The British Post Office Scandal: How Not to Handle One

“The worst miscarriage of justice in British history,” it’s been called — “an affront to justice.” Hundreds of innocent people convicted on false evidence. Not a 16th Century witch hunt, but one in the 21st.

This true story was dramatized in a multi-part Masterpiece Theater production, “Mr. Bates vs The Post Office.” A disturbing window into an aspect of human nature.

The British Post Office introduced a new Fujitsu computer system called “Horizon,” for local postal outlets, run by private individuals (“sub-postmasters”), mostly as adjuncts to other businesses like little stores. Horizon started showing widespread account deficits. The Post Office’s “help line” was useless in sorting this out (and lied to callers that they were alone having these problems). Hundreds were forced to repay amounts ranging into tens of thousands; stripped of their licenses; nearly a thousand criminally prosecuted for theft and fraud. The P.O. insisted their contracts made them completely responsible. Many lives were destroyed. Several committed suicide.

When this began to unfold, you’d think someone high up in the P.O. would say, “Wait! This makes no sense! Something’s messed up here!”

But no.

A question that came up in the dramatization was — where did the money go? Not to the sub-postmasters, many being bankrupted by the repayment demands. But a question that somehow never arose was — how could those tiny postal outlets even have turnover in such large amounts in the first place?

It made, indeed, no sense at all. There was never anything to indicate that any money was actually missing. The “deficits” were just figments of Horizon computer glitches. That should have been obvious from the get-go.

Yet the Post Office muckety-mucks went into a bureaucratic crouch, refusing to entertain the possibility of anything wrong with the system, insisting all the prosecutions were perfectly proper. Oblivious to reason and the injustice. This continued for a decade. They went through the motions of an internal investigation, an outside review, and a mediation process for victims — all jerry-rigged to bury the truth and produce the desired results. Officialdom in all its gory glory.

It was a human unwillingness to acknowledge error. They also wanted to protect the P.O.’s “brand” from any opprobrium. Perhaps arguably understandable had there been much chance they’d succeed. But with hundreds of victims all across the country, the crap was bound to hit the fan somehow, eventually. Damaging the “brand” far more than an honest handling of the matter in the first place would have done.

They should have quickly realized something was wrong, and gotten out in front of it, doing everything possible to make things right. Instead they doubled down, violating the first rule of holes: if you’re in one, stop digging.

I’ve previously written that all human sins are ultimately rooted in arrogance. And reviewed a book titled Assholes – A Theory, also centralizing arrogance. The “Horizon” story is illustrative — behavior quintessentially arrogant. Asshole behavior.

Being fallible, I make mistakes in my own business. I try to correct them. But government bureaucracies have little impetus to do so, free to behave arrogantly instead. This is a key element of a traditional antipathy toward governmental power.

In the end of a very long and tortuous story, the sub-postmasters, led by the indefatigable Mr. Bates, won a sweeping judicial victory. That “affront to justice” quote came from appeal judges, voiding some of the many criminal convictions. The real criminals, it was now clear, were the Post Office bureaucrats.

Led by Paula Vennells. She almost seemed like a human being — almost. At the end, she was shown in church (she was also a pastor — a woman of God!) at last apologizing to the legions of people who’d suffered so cruelly. Yet still disclaiming criminal responsibility. And: her lips didn’t move. The contrition was only in her head.

Vennells was not prosecuted. Instead, awarded a CBE (“Commander of the British Empire,” a step below knighthood). Vennells later renounced the CBE, a gesture without effect; but King Charles has revoked it.

Yet even now the story’s not over. After the TV drama aired, the BBC News had a brief item quoting Vennells labelling the false numbers spewed out by Horizon not “bugs” but “exceptions” — to make them sound “non-emotive.”

The hole so deep no light can reach the bottom.

Artificial Intelligence Explains There’s No God

ChatGPT, a leading Artificial Intelligence entity, is very easy to use. Just google it, go to the site, and sign up: very simple and free. Then there’s a box where you can ask it anything. Just for fun, I asked it to write a blog post on whether God exists. Here’s the (unedited) result:

Introduction

In a world filled with diverse beliefs and spiritual ideologies, the question of the existence of God has been a source of profound contemplation for centuries. Atheism, the rejection of the belief in gods or a higher power, has gained prominence as a rational and empirical alternative to religious doctrines. In this blog post, we will delve into the arguments that challenge the existence of God, exploring the philosophical and scientific perspectives that have led many to adopt atheism.

The Absence of Empirical Evidence

One of the central tenets of atheism is the demand for empirical evidence to support any claim, especially one as significant as the existence of a deity. Unlike scientific theories that rely on observable evidence, the concept of God often lacks the tangible proof that skeptics seek. Critics argue that if God exists, there should be concrete evidence or at least a reasonable basis for belief. In the absence of such evidence, atheists maintain that the most reasonable stance is to withhold belief until proof is presented.

The Problem of Divine Hiddenness

A compelling argument against the existence of God is the problem of divine hiddenness. If a benevolent and all-powerful deity exists, why is there a lack of clear and universally accessible evidence of this presence? Atheists posit that if God wanted to establish a personal relationship with humanity, the signs of such a relationship should be evident to all, rather than being shrouded in ambiguity and subjectivity. The diversity of religious beliefs around the world further adds to the perplexity, as different cultures claim exclusive access to the “correct” understanding of the divine.

The Role of Science

Scientific advancements have reshaped our understanding of the natural world, providing logical explanations for phenomena that were once attributed to the supernatural. As our knowledge of the universe expands, the gaps that were once filled by religious explanations are continually narrowing. Atheists argue that the scientific method, with its emphasis on empirical observation and testable hypotheses, offers a more reliable and consistent framework for understanding the world than relying on ancient scriptures or divine revelations.

The Problem of Evil

One of the age-old challenges to the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent deity is the problem of evil. If God is omnipotent and benevolent, why does evil and suffering persist in the world? The existence of natural disasters, diseases, and human-inflicted pain raises questions about the compatibility of a loving God with the harsh realities of life. Atheists argue that the prevalence of suffering is more in line with a world governed by natural processes and random chance, rather than a world overseen by a caring deity.

Conclusion

While belief in God is deeply personal and often rooted in cultural, familial, or experiential factors, atheism provides a rational and evidence-based alternative perspective. The absence of empirical evidence, the problem of divine hiddenness, scientific advancements, and the enduring problem of evil all contribute to a robust argument against the existence of God. It is essential to engage in open, respectful dialogue to explore these ideas further and foster a better understanding of diverse perspectives on the profound question of the divine.

[End]

AI is faulted for occasionally “hallucinating” false information. But on this subject, at least, it seems pretty clear-headed. It’s human religious believers who are hallucinating.

Republicans on Abortion: “Full of Shit”

That’s a quote from The Daily Show. Actually applies to today’s Republican party in toto.

Daily said it following a clip of Arizona senate candidate (and election denier) Kari Lake declaiming she wants women having the widest possible health care choices. After she’d previously applauded a measure banning virtually all abortions.

On that subject, Republicans are like the proverbial car-chasing dog who catches it. For decades they thought opposing abortion was a great issue for them — until they finally prevailed, and are flummoxed to find most voters horrified.

So here’s Trump, bragging about his getting Roe v. Wade overturned, yet somehow trying to make himself sound almost pro-choice, saying it’s really just letting each state decide, something everybody wants. Except they don’t. He’s (as ever) full of shit.

The Supreme Court’s voiding abortion rights, so blatantly motivated by religious and political zealotry, has accelerated plunging citizen trust in our public institutions. (Trump’s presidency made the whole government look like a feckless circus; and his vote fraud lies have shredded confidence in our election systems.)

Look — abortion is a difficult moral issue. Pro-choicers err in deeming it merely about a woman’s own body. Not so simple when there’s another life inside it, for whom she has some responsibility, especially in the later stages.

But meantime Republicans posture as the party of “freedom,” the word almost a mantra. Well, freedom for men maybe. Women they want to control — with no freedom for pregnancy health care. Often not even to abort unviable fetuses that might kill them. Just one way Republicans want government regulating behavior they dislike. Freedom for gays? Let alone trans people? Fuggedaboutit.

Then we even have the loony Alabama Supreme Court ruling, full of Biblical bloviating, declaring embryos created during in-vitro fertilization human beings. So no freedom to utilize IVF. That went over like a lead balloon, with Republicans scrambling to tell voters, “Oh no, we don’t mean that.”

Another thing: they’re all for the rights and welfare of unborn children. Once born, not so much. Alabama — typical of Republican fetus fetishizing states — ranks at the bottom regarding the welfare of kids no longer fetuses. Issues of poverty, education, nutrition, health care, etc. “Pro-lifers” only seem to care about children in wombs, not those pesky ones outside.

Meanwhile too, these “pro-life” Republicans are fine with 30,000 Americans killed annually by guns for which they refuse to allow any sane regulation. Yet they prattle “law and order.”

And after months screaming that Democrats were trying to interfere with the election by barring Trump from the ballot (invoking the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause), now in at least two states, Alabama and Ohio, Republican election officials are trying to use legal technicalities to keep President Biden off their November ballots!

Such fundamental dishonesty and hypocrisy pervades today’s whole Republican party. With all that “stolen election” rubbish, and so much more. As The Daily Show succinctly put it: they’re full of shit.

The American Dream: A Fairy Tale?

The New York State Writers Institute’s annual Film Festival is always a great event. It’s free, and this year’s included nice breakfast and dinner buffets! (And I got to meet Jacqueline Bisset!)

The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales was produced by Abigail Disney — Walt’s grandniece. Its theme was corporate greed at the expense of workers. Abigail Disney has become a crusader on that.

Not so long ago, battling for a $15 minimum hourly wage was a big thing. Disneyland workers were getting $15; being bumped up to $18.25. But there’s been inflation. In that Anaheim, CA locale, the film asserted, a living wage would now be $24.

So, as vividly shown, those workers struggle to make ends meet. One single gal, Artemis, searched endlessly for affordable housing, finally finding something entailing a two-hour commute. (Nasty confession: I judged her unattractive, only to realize her face must be molded by constant stress about her circumstances.)

The City of Anaheim apparently deems Disneyland a big asset, for all the tourism it attracts. No surprise there. So the City financed construction of a huge parking garage near the park. Then leased it to the Disney company for $1 a year, enabling Disney to reap tens of millions in parking fees annually. WTF??

More profit for the company; less for the City to help its residents. And the pandemic provided occasion for Disney to shed tens of thousands of workers, further fattening the corporate bottom line. It’s stock price has duly marched upward.

None of this does anything for the workers — who in fact have more toil, due to the fewer hands. While Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, is paid hundreds of millions.

Corporate culture wasn’t always so greed-filled, the film argues, pointing to Disney’s own past, when labor unions were stronger. But it invokes Evil Geniuses (a book I’ve reviewed, whose author Kurt Andersen appears in the film) as showing how America’s richest labored to change that culture to feather their nests.

A particular villain in the film is economist Milton Friedman, who held that a business’s only responsibility is to earn profits for its shareholder-owners. That might indeed sound ugly. However, Friedman was not arguing for profit for profits’ sake. Instead, that profits are a gauge of a corporation’s real benefit to society: producing goods and services people want, at prices willingly paid, to enhance their quality of life. Of course corporations wouldn’t do that without profit.

That’s what makes a free market economy beneficial for society. Encapsulated by Adam Smith’s famous line: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” And Friedman was arguing that anything distracting a business from its main job of providing desired goods and services would detract from the general welfare.

The film casts Iger’s pay, and corporate profits more generally, as coming at the expense of Disney’s workers. But again, we can’t expect any business to give us desired things without its profiting. What’s a reasonable level of profit can be argued.

But here another aspect of free market economics comes in: competition. If businesses must vie with each other for consumer dollars, with price a key factor, that tends to drive down prices to levels allowing just enough profit to keep them going. I have friends always saying grocery owners should just cut prices and take less profit. In fact that’s a highly competitive market where profits are, in consequence, just a tiny percentage of cash register receipts.

I don’t know what that number is for Disney. But even Disney, too, faces intense competition. Consumers have numerous other entertainment options.

All that said, however, there’s much evidence that in the big picture, America’s economy has become less competitive, with accordingly higher profit levels. The Abigail Disneys and Kurt Andersens of the world think it’s because government has let corporations get away with more. Yet there’s another factor of government putting its thumb on the scale to reduce opportunities for competition. That’s certainly true in the vast realm of governmental licensing requirements, fundamentally anti-competitive. “Free market economics” is not the problem; freer would be better.

Greed is a mis-used word. The film inevitably quoted Gordon Gekko. It’s simply human to want more for oneself, to improve one’s life. Mostly that’s a motivator for efforts that benefit society (per Adam Smith). What’s a problem (bad greed) is seeking gain unethically, at another’s expense.

As for Iger’s bloated pay: yes, it’s unreasonably excessive, Disney should be able to hire a perfectly fine CEO for a small fraction. And most of what’s now paid to Iger could instead be used to give workers more, without reducing overall profit. CEO pay in general got out of hand due to perversities in how it’s determined, full of conflicts of interest and self-dealing, a system guys like Iger all exploit because they can.

The left’s picture is of a very unequal America, with its Iger types hogging undue shares of its wealth, while the masses, like those portrayed in Disney’s film, suffer. It showed, for example, rising demand for handouts from a local food bank — one striking scene was an endless line of cars awaiting their turns.

But, dare one say, those people have cars. Not to dismiss their undoubted challenges, but poverty in America isn’t what it used to be. Government help is a big reason. More would be justified; but let’s not forget that it’s a relatively modern thing.

And it’s certainly not true that the “the masses” suffer deprivation. The far bigger phenomenon is mass affluence. Most Americans are part of a huge middle class doing a lot better than those in the film. And while there’s much written about a “shrinking middle class,” a lot of that is people rising rather than falling out of that class.

Also much invoked is supposedly rising inequality. But here too the true picture is complex. And while it’s fiendishly hard to parse the data, there’s much evidence that, in the pandemic and its wake, wages in the lowest echelons have actually risen faster than in the rest of the economy — reducing inequality.

But perhaps all this is easy for me to say, having been very lucky, with a resulting great life. I feel for the people in that film. They have it tough, and make great efforts. They are good people.

What the Hell is Happening to America?

The American character has ever been one of positive spirit, optimism, self-confidence. Thus conventional wisdom in politics was that positivity always beats negativism. Exemplified by Ronald Reagan’s sunny persona defeating dour rivals. How distant that picture now seems.

Departure from it might be understandable were there some profound national trauma pushing us onto a radical, disruptive path. Something like, say, the Great Depression. Yet even that did not upset our civic applecart. While it did spur some fringe movements, our basic political culture stood resilient. Testament to the goodness of what America had built.

A democracy where election outcomes are respected and accepted by all sides, with peaceful transfers of power, in a spirit of goodwill. Such civility characterizing all our political processes. Agreeing to disagree, often coming together in pragmatic compromise, actually tackling problems, generally respecting opponents. Intolerant of misconduct, vulgarity and falsehood. All in all making our public culture something genuinely noble. Francis Fukuyama has written how such democracy serves our deep need for “thymos,” having one’s human dignity respected. This has been America’s great achievement.

Rejecting that longstanding salutary ethos, traducing this nation’s most essential character, makes today’s Republican politics tragically baffling. It might, again, be explicable were there some severe system shock. But there’s nothing remotely like that.

Nothing like the Great Depression. Or, for that matter, the Civil War, which we also actually got past with remarkably little discombobulation of our political culture. The pandemic was traumatic, but Trumpism preceded that, and normality returned pretty fast. Now the economy boasts strong growth, rising wages, record low unemployment, stocks up and inflation coming down.

And yet what is a national crisis today is so many voters being so pissed-off and disaffected by who-knows-what that they want to burn the house down. Though they don’t see it that way themselves, instead imagining they’re “patriots” somehow saving the country. From a Biden administration that actually merely embodies the kind of politics-as-usual that prevailed for generations. They’d elect instead a sociopath who literally tried to overthrow the government.

And while there’s a feeling our politics is broken, requiring drastic medicine, they empower the very people most responsible for the breakage. And while despite the good economy some are struggling, they’ll be hurt more than helped by Republican policies.

Sure, there are grievances and cultural divisions. Whites who feel a loss of caste position, traditionalists unsettled by acceptance of divergent lifestyles, fear of immigrants, resentments against educated elites, etc. But there have always been such societal discords, yet they didn’t shred our civic culture or provoke such nihilistic political pathology. A sizable Republican contingent now even justifies political violence.

A key aspect is divorcement from reality, embracing a bizarro mockery of it. Like rejecting the reality of January 6, and the 2020 election’s legitimacy. Trump said it was stolen, based on nothing whatsoever, just because his damaged psyche could not accept losing. Any fool could see that. Yet Republicans refuse to.

My Lawn Sign

Why doesn’t their hateful, destructive behavior make them unelectable? For many voters the whole political picture is just a fuzzy blur, they can’t discern true signal from noise, and not even January 6 provides clarity. Meantime Trump’s pantomime of “strength” is psychologically bedazzling as against notional Democrat “weakness.” When it’s actually derangement versus sanity, depravity versus decency.

Too many take for granted our democracy, without much understanding of it, or its vulnerability to what’s afoot. Some see Trump as more symptom than cause, just exploiting passions already extant. Maybe. But such a perfect storm of badness can do immense damage. He already has.

So we’re sleepwalking off a cliff, poised to witlessly throw away America’s quintessential goodness, making this a much darker country. Indeed, Trump loves dictators and will put us on the dark side globally. A world whose Putins are untrammeled won’t be good for us. “America First” will be ashes in our mouths.

This nation is still full of wonderful people. How can we be sucked into such evil?

A Byzantine Coin Lover’s Frabjous Day

In my coin dealing business, customers like to sell me stuff. Couple years ago a guy drove up with a rented U-Haul fully packed with coins he said he’d been collecting since 1949.

More recently another longtime customer sold me his ancient Greek coins. Turned out he’d specialized in the tiniest ones (like 3 to 8 millimeters). I gave him a price he was happy with. Had to work up a new technique to photograph such micro coins for my auctions.

Then he asked if I’d be interested in his Byzantine coins.* Love them, said I.**

I vividly remember, over 50 years ago, standing in a little shop, chatting with its owner over a tray of coins he’d bought. “That’s Byzantine,” I said, pointing to one. “In the usual miserable condition.”

Those words afterward reverberated with me. I actually knew nothing about Byzantine coins, except that they did tend to look pretty crappy. Now I wondered if it was possible to find and collect non-crappy ones. (For me quality is the name of the game in numismatics.) Soon enough a mail auction presented an opportunity, and so my Byzantine collection was launched.

The Byzantine Empire began as the Eastern part of the Roman one. After the West fell in 476 AD, the Byzantines flourished for further centuries, followed by a long decline, until 1453, when the Turks conquered their capital, Constantinople (today’s Istanbul).

Byzantine gold coins are actually very common and usually very nice. It’s the bronzes that are problematic, having been “workhorses” of commerce, suffering much abuse — and were poorly made to begin with. Those are what I’ve collected. It’s a highly interesting series, very varied, with many different types produced at numerous mints. The later ones tend to be scarcer, and even more quality-challenged.

But one can accomplish a lot in five decades, and I now have a pretty comprehensive collection, over 700 different coins (no duplicates), the quality ranging from decent to very nice. The difficult later series is particularly well represented since decades ago I bought the collection of a man who specialized in those (because his name, Laskaris, was that of one of the relevant dynasties). At this point, improving my collection grows harder, but I have by no means exhausted the field.

And what, really, is the purpose being served? A question I often ponder. It’s an ephemeral thing (I haven’t really thought about the collection’s ultimate disposition).*** Much human endeavor is geared toward raising esteem in others’ eyes. But it’s unlikely anyone able to appreciate this collection will ever see it in its fullness; and when I see great collections in auction catalogs, it does nothing for those collectors. But my pride in this achievement is personal to me, it pleases me; and I’m the most important person on Earth (to me).

Anyhow — my customer, who seemed a pretty sophisticated collector, sent me his 85 Byzantine coins, and I was keenly looking forward to this, hoping to add some goodies to my own holdings.

There were indeed some scarce and nice ones I didn’t have. One a nummus (my spell checker wants to make this “hummus”), the smallest value in the whole Byzantine repertoire, and rarely produced. This particular type, unusually with a facing bust of Justinian I (527-65 AD) and a lion on the reverse, I’d never even seen before, and it’s in quite good condition.

Another was minted at Rome, while re-occupied by the Byzantines, who made rather few coins there. Wretched productions at that. This one again is much above average.

As I worked my way through the chronologically arranged box, I said to myself, “this is the kind of collection that just might have a 1693.” A catalog number in Sear’s definitive book, Byzantine Coins and Their Values. A Follis of Michael III (“the Drunkard”) and Basil I from their brief joint reign, 866-67 AD (the depths of the “Dark Ages”), with their facing busts on each side. A distinctive and rare major type that really should be in my collection, but I’d never managed to get one — and it had started to bug me. Like it had become a holy grail. Recently I’d put in what I thought was a strong bid in an obscure online auction, but lost out.

So as that number approached, I crossed my fingers. And Bingo! There it was, 1693! And a nice one. Very nice.

I recalled the line from Jabberwocky: O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy. Because I was literally chortling with delight to see that coin.

And in fact it’s more than just nice. One of the best 1693’s in existence. I checked acsearch.info, an extensive online database of past numismatic auctions (I consult it constantly), and found my coin’s 2005 sale record. There were 43 others — none as good.

O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay!

* He mentioned he was inspired to collect them after reading a book on the period by Kenneth Harl — who also buys coins from me.

** I’ve previously written about one in my collection: https://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/baltimore-coin-show-fun/

*** Not wishing to burden my wife and daughter, I have been selling collections, notably my Chinese and British. Do I miss them? Yes. But I look fondly back on the fun of collecting them.

Christian/Conservative Nationalist Populism

It’s not just in America, but burgeoning all over Europe. And it’s not your father’s “conservatism,” but transmogrified into something unrecognizably darker.

Yet many followers don’t seem bothered by the switcheroo. For them it’s more tribal than ideological. Stick with the “conservative” tribe, no matter where it’s going.

Take Russia. For the better part of a century, conservatives saw Communist, totalitarian Russia as the antithesis of the small government individualist freedom they stood for, and threatening our national security besides. Russia is no longer “communist” but if anything worse. Actually even more totalitarian, repressive, and more actively a military threat.

Yet today’s right sees Putin as no enemy, or even somehow an ally. Casting him as a defender of their traditionalist Christian values. Epitomized by Tucker Carlson’s asinine Putin interview and supermarket documentary about how wonderful and advanced Russia is. Overlooking how impoverished the average Russian actually is — and the brutal repression which, if needed to sustain the “traditional values” these fools babble about, might suggest those values are awry.

Meantime it’s really Trump calling this tune — as if he’s moved by any values at all. Taught by his dad that people are either killers or patsies, and seeing Putin as the ultimate killer. Trump’s role model.

So Putin’s Ukraine atrocity shows his badassness, and to them that’s a good thing. “Strength” bedazzles these people. Likewise it’s Trump’s badassness that, deep down, appeals to his cultists. So they do whatever he says. That’s why they’re blocking Ukraine aid in Congress.

Nationalism is a factor here too — the “America First” trope. The idea that we should stick to our own knitting rather than foreign involvements. As if we’re too poor and weak to do both. (So much for American “strength.”) Many on the right even spout Putin’s nonsense blaming the West for somehow provoking his Ukraine invasion. And never mind that America has a huge self-interest in deterring such violent aggression. But a truculent chest-thumping nationalism is characteristic of these populist anti-globalist movements everywhere.

My old conservatism favored small government to generally keep its nose out of people’s business, maximizing our freedom. Today’s right does hate what it calls “the administrative state,” seen as a vehicle of their left-wing elite globalist bêtes noires. Yet contradictorily, while still fetishizing the word “freedom,” they also want big strong government to enforce their own will on people. Notably, for example, controlling women by limiting their access to pregnancy medical care. How is that “conservative?”

What they really hate is classical liberalism, the humanist philosophy arising out of the Enlightenment, freeing people from the shackles of traditionalist society (and religion), enabling them to better flourish. That’s what “liberal” means outside America, and it’s become a dirty word everywhere, with the left too banging on against “neo-liberalism.” This is why Hungary’s authoritarian poster boy Viktor Orban, a darling of the populist right, proudly speaks of his oxymoronic “illiberal democracy.” (As undemocratic as he can make it.)

Immigration is another right-wing populist bête noir. Thus the “replacement theory” nonsense — positing some conspiracy to swap out regular people for migrants supposedly inferior and more politically pliable. In fact migrants tend to be better people. But they’re from different tribes — reason enough to demonize them. (Plain old racism operates too.)

Immigrants are seen as corrupting and degrading the tribal home (“poisoning our blood”), changing its comfortable familiar parameters. Part of a broad narrative of declinism. Thus Trump’s “American carnage” and “Only I can fix it.”

Again the lure of the strongman. People who feel disempowered see the strongman as compensating for their own sense of weakness. As if they can somehow absorb some of his strength. As if all could be fixed by one person of great wisdom and capability. As if Trump had those attributes. And as if removing democratic accountability serves people better.

The old and familiar, for most of these populists, importantly includes Christian religion. Thus the insistence that America was founded as a “Christian nation.” In fact our founders hated the religious oppressiveness they knew all too well, and aimed to banish it.

Our Supreme Court is undoing their work; applying the legal doctrine, “Christianity always wins.” Going so far in one recent case to literally make up untrue facts to achieve that result (the one where a football coach forced students to pray).

The Economist recently editorialized about the threat posed by this movement of populist “national conservatism.” Cover title: The Right Goes Gaga. But they recognized underlying real grievances: people “see illegal migration as a source of disorder and a drain on the public purse. They worry that their children will grow up to be poorer than they are. They are anxious about losing their jobs to new technology. They believe that institutions such as universities and the press have been captured by hostile, illiberal, left-leaning elites. They see the globalists who have thrived in recent decades as members of a self-serving, arrogant caste.”

The Economist is itself a standard-bearer for classical liberalism, set against both today’s left and right. Both of which need to be opposed, and countered with sensible policies. But squeezed between the other two, true liberalism hasn’t got much traction.

Impeding amelioration of all those mentioned grievances. Much of the West, and America in particular, has fallen into a scleroticized inertia when it comes to any sort of reform or societal change. The inability to deal with immigration policy is one example. Another is the chronic failure to overcome morasses of restrictions stopping desperately needed expansion of housing. Britain suffers this too. (A big rail upgrade project there is such a fiasco that it may actually slow down trains.) A big reason for it all is the intensification of political antagonisms, in what’s been called a “vetocracy” — one segment of society able to block action by others.

Of course the censorious holier-than-thou totalitarian woke left is bad too. But not remotely so threatening, simply because it’s vastly smaller. Meantime the threat from the right might be even bigger were it not tied to a grotesquely depraved con man. However legitimate their grievances might otherwise be, this is no way to help them. Imagine the movement with a leader more palatable to sensible people. Trump’s awfulness may be our salvation.

However — The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper asked some Republican Nikki Haley supporters who they’d vote for between Trump and Biden. All, former Trump voters, said they were done with him, calling him a bad man, unfit to be president, a threat to democracy and global security. But, agonizing, all but one would still vote for him over Biden. Political insanity is the new pandemic.

Zero-Sum Us-Against-Them Populism

In the “good old days” (they weren’t) economic progress was nonexistent. Most people lived in extreme poverty, generation after generation. You could only get ahead at someone else’s expense: a zero-sum world.

Gradually a better one emerged. Capitalism, market economics, division of labor, and trade all enabled us to escape the zero-sum trap. If I provide something you need or want, in exchange for something I need or want, we’re both better off.

Thus “the good of others multiplies my own good,” David Brooks wrote in a recent column. This is what sent economic advancement into overdrive, especially with the modern era of globalization applying it the world over. Multiplying real incomes dramatically, raising living standards, and almost eliminating extreme deprivation.

But too many people still don’t get it. “Socialists” imagine all good somehow comes (or should come) from government rather than enterprising individuals; even thinking it immoral to profit from one’s efforts, seen as exploiting others and causing inequality.

Brooks counters with the example of Steve Jobs, who did get very rich, but not by “taking” anything from anyone. Rather, by providing products that improved others’ lives, giving them value exceeding what they paid. But isn’t that the case with any free market transaction? Win-win, not zero-sum.

Yet nowadays even trade itself, commerce itself, is misunderstood as some people benefiting at others’ expense. China is actually demonized for selling us products at low prices! Such nonsensicality is a Trump campaign staple. The whole global trade structure is under assault and crumbling, throwing away opportunities for making us all richer. Trump promises a big expansion of tariffs — which will make everyone poorer.

Such “populism,” is on the rise almost everywhere, thriving, as Brooks explains, on a zero-sum mentality. And it makes the world not just poorer, but nastier. Because if it’s indeed a zero-sum world, then it’s us-against-them. And populist demagogues like Trump specialize in targeting “thems” — they “invariably enflame ethnic bigotry,” Brooks says, “to mobilize their own supporters.”

India’s Modi another example. Actively provoking the Hindu majority to hate the nation’s two hundred million Muslim citizens. Even questioning their citizenship. How insane in a country that’s already seen too much inter-communal bloodshed.

For Trump, it’s mainly immigrants, who “poison our blood.” Actually asserting that other nations empty mental hospitals and jails to send us their inmates. What deranged, vicious nonsense.

Reality: America’s economy is doing so much better than elsewhere, like in Europe, in good part because we take more immigrants. Offsetting population and workforce shrinkage, reinvigorating our society with go-getters who are net contributors and assets to America.

In the dark, zero-sum past, Brooks notes, grabbing territory was how despots sought self-aggrandizement. This is recrudescing with Russia’s attempt to grab Ukraine; while China is poised to try to grab Taiwan.

Israel’s conflict with Palestinians too reflects a zero-sum mentality, as if they’re both fighting over something only one can have, blind to how both could benefit from cooperating together.

But alas, says Brooks, “the thugs [Russia, China, Trump] are winning.” Will we come to our senses in time?

Roots: Israelis and Palestinians Together

I attended a 2+ hour presentation by an Israeli and Palestinian, discussing their peoples’ situation. The words “Hamas,” “October 7,” and “Gaza” never came up.

Palestinian activist Noor A’wad, and Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, a Zionist West Bank settler, are both proponents of “Roots/Shorashim/Judur,” a local community program enabling the two ethnicities to interact positively. Deemed the only such shared space in the otherwise strictly segregated West Bank. Such separation, Schlesinger said, breeds stereotyping, fear, enmity, and hatred.

He grew up American, but emigrated to Israel to join its settler movement, of Jews moving into the largely Palestinian West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. He cast Jews as an “extended family” and Zionism as aiming to “Bring the Jewish people home,” quoting the wishful invocation, “Next Year in Jerusalem” (heard in my own childhood family gatherings). Settlers, he said, make not just a political but a historical statement — the Jewish realm of ancient (Biblical) times was actually centered in kingdoms located in the West Bank called Judaea and Samaria — names often on settlers’ lips.

Then a decade ago, he said, he realized he didn’t know what he was talking about. His epiphany came with a remark about always picking up hitch-hikers — but he knew he lied, because it’s never Palestinians. Never interacting with them at all, living in a “Jewish bubble.” But suddenly seeing that in addition to the Jewish story shaping his own life, there’s another one, making his a half truth. Which is “close to falsehood.”

Thus he spoke of the “hubris of exclusivity.” The idea that Jewish people belong there, and others don’t, denying any legitimacy to their narrative. While in reality the same land birthed two peoples, and both “belong” there.

“I don’t have to be who I am at the expense of who you are,” Schlesinger avowed. Yet the Jewish settler movement operates at the expense of Palestinians and their human dignity. It’s wrong, unjust, bad, he said. Instead, we must “get the two truths into one heart.”

Noor grew up during the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, making normal life impossible — a wrong which he felt must be fought, both nonviolently and violently. Later he worked as a tour guide. This, at one point, gave him a very rare encounter with a settler. Who declaimed that there’s no “occupation,” it’s just simply Jewish land. Indeed, there are no “Palestinians,” only “Arabs,” and with 22 Arab countries why do they need another? Hearing this was unsettling (pun intended). Then Noor met Rabbi Schlesinger.

Each side, Noor said, seems to think the problem’s solution is to disappear the other (or at least they act that way). But he realized that they must instead coexist. Echoing Schlesinger in saying that his own heritage actually encompasses both narratives — the land’s Jewish history is integral to his own.

But what, really, is the solution? Schlesinger spoke of not just a “two state” paradigm but rather a “confederation” — not separate states but, much like the European Union, with open borders between them, and citizens of both free to live in either.

Yet we often hear even the thinner “two state solution” ruled out because Israel has no “partner for peace.” And the intensity of enmity, ratcheted up by both sides’ violence, does seem to bar any such rationality.

Schlesinger — though a rabbi — said religion is part of the problem. It’s a huge part. When you believe God has told you something, you’d damn well better act accordingly. Though of course what people hear God saying is what they wish to hear. And other human values go out the window, a prescription for nightmares. Pray for people to free themselves from delusional, nonsensical beliefs that negate their humanity.

Delusionality too was behind October 7, imagining violence could force the Jews out of Israel. Likewise Israel’s response, imagining violence can end its Palestinian “problem,” when in reality the horror Israel is unleashing can only make it worse.

The cycle of violence feeding violence, neither side seeing humanity in the other, is insane. Full stop. They have to live together in that land. “From the river to the sea” — it’s big enough for both. And could be so much better for both if they’d cooperate to their mutual benefit, instead of trying to kill each other.

If only they were atheists.

Humanism, Meaning, Values, and What Really Matters

“Humanity is at a painful point in history. We’re between paradigms, between stories. In the Western world, the old story is largely played out — the tale of the monotheistic god . . . is going out with a snarl, as evidenced by the hostile, violent, truth-denying politics associated with the segments of the population most invested in the old story. A sense of dislocation and pessimism pervades society. The culture has lost its bearings.

“We need a new story.”

So writes Yale’s Tom Krattenmaker in The Humanist magazine. I first encountered him in a 2016 Albany forum on the Bible, hosted by the Massachusetts Bible Society. He seems to sit at the intersection between religion and atheism, trying to bridge those worlds.

Krattenmaker notes that Nietzsche long ago declared God dead. While many haven’t seen the obit, others have, and Christian nationalism’s current political assertiveness is actually the desperate rear-guard effort of a doomed idea, rejected by increasing numbers. A big factor, but not the sole one, in the cultural upheaval Krattenmaker describes.

His Humanist essay does propose the “new story” he says we need, to supplant religion’s. A story “that answers the questions of our time, that makes sense of our existence, that provides context — provides psychological and emotional mooring — for this mysterious thing called life.”

He finds it rooted in Carl Sagan’s observation that we’re all actually “star stuff” — totally comprised from molecules originating in exploding stars. That, to Krattenmaker, is such a big thing that it’s “something to build our values and lives around.”

Pursuing this idea, he invokes environmental proselytizer Sam King, who “finds meaning, inspiration, and an ethical foundation through deep engagement with the story of the universe and the life it spawned.” Something Thomas Berry called “ecozoic consciousness.”

Accordingly Krattenmaker envisions this supplanting conventional religions. “Imbuing science with the sense of wonder and excitement it deserves.” Going on to say that “what we value, of course, is what forms our values.” [His emphasis.] And what we should value above all is the planet making our lives possible. So it all comes down to a new paradigm apotheosizing a sort of spiritualistic environmentalism, “to transform our relationship with the earth from exploitation to regeneration.”

Not exactly a surprising novel idea. Quite a lot of people think this way; for some it’s already a quasi-religion. Which is fine. Though it’s far from clear how it devolves from the star stuff “origin story.” And I do not see it as the be-all and end-all philosophical/psychological foundation for a next stage of culture/consciousness, as does Krattenmaker.

I’ve sometimes fantasized a new church — not another supernaturalist religion, but rather a vehicle for people to pursue the quest for meaning and values in a sound healthy way, grounded in truths revealed by science, free of the old deistic crap which actually messes up that quest. It would incorporate what Krattenmaker describes — being anchored in the cosmic reality that actually does define our existence.

However, where I differ importantly from him is in not seeing the “star stuff” stuff as at all central. Indeed, to quote his own initial comment: “Cool idea, not sure how it applies to anything.” [His italics.]

The problem is that however literally true Sagan’s line is, for human individuals trying to make sense of their lives, it’s not much help. It’s ethereal, kind of abstract, detached from everyday life, no more pragmatically useful than looking to a nonexistent god.

My own take is embodied in the highly apt term humanism, a philosophy that does point us to meaning and values grounded in our everyday reality. Centered not upon things that happened incomprehensibly far away and long ago among the stars, but instead upon our here-and-now. Specifically, being a human living among humans. How we choreograph that is everything. The only possible true source of meaning and values for us. (This would be a core precept of my fantasized church.)

However “cool” the “star stuff” notion may seem, its unfortunate corollary is (to quote the Bible!) dust to dust. We go back to being star stuff; one’s existence a fleeting cosmic happenstance, with inevitable ultimate annihilation. Our only meaning and values reside in what we do with that tiny blip of existence while we have it.

The cosmos of star stuff is cold and uncaring. Only the feelings of beings that feel can matter. Without that, whether the universe even exists or not is meaningless. The only meaning lies in how we make ourselves, and each other, feel while we can.

Religions only block our seeing this truth by putting false gods in the way. My humanism in contrast puts humanity at the center; humanity as the thing I am most importantly part of. Loving humankind, seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of us. Nothing else matters.