The Heart of the Matter

When most people talk about globalization and income inequality, the talk about policies to alleviate the problem. That is an important part of the equation. But Pope Francis recently addressed the heart of the matter.

I recognize that globalization has helped many people to rise from poverty, but it has condemned many others to hunger. It's true that in absolute terms it grows world wealth, but it also increased the disparity and the new kinds of poverty.

What I notice is that this system is maintained with the culture of waste, of which I have already spoken several times. There is a politics, sociology, and also an attitude of rejection.

When at the center of the system there is not anymore man but money, when money becomes an idol, men and women are reduced and simply instruments of a social system and an economy characterized, indeed dominated by deep imbalances.

That reminded me of something David Simon said a few years ago when he talked about why he created the HBO series The Wire.

We are in the postindustrial age. We do not need as many of us as we once did. We don’t need us to generate capital, to secure wealth. We are in a transitive period where human beings have lost some of their value. Now, whether or not we can figure out a way to validate the humanity of the individual, I have great doubts...

The Wire is certainly an angry show. It’s about the idea that we are worth less. And that is an unreasonable thing to contemplate for all of us. It is unacceptable. And none of us wants to be part of a world that is going to do that to human beings. If we don’t exert on behalf of human dignity at the expense of profit and capitalism and greed, which are inevitabilities, and if we can’t modulate them in some way that is a framework for an intelligent society, we are doomed. It is going to happen sooner than we think. I don’t know what form it will take. But I know that every year America is going to be a more brutish and cynical and divided place.

And finally, I was reminded of what Derrick Jensen wrote in The Culture of Make Believe when he talked about the similarities between hate groups and corporations.

He said, "They're cousins."

I just listened.

"Nobody talks about this," he said, "but they're branches from the same tree, different forms of the same cultural imperative..."

"Which is?"

"To rob the world of its subjectivity."

"Wait - " I said.

"Or to put this another way," he continued, "to turn everyone and everything into objects."

Robbing the world of its subjectivity means removing empathy and our feelings of mutuality. It means creating distance between "us" and "them." It is also what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was addressing when he said this:

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

When people accuse President Obama of being too accommodating with his opponents (liberals accuse him of being too accommodating with Republicans and conservatives accuse him of the same thing with global opponents), they fail to see that this is exactly the challenge he is attempting to address.

Here's how candidate Obama talked about it back in 2008 on Martin Luther King Day.

Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny...

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do...

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media...

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scapegoating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others - all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face - war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

Here's how he talked about it on a global scale during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more -- and that's the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share.

The President reminded us of this when he memorialized Nelson Mandela.

Mandela understood the ties that bind the human spirit. There is a word in South Africa- Ubuntu – that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us...He not only embodied Ubuntu; he taught millions to find that truth within themselves. It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailor as well; to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion, generosity and truth. He changed laws, but also hearts.

There are those that say Ubuntu is impossibly naive and unrealistic. To them, I simply respond:

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us (John Lennon, Pope Francis, David Simon, Derrick Jensen, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, President Obama)
And the world will live as one.

I'm not interested in class "warfare"

Anyone who reads here regularly knows that I respect BooMan's political analysis a lot. I quote/link to him all the time. But I have to take major exception with something he recently wrote titled: Only Class Warfare Can Save the Country. I've been pondering my reaction to that post (and this one) for a while now. You can see the results of that here and here.

When BooMan singled out Sen. Elizabeth Warren's post-election op-ed piece as an example of how this class warfare would be engaged, I began to ask myself how her rhetoric and solutions differed from what President Obama has been saying for some time now. The President doesn't tend to talk in terms of "class warfare" (although, neither does Sen. Warren). But, as I've pointed out before, since his announcement to run for president, he has consistently called income inequality "the defining issue of our time."

In order to answer the question about differences, I went back to the speech President Obama made in Osawatomie, KS about the economy. But before we even get to comparing the specifics, please note that BooMan's prescription for class warfare is based on the idea that it is the one way the Democratic Party can regain any appeal to southern white voters. The truth is that there is not that much of a difference between what Sen. Warren and President Obama prescribe. But there is one GLARING difference for southern white voters in the messenger - as opposed the the message. In case you hadn't noticed...Barack Obama is black. What looms large over BooMan's analysis - but is never actually spoken - is that perhaps southern white voters will hear it from a white woman. That assumption alone sends up all kinds of red flags for me.

As I've already said, there's not much difference between what Sen. Warren and President Obama prescribe. But there are a couple of glaring differences in how their messages are framed. For example: Senator Warren says this:

It’s not about big government or small government. It’s not the size of government that worries people; rather it’s deep-down concern over who government works for. People are ready to work, ready to do their part, ready to fight for their futures and their kids’ futures, but they see a government that bows and scrapes for big corporations, big banks, big oil companies and big political donors — and they know this government does not work for them.

While President Obama talks a lot about holding big corporations accountable, there is a reason why he went to Osawatomie to make that speech. Its the town where, 100 years ago, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech about a "New Nationalism." Over and over again, President Obama noted that the ideas both he and Sen. Warren are espousing have been embedded in the fabric of this country.

I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them.

If we paid attention to our history, we'd know that it was the success of the Southern Strategy that convinced working class whites that "this government does not work for them." Sen. Warren affirms that message and President Obama suggests that we can reclaim the value of working together for the common good.

But perhaps even more importantly, there's a reason why BooMan calls it class "warfare." That indicates there is an "us vs them" battle to be engaged. Here's how that sounds from Sen. Warren:

At this very minute, lobbyists and lawyers are lining up by the thousands to push for new laws — laws that will help their rich and powerful clients get richer and more powerful. Hoping to catch a wave of dealmaking, these lobbyists and lawyers — and their well-heeled clients — are looking for the chance to rig the game just a little more. But the lobbyists’ agenda is not America’s agenda.

Once again, President Obama tells the people in Osawatomie why he wanted to invoke Teddy Roosevelt.

“We are all Americans,” Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. “Our common interests are as broad as the continent.” In the final years of his life, Roosevelt took that same message all across this country, from tiny Osawatomie to the heart of New York City, believing that no matter where he went, no matter who he was talking to, everybody would benefit from a country in which everyone gets a fair chance.

And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we’ve changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn’t changed -- what can never change -- are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule of our national life,” he said, “the rule which underlies all others -- is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of wars - whether they be in the Middle East or here at home. But more than that, what message do you think would be more effective in taking us beyond the divisions created by the Southern Strategy? Pretty interesting to me that its probably the black guy's.

Wall Street and Main Street: Our inescapable network of mutuality

I believe that one of the problems with a lot of liberals is that they focus too much on the enemy. Looking at the treatment of our financial system and the 1%ers by them is often instructive. The rhetoric is all tied up in calls for retribution and defeat of the enemy.

In saying that, I am in no way attempting to excuse the injustices. They are very real. But if we are going to address them, we must maintain our North Star - a focus on who we are fighting FOR.

I am often struck by the approach of leaders from the past that we revere...people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. Both of those men led movements against oppression far beyond what we experience today. I believe that much of what guided them can be summed up in these words Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

It is the same grounding that President Obama acknowledged as the basis for what made Mandela such a powerful leader.

There is a word in South Africa- Ubuntu – that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us...It took a man like Madiba to free not just the prisoner, but the jailor as well; to show that you must trust others so that they may trust you; to teach that reconciliation is not a matter of ignoring a cruel past, but a means of confronting it with inclusion, generosity and truth.

Mutuality and Ubuntu are not merely statements of sentimentality. We now know that they are well-grounded in the science of everything from biology to economics. A simple focus on retribution against our enemies ultimately affects all of us. Whether or not we are willing to heed King's call to "love our enemies," we have to at least take that into account.

While I might not agree with every action taken by President Obama and his administration in the midst of the Great Recession, it is clear that they were guided by an awareness of the economic mutuality between Wall Street and Main Street. They knew that "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." That is exactly what is meant by the idea of "too big to fail." Even as we are justified in decrying how we got there, no one can deny that a "failure" would have had catastrophic effects on everyone - not just Wall Street.

And so here we are six years later and the immediate crisis is over. We're back to dealing with the growing income inequality that has been building for over 30 years. Liberals whose primary focus is on defeating the enemy seem more resentful of money being made on Wall Street than they are in figuring out what to do for Main Street.  I suspect that what drives that is an assumption that if Wall Street suffers Main Street will prosper. To me, that is just another example of assuming that the master's tools will be able to dismantle the master's house. It is the master's way to pit one group against another...divide and conquer...survival of the fittest.

Ultimately what will dismantle the master's house of income inequality is a recognition of the fact that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." That means that we demonize neither the poor or the rich, nor do we call for their defeat. Instead, we begin to imagine how we can "free not just the prisoner, but the jailor as well."

Getting the history right

Years ago I was a member of a professional association that staged a coup against the man who had served as its president since its founding. Members had lost trust in him and his vision for the association. In a surprise move, they coalesced a majority to elect me as president.

The next couple of years were ugly as I dug into the finances and found that the previous president has "skirted" the law and created potential legal problems for the association. So I had a pretty big mess to clean up and it took some time.

Once that was finally completed, we opened up the doors of the association to a lot of new members (something the previous president had opposed) and folks came flooding in. Knowing nothing about the mess we had been busy working to clean up for the past few years, they criticized the association for lack of vision, took the reigns, and ran with it. I was happy to pass the baton on to a next generation that would take the association where we'd always dreamed it could go.

I think of that experience now as a tiny replica of what I see happening with a meme that is developing in our politics. The buzz on the left is all about the new focus on income inequality. As the story goes, that meme came on the scene with the emergence of Occupy Wall Street and has been championed by Senator Elizabeth Warren. Lately even Hillary Clinton has gotten on the bandwagon.

Of course that narrative completely ignores the fact that Barack Obama has repeatedly called income inequality "the defining issue of our time" and that way back in 2007 he said dealing with it is why he decided to run for president.

But something happened on the way to that presidency. The guy who preceded him made a pretty big mess of things and for the first few years President Obama had to focus on cleaning all that up. Now that he's done so, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon that he had the vision to see over 7 years ago.

Based on my experience, it is probably inevitable that the baton will soon be passed on to those who will have the opportunity to build on that legacy. But when the history is written, I for one will remember who - not only championed that vision from the beginning - but did all the hard work to create an opening for it to thrive once again.