Letter #168: Trump may fade but kulturkampf will not

". . . . certain socio-economic changes, notably the decline of the middle class and the rising power of monopolistic capital, had a deep psychological effect. These effects were increased or systematized by a political ideology – as by religious ideologies in the sixteenth century – and the psychic forces thus aroused became effective in a direction [for the lower middle class] that was opposite to the original economic interests of that class. Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position." --Erich Fromm, 1941.

B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): No, Rash Boombox (d / b / a Rush Limbaugh) et al. notwithstanding, secessionism does not pose the threat of infection that the coronavirus contagion does. Yet, the country, our country, must face up to cultural divides too long exploited by demagogues. This split shall become even more apparent following the Supreme Court’s public repudiation of the premise and the argument underlying a recent law-suit from Tejas, effectively ending, at least, the bloodless phase of Trump’s attempted coup d’état.

INTRODUCTION
The COVID epidemic across the United States has not divided the United States any more than the despicably racist occupant of the 0val Office has. Both have brought divisions, dark divisions, into the public -political discourse. This meticulously documented essay by liberal historian, Dr Heather Cox Richardson, serves as a wake-up call to disentangle the two forces – the coronavirus contagion and Trump's attempted coup d'état – that bring out in bold relief the underlying cultural divisions.

One may disagree with Dr Richardson, as I frequently do, but her fine work is the source of perspective in a time of clashing and confusing cross currents. Several of the links in this essay are swiped, shamelessly I assure you, from her daily ‘sources’. Please note that, unless I stipulate that some statement is attributable to Professor Richardson, anything I say reflects solely my thinking, or lack thereof. As it is, the good political historian's influence will flow these thoughts.

THE DIVIDES
The source. Traditionally, one has seen a split in the “theories of life” among and between regions and areas across the United States (e.g., the coastal cities versus the great plains) as well as within them (Chicago versus down-state Illinois). The most consequential, of course, is the central division that led to secession one hundred sixty years ago followed by the Great Civil War. These divisions go back to the Founders when the urbane Alexander Hamilton clashed with President Jefferson and his vision of the ideal democracy with the yeoman farmer. One saw it later with President Jackson’s feud with Nicholas Biddle and the privately chartered central bank of the United States.

In the seven decades before the Civil War, slavery radicalized this cultural wedge as a Southern planter plutocracy insinuated itself into control of the Federal government and policy. Ironically, some of the greatest minds of that era, arrayed on both sides of the divide, had strikingly similar views that differed decisively in nuance. One such split was Jefferson’s idealization of the yeoman farmer versus urban political organizations along the East coast (e.g., New York and Philadelphia); later the Great Lakes; and, ultimately the West Coast).

The similarities. President Lincoln’s initial views toward slavery were those of non-extensionism so ‘free-soilers’ could make a living. Free-soilers were white farmers homesteading in the Midwest, emerging as America’s heartland. Many founding Republicans did not argue against slavery as much as having no blacks at all, save a few freedmen, tragically and often unwelcome by their white compatriots, in the terrirtories in great plains. Restricting the free-soil to free whites homesteading sounds an awful like President Jefferson’s ideas about yeoman farmers, ¿doesn’t it?

The difference, of course, is that President Jefferson was a slave-holder, eventually addicted to that systematized and degrading exploitation. President Lincoln, himself a racist by cultural bias (as many of us are today; e.g., me) became a model of citizenship by growing while he was President and maturing his vision into a conviction of universal liberty, enfranchisement, and conciliation. Such growth by a President in office – recall that other favorite son of Illinois, President Obama – is hardly the norm. 

The contemporary choice for those whites, imbued with a culture of racism, remains stark: ¿do I combat this racism within me or let it flourish? Another unsettling similarity between slavocrats and Lincolnian Republicans is a key tenet argued by Vice President John C. Calhoun and Dr Richardson’s view of President Lincoln’s view of innovation and progress. The big difference, again of course, was that Vice President Calhoun’s theories served infamously as an apology and indirect justification for his ‘peculiar institution’. Vice President Calhoun’s ‘March of Progress’ stipulated that upward social mobility among small farmers and merchants would pressure the slave-controlling élite out of any complacency and into accelerating progress as the leaders of Southern society.

Dr Richardson argues that President Lincoln introduced an alternate idea of innovation and progress: that it was a bottom-up rather than top-down process and that President Lincoln sought to empower the common man. (General discussion minutes 31-42; definition minutes 36:00-37:30.) That rings reminiscent with Calhoun’s thinking (minus the racism), ¿doesn’t it? To be clear, Rash Boombox's mind will never rise to that of Vice President Calhoun. We are a point-of-pivot between the top down individualism and bottom up communalism.

Boombox, an undeserving recipient of the President Medal of Freedom from Trump – one demagogue anointing the other – is a durable but ultimately historical ephemeron craving attention rather than wisdom. (Erich Fromm nailed it with the Rush Limbaughs and other macho mouths of the world in 1941 by writing in his great work, Escape From Freedom: “If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts.”)

The rub is that Trump uses the populism, as Michael Moore foresaw in October 2016, of the urban-rural divide as a cover story for his agenda of business oligarchy and people like Rash Boombox and Congressmen Nunes, McConnell, Paul, Cruz, Cotton, and Collins actively enable it while craven quislings in the G.O.P. like Senators Ernst, Kennedy, et al. permit it. No, conspiracy here, but a coincidence of interests of ten difficult to brake then break.

Undoubtedly, Vice President Calhoun despicably defended slavery yet, paradoxically, he remains one of America’s foremost minds in political theory. Even now, some of his political thinking lives on as producing some of the freshest ideas this crazy republic has produced. His ideas on concurrent majorities remain applicable today. For example, instead of states enjoying a nullification right to protect their own sordid rights, segments of the population would benefit from such a right of concurrent majorities and ought to, in the case of women, be able to exercise it. 

Practical example. Roe versus Wade should not be overturned and abortion rendered illegal without a concurrent referendum among women in the United States eighteen years old or above of any citizenship or status. Why? Because overturning Roe versus Wade and / or passing legislation that inhibits abortions by those women choosing them abridges their natural right to privacy with respect to personal sovereignty over their own bodies. In a concurrent referendum, a super-majority of women (i.e., 60-75%, as stipulated) would have to consent to the abridgement of a natural right before the state could deprive them of it.

My knowledge of the industrial era of the United States is limited. Suffice it to say that, since 1876, Party roles have switched and today the Republican Party is the élite Party fronting for plutocrats who are not planters but profiteers. This process has accelerated demographically after 1968 and economically after 1980. These days, since the 1890s, the Democrats are the bottom up Party seeking to empower the common man with Republicans having made their ideas plain under Trump.

Summary view. So, in addition to the city-country gap, one sees a wider gap between who fuels progress: people innovating from the bottom through communal support or those at the top, the individuals charged with leading the progress. The strands are clear from the Republic’s earliest days:

• top down personified by Messrs Hamilton, Biddle, Hoover, Reagan, G.W. Bush, and Trump;
• or bottom up with Messrs Jackson, Lincoln, La Folette, F.D. Roosevelt, and L.B. Johnson as well as Ms Chisolm; or,
• surfing on two boards featuring Messrs Washington, Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Ford, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama as well as Ms Clinton.

The struggle for the country is to straddle these two discordant themes so all can work together for the common good. President Biden thus far appears to be intent on mastering the precarious and perilous art of surfing on two boards by openly building a new and open coalition while keeping its leadership moderate.

ALONG COMES COVID
The cultural divergence polarizing since the 1980s has featured right-wing intellectuals like Patrick Buchanan calling for a kulturkampf. As a young man, I was initially sympathetic to these conservative concerns against godless secularism underlying this kulturkampf, principally with respect to being pro-life and supportive of school prayer. In the mid-1980s, Patrick Buchanan began to alienate me from this right-wing push-back with his odious comparison between gays suffering from A.I.D.S. and the punishment meted out by G-d against Sodom and Gomorrah.

This culture war has gradually crystallised into the direct attack on our participatory democracy waged and perpetrated by Trump, his ideologically irredentist allies, and too many craven quislings in the G.O.P. These demagogues, racists, élitists, and cowards are mostly white men over the age of fifty. A few lonely voices in the G.O.P. have pushed back against Trump; those in office have often paid a heavy price.

If my erstwhile Party of Lincoln is to survive, these oldsters representing a dangerously opportunistic ideology of cupidity must be cleaned away and room made for conservative intellectuals with fresh ideas without the years in power to make them crave job security over public service. In the interim, the epidemic has wrought its havoc on the world, but most particularly on the United States by laying these divisions bare with too many of our compatriots falling through the ideological cracks. The rural-city split has manifested with ‘red’ states (i.e., chronically Republican) being rurally oriented and reflecting, often crassly, the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer.

At its best, this vision represents the core American values of thrift, self-reliance, living in peace with one’s neighbor, and personal integrity. At its worst, this vision represents darker core American values of racism, neglect for individuals, and blaming the victim in the name of assuming personal responsibility. These values need to be promoted and pruned selectively; they remain anterior to the assumed utility of capitalism in allocating scarce economic resources efficiently. The urban side is more communal by virtue of population density and argues that people should have the opportunity to make money no matter who they are.

This vision reflects a different array of values. At its best, the urban vision manifests in communal economic rights through unionization of the work-force, providing universal access to education and medicine, and pursuing distributive justice to expand the middle class. At its worst, these alternate values include the excesses of wealth, the zero-sum reality of social Darwinism, and institutional corruption. The poisonous paradox here is that the rural states have rejected ‘tax-&-spend’ liberalism exemplified by Medicaid extensions under the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (a / k / a ObamaCare).

In doing so, and in supporting elected officials sympathetic to Trump’s élitist power-grab, these people are heading toward catastrophe in the shadow of an out-of-control epidemic in the remote areas as my writings on the coronavirus contagion have warned repeatedly. In her ‘Letter of an American’ for 10dec20, Dr Richardson summarizes this situation aptly, at least from my particular perspective. The evidence of this unintended self-immolation?

The seventeen state Attorneys General supporting the Texas law-suit seeking to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (now joined by a majority of Republican House members and, of course, Trump).  With the possible exceptions of Florida and Tennessee, these are rural states that desperately need the largess of Medicaid assistance due to hosting fewer doctors and facilities to combat COVID; a large majority of these states has either rejected or implemented half-heartedly such health-care expansion.

Yes, this preference away from 'socialized' medicine may reflect rugged self-reliance, a core and worthy value, but it short-changes the dignity of poorer Americans. The influence of the other divide of – individually versus communally led – innovation is more subtle. One touchstone for that split may be the focus on ‘shareholder wealth’ maximization and rewarding individual achievement with enrichment starting with the arguments of Ayn Rand in the mid-twentieth century.

President Biden, in seeking to surf on two boards, is assembling an urban-based, politically progressive voting coalition while remaining moderate on any progressivity in taxation. Which of the two boards will assume paramountcy waits to be realized. The 2020 election and the necessity of overcoming Trump’s evident neglect of the pandemic should augur for a more communalist governance now that the Supreme Court has manifestly and unanimously rejected the premise and, with the two dissenters, the logic of the Texas law-suit.

Letter #167: Free will and determinism: ¿realization or resignation?

"Ned, what happens when we die?"
"Not sure. Tell you what: I'll be sure to send you a post-card."

". . . . these methods (e.g., 'customer is king') of dulling the capacity for critical thinking are more dangerous to our democracy than many of the open attacks against it, and more immoral--in terms of human integrity--than the indecent literature, publication of which we punish."    

-- Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941.

"G-d has a plan for you, Ned."
"Well, I'd appreciate it He'd clue me in, you know?"

B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): Free will feels right, but determinism is closer than one would ever suspect, particularly with the 'theodicy' (i.e., the best of all possible worlds).

INTRODUCTION
Recently, my niece analyzed my natal chart, basically a sky-map of the exact positions of the planets in the solar system at the exact minute and particular place of my birth. Astrology excites comments from skeptics. The discussion became heated at times, which set me to thinking why since I myself am a skeptic. In reviewing these discussions, none of which were on F.B., I sensed that a larger issue was in play.

PLEASE note that the service performed by my niece in reading my natal chart was triple-A all-the-way in her professionalism, thoroughness, and her uncanny insights that taught a (sixty-three year) old dog (i.e., me) some new tricks. Thank you, Miss Elizabeth Purnell of Brooklyn, New York. If the reader trusts astrology, (s)he would trust my niece and her services. Of course I am not biassed. 😉

DETERMINISM versus FREE WILL
The common argument, if not consensus, postulates that one can not, or, at least, has not yet tested the likelihood of truth of Astrology through use of the scientific method. Frankly, I am old enough to know that many things can not be reduced to the scientific method. That "something more" basically boils down to a lack of comfort with the possibility determinism.

This essay makes a case in favor of the thinking written by Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher, in the early eighteenth century in his great work on theodicy, or the idea that, notwithstanding the evils of suffering and wrongdoing so evident around one, this world remains the best possible under the stewardship of G-d. Leibniz's thesis basically apologizes on behalf of G-d for permitting the evil that man created as 'necessary'. 

The essay basically argues that through the telescope of modern portfolio theory, one can see that theodicy can still function in the wider context of free will in our day. No way out of the dilemma of determinism and free will likely ever emerge as, like Astrology, the scientific method really can not test out answers empirically. Humankind, therefore, will wrestle with the question. 

Any consensus will not last due to the cogent criticisms of either argument by its opponents. Any answers can not be reduced to the scientific method. Determinism sounds un-hip to the elbow-patch crowd, but minds far better than mine believe that determinism still has a role after "A Century of Self", albeit it is manufactured more by man than by G-d or by fate. Erich Fromm wrote in Escape from Freedom (1941):

"The ‘style’ of the whole period corresponds to the picture I have sketched. Vastness of cities in which the individual is lost, buildings that are as high as mountains, constant acoustic bombardment by the radio [i.e., television, audios, videos, etc.], big headlines changing three times a day and leaving one no choice to decide what is important . . . these and many other details are expressions of a constellation in which the individual is confronted by uncontrollable dimensions in comparison with which he is a small particle . . . He can act; but the sense of independence, significance, has gone."

Leibniz: catch him if you can
The whole idea of necessary (determined) and moral evil argued by Leibniz confused me because I do not have the mind of the 17th century during which G-d was quite alive with a mind "above" reason. People simply did not go there. We live in an era in which a famous atheist, and a very enlightened human being, seriously sought to devise an equation of everything. 

There is no question of free will anymore, Freud notwithstanding. We also live in an age defined by four horrific wars, making the idea of this world being the best possible world absurd. So, I could not understand Leibniz until I put my finance cap on and thought about portfolio management. You see, Leibniz views certain evil acceptable to God because it leads to an optimal, not perfect outcome. 

Gottfried goes to grad school for an M.B.A.
Then I thought through Modern Portfolio Theory. That theory reduces the aggregate behavior of a securities market (i.e., the stock market) to the classic equation of a line plotted on a Cartesian coordinate plane. 

First a refresher on, or de-coding of, what "y=mx+b" means . . . The Cartesian plane, shown by the grid-marks in the illustration, is split into four quadrants by two axes: a vertical axis (y) intersecting a horizontal axis (x). That equation plots a dependent (calculated) value based upon the influence of an independent (i.e., input) value. That equation is: 

• y = mx + b; 
• where 'y' equals the calculated or dependent value;
• where 'x' equals the independent of input value;
• where 'm' equals a pre-determined slope (i.e., the movement on the 'y' axis relative to the movement on the 'x' axis); and,
• where 'b' equals the point at which the line crosses the 'y' axis.

source: https://mathbitsnotebook.com/JuniorMath/Graphing/GRLineEquations.html  

Evil is akin to risk of loss in the old capital asset pricing model (C.A.P.M.). The y=mx+b equation uses different, including two Greek, letters. In a simplified re-telling:

• y = mx + b;
• where, in the C.A.P.M., y = R for total return of an individual security or portfolio (i.e., dependent variable or calculated value);
• m = Beta (slope) for sensitivity to market movements, or market risk;
• x = expected market return or MktRet (i.e., independent or input variable);
• b = Alpha (y-axis intercept) as return unrelated to the market movements; and, therefore,
• R = β(MktRet) + α . . . OR . . . R=α+β(MktRet).

Please note that the 'αlpha' factor has two components.

1. The risk-free rate, or the time-value of money. This rate is what one would earn if (s)he did nothing with the money. In the real world, one assumes this value to be the interest earned by investing in three-month bonds (i.e., treasury bills) issued by the U.S. Government. 
2. The company specific returns, or returns of an individual stock attributable to factors unique (i.e., idiosyncratic) to a particular company (e.g., quality of management, company pricing strategy, etc.)
3. Since the risk-free rate is the same for all, it drops out as a 'value-driver'.
4. The idiosyncratic returns of various companies tend to cancel each other out (or so the theory postulates).

Along comes Gottfreid . . . There is systematic risk which no one can avoid; it is like the systemic evil born of original sin and nature's imperfections in the world (e.g., an earthquake in Lisbon) that act as universal sources of pain and tragedy. The sensitivity of one to that evil corresponds to the 'βeta' of the C.A.P.M. 

Then there is moral evil, the action done by the free-will. That parallels idiosyncratic or unsystematic risk. (On the up-side this unsytematic risk is known as 'αlpha' and people go as mad hunting for it as did the conquistadors for the fountain of youth; on the down-side, negative αlpha often means time to dust off the résumé.😱)

In a diversified risk-managed portfolio of stocks, for example, the market risk is assumed by everyone. Unsystematic risks can be diversified away as unique weirdnesses of many different securities tend to cancel each other out. Such an absence of coincidental behavior corresponds with independent events, or acts, of free will.

Eventually, an efficient frontier of optimal (i.e., likely to be the best possible) returns emerges, based on the amount of systematic risk assumed, or the sensitivity to general evil one is willing to accept. For example, people continue to buy and build luxury homes on beaches, though the property hazards (i.e., sensitivity to the systemic risk-as-evil, in this case hurricanes and erosion) stare them in the face from day-1.

¿Theodicy or the idiocy?
So, in Leibniz's world, G-d is the portfolio manager and foresees the petty evils of people exercising free will and allows for a certain element of universal risk (i.e., evil or, nowadays, suffering). Together, these universal risks-as-evils that G-d assumes, or permits to exist, produce the highest return of happiness to the people of our fallen world, which is, ironically, managed into being the best of all possible worlds.

For the greater reward, the more risk (or suffering) that G-d assumes into our world. Put another way: for the higher eventual happiness of humankind, the larger of acceptable evil permitted by G-d. The last element of the old C.A.P.M.-as-analogy is the 'αlpha' return (specifically, the component apart from the risk free rate and independent of the risk premium expected by the investment's βeta), which is not explained by the systematic / unsystematic risk factors. 

That risk-free rate of return is positive; as such, it may serve in this analogy as G-d's unconditional love for man expressed as G-d's grace. (Or, alternately, man being created in the image of G-d.) Consequently, an evil man using free will has to burn through G-d's grace, freely conferred upon him as a birth-right, before his soul is extinguished (i.e., the αlpha turns negative). This accounts for the difference, in traditional R.C. theology, between:

• venial sins (i.e., minor infractions) absorbed by G-d's unconditional love as expressed by the given risk-free rate for a lower but still positive y-axis intercept; and,
• mortal sins (e.g., the seven deadly sins), the commission of which consign people to HELL as their gravity exceeds G-d's unconditional love, thus creating a negative αlpha or a negative y-axis intercept.

What about sincere atheists?
Atheism -- at least as I see it practiced among atheists I know -- is not about the decline of humanity, but of the expectation of humanity's cracking the code of knowledge that used to be "above reason", as Leibniz asserted three hundred ten years ago, and, therefore, reserved to G-d. G-d and religion remain important to me, but these personal preferences would be deeply heretical to a genius like Leibniz.

The history versus theodicy rift
Theodicy does seem like the idiocy in the face of four globally catastrophic wars, genocides, colonialism, slavery, climate change as well as pandemics like the 1918 flu and COVID. An apologist for Leibniz could argue that God permitted these vast evils because they modernized technology, transportation, food production, economic structures, and security as well as medicine and daily health.

These advancements, albeit commanding a high price, enhanced the optimization of this best of all possible worlds. To me, at least, such rationalizing represents a ridiculous argument. Another point worth considering is the possibility of determinism on a ‘portfolio’ level. That is to say, in parallel with modern portfolio theory, G-d determined the end state – some utopia, live or memorex – but not the actions of specific people in getting there.

Any one person would inevitably deviate from the perfect path to that end-state due to personal short-comings and elements of individual free will. Across humanity, however, these ‘unsystematic’ risks-as-transgressions (i.e., random variances) cancel each other out. Consequently, the systemic progress "pre-formed" by G-d (a term used by Leibniz) continues apace toward the divinely optimized end-state.

Thus G-d acts as a prudent expert (i.e., a portfolio manager diversifying across many investments) rather than a “prudent man” micro-managing our lives (by agonizing over each investment, one at a time). In truth, this world likely is not the best of all possible worlds, but G-d and man can try to avail themselves of the best of both worlds: divine direction and human free will. The key here is what Leibniz labelled as "equipoise": a balance between the temporal and eternal.

A new determinism to mankind's detriment?
A devout believer could argue that man has used his 'ego' (i.e., easing G-d out) by supplanting human knowledge through science for divine direction above reason, a transcendent realm no longer taken seriously. With a crushing global conformity around the scientific method as the final arbiter of knowledge, free will is no longer random but univocal. That prideful consensus creates an imbalance – reminiscent of the Tower of Babel (or the endless hours of babble) – that nullifies the optimization of human progress and this world we live in. In a sense, then determinism has a greater sway than ever due to an enforced consensus forged by minds lesser than G-d's.