Friday, July 24, 2020

Comment on: "Judge orders Seattle Times, four TV stations to give photos, videos of protests to police", Washington Post, July 24, 2020


The is a very good decision. 

I am all in favor of raising awareness of persistent discrimination against minorities and police misconduct. 

However, the same stringent standards applied against police misconduct by a very small minority (body-cams, transparent and stringent review and prosecution of police misconduct) should and must be applied vis-a-vise the "protesters", infiltrated by chaotic looters and arsonists.

The MLB movement condemn entire police departments for the terrible behavior of a few. In the same way, the legitimate protesters could be blamed for the misconduct of the few which infiltrate the protests. The police in many jurisdictions are required to wear and activate body-cams to document possible misconduct. Since we cannot require protesters, and especially the criminal elements which infiltrate them, to wear body-cams, it is only appropriate that all available evidence, including news videos (in addition to normal surveillance video) be available to prosecute the criminals giving a bad name to the legitimate protests.

Our (Seattle's) Major is largely responsible for the continued violence, burning and looting in Seattle, as she explicitly stated that "misconduct" during protests should not be prosecuted, that the infamous "summer of love" should just be allowed to deteriorate unabated. Our Police Chief and Fire Chief (both African-American) are the only ones with any consistency and common sense. 

Our City Council, favoring reduction of the police budget by 50%, is completely bonkers.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

100 Reasons to Love America: An open letter to People Magazine



When I immigrated to the United States of America back in 1963, I had real reasons to “Love America”: Europe, and especially Germany where I was born, owed its very existence , evolving prosperity (in the ’60’s) and its security from the threat of Soviet takeover to America. As a young boy in bombed out and blockaded Berlin, following American soldiers through the streets (to pick up their cigarette butts to take in to Tobacco Shops for penny candy), I saw Americans as can-do, nothing is impossible, let’s fix it kind of people. Coming from bombed out Berlin to the US for the first time in 1951, thanks to my fathers posting to the German Consulate in San Francisco, seven years old, I literally felt like I had gone to heaven.

By 1963, when I finally immigrated, Germany had come a long way towards economic, social and political recovery, although in many ways it was still the “anything not explicitly allowed is ‘verboten’ “ country. And even then there were some disturbing events and trends in US social and political reality: the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, positive at the time, but worrying about what it said about America’s unresolved past, and the first signs of the extreme political polarization (under Nixons “Southern Strategy”) typical of the US today.

However, on a strictly personal level, I was still able to realize “The American Dream”, a good education, followed by good jobs, marriage to a wonderful American “girl”, and physical and financial security, even into retirement age. But I am one of the lucky ones, even in America; I’m white and middle class. There is a very large subclass, often native-born Americans, not immigrants, who had and have no chance at the American Dream.

The social, political end economic decline of America, first slowly and barely noticeable, has steadily accelerated, to the point today, with the US being at best second rate in all the international comparisons of social and economic wellbeing, that one has to, as I have, consider the United States a failed state - I submitted an opinion piece to the NYT to that effect (not accepted/not published) - http://rantingsofgrumpyoldguy.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-united-states-failed-state-united.html

With that as background, I came across the current (June 29, 2020) issue of People Magazine and their “100 Reasons to Love America”. Now, in fairness, People Magazine is a celebrity-oriented rag, and one should not expect “serious” thinking or writing from them. But even with that in mind, the list they published is just mind-bogglingly banal and self-delusional.

Just take the first six - the ones beyond that are so banal, I can’t even stomach commenting on them:

#1 Peaceful Protests
Yes, I am fully on board with most of the protests, currently for Black Lives Matter, and those back in my younger days, for Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War. And I get it, that sometimes fringe elements will create violence, which should not distract from the issues at hand. But, for example, here in Seattle (as in other cities) there was violence arson and looting, and to top if off, the City of Seattle has allowed the creation of, literally, a lawless zone in its midst, containing a police station, which itself in the past was created at the request of the local resident to have closer police presence to fight crime in that area,  where police are now not allowed to enter. This acquiescence to mob rule is certainly one of the many signs of a “failed state” condition which the US is descending into.

This item, as most of the others, is also a reflection of one of the central weaknesses of the American psyche, or personality: the need to feel that everything which happens here is unique, the best, the biggest, the greatest, etc. and the self-delusional refusal to look realistically at anything happening outside of the US.  Peaceful protest is happening around the world, because racial and other inequality is not unique to the US. See also the “peaceful protests” happening in Russia and other former Soviet states, protesting the autocratic suppression of any and all political opposition - protest in those environments takes real courage, and is not a “summer block party”, as Major Durkan likes to refer to the Capital Hill autonomous zone.

#2 American Optimism
I used to be an admirer of  “American Optimism”, that “can-do” spirit which so enthralled the rest of the world after World War II, personified at the national level by the Roosevelt government’s  Marshall Plan, and at the personal level by the American GI’s pitching in to make life bearable in bombed out Berlin.

But looking at Americas social and political decline over the past fifty years, that can-do approach has been replaced by a severe social and political paralysis. Socially, America is far behind all other advanced countries - we are the only first-world country without universal health care and one of the very few where college and university education is not free or at least heavily subsidized. Politically, our highly polarized two-party political system has caused virtual paralysis in dealing with urgent, social, political and economic problems, at the national, state and local levels. This dysfunctional political paralysis is largely responsible, among many other things, for the amateurish, fractured and highly politicized response to the current Covid-19 pandemic - together with the related lack of universal health care, responsible both for large segment of the population with severe untreated chronic health issues, and an inadequate, profit-driven health care infrastructure, exemplified by a severe shortage of ICU beds and lack of even rudimentary supplies of protective gear.

#3 MasterClass - actually, remote and home schooling
Here again, a “tell” on the American psyche - to highlight a private company trying to make a profit from the current pandemic, rather that the millions of dedicated parents and teachers trying to keep the education of our youngsters on track. This is like glorifying Trump University or the many private, for-profit colleges whose main goal is to cash in on the federally guaranteed (but not subsidized) high interest loans, not grants, for education.

#4 Stationary Bikes
Really ??!! Stationary bikes are something uniquely American to be proud of?

#5 Billie Eilish
OK, if one widens the scope here to “American performing popular artists”, I agree, that in general, they are a cut above the rest of the world. Personally, I don’t particularly care for Billie Eilish, but, for example, the poetic genius and performing honesty of someone like Kris Kristofferson, to me, is very rare and exceptional.

#6 Dr. Anthony Fauci
Yes, Dr. Fauci has proven to be an effective counter-balance to the irrational nonsense coming from The White House. But we also have to be honest and not succumb to blind hero-worship. Dr. Fauci did, in early January, downplay the threat of Coronavirus to the US, even though he couched that opinion in the generic cop-out of “things may change”.

We also need to remember, that Dr. Fauci allowed himself to be used to spread the blatant lies about the availability in the US of Coronavirus testing. During the infamous news conference with VP Pence, as well as in other interviews, Dr. Fauci echoed the blatant lies about the availability of testing in the US; he, of all people, was in a position to know that the early test kits from the CDC (which in typical American arrogance, it insisted on developing its own, rather that go with the proven one from the WHO) were rife with reliability problems.

Beyond #6, things really become trite and ridiculous (#7 Quarantine Cocktails - really??!!) that I don’t have the stomach to even critique these individually … except

#73 Judge Judy, could not agree more - one of my favorite shows!

Thursday, June 4, 2020

The United States, a Failed State ?


The United States is showing all the symptoms of becoming a failed state. The rot of constitutional governance starts at the very top, a President who claims for himself the right to do anything he wants; Cabinet Officers at the highest level showing complete disregard for their responsibilities to the people of the United States rather than just kowtowing to only the sociopathic President. 

At the local level we see the very thin veneer of civilized behavior disintegrating, where governors and local officials are trying to present a veneer of being in control, while everyone is using the police as scapegoats for societal problems which have been baked into American society since the very founding.

Contrary to the soaring sentiments and words of the Declaration of Independence, the Framers of the Constitution, whom we have been brainwashed into treating as infallible holy-men, made a pact with the devil by legitimizing slavery. Understandable as that may have been, given the realties of the times, this original pact with the devil has never been resolved, not by the Civil War, not by the civil rights movement and legislation of the 60’s and not by anything we as a society have been able to do since then.

The mistake we as a society, and especially our politicians, are making now is that, instead of actually implementing political and social programs to finally try to mitigate this deep seated racism, and social injustice in general, we are now using the police as scapegoats for the myriad of social, economic and health problems. The police are being asked not only to enforce the laws, but have been forced into the untenable position of dealing with mental illness, drug use and petty crime on the streets, because, as a society, we are not willing to deal with these issues at a broader level.

We as a society are in the throws of a false feel-good liberalism, where governors and mayors mouth words of sympathy for victims of possible police violence and misconduct, but have not and do not do anything to effectively control the systemic economic, social and racial inequalities in their communities. Where is the equivalent outrage at the violence in our cities, where children are routinely caught in the cross-fire of warring gangs? Who, if not the police, is going to protect the residents of these neighborhoods from the violence in their midst, perpetrated not by the police, but by their own children, friends and neighbors.

By “feel-good liberalism” I mean the spouting of (possibly sincere) banal words of empathy with racial and social injustice, designed to make the speakers themselves “feel good”, without actually doing the hard work of implementing social and political programs to mitigate these issues.

The fact that our downward spiral towards a failed state is hard to recognize is explained by the “boiling frog” fable. If one takes a step back and looks at the many failed states around us, like Syria, Libya, Venezuela, it is easier to recognize, that their descend into chaotic lawlessness and even civil war show a lot of parallels to what the United States is experiencing now: despotic, lawless, sociopathic rule at the top, untreated social discontent, protests, looting and burning cities, and finally, to complete the cycle, a ruler calling for the use of more force, even threatening the use of the military, to quell and “control” the violence, as our President is doing now.

The best case scenario in the short run is that this outburst of violence too will subside and that we get back to “business as usual”. But business as usual is at best only a delaying tactic. Americans as a society seem to be allergic to true introspective self-criticism; we always have to reassure ourselves that we are the best, the greatest, the richest, without the necessary humility to admit our shortcomings and failings. Without such honest introspection, we will not solve our deep seated social problems and our descent towards a failed state, or at best a second rate nation, will continue. 

As a reality check on how far towards second rate status the Unites States has fallen, one needs only review some sobering statistics. The fact that we continually pride ourselves on having the highest GDP, a virtually meaningless statistic, should not distract from these sobering statistics.

  • USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: 9 (1 Sweden and 2 Norway) – OECD
  • USA Ranking on Health care Quality Index: 37 (1 France and 2 Italy) – World Health Organization 2003
  • USA Ranking of Student Reading Ability: 12 (1 Finland and 2 South Korea) – OECD PISA 2003
  • USA Ranking of Student Problem Solving Ability: 26 (1 South Korea and 2 Finland) – OECD PISA 2003
  • USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability:  24 (1 Hong Kong and 2 Finland) – OECD PISA 2003
  • USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: 19 (1 Finland and 2 Japan) – OECD PISA 2003
  • USA Ranking on Women’s Rights Scale: 17 (1 Sweden and 2 Norway) – World Economic Forum Report
  • USA Position on Timeline of Gay Rights Progress:  6 (1997) (1 Sweden 1987 and 2 Norway 1993) – Vexen
  • USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: 29 (1 Japan and 2 Hong Kong) – UN Human Development Report 2005
  • USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: 32 (1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied) – Reporters without Borders 2005
  • USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: 17 (1 Iceland and 2 Finland) – Transparency International 2005
  • USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: 13 (1 Ireland and 2 Switzerland) – The Economist Magazine …Wikipedia “Celtic Tiger” if you still have your doubts.
  • USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: 45 (1 Finland and 2 Norway) – Yale University ESI 2005
  • USA Ranking on Overall Currency Strength: 3 (US Dollar) (1 UK pound sterling and 2 European Union euro)- FTSE 2006….the dollar is now a liability, so many banks worldwide have planned to switch to euro
  • USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: 32 (1 Sweden and 2 Finland) – Save the Children Report 2006
  • USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): 10 (1 Norway and 2 Iceland) – UN Human Development Report 2005
  • USA Ranking on Happiest Nations: 150 (1 Vanuatu and 2 Bhutan) -New Economics Foundation (NEF).

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Reopening from COVID-19 Lockdowns

One of the very frustrating aspects of both media reporting on, and the responses by governors to this Covid-19 pandemic - forget the WH briefings, those are comic-tragedies - is the single-minded focus on testing as a gateway to reopening.

All we hear from the governors and the media is the hype about the testing, testing testing which is needed before States can begin to reverse the lockdown. However, no clear metric is given what level of testing (or even precisely what kind of testing - confirm COVID-19, or confirm anti-bodies) is considered sufficient to allow the economy to be re-opened.

I have the uncomfortable feeling, that especially the Media are focused on testing because Trump (but also the States) obviously failed in providing testing capability early on, and the Media love to keep bludgeoning Trump with this early failure. With their backward focus and hyperbolic coverage, the Media reporting and endless Governor press-conferences seems designed more to panic the public rather to inform us.

It should be obvious by now, that the testing capability and the so-called contact tracing everyone is talking about, let alone the vaccine, will not be available for months, if ever. Thus, a more reliable gating metric is needed, such as the R0 metic, the “Basic Reproductive Number”. It depends on the virus’ “latent period” (time from infection to infectiousness) and the infectious period, both of which are admittedly difficult to determine - see Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC, pre-release, July 2020 (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article).

A different metric, R(t) or RT, the Effective Reproductive Rate, or Reproductive Rate over time, is calculated (with some sophisticated statistical methods) from the the number of new cases which appear each day (note dependence on testing). There is a very interesting Blog post by  Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram (“The Metric We Need to Manage COVID-19 - Rt: the effective reproduction number”, http://systrom.com/blog/the-metric-we-need-to-manage-covid-19/), which advocates calculating this R(t) statistic for each State as a realistic gating metric for allowing the slow and careful re-opening of each State’s economy.

I first stumbled on the use of R0 as a gating metric for slow and careful re-opening by following the German news (I’m originally from Germany). They made their decision when R0 reached 0.7, indicating that each infected person, on average, infects fewer than one other person. Since the partial opening on Monday, Apr. 20, the R0 metric has risen to 0.9, still below the magic number of 1.0.

All of these statistics, of course, suffer from a degree of uncertainty, dependent on knowledge of the infectious progression and the degree and accuracy of testing. In that connection it is worth reminding our politicians, that effective governing is policy making under uncertainty. It strikes me that the rote recital by Governors and Federal officials that “we need to follow science” is a way to avoid their responsibilities to make decisions in the face of uncertainty - even Science cannot always predict outcomes with 100% certainty, which is especially true in Social Science.

Here too, there are techniques available to make these uncertain decisions more robust - see for example “Robust Decision Making for Planning Under Deep Uncertainty” RAND Corp., 2013 - https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9701.html 

At this point it would be helpful if the media relaxed their hyper-partisan reporting and endless speculation, designed to increase the readership/viewerships in their respective camps, and concentrate on useful factual reporting, which can provide the public with realistic expectations on when we can expect the “lockdown” to be relaxed.

I have a lot of sympathy for the protest demonstrations in various State capitals to “open the economy” - these are the people who are trying to apply for unemployment benefits and waiting in line for food distribution, rather that the “talking heads” on TV, making their pronouncements about the need for continued lockdown from the comfort, safety and financial security of their homes. They need to be given realistic perspective rather than the very obscure, non-specific “testing, testing, testing”.


Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Comment on: "Medicare for All comes with a price tag — and hard choices"

Medicare for All comes with a price tag — and hard choices

by Megan McArdle,
Washington Post, July 31, 2018

There is a very simple back of the envelope calculation which can demonstrate the net benefit of a Medicare-for-all type of health insurance plan:

The US spends about 2.5 times per capita on health care than most developed nations, or about 17.6 percent of GDP - that works out to $ 8,233 per person per year (2010) - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries - growing to $ 10,348 per year in 2016.

Germany, by contrast, pays an average of $4,500 per person per year (or about 11.3% of GDP) - lower cost for virtually 100% coverage and much better health outcomes and life expectancy (I know this from personal experience, as I with my family lived and worked in Germany for more that 10 years and we were insured under the mandated health insurance)

So, just as an example, if the US adopted the German model for universal health care, and was able to implement it with the same efficiency and effectiveness (unfortunately, that is not at all a given), the total national expenditure for healthcare should go down to about 11.3% of GDP.

2016 GDP (2016) was $18.57 Trillion
17.6% of that is $ 3.27 Trillion
11.3% of that is $ 2.10 Trillion
Potential SAVINGS is $ 1.17 Trillion PER YEAR

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Comment on: "Why Trump Can’t Quit Tariffs", by Ross Douthat, NYT

Why Trump Can’t Quit Tariffs

by Ross Douthat

NYT, July 28, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/trump-tariffs.html?comments#permid=28037535

This interpretation points to what I consider a possibly fatal flaw in US governance - politicians are violating their oath of office to protect the Constitution in favor of protecting their political party and their own political futures. Douthat's analysis indicates that, by and large, GOP politicians understand that Trump's policies endanger the wellbeing of America and Americans, but that in spite of that, they support domestic policies (e.g. tariffs, massive tax cuts for the rich) which are self-evidently hurtful to Americans.

This, of course, ignores the disastrous effects which Trump's foreign endeavors (I cannot in good conscious call them "policies") has on the US position in the world - Canada and the EU are "foes," which endanger US national security? Really??!!

So on both counts, domestic and foreign affairs, the GOP controlled Congress is collectively violating its oath of office and willfully supporting what, for the most part, they probably see as detrimental, even catastrophic US policies to save their own political skins rather than working for the benefit of "the people".

Once the surge of Trump is over, it will be difficult to re-establish  vital American institutions, which Trump, and by gutless acquiescence, the GOP have severely damaged - a significant minority of Americans have been brainwashed to be willfully ignorant. Democracies fall because ignorant minorities follow autocratic leaders, and apathetic majorities allow it.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Review of: “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levtsky and Daniel Ziblatt

“How Democracies Die”
by Steven Levtsky and Daniel Ziblatt

This book came highly recommended by the likes of Farid Zakaria. Although it is interesting in parts by providing historical and world-wide context as to how other democracies have failed, in term of “analysis” on the causes of democratic failure, I found this book to be very disappointing, narrowly focused and somewhat simplistic in its emphasis on the role of “political parties” as “democracy’s gatekeepers”.  The book ultimately devolves into a critique of Donald Trump and the current Republican Party, which for many people (like myself) is emotionally satisfying, but falls far short in terms of serious analysis of what makes democracies fail.

Democracies are indeed very fragile. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others”, attributed to Winston Churchill, highlights this fragility. But this also highlights the need to constantly remain aware of what we have to loose if we allow democracy to fail. This in turn highlights the importance of “education” in the broadest sense both to allow democracy to develop and to allow it to persist. This fragility also highlights the need for a “free press”, which ensures that the public is “informed” and thus armed against the speed of demagoguery.

Demagogues have fertile fields on which to sow their seeds of distrust and hatred primarily if there are external or internal events which cause society in general to feel under pressure (e.g. large scale economic downturns) or subgroups within society to feel disadvantaged. The world-wide Great Depression led to the rise of Fascism and the collapse of fragile democracies in Germany and Italy, and serious attacks on democracy in many other countries. The huge migrations from poor, war-torn countries into Europe are causing huge strains on European democratic institutions and a re-emergence of demagogues, primarily on the right. 

To me, relying on political parties as “democracy’s gatekeepers” is like letting the fox be the protector of the chicken coop. Political Parties, like almost all large organizations (including economic corporations and even religious organizations, like the Catholic Church) are primarily interested in maintaining and enhancing their power - they will, in general, make pacts with the devil to that end. Political parties in Germany and Italy made pacts with Hitler and Mussolini, respectively, to maintain their influence and power. The current GOP tried to co-opt the Tea Party to enhance their own power, only to find that it fractured the Republican Party to make it incapable of governing, literally. I’m sure there are examples of Democrats making disastrous pacts with fringe organizations to enhance their own power.

Taking a look at the current Trump phenomenon, one-plus year in, and its corrosive effects on US democracy, I’m struck by the fact that, so far, there are two pillars of democratic governance which are holding up reasonably well - the judicial, both at the federal and state levels and including portions of the Justice Department, and the “fourth estate”, the press broadly. 

The legislative branch (Congress) is for all practical purposes completely broken - note that this is also the place where political parties, those gatekeepers of democracy, or most prominent. The executive branch is now completely dominated by ignorance and incompetence.

The importance of the judiciary and the “fourth estate” is also highlighted by the fact, that these are the institutions which immediately come under attack by demagogues and wannabe dictators. What the “Lügenpresse” was to Hitler is “fake news” and “mainstream media” to Trump. Erdogan in Turkey has imprisoned more journalists than any other advanced society. The current Polish government has passed new laws and a modified Constitution which emasculates the judiciary. 

It seems to me, that what really initiates decline in democracies are developments which cause polarization in societies, and more often than not, these polarizing developments are large scale, world-wide phenomena to which different societies respond in different ways.

In Europe this polarization is currently caused by the migration and refugee crisis, which is putting huge economic and cultural strains on societies and countries. Such strains are then hyped and demagogued by groups seeking to use these external events to scapegoat for perceived (often not real, or at least not as imminent as portrayed) disadvantages experienced by one group compared to another. In Germany, for example, the hysteria over “Überfremdung” (large numbers of foreigners) is most pronounced in former Eastern Germany, where the actual numbers are small.

Different countries and societies deal with these external pressures in different ways. In France, for example, after the Font National under Marine LaPen came very close to capturing the Presidency, Macron almost single-handedly turned the situation around and soundly defeated the Front National to the point where it is now cannibalizing itself. This victory for democratic values was not achieved through gate-keeping by political parties, but, so it seems, by the charismatic (though non-demagogic) personality of a single man.

In Germany the approach is more in line with the authors’ view of gate-keeping by mainstream political parties. All traditional parties, in spite of their significant electoral losses, categorically rejected any coalition with the AfD and are intent on isolating that neo-Nazi party. It is interesting to note, that the AfD originally formed as primarily an anti-Euro, libertarian movement, which was then taken over (literally) by nationalistic, xenophobic tendencies, which very much matches the experience of the US Republican Party.

In Austria the new young Prime Minister, Sebastian Kurz, is following very closely the path of Hitler’s rise to power - he has formed a coalition with the FPÖ, a long established Austrian political party, but one with ever increasing nationalist tendencies. He obviously feels that he can “control” the neo-Nazi aspirations of his coalition partner, and it will be interesting to see how that works out.

Other countries, such as Poland and Hungary, have opted to respond to the common external pressures of mass migration and refugees by full out attacks on democratic institutions. The different approaches by different European societies are partially driven by long historic trends (Poland and Hungary both have strong xenophobic, nationalistic, anti-semitic tendencies, which, unlike Germany, they have not been forced to acknowledge and deal with), but by the same token, the differing responses are often driven by individuals (Macron in France, Merkel in Germany, Kurz in Austria).

Now let’s look more closely at the “Death of Democracy in America” - a little pitch for my own past writing on that topic - admittedly poor writing and quite possibly poorly argued opinions, as evidenced by the fact that this “book” has been collecting dust in the back-reaches of Amazon’s e-book offerings for more than five years. This book is the culmination of my “American experience” since immigrating to this country in 1963 and observing the changing social and political landscape here and comparing it to social and political developments in Germany, the country I left.

My first impressions of American life were almost like having escaped hell and gone to heaven at age seven - we came from bombed out Berlin in 1950 to San Francisco, where my father took up his first post-war posting for the German Foreign Service. Even after leaving again five years later, my plan to someday return and become an American citizen was firmly in place. In 1963 that plan came to fruition, when I came as an immigrant to start university, and I have been grateful ever since for the welcome I received and the opportunities I was given.

However, even back in 1963, with all the youthful enthusiasm and optimism about the future, there were shocking events which gave me pause.  The rash of political assassinations (JFK, MLK and RFK) made me wonder if the US was really the model democracy I had come to assume. These spasms of violence, more reminiscent of Banana Republics, continued through the 70’s and 80’s. The long Vietnam War, the violent suppression of protest and the subsequent proof that the war was politically engineered, abetted and aided by cowardly military leaders, raised uncomfortable comparisons to recent German history.

On the positive side of the ledger in my early years in the US was the Civil Rights movement, demonstrating democratic civil society at its best, forcing society and government to rectify centuries of injustice through essentially peaceful, grassroots democratic means.

The 70’s brought Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, aimed at fostering racial animosity in an effort to win over southern white voters. Here is an explicit example of political parties, rather that acting as “democracy’s gatekeepers, shamelessly exploited fears and resentments resulting from the civil rights movement to enhance their electoral, policies power. Today’s republican’s like to cast Democrats as practicing “identity politics” (due to their efforts to include minorities in politics), but the Southern Strategy was only the first of a continuous set of electoral policies by conservatives to deepen divides among Americans to enhance their political power.

Then came Watergate, a flagrant effort by the Executive branch to use criminal activities to enhance and maintain its political power, and then to use its executive powers to cover up its unlawful activities. American democratic institutions survived that attack by a ruthless and lawless Executive, mainly because the media, that vital “fourth estate”, did its Constitutional duties by exposing the corrupt disintegration of a President. However, very much different from today’s corrupt Trump presidency, Watergate was recited by courageous individuals (The Saturday Night Massacre) and a Republican Party, which still retained some decency and dignity. By contrast, today we have a gutless Republican Party which consciously and knowingly support a President intent on corruption every corner of American society.

However, there are other, more basic aspects of American Democracy which are destroying democracy. 

The US Constitution was, in its day, a brilliant effort codify liberal, democratic principals to transform a ragtag group o colonies into a cohesive and stable democratic society. That success, and its longevity compared to all other democratic experiments around the world, has led Americans to endow their Constitution and the people who wrote it, with a religious aura of infallibility (“The Founding Fathers”). In spite of obvious flaws in today’s world, resulting in no small part from the need for imperfect compromises to get all States to ratify it. This religious veneration leads to the disastrous efforts of interpreting the Constitution by trying to divine the intent of the original framers - this is both impossible as a practical matter, but also counterproductive in a world which has changed dramatically in the past 250 years. 

This effort to divine the original intent has led to hair raising rulings by the Supreme Court. The two most devastating “interpretations” of original intent deserve special mention. The first involves the extension of “free speech” of the First Amendment to corporations, thus loosing torrents of corrupting money on the political process and making a mockery of the democratic concept of “one person, one vote”. This is a death knell to everything “democratic”, as it essentially ushers in a new age of political rule by privilege and wealth. Although money has a strong influence on politics and policy in all democracies, this interpretation of “personhood” in the First Amendment canonized that influence as supremely legitimate. Who can honestly say that todays electoral process in the US is truly “democratic” - it is much more akin to the “electors” of the medieval “Holy Roman Empire” getting together to designate a new Emperor. 

The second example I would cite is the unbelievably convoluted justification of the latest decision on the Second Amendment, where the decision at the same time argues, that the Second Amendment applies to “all citizens”, arguing the the preamble about “ a well regulated Militia” does not apply (i.e. an expansive interpretation), but then turns around and argues restrictively that “arms” does not apply to all modern weaponry. Although this mis-interpretation of the Second Amendment, does not directly impinge on the institutions of democracy (although one could make a strong argument, that the continuous stream of political assassinations in the US, far beyond what other democracies experience, does have significant impacts on democratic processes), it leads to a weakening of “the rule of law” in favor of a “Wild West” mentality. It is argued in political science and sociology, that the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force lies with “the state”, that indeed that is what defines a cohesive society, “a state”. The absence of such a monopoly of the user of force by the state can easily lead to s spiraling of society into chaos and anarchy.

There is, however, a strong undercurrent in the current popular interpretation of the Second Amendment, not explicitly sanctioned by Supreme Court interpretation, but strongly influenced by the Revolutionary origins of the US, of a distrust in government in general. This distrust in government is encouraged by mainstream conservative libertarian, lesser-faire economic philosophy, popularized by the (in-)famous Reagan speech that “government is the problem”. This combination of distrust in government, although not unique to the US (Note: In Germany there is a movement of “Reichsbürger”, who do not accept the authority of the central government and have gone so far as to issue their own passports), is much more typical of US attitudes, as evidenced by private militias and armed conflicts over issues such as grazing rights on Federal lands, and are potentially a great danger to democratic governance.

Although “How Democracies Die” mentions some of these additional threats to democracy, it’s emphasis on the role of political parties as “democracy’s gatekeepers” and its devolution into a tirade on Trump (as justified as such a tirade may be) was very disappointing.