We Are All Refugees

       A Brexit omen hangs over the coming U. S. Fall elections but in a foreign language whose key few seem to know.  Gone is the progressive Sanders momentum; gone the dominant Democratic party; gone a coherent Republican opponent.

       The latest Quinnipiac Poll today (6/29/16) is verification of the approaching danger, showing Clinton and Trump deadlocked, even after a week of bizarre Trump pronouncements (Waterboarding?).  This may not be a surprise to everyone, but aside from Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats seem to be winning very few new friends.  Trump on the other hand is gathering-in the sheaves and seems already to have a solid Brexit-style support community. Like the “leave” majority in Britain, a growing dangerous number of U. S. voters have stopped listening to the professional political leadership and media pundits. They’ve stopped caring about the Marquis of Queensbury rules of combat.  The Brexit majority has much in common with Donald Trump’s supporters. 

        This emerging landscape created by the 52% to 48% vote in Britain to leave the European Union reflects a British population that is refugee averse, increasingly caught in the stagnation of declining income prospects, fearful of terrorism within and without.  The truth in plain terms is that the anti-refugee movement in Britain and the United States is fired by the dawning realization that they themselves have become refugees in a world of obscene inequality. Brexit is the name of the new god,

        It is both sign and graven image: a sign of possible disaster approaching and a bit like an economic futures contracts—you might win but you’ll have to take large risks, and the Brexit God is making no promises; but then neither have Cameron or Clinton.

       A case of very bad mythical theology has created this 1 percent God who reigns over the trampled majority who only lately have stopped believing in the respectability of the 1 percent.  Assistant New York Times business editor, Gretchen Morgensen, describes a now familiar example of acceptable fraud in U. S. banking, giving the particulars of just one case. Writing last Sunday, June 26^th—she describes how Angelo Mozillo, former CEO of Countrywide Mortgage, had over-charged 600,000 of its customers and was at the center of the 2008 mortgage crisis meltdown.   She asked

“What about thousands of loans with exploding interest rates made to unsophisticated borrowers who had no ability to repay them? The abusive foreclosure practices that increased the burden on struggling people? The shattered lives?”

        The answer of the Obama administration? Mr Mozillo was told last week by the Justice Department  “that he was no longer under investigation in connection with civil mortgage fraud.”

        While the Brexit vote is an omen of rebellion the question is whether it can do more than replicate the unjust system that has prompted it.  Can high principles of justice, equity and fairness be adopted by this emerging revolution, or will it be consumed by a desperate search by the disenfranchised for another idol made of clay to be worshiped until it too collapses?

For the time being we are all refugees in a strange land.

Roosevelt's Ghost

       It’s worth betting real money that the Trump candidacy may blow up before or at the Republican convention.  If it does his replacement would probably be Governor John Kasich of Ohio—a prominent participant in the Primary contests with the mojo to defeat Hillary Clinton.  Absent a rejected Trump remaining in the race, a Kasich-like nominee would face the Democratic leadership with the possibility of seeing Hillary Clinton not only lose the election but lose her anticipated momentum to maintain and enlarge Democratic control of the Senate. This is why the Sanders candidacy remains in play.

       Both the Democrats and the liberal news media have had trouble moving from opportunistic day-to-day political coverage to the badly needed deeper probe into growing inequality in both the American and global community.  Sanders’  progressive policy proposals stand out because the ghost of the FDR New Deal version of the Democratic party—a party aligned by Roosevelt with working class and middle class folks—haunts today’s Democrats.  Thomas Franks, author of “What Happened to Kansas” and a new book, “Listen Liberal,” asserts that the FDR version of the Democratic Party has become the Bill and Hillary Clinton party of the top ten percent with deep commitments to the new class of technocrats, professionals, Wall Street wizards and Silicon Valley CEOs.  

       These are the CEOs who shipped millions of jobs to China to make their unprecedented fortunes.  It was a shift that left a third of Silicon Valley, South Chicago and the South Bronx with an irremediable jobless population. It’s terrible for the permanently jobless or underemployed, but working and middle class folks are almost equally stricken--the ones who teach in your local school or work on the fire department—but can’t afford a house to live in-town.  

        Lest a line form to cast the first stone, this class line can be found from Asia to your local church or synagogue.  Virtually every church in the United States (there are notable exceptions) holds services for their middle class congregants just a few miles from the bullet-infested narcotic-laden streets of their city, or from the migrants bent-over in the fields to pick their strawberries. Everyone can see that the political tempest is growing more violent from Afghanistan to the assassination of labour party MP Jo Cox in England to the Orlando madman equipped by Congress with an AR-15 automatic rifle.

        At the bottom of the Mid-East crisis is the vast inequality that creates unspeakable wars and that has so far killed 400,000 people in the Syrian conflict.

“the International Organization for Migration said that thousands of migrants had died trying to cross seas and deserts…. Along one of the busiest sea routes to Europe, a third of the dead were children.” 

       This global humanitarian and economic inequality crisis shattering communities world-wide is the real issue but it’s not clear that today’s Democratic party wants to face that storm.   While Bernie Sanders’ stance about economic injustice can belong to Hillary as well, she is very unlikely to win without a partnership with him.  Roosevelt’s ghost this week made it plain that this will be a hard sell. Sanders will be in Philadelphia with 1,900 delegates!  

Unable to Mourn the Other

    Two thousand refugees drowned in the Mediterranean last week; briefly noted, easily forgotten. Their deaths are hardly mentioned if at all by candidates and the silence of faith leaders speaks volumes. Apparently these are “the others.”

        David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, provides context: two different desperate refugee streams are fleeing violence: one stream from Syria, Lebanon and Iraq trying to cross to Greece. Another fleeing from countries like Egypt, Somalia, Libya and Ethiopia on a longer journey trying to reach Sicily. Refugees who survive the sea passage say they did not understand in advance the terrible danger of turbulent seas, their flimsy inflated raft, and possible death.  But they say “If we don’t go we will die here.”  An interfaith fellowship of dieing?

There’s a profound analogy here to rich nation failures to see the mortal danger of letting growing domestic and global inequality go unaddressed. The dots can be connected from inequality to desperate acts and more warfare. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports income inequality now is at its highest level in half a century

“The average income of the richest 10% of the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10% across the OECD, up from seven times 25 years ago.”

        Perhaps the end of the long Primary Elections season will make it possible for people to see what is really at stake in their political decisions including, the refugees experts tell us, those  who may die in coming weeks.

        It is a colossal disaster and there is such silence in the faith communities, to say nothing of the candidates. It suggests that the inability to stop and mourn is the real death knell of civilization because it is the end of a moral common thread.  Consumed by self-absorption, the policy debates fail if “the others” can be so easily dis-remembered.    Not even a Bach chorale can express the sorrow of boatloads of hundreds of drowning children, men and women because they are “the others.” The Christian tradition Bach expressed easily lapses into a liturgy that helps people mourn for Jesus and themselves, but not for “the others.” The dangerous quicksand of Jewish tribalism likewise subjects “others” to subsidiarity to a chosen people. 

       Of course we will not mourn unless the others become our brothers and sisters, our children.  The ancient texts require a new song, a new chorale, that defines an inclusive and whole global family in moral terms, that compels action and elects governments that will enact it.

Backs to the Wall

       Maybe it will all blow over, especially if Bernie Sanders does not carry California, but as things stand today he has drawn even with Hillary Clinton and his surging candidacy is pushing democratic liberalism up against a possibility that their preferred candidate may be unable to defeat Donald Trump in November. Their careers and much more are at stake. 

       This looming twilight of the gods is creating intense hard feelings. Knives have been drawn. Famous figures like NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, Dodd-Frank’s co-author, Barney Frank, and Senators Schumer and Feinstein believe it to be true that Sanders’ proposals are impractical campaign pie-in-the sky promises. However, they are up against a different truth: that Sanders has created a social change movement of biblical proportions.  He intends to overthrow the status quo in ways the Clinton era has been unable to accomplish, and he’s caught a big wave.    

       A political revolution is underway. The Sanders movement has parallels  with the intense dissatisfaction in the country mirrored in the Trump candidacy.  Both candidates are drawing upon the “fed-up” crowd in both party traditions.  The Trump constituency is diverse in its own way, attractive to many and also growing.  

       Although thousands in the crowds Sanders now attracts several times every day show a lot of young college age faces, the California Board of elections this week reported the astounding number of 850,000 new voters have registered in California since January 1^st.  That’s one reason why the Sanders campaign last evening (Friday the 27^th) sent a formal letter to the DNC asking them

“to remove Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy and former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank as the chairmen of two Democratic National Convention Standing Committees….Malloy serves as the co-chairman of the Platform Committee and Frank is the co-chairman of the convention's Rules Committee….”

“Their criticisms of Senator Sanders have gone beyond dispassionate ideological disagreement and have exposed a deeper professional, political and personal hostility toward the Senator and his Campaign"

       A New Yorker cartoon years ago pictured a conversation between two goldfish in a bowl. “Okay,” says one, “if there isn’t a God who changes the water?”  In the common person’s political theology the fish have to figure out how to look after themselves. In the democratic establishment view it’s better to count on the experts in power, but it’s their twilight the Bernie Sanders movement is threatening to make real.

       We've observed before that historically speaking social movements not well-anchored politically often fail. If Bernie Sanders wins California watch for the burly Barney Frank to start throwing the fists before and at the Convention in Philadelphia.  His problem will be that the youthful spirit of the times, if defeated, could put Trump in the White House.

Let My People Go

        Phaoronic regimes may have been slightly more powerful than the Democratic party but it’s close, and they have certain problems in common like dissatisfied cheap workers and growing populations to be housed and fed. There is the danger of social instability if resources are not fairly distributed and such conditions generate social rebellions when there is no political way forward, especially if the younger adults keep over-populating the food chain.

        All stops have been pulled by the Democratic machine to bring Senator Sanders to heel but the tens and twenty thousands pouring into his rallies make it hard to close the deal. What’s at risk is the long reign of an entrenched political machine faced with a movement created by its own policy failures.  Win or lose, their favored candidate faces a wilderness of unpopularity.

        There’s lots of instructive biblical history behind this familiar process including the uproar and exodus from Egypt and revolts in the era of Jesus.  So today with two generations of younger adults exiting the Clinton camp, its instructive to remember that rebellions without positive solutions have a bad history.

        The evidence of people gathering in large numbers—Jesus feeding the five thousand comes to mind-- suggests that beneath the lingua franca of miracles and magicalism such crowds are signs of revolution aborning over the policy failures of the Phaoronic Romans and their priestly cohorts to deliver a future that will nourish everyone.  Today’s rebellious younger generations building support for Bernie Sanders may be vulnerable to demagoging but they’re not wrong about their perceived predicament of poor jobs and high debt; which is why they’re looking for a political way forward.  Failing that, the Trump demagoguery looms.  

        Students of Abraham Heschel, the famous Rabbi and professor at Jewish Theological Seminary, reported about classes where he would say the one thing distinguishing the prophets of biblical record from all the pretenders was that the biblical prophets had became hysterical about injustice.

 

        Either the democratic machine creates a political way forward beyond its familiar status quo in highly progressive directions or the country moves deeper into the wilderness.

Who's Chasing Whom?

       “Who has who surrounded ?”  the reporters asked the generals during the Tet offensive at the battle for Que in Vietnam.  A similar question is now on at the top of the agenda of the democratic nomination race.  Who’s chasing whom? According to print and cable media Bernie Sanders is in a hopeless race to catch candidate Hillary Clinton.  

        PBS Newshour anchor Judy Woodruff  and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow every evening bear a strong resemblance to the school Marm who can’t understand why Johnny can’t learn.  Why doesn’t Bernie withdraw?  The answer is because Sanders has all the momentum and he has the young adult generation following him by 70 percent.  Truth to tell, Hillary Clinton is in an increasingly desperate race against Donald Trump that she can’t win without the Sander's 70 percent group.

       The growing confusion in both political parties has its common root in the failure of the U. S. economy to decrease inequality by increasing jobs, which is why both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have moved left on trade policy, health care finance, and higher taxes on the wealthy.  More surprising is Trump’s unhesitant support for continued full funding of Social Security and Medicare; an explicit contradiction of conservative dogma.

       Hillary Clinton’s shifts have a certain credibility problem which can seem to some to document her negative reputation for the ease with which she changes positions. The charge that Sanders has no foreign policy experience may seem like an advantage to some voters in light of Clinton's foreign policy choices in Iraq and Libya.  Worse, in both parties these shifts leftward to attract voter loyalty are creating the unintended effect of putting candidates into direct conflict with their large corporate and investment bank funders.  

       This confusing scene is generating bi-partisan chaos because while the candidates need votes, their parties do not want their traditional arrangements disturbed. This includes the links of both parties to huge business contracts for urban reconstruction and the politically potent patronage that hands out thousands of jobs. Within the Wall Street community itself the campaigns’ instability pose a threat to the dependable investment climate that among other things guarantee their practice of revolving doors—defined as moving your corporate  technocrats and lawyers into government jobs on the other side of the street where “your people” will write the regulations that govern your business.

      All this chaos stands in contrast to the Sanders momentum which continues to grow: winning more states (with more wins probably directly ahead) but also winning hearts and minds. It’s not only the data of Sanders’ popularity among voting adults under 40, but something else as well. His growing public seems to think Sanders is the genuine article.

     It’s not too much to say that this new form of identity seems increasingly potent and akin to the strong affinities among racial/ethnic groups bound together by the mystique of shared struggle and oppression.  Creating solidarity in the growing Sanders movement is a bond grown from their generation’s shared experience with an unfair economy. Theirs is a sense of U. S. exceptionalism as a wildly inappropriate national boast.  They also seem to own a more acute understanding that because of our national history of slavery and immigrant exploitation much of the so-called American story is a huge lie.

       While they understand that this needs to be re-written with a far different and new national consciousness, the under 40s think that such truth-telling could mean hope not despair.

Under Water

       

       The Sanders and Trump candidacies share the common discomfort zone of growing economic pain.  Reflecting their lost status, sixty-six percent of Republican-leaning voters say life has gotten harder over the past 50 years according to the Pew Research Center. It also finds that in 2016 half of Republicans sound like Bernie Sanders, saying the economy favors powerful interests. Perhaps more accustomed to lower altitudes of well-being only 28 percent of democrats say times are harder. The pain is most obvious among young voters with two-thirds of college graduates reporting good jobs are hard to find

       

       While these 2016 findings demonstrate a certain symbiotic relationship between Sanders and Trump followers they show a different tie between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, voters viewed Mr. Trump unfavorably, 65 percent to 24 percent. In the same survey Hillary Clinton was viewed unfavorably, 56 percent to 32 percent.

Both are highly unpopular in spite of their apparent nomination. NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator, Chuck Todd, reported this past Tuesday evening that this would be the first time in U. S. political history that both parties' presidential candidates had net unfavorable ratings with the public.  The popular candidate is the one experts say has already lost, Bernie Sanders, with a net 9 percent positive rating. 

       The “remember the Alamo” sentiments among both parties document both their nostalgia and their pain as members of a falling middle class plus the large dissonance they face among a new generation of voters under 40 years of age going 70 percent for Sanders. Their plight is illustrated in super-wealthy Silicon Valley where teachers are moving away and out of the schools because they have no place to live.  The school districts can’t compete. They’ve raised teacher pay 12 percent, according to the San Jose Mercury News (4/30) but the cost of available rentals rose as much as 64 percent.

       In his NY Times column this week the nation’s preacher, David Brooks, writes about a March speech by Hillary Clinton’s in West Virginia that was a failure of imagination. “She didn’t really capture the way economic loss has triggered a series of complex spirals, and that social decay is now center stage….

it’s hard to hold off the dislocation, distrust and pessimism. Birthrates drop. Family structures erode. Life expectancy falls. People slip between the cracks and inevitably drug use rises. According to The Charleston Gazette-Mail, between 1999 and 2009, per-capita consumption of oxycodone, hydrocodone and fentanyl tripled. By 2009 West Virginians were annually filling 19 painkiller prescriptions a person.”

      The question is whether the Democratic party establishment has any capacity to address their listing political ship and begin to make major revolutionary changes or whether its new tack is the same old same old slow-footed liberalism.  For the Republicans, the problem is that Trump, the outlier, has virtually no Republican Party left to either love or reject.  He’s alone in a sea that more than once in history has raised up murderous dictatorships. They’re already in place in the Middle East and Africa.

       The sense of descending catastrophe eludes political game players with the exception of Bernie Sanders who while long on diagnosis and short on prescription does have the virtue of directly facing the problem.  Like the fictional story told of the day scientists discovered the sun was about to overheat, melting the polar ice caps and covering the world with water. They warned U. S. religious leaders to prepare their people for the worst. So, the story goes, the Catholics organized final confessionals, the Protestant’s leased stadiums for last revival services, but the Jews called their people together and said “We’ve got 24 hours to learn how to live under water.”

       We’re definitely under water.