"Everyone in This Picture Is Dead"

When I was writing The Neglected Giant: Agnes Meyer Driscoll, I often had this picture up in the background, and would often look at it.  (It can be found in the linked document on p. 56.)  Usually when I looked, the title of this entry would come to mind at some point.

I liked looking at the picture as a window on the world I was writing about, and to admire young Agnes Meyer's fierce intelligence and determination, still blazing out of the picture over a century later.

And, as I wrote it, I found much to admire about her.  A great American, never known and now nearly forgotten, this country owes her much, and I was glad to shine a light on her.  She accomplished so much despite so many obstacles.

Which is not to whitewash her.  She made mistakes, the kind rivals could use against her and certainly did.  Intelligence and determination are worth admiring, but they don't eliminate error.

But overall I found her far more admirable than not.  I was determined on my own part to tell her story with honesty and accuracy; she deserved no less and I'm sure wouldn't have wanted it otherwise.  I like to think I succeeded.

Still, the picture I looked at did influence me in one direction.  I kept looking at a picture of people and seeing good, honest folk, more than one of whom served her country and served it well.

"Everyone in this picture is dead."  As I wrote, I strove for honesty and accuracy.  But I aimed for one more thing.  I tried not to be unkind.

Agnes Meyer Driscoll began her Navy civilian career on 1 August 1919, 100 years ago today.

Politics of Discontent

Any politician can appeal to the discontented to acquire power.  It's not a bad ploy, especially in a democracy, where some percentage of the population can always be counted on to be cranky.

And, naturally, a number of politicians have.  Here's some quotes from three (the source of all are Wikipedia/Wikiquote, since my point is more about words than the three individuals here).

First, three quotes from one politician:

⦁    "Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest."
⦁    "We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world."
⦁    "Let the dogs of the empire bark, that's their job; ours is to battle to achieve the true liberation of our people."

Who said that?  None other than the late President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez.

He's an easy target, of course; the North American Congress on Latin America (said to be "left-wing") looking back on Chavez: "reductions in poverty and inequality during the Chávez years were real, but somewhat superficial [...] structural poverty and inequality, such as the quality of housing, neighborhoods, education, and employment, remained largely unchanged."

Second, three quotes from another:

⦁    "[I]f you don't modernize yourselves, leave.  You're poor?  Whore mother!  Suffer through hardship and hunger.  I don't care."
⦁    "What I don't like are kids [being raped].  You can mess with, maybe Miss Universe.  Maybe I will even congratulate you for having the [crude word for daring/chutzpa] to rape somebody when you know you are going to die [for your crime]."
⦁    "Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination if you're a son of a [expletive deleted]."

Whose words were those?  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, of whose first year as president the Human Rights Watch (HRW) called a human rights calamity.

Third, one more politician, three more quotes:
⦁    "Our religion has defined a position for women: motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood."
⦁    "Those who do not want to take a side will be eliminated from (meaning: irrelevant for) the process."
⦁    "...it's not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide."

Who said those?  Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

What kind of president is he?  Well, once again from Wikipedia, political scientists no longer consider Turkey as a fully fledged democracy, citing the lack of free and fair elections, purges and jailing of opponents, curtailed press freedom, and Erdogan's efforts to broadening his executive powers and minimize his executive accountability.

So, what's my point?

Namely this.  I regard the only real criterion for rating presidents as whether their country benefited or not from that leader's administration.  People who exploit discontent to attain power don't have a good track record for improving their country.  They're best at showing the way for future heads of state to get there: to keep people discontented, and use them.  Exploit them.

How can we spot such politicians?  Not just because they anger people, because that can happen anyway.  Look for loaded words (I talked about them a little in "Writing 102," Part 6: Tone, and more in "Writing 201," Goal 3: Anger.)  Words packed with emotional loading are meant to get the audience feeling rather than thinking.  (Examples from the quotes: "tyranny," "elite," "dogs," "whore," and crude words and expletives.)

The politics of discontent are a great way to take your country into diminished democracy, disintegrating human rights, and a declining economy.  Those who employ these tactics aren't there to help you, just to help themselves.  Something to keep in mind when watching ploys, and to avoid being played.

Truth, Fairness, and Dubious Tactics

The BBC recently ran a really interesting piece about Trump and Brett Kavanaugh borrowing from Bill Clinton:  "Brett Kavanaugh deploys the Trump and Clinton playbook."

As the article shows, all three (and Hillary too) used or are using the same tactic when confronted by scandal, which is to say framing the issue in terms of taking sides.  Not in terms of what the truth might be, what is fair, or what is moral, not even what's best for the country.  Just are you with me or against me.

Now, none of us should be surprised.  After all, most of our politicians started out as lawyers, and legal battles don't ultimately search for the truth, or what's fair, or equitable.  (If truth were primary, all evidence would be admissible; if fairness and equity were, the rich wouldn't be the only ones to hire the best attorneys.  But I digress.)  Everyone would like those to be the main goals, but the law is imperfect, and uses courtroom battles as a way of deciding issues as close to correctly as it can.

And that's fair enough, it's as good as we imperfect mortals can do.  But we need to remember that defense lawyers who get their guilty clients convicted will have as little career success as any other attorney who loses cases.

Anyone who wants to get anywhere as a lawyer has to put truth and fairness and equity into secondary priority, and win.

So we shouldn't be surprised when our politicians have the same mentality.

If you follow the news, the narrative is likely to suggest that American voters are fine with that, that everyone is increasingly polarized and uninterested in truth, fairness, and all the rest.  And certainly there's some truth to that.

But if you look back at the last election, turnout was something like 55%.  Granted that there will always be some who aren't paying attention or whatever, but I would suggest that some significant proportion of the US population, under 45% but still significant, doesn't see any better option than not voting at all.

So I can hope that at some point both parties stop and take a longer-term view, and start thinking in terms of engaging more than 55% of the population.  That they think about what's best for their party in the years to come, if not the nation, and stop focusing solely on winning their current case—I mean, election.

That's the truth as I see it, and I think it's a fair view of the overall situation.  But I doubt that dubious tactics will give way anytime soon.  I'm 55% sure of it.