, or else they have to wait for the proper paperwork to be filled both at the hospitals and clinics releasing records and the hospital or clinic receiving.  The prescription written in one state for a procedure may not, and almost definitely will not, be accepted in the next state you live in.  The patient is forced to repeatedly jump through similar but different hoops to get necessary services that in cases like mine literally put their health and life at stake.

In every nationalized healthcare system doctors are approved to treat patients in their country, they are allowed access to that patient’s medical history to see what has worked and was has been prescribed.  But America’s insistence on being 50 separate healthcare systems each with possibly even more local subdivisions results in a callous reality for people who are in most need of medical attention.  And I know the conservative response that the beauty of America is that it has 50 different political laboratories each looking and competing for what works best for them, but this is a slap in the face to all the people who assumed that they were American citizens and not say citizens of Alabama.  As an American it is my right to live and move about these 50 states, but I am bound by the realities of my condition to think very carefully about doing so.

It is terrifying to live with a chronic illness and know what the consequences of inaction or improper action are.  The last thing that needs to be heaped on top of that is the stress of trying to figure out if you need to move how you will get the life-saving treatments you need.  I want an American Carte Vitale, a card that carries my medical information and is accessible by well trained doctors who have been approved by the national government to work all over this great nation of ours.  I want a system that truly cares about its systems and won’t put up barriers between patients and the drugs that save lives.  I want to know that if I go from one state to another, within my home country, that I will be safe to go into a local hospital and seek treatment.  I want to know that my healthcare insurance will be accepted throughout this country for the same drugs, regardless of where I end up.  The fact that this is the 21st century and I have to ask for something so basic from a country as rich as ours is in no small way one of the most insulting things I’ve ever dealt with, and as a gay man who’s been in some fairly conservative areas that is saying something.

The Role of Extremism

There is a fairly popular belief among the more conservative elements of this country that America, as a whole, is a center-right nation.  Like any misconception, this is based on a bit of truth and then taken to an absurd abstraction.  It is true that in American politics, the choices that are presented to us are not particularly left leaning.  Essentially our choices are the extreme right, in the guise of the Republican Party, and the centrist Democratic Party, which occasionally seems to even be center-right.  It becomes impossible to do comparative politics between the US and nearly any other country in the industrialized world, because we lack an effective group that represents a legitimate political left.  However, this is far from an accurate representation of the true will of the people which consistently shows a progressive leaning when actually questioned on individual issues.

Part of the problem comes from the United States’ unique history of isolation.  We are among a select few nations in the world that can effectively pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.  To our East and West lie immense oceans keeping us from any kind of contact with possible enemies.  The two countries with which we do share borders haven’t posed a real threat to our existence since the Mexican-American War.  But if this were the only factor, then Canada should be even more isolated than we; however, their history in the British Commonwealth has meant a much more intensive international history.  Something that has never really happened to the US, as we have always expected the rest of the world to come to us.  And more recent history has ensured that the extreme left has never grown to fruition on American soil.

In France, the Communist Party(PCF) is at its weakest point in a very long time because of a lack of interest more than any persecution.  In fact France holds the PCF in some esteem because of their role in leading the Resistance in World War Two.  Above all other groups, they were the ones fighting against fascism and were reviled perhaps even more than the Jewish people by the Nazi government and Vichy puppet state.  Although, and perhaps because, they never came to the kind of power that communist groups in other countries did, they remained a respected party by all but the most extreme right partisans.  At the same time in American history, communists and socialists were being tolerated at the best of times and outright hunted at the worst.  The trials of Joesph McCarthy scared people from even conversing with people with ideas that strayed a little too far to the left.  This was part of a larger narrative in the Cold War where the communists and socialists were de facto allies of the USSR and thus enemies of the United States.  This narrative held sway over the American psyche well past the 80’s even until the collapse of the Soviet Union all together.

The result of this level of persecution has meant that the closest thing we have to a truly progressive party in the US is the liberal party, the Democrats.  In the rest of the world the word liberal means a center-right position, much like the Liberal Democrats of the United Kingdom.  And yet this is supposed to be the party that the right labels as socialist and extreme leftists.  They can make this argument only because of the utter ignorance of any real context, and why should they consider context?  It serves them well that people remain ignorant of any legitimate alternative to the status quo parties.

The American people are not an inherently government hating people, in spite of the narrative that has been spun by the Right.  What’s more the irony of a party specifically designed to make the argument that governments cannot work and then actively try to take the wheel of government is not lost on me.  The tag line of the modern Republican Party is that the government that governs least is ideal.  And yet whenever they come to power they go out of their way to both extend their influence by governmental authority, especially in terms of social issues, while using the premise of free markets being a pure good to get government to defend those with all the financial power.  But if you ask the average American what they think about important issues, this is not what they want.

Americans want a certain level of independence and autonomy from the government, this is true, but they don’t want the government to go into obscurity, or worse to actively try and make things worse.  Most Americans are in favor of a social safety net to protect people from falling into abject poverty.  Most Americans are in favor of the government providing healthcare for those who are unable to afford it on their own.  Most Americans believe that education, especially public education, is a right for all children and a necessary investment.  Most Americans believe that the separation of church and state is in fact a good thing, and necessary for the defense of their individual rights.  Most Americans are in favor of a progressive tax, that puts more weight on the shoulders of those capable of bearing it.  Most Americans are in favor of marriage equality, access to safe and legal abortions, birth control, pay equality, and government protection from the overreach of the affluent and influential.  This is at the very least a liberal country, which I’ll grant you can be center-right, but means that there is also an important part of the population to the left of that.

America lacks a sufficient extreme left to give context to the extreme right.  As it stands, the Republicans can get away with calling liberals socialists, because there is no group that claims that title for themselves.  I’ll grant you that Senator Bernie Sanders does exist, but as a single independent in the whole of the federal government he hardly serves as a counterbalance.  The only problem with getting a more effective party to represent comes in the short term, the fracturing of the Democratic Party would be in the best interest of conservatives.  This is a dangerous risk that needs to be considered in moving the march of progress forward.

What we need at this point is a leftist version of the Tea Party, a group that remains part of its larger political party but asserts its weight to drive the policies of that party.  We need more politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who will proudly where the D next to their name, but call for decisive and progressive politics.  We need to rise above the ashes of the past and proudly declare our intent to defend the defenseless, to ensure the rights of the working and middle classes, to strengthen the policies that the government does well and yes eliminate the programs it does poorly.  Above all we must defend the idea that the government that governs best, governs best.  This does mean that there are times when the government should back off and allow industry to do what it does best, but it also means that there are times when we acknowledge the limits of markets and give the government the means to fill those holes.  Give a voice to the voiceless, and the newly empowered chorus will bring back a beauty that has been lacking from our politics for too long.

Consume or Die

Among the ways countries can be assessed in terms of their economic development is the existence of a consumer culture.  Certainly when economists discuss the opening up of the Chinese markets, they are in part referring to the fact that the increase of wealth in Chinese society creates new consumer markets.  This in turn creates what some people call a positive feedback loop, wherein that new demand for products forces new industries to meet the demand, which then creates more wealth and starts the cycle all over again.  This is a beautiful illustration of market economics in action; however, it presents an unfortunate potential problem.  What happens if and when people start to buy less?

The greatest power of the market system is also a weakness, that being the division of labor.  The fact that you can wake up in the morning and know that you have a fridge, constructed by someone else; filled with foods, grown by someone else; which you can eat before going to your job, gives us all the ability to be more efficient.  We can spend more of our time on specialized tasks, which added up together, mean everything we see is produced in greater quantities than they would otherwise.  But this means that every person is in some way dependent on the productive capabilities of everyone else.  This is fine so long as everyone keeps producing, but people only produce to meet demand.  If that demand somehow goes down then production will too.  This too shouldn’t be a big issue as it means there isn’t too much waste, but for the people who would otherwise be employed by producing what has become a surplus it means a threat to their livelihood.

This, in turn, has the potential to create a negative feedback loop.  The loss of employment means a decrease in spending on inessential goods and services.  This drop in demand means less production and fewer jobs, which brings us back to square one.  This is why I sometimes feel guilty when I shop at a thrift shop, in spite of the now ubiquitous song by Macklemore.  By buying secondhand goods a part of me recognizes that the jobs of people who make new products are threatened.  Of course people are employed by those thrift shops, but not nearly as many as would be required for the production of new goods, and the disposal of the old ones.  The environmentalist in me then says that by reusing goods and keeping new production down I am fighting waste, pollution, and carbon emissions, but this is hardly a consolation for those who may lose work.
And beyond merely the sentimentality I may feel for threatening another person’s job, as I pointed out before I threaten my own well being by decreasing demand in a market economy.  Perhaps with time I could learn to grow my own food, make my own clothes, etc but then I would be unable to devote my time to other pursuits, not least of which is this blog.  I need the market economy to remain strong just as much as anyone else to make the comfortable lifestyle I enjoy possible.  But surely these are just normal fluctuations in the boom and bust cycles we’ve come to know and love.

Certainly automation is one of the best things to happen to society.  By reducing the amount of human effort that goes into the production of goods we free up time for other activities, pursuits, etc with the added benefit of lowering costs.  And if having a human being in a job creates an unnecessary inefficiency, in the long run it is even in their best interest to allow that position to be automated and allow prices to be lowered even further.  The only problem with that is that people don’t live in the long term.  A man can’t eat cheap bread without even a low wage with which to pay, and can’t live in an apartment on next year’s rent.  What happens to people as they get pushed from the jobs of yesterday and are told to wait for the jobs of tomorrow?

Like a hamster caught in a spinning wheel we can’t just slam on the breaks, we need to keep running.  This is the trap of a market economy, the only way for it to grow is for demand to grow.  The only way demand can grow is if people have the means to demand and every time we take a step forward with technology we take away the means from at least a few people.  There are ways to mitigate the worst effects of these symptoms, but they are only effective for relatively short periods of time.  One way is to have a system heavily reliant on credit, which is how many Americans have been able to afford things they can’t afford.  To make the math work out we can keep a steady steam of inflation such that people are paying back comparably less than they originally took.  But to be truly effective to that end we would be devaluing our currency and creating a system that ends badly.  We can create a social safety net to support people as they look for new employment.  But, as conservative pundits love to remind us, that does take away some urgency to find employment and remain in it.

The creation of our market economy has done much to improve the lot of all people in society and it continues to do so, but there is that ever present trap looming in the distance.  The more we consume the more we need to fulfill demand, which in the best of times means the potential over consumption of resources.  But if we ever stop consumption we risk a much worse fate of unemployment and want.  In the meantime the only remedy is the exact problem, consumption.  We must continue to consume or else risk the collapse of our market utopia.  And we’ve seen in the last decade that this is not necessarily an easy task to accomplish.

I am reminded of Aldous Huxley’s famous novel Brave New World, wherein every person was indoctrinated from birth to consume and never reuse.  This dystopia was made possible because of drugs and a complete disregard for the effect of such consumption on the environment.  We, unfortunately or fortunately, have no such means of making this level of consumption feasible.  I don’t know what a world without this push toward demand, production, and consumption would look like, but we need to figure it out sooner rather than later.  As it stands we are as dependent on consumption of all resources as we are dependent on consumption of food to keep us and our society alive.

For the Gander

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.  The have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”  So go the words of William Shakespeare, and though it is true that in our time we will end up on all sides of trade, being a buyer and seller, there are those who do more of one than the other.  IT is too simplistic to thus label people as givers and takers, but surely there are those who get more from their lifetime than others.  The acknowledgement of this reality need not be the beginning of dogmatic antagonism against each other, but a recognition of the more specific roles we do play.  In this sense one could say that though humanity is clearly made up of equals we are surely not made of clones.  And although this would seem to be commonsense and universal, the policies of the Right remain ignorant of the second half of that previous statement.

The is a common adage that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and there is a good region that phrase is so often spoken with the tongue stuck fiercely into the cheek.  The conservative promise that the lack of intervention by the government and the increase of personal liberty in market transactions is invariably good.  This however fails to recognize that the world of markets free from the fetters of government intervention is not an even playing field; it is ever slanted toward those with the capital to assert their influence.  Now it would be equally naïve to think that the government only ever works in the best interest of the poor.  Certainly those with the means to assert their influence in the market also have the means to get the ear of politicians.  Nonetheless, the government has the potential to act as a mediator in a way that the market really cannot.

The barring of a referee from a game directly gives an advantage to those most capable of breaking the rules without retribution from others.  The reason why I consider myself a capitalist but not a free-market capitalist is because I understand the mythology of classical economics.  There are two basic myths of classical economics in particular that need to be confronted before we can have a more responsible conversation on the matter.  The first concerns the origin of money and the second the operation of the free market.  In the first myth we are told to imagine a culture without currency, where people only ever trade by bartering two different resources.  This requires a, so called, double miracle wherein both participants want the product that the other has.  The rarity of such transactions necessitates a medium of exchange such that goods and services can be exchanged without needing this double miracle.  I do not have the time to go in great depth into the inaccuracy of this, but if you want a much better explanation please read Debt: The First 5000 years.

In short, societies don’t work like this.  We establish primitive forms of credit long before we find the creation of money necessary.  The acquisition of money can be seen for what it really is, the gaming of the assumptions created by society, and not necessarily the creation of real wealth for all people.  Again I feel the need to clarify, I do not think that the creation of wealth and surplus is a bad thing, but in a system designed to protect those with the medium of exchange and not the producers it seems hardly accurate to call those with great quantities of that medium as being necessarily beneficial for those trying to get their goods and services in the market.

The second myth posits that when people make transactions they are invariably both profiting from the situation, as each person wants what the other person has more than they want the thing that they pay with.  Again this seems understandable if you belief in the founding myths of our economy and pay no attention to how things actually operate.  Although this is most definitely how things operate in most occasions, there is a minority of events where people choose to undergo transactions not because they want to but because they have no other realistic options.  Coercion by necessity is as strong as any external necessity, and if you need something bad enough it doesn’t matter how disadvantageous the deal is you will take it.  This is certainly the case with life-saving medical care, because what will you do with the saved money when you die.  The same can be said of food and water supplies, where the middlemen are able to increase prices in a way that the buyer may be in no position to negotiate.

To put it briefly, I know a little late for that, what is good for the goose sometimes comes at the direct expense of the gander.  Policies of the GOP in general and conservative libertarians specifically, directly benefit those who already have the power in negotiations by removing the counteracting influence of the government from the corner of those without.  This is the case when they defend the rights of sellers to choose not to have transactions with people of certain races, religions, or sexualities.  But for a less extreme example of this defense of the already powerful, one look no further than the Gilded Age of America’s history, where the free market was held sacrosanct over all consumer and worker rights.

Those entrepreneurs that did not have the adequate capital or ambition to beat more the most successful Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc. were driven into the ground in favor of trusts, monopolies, and cartels.  Workers were forced to accept the squalid conditions of not only the factories and mills, but also the tenements and slums where they lived.  They did this not out of some noble choice, but out of the lack of choice.  Opportunities for agriculture were nil and the idea of a middle class existence was nonexistent, but compared to the prospect of death and misery, abject poverty and miserable existence seems preferable.  In the same way that a person with a gun to their head can not be said to really choose to give their mugger money of their own free will, coercion of the market can not always be seen as free will and mutually beneficial transactions.

So although I can agree that government intervention into market transactions can be annoying and sometimes overbearing, the lack of such intervention is a much worse alternative.  Those who favor these policies of an ostensibly free market are either doing so because they understand that the playing field will be tipped in their advantage or have been brainwashed into believing it would be a fair playing field.  I will not be so condescending as to say that working class and middle class people who vote for such measures and representatives are completely uninformed, but that the way our narratives of economics have been inculcated into nearly all parts of our society.  Thus proving the other adage, “A lie repeated often enough becomes the Truth.”