Letter 58B: North American politics at the cross-roads-The United States

This second essay on North American politics at the cross-roads, in this case that of the United States, has been very difficult to write as seven drafts (each started from scratch) amply attest. The reason for this brain-freeze is easy enough to explain. For many Americans (e.g., me), citizenship is a part of self. As it is more challenging to examine oneself than it is to analyze another, so it is proving to be for me with political thinking. To be sure, there are other reasons; yet my lack of perspective is a big one for me.

Unlike México’s choices for destiny, our cross-roads seem to be more dilemmas imposed upon a declining power. Though I have tried writing about the same policy specifics in many different ways, I fall back, exhausted, to two basic questions that define the politics.

• Will it be guns or butter?
• Does the Constitution really matter anymore?

Bottom line, I fear that we are losing the belovèd America I knew – a noble, mighty nation founded by philosophers that later trounced the fascists. The days of euphoric recall of the greatest generation, for an era that almost none of us knew directly, are fading fast. Great as our fathers and grandfathers were in times of national need and nightmare, liberty's price remains vigilance and not reminiscence.

Guns-versus-butter is nothing new, especially to baby-boomers. Thanks to recent fiscal fugues, albeit imposed by the national necessity following 9-11, as well as the Federal Reserve playing God with the greenback, the dollar is close to facing its last rites as the international currency. In the long run, this is likely to be better for the world. In the short run, however, it may well be stagflationary Hell for us.

For twenty years, I have been reading about, and blowing off (apparently, like many others), the fiscal time bombs of healthcare and social security. On the other hand, we are now struggling to maintain defense spending at an unsustainable and insatiable level higher than such expenditures by the rest of the world combined. In truth, this relative level may be exaggerated by differences between countries in the national accounting for healthcare and retirement for the military.

Trying to be the sole superpower has consequences, not the least of which is accelerating use of interventions to cover for policy failures or, worse, the absence of any policies at all. Thus “might makes right” in the eyes of the political ‘pragmattorney’ who turns expedients into precedents to ossify them into policies. Overuse of our military is not only immoral toward, but also dishonours the mission of, our citizen-soldiers, active duty and National Guard alike. The consequences for innocents around the world are little discussed, at least among U.S. political leaders.

So the current debate on the Healthcare Bill as opposed to Defense ‘sequestration’ really boils down to which of two implied rights – one to health-care or another to unassailable military power – will prevail. Neither choice is particularly palatable. For many reasons, the Healthcare reform in the current law is unconstitutional. The eight words mentioning the “general welfare” in the Constitution can not justify the politics of convenience at the expense of some seventy-seven hundred other words contained in our national contract.

The whining over sequestration is equally bogus. Thoughtful analyses, readily available, indicate that the consequences – in dollars and cents – will be similar to other periods of demobilization after modern wars (declared or undeclared); and, we are de-mobilizing by withdrawing from Iraq and as we wind down operations in Afghanistan. Instead, this rhetoric against sequestration shrouds the unseemly choice of picking guns over butter.

As mesmerizing as this cross-roads of empire versus social programs is to me, the mortally dire challenge is the current and unrelenting erosion of the Constitution by a President who, by all accounts, is a very intelligent and high-minded man. Security-versus-liberty has always been a subject for heated discussions over dinner. This time around, however, we may be presiding over the slippage of republican constitutionalism from a democratic ethos to manipulated mythos.

The Constitution is damnably inconvenient; it is supposed to be. Yet we live under an Administration, the outward behaviors of which are as dismissive toward constitutional constraints wisely imposed as those manifested by President Nixon. Consider these examples, if you please; acknowledge them, if you don’t please.

1. A recent executive order allowing the President to govern by executive fiat. Such powers are reserved for war-time (i.e., real wars where the very existence of the republic is at stake). Now, the President’s mere and unilateral declaration of a national emergency will suffice.
2. Signing a Defense Authorization Bill enabling the government to jail citizens or resident aliens as potential terrorists without due-process merely for suspicion of being (i.e., seeming like) terrorists. The old I.N.N.A. (Irish Need Not Apply) has evidently been supplanted by A.N.N.A. (Arabs Need Not Attorneys).
3. Apparent support for an Air Force plan to develop and deploy domestically drones the size of golf-balls or toy helicopters for routine surveillance of Americans thought to be of interest to the military with 'incidental' findings turned over to civilian law enforcement agencies.
4. A campaign to vilify Bradley Manning and to prosecute Julian Assange as a spy for the responsible release of information arbitrarily classified to keep it out of the public domain.  At least the wikileaks documents I have read have taken pains not to endanger people; embarrass, perhaps.  Place in harm's way? No.
5. Open defiance of Congressional subpeonas through an indefensible invocation of ‘executive privilege’ combined with a dubious, media-saturated assertion of a current policy gone terribly wrong as representing nothing new.  That excuse did not work for John Mitchell, et al. and President Nixon nor should it for Eric Holder and President Obama forty years later.
6. Violations of Pakistani and Mexican sovereignty in the same manner as the Nixon Administration did with Cambodia, though with fewer civilian deaths and Congressional acquiescence in these instances.  

As with most dilemmas of one’s own making, if our nation is to be great again, she will have to be so from the inside out. In 1968, Senator Kennedy called for a national cleansing of the sickness of the “menace of mindless violence.” That call still holds today. Yet the violence now extends also to that against our national character, our constitutionalism.

This oncoming period of national renewal will not be easy for any of us. It may require remedies – like progressive taxes or imposing tort reform – that are anathema to both sides. While I shudder at the possible pain ahead, deep within me, resides that traditional American optimism and adaptability. Time and time again, politicians have vastly underestimated the moral tenacity of the ‘simple’ electorates who hired them in the first place.

Letter 58A: North American politics at the cross-roads: Part I, México

Both the U.S. and México have presidential elections this year within four months of each other. While both involve politics at the cross-roads, the moods could not be more different. While each nation has its anxieties, one faces hard choices while the other responds to a call of destiny, of national risk.

Mexicans head to the polls in ten days. Since I have not followed the election closely and have watched only one debate, I cannot say much about whom I would prefer. My political propensity would be for the P.A.N. party, the conservative voice. The candidates were interesting in the national debate of ten days ago. So, in my adolescent way, I would like to share some first impressions of these candidates.

My favorite was Gabriel Quadri, the resident intellectual. Quadri has held some important posts in the Mexican government but not elected office. He is an intellectual as his unfortunate 4% showing in the polls attests. Quadri was an unsung hero in the debate nevertheless since his presence and breezy demeanor elevated the tone of the discussion. Bottom line, he lack that cast-iron belly to be “el Hombre”.

My second favorite, strictly on impressions, was Andrés Manuel López Obrador. First, he cited President Franklin Roosevelt favorably, disproving the theory that, in the eyes of every Mexican, each American is presumed ugly until proven dead (mini-ha-ha). López Obrador led a break-away populist movement from the traditional ruling class (of the P.R.I.) after the downfall of México under President Salinas de Gortari in the mid-1990s. ‘AMLO’, as he is called in the press, reminds me of President Truman, with his questionable cronies but character beyond question.

My third pick, in a virtual dead heat with López Obrador was Enrique Peña Nieto of the P.R.I. (Partido Revolucionario Institucional-¿how is that for an oxymoron?), whom I affectionately call pinhead (PNhead). Peña Nieto probably won the debate in terms of his polished presentation and holding his own with Quadri on content.  Yet he seemed less sponaneous than his quirky counterpart, perhaps a little slick. PNhead has taken flak for looking like a movie-star and being married, after he was widowed, with a 'tan guapa' television personality. On balance, notwithstanding some skeletons doing a hat-dance in his closet, he seems to be high-minded and capable.

My 'way-last' pick was Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the conservative Partido de Acción Nacional (P.A.N.). She has an attractive and erudite air about her. Nonetheless, I found her performance in the debate to be very disappointing because she turned so negative.  Unsurprisingly, she called the P.R.I. a dictatorship, a refrain true enough until President Zedillo but hacneyed by now.   Vázquez Mota was, in turn, dismissive toward Quadri, out of step with culture of courtesy in México.  She harshly criticized López Obrador (for being, well, AMLO). All of what  Vázquez Mota said may be true, yet I heard too little about what she stood for; in truth, she sounded desperate.

In all, I think the crop of candidates is quite good and representative of the strains of thought – or, the thoughts of strain – woven through Mexican society: populism from the campo to the disenfranchised fringe of the cities (AMLO); the youthful emergence of an urban middle class intent on making México a power in her own right (PNhead); the deep but numerically limited tradition of leftist intellectualism in México City (Quadri); and, the fretfulness of the scared and alienated (common anywhere these days; Vázquez). México is at a cross-roads as her current, embattled President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa – whom I admire – prepares for a well deserved rest and retirement.

Here’s why.

President Calderón has strengthened his country through several unglamorous or unpopular initiatives:

• the war on drugs or, better put, the fight to rally the rule of law;
• an accounting system aimed at reinforcing a new transparency upgraded across the government;
• a financial system greatly strengthened, though still requiring improvement, after the 2008 banking crash in the U.S.;
• an increased emphasis on college level studies in the sciences with México now graduating more B.S.es (no, not B.S.ers) in recent years than the U.S.;
• reforms to support entrepreneurs (e.g., a patent law that doesn’t enable defensive patents); as well as,
• trade treaties galore, making México the freest wheeling country on the planet.

These are serious structural changes that have positioned México at the convergence of four points of inflection in her destiny.

First, the struggle with the drug cartels is at a possible tipping point. The population has increasingly turned against the gangsters, though the conflagration, costing more lives than we lost in Viet Nam, is deeply unpopular for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, this is a fight to save the rule of law in México; the country will prevail because she simply has to; at least, that is my hunch.

With the new law favoring class-action suits in México, it would be interesting to see if an N.G.O. would sue the drug cartels, for example in the name of all the 1.4 million citizens of Juarez City, for damages suffered at the hands of these warring gangsters. This law lends itself to this type of action since plaintiffs can wait until the case is decided in their favor before signing up and not end up on a hit list should the case fail.

Second, the country has invested in basic scientific research for fifty years and in applied engineering research for forty, currently producing 40% more graduates – in absolute numbers – than the U.S.  México has a population better and better educated (at least for the upper half), making her ideal for foreign direct investment in value-added manufacturing.

Third, is the industrial inflection. With the skill base transcending the maquiladoras, Mexican companies along the U.S. border are now migrating backwards in the value chain, having been exposed to the transfer of technology. The science and research centers are being nudged by a Science and Technology Law of 2009 to take the intellectual capital accumulated over two generations and mobilize it through technology transfer.

Gradually these government-sponsored centers are pushing forward along the same value chain as the more energetic maquiladoras in the private sector. The point of inflection here is the convergence of the maquiladoras moving rapidly backwards (out of competitive necessity imposed upon U.S. firms by globalization) and the science centers moving forward cautiously along that national value chain.

Fourth, México’s free-trade régime – to the extent that any such fiction manifests anywhere – is in a sweet-spot (¡not sweat-shop!) geographically. Think of the R.C. sign of the cross. The forehead is the U.S. and Canada; the bottom of the sternum is Brazil and South America; one shoulder is Japan and the Australasian Pacific Rim; the other shoulder is the European Union. Who is in the middle of these four points, at the heart of it all? México, that’s who.

With wide-open sea lanes for access, a high quality but relatively inexpensive work force and a propitious position on the U.S. door-step thanks to N.A.F.T.A., this country might be the sweet spot for future advanced technology manufacturing: not too big to be a nuisance but just right for leveraging the knowledge and research of other countries laboring under worsening shortages of engineers.

The choice belongs to the Mexican people. While I hear many educated Mexicans complain of their compatriots’ fatalism, I sense an emerging middle class filled with readiness to risk, led by restless entrepreneurs blessed with a strong work ethic deemed by O.E.C.D. sees as second to none. If México can steer a course increasingly independent of the United States, in twenty-five years, my home country may well be banging on her door begging her young to move north.

Letter 57: time alone - time enough

Life’s interventions have a peculiar timing, or they do not. After the past month, I cannot say and really no longer care. What remains evident is that life has a way of making sure I listen.

That call is not the irresistible charm of a siren; been there, done me. Instead, it is the overbearing, at times lethal, screech of illness. Fortunately, mine was not serious though the screech quite grating.

Nevertheless, the illness landed me – butt-first – in an excellent hospital with attentive nurses and conscientious doctors here in Mexico. The Peace Corps physician, la Dra. Lourdes Gonzales, was a god-send to me.

My colleagues at the science center where I serve really cared about my welfare and have shown me a steady solicitude since my tentative return to work. These blessings have accelerated my recovery and, to all these people, I am grateful.

A week of looking alternately at an intravenous drug unit (the first I can recall ever being plugged into me) and a ceiling with plaster tiles cut from the exact same mold, followed by a week stationary rest, left me a great deal of time.

Though I tried reading, I was not up to it; physically, I was almost too weak to hold the book up. So I just lay there, immersed in a mixture of self-pity and self-reflection.

Mortality was not the big deal for me. Long ago, I came to terms with the fact that when I die, loved ones will grieve. That hard reality in itself is sobering. Yet the world, my employer, even my family and countless innocent bystanders will somehow manage without me.

After a couple of days of reflecting on a variety of life experiences that ran the gamut of time of human feeling, I started trying to tie these often discordant images into a coherent meaning.

Recalling that my overriding goal in life had always been the pursuit and attainment of wisdom, I raked through these memories, these triumphs, these defeats, these resentments, these fantasies. Influencing me to be honest about this time alone was the fact that my little jaunt to the hospital was the first such divertissement in forty years.

Honesty is an ambivalent virtue, perhaps over-rated. In any case, in that enforced solitude, I took stock on just how much closer to wisdom I was now than when I first read The Death of Socrates , Siddhartha and Stride Toward Freedom in 1972 or walked around le Mont Saint Michel on a winter twilight in 1975.

Not much, it turns out. You see, I had wisdom all figured out. All I really needed to do was suffer enough, like Job, and then I would attain wisdom.

Well I have suffered plenty in recent years, at times facing calumny and at other times making those difficult decisions of which memory never lets go. Perhaps my reactions to those realities— confronted by each of us – have diminished me, taken me further away from wisdom.

Absent the suffering, I "just knew" that wisdom would come with age and experience, preferably diverse. Nope; again my mind seems smaller – not in intellectual capacity – but in that balance of courage and conscience that wise people historically have exhibited. Shoot, mister, I have experienced many things in many places, all to no discernible end.

Then came the last conviction that by reading that next ‘right’ book – of fact, fiction or philosophy – would I taste the forbidden nectar of wisdom. Well, wrong again. Yes, I can quote or note a lot of things. These trifles fall to dust in the face of wisdom and my knowing how painfully far away from it I really am.

None of these elements have proven to be stepping stones to that wisdom. In fact, I believe I am a smaller minded man today than I was thirty years ago. Granted, to outward appearances, I may qualify as knowledgeable, maybe even intelligent. But wise?

That I am not; nor, honestly these days, do I expect ever to be. After all of this thinking, it dawned on me that the “Male Calvinist Pigs” of centuries ago may have been right, to some extent, about divine predestination. Yikes.

To me at least, wisdom likely is distilled from all of the things I have already mentioned (and more, I am sure) through the medium of “grace”. Not in the Hemingway but in the more traditional sense.

Lucky for me, I had caught a whiff of this other-wordly, if not ethereal, quality from several people in schools along the way and others whom I met fresh out of college.  Theirs was an innate purity and grace, or so I thought at the time; I do not know, even today.

What I do know is that I wanted what these people had and that I never came close to getting it. It is not easy to admit that I will likely enjoy neither grace nor wisdom, at least in this world. These days, I still come across grace in people, though, with time, it seems rarer.

Grace remains as unmistakable today as it was unusual in my teens and early twenties. 

So, during those hours of solitude in illness, I wondered – aloud and alone, even – what was it that had failed me in my life's quest for wisdom. Why did that boney-fingered grip around my heart not let go and reach toward grace and, through it, wisdom? Presented the opportunity several times, I cravenly shied away.

Now, I have a tentative idea. Grace may indeed be a gift quite independent of anything I am or do yet it requires that most elusive of all human virtues. And, what virtue is that?

Well, to answer that question, I defer to Alfred Lord Tennyson, so little in vogue these days of edgey realism and brutal achievement. Tennyson did a far better job than I ever will in identifying that wispy virtue. In his timeless, enchanting recount of the Arthurian legend, Idylls of the King, Tennyson wrote:

“O son, thou hast not true humility,
the highest virtue, mother of them all…
                                  …for what is this
thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins?
thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself
as Galahad."