Presidential History - Some Comfort Can Be Taken

In my moments of despair over the current political climate and the Trump presidency, I have found it helpful to pore over the history of our republic and its tenuous grip on political stability.  In particular, the history of presidential politics and the ragtag assortment of characters who ascended to the highest office gives me some optimism for our odds of surviving the current inhabitant.

Here are some statistics:  We have had 45 presidents.  Seven died in office – four by assassination and three by illness.  Poor William Henry Harrison only lasted a month before he expired!  Five of our presidents were not elected at all, but ended up in office after either a death or a resignation and didn’t generate enough enthusiasm to be elected for an additional term.

Most of our 15 two term presidents were at the two ends of our presidential history – five of the first seven presidents were two term, and four of the last five.  There was a period from 1837 (end of Jackson’s terms) to 1912 (75 years!!) where only two presidents, Lincoln and Grant, were elected twice to office.  We all know what happened to Lincoln, and Grant’s presidency was so marred by scandal that it has become a symbol of corrupt government.

That 75 year period is characterized by three major themes – (1) conflict over slavery and the civil war, (2) reconstruction, and (3) the gilded age with its associated corruption and avarice.  It is no wonder that every president was sent packing after a single term in those turbulent times, which comprise a third of our history!

Many of our presidents ended up as nominees by the slimmest of margins in back room shenanigans that make Trump’s election almost look respectable.  These men, with a few notable exceptions, were by and large not impressive characters.  And the vitriol of the political processes that placed them in office rival the worst of our current partisanship.

Even during the golden age of our founders – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe – the sniping and slander of the political process was astonishing.  Duels were fought and reputations destroyed as men sought to defame and discredit one another over often very abstract differences in political philosophy.  Jefferson and Adams didn’t speak to one another for decades.  Burr and Hamilton dueled and neither fared well (Hamilton died from the duel and Burr was disgraced and spent the rest of his life in rather strange escapades).

Donald Trump is not the first misfit to sit in the oval office, though he might be at the very top in terms of the extent of his idiosyncrasies and paranoia.  Will he destroy the republic?  I believe it is doubtful.  We have had worse overall circumstances than the ones we face now.  We can survive a term of Donald Trump. even if it does make our skin crawl!

The Ends and the Means

When I speak these days to Trump supporters, I often hear the concession that ‘yes, Trump is a horrible braggart, and yes, he is terribly thin-skinned and confrontational, and yes, I wish he would tweet a little less, and yes, he is a philanderer and sexual predator (but so was Bill Clinton!), and yes, he has a multitude of character flaws’.  And then comes the ‘but’ – ‘But it may be that this country needs someone like Trump to fix the big problems it has’.

Other than a modest percentage of true believers, the support for Trump seems to be of the ‘ends justify the means’ variety.  I picture a nation of ‘cringing’ conservatives, aghast and embarrassed at what they have put into the white house and yet still doubling down on their full-throated support for his initiatives.

I recall Dave Barry once writing in a humor column that Republicans would elect an axe murderer if he promised to cut taxes.  Very prescient!  I don’t believe that Trump is necessarily evil in the sense that a serial killer is evil.  But I do believe he is a classic example of a leader who is so consumed by vanity and power that he no longer has any empathy for other points of view and that he will use his power ruthlessly in pursuit of his goals, which in the end are mainly about assuaging his profound insecurity.

At the heart of the Trump phenomenon lies one of the great questions of civilization – do the ends justify the means?  For conservatives, does the ‘end’ (various rollbacks of liberal policies, tax cuts, a bellicose foreign policy - no more apologizing, i.e. no more empathy!) justify the ‘means’ (Trump’s legitimation of the basest human traits in leadership and diplomacy, alienation of large segments of the U.S. and world populations, his astonishing lack of civility).  Human societies have always wrestled with this quandary.

I confronted this dilemma when I worked for Habitat for Humanity International in its early phases (1986-1988).  I had come in to set up their computer systems but soon found myself running their fundraising and publicity departments as well.  The primary means of obtaining funds for HFH’s work was through direct mail.  Habitat had recently been fortunate to have Jimmy Carter join its board and become a strong advocate of its work.  He had agreed to lend his name to fundraising letters for the work. 

The direct mail firm we used did an aggressive campaign of ‘acquisition’ letters to large mailing lists.  These mailings cost hundreds of thousand of dollars and were a substantial part of the funds we had for operation each year.  However, from an accounting point of view, we could amortize the cost of the mailings over the ‘lifetime’ of the donors, which could be estimated at 5 years or more.  Thus, our % of fundraising costs in terms of our overall budget that appeared on our annual report allowed us to be graded well by various watchdog agencies for charitable organizations.

Many of our employees and volunteers were deeply disillusioned by these mailings, which had all the typical slick marketing characteristics.  The fact that we were spending incredible amounts of money to obtain donors seemed antithetical to the values of HFH and the people who supported it.  Habitat was still a very small organization with a strong sense of family. It seemed a betrayal of the uniquely simple, non-commercial message of Habitat.

However, direct mail was how Millard Fuller, Habitat’s founder, had made his millions before he gave them all away and started HFH.  Millard was passionate about the mission of Habitat and if millions of Jimmy Carter direct mail pieces could accelerate the growth dramatically, then there was no question we would embrace it.  So, rather than allow Habitat’s growth to occur more slowly and organically, we drove ahead with massive mailings.

The questions abound.  Did the end – Habitat’s meteoric growth – justify the means – the use of fundraising techniques that sparked a loss of innocence and the change in character of Habitat?  Would Habitat have changed anyway?  Is such change inevitable in any successful endeavor?  If more people received houses because of these mailings wasn’t it worth it?  Or perhaps the preservation of Habitat’s unique character was more important and more impactful than being able to build more houses.

Using questionable means to achieve an end cannot always be easily evaluated at the time of the decision.  Was the use of the atomic bomb on Japan a good decision?  In the emotional extremes of WWII it was readily accepted. War is a time when these types of ends-versus-means decisions – the calculus of the so-called greater good – are made over and over again.  Were the allies right (apart from the more basic question of morality . . . ) to massively bomb civilian targets in Germany and Japan to ‘break the will’ of the people?  Should we torture people and deny them all civil and legal rights in the name of anti-terrorism?  Doesn’t each new concession to more horrible ‘means’, even if the ‘end’ is a noble goal, create a downward spiral of precedent and example that is bound to wreak future havoc and horror?

And so here we are with President Trump.  The man cannot let a day go by without ridiculing or threatening someone via Twitter, or bragging shamelessly about his so-called accomplishments (methinks thou doth protest too much Donald!).   Even if he is successful in accomplishing certain goals for the Republican party, will anyone be happy with the long term consequences of his presidency?  Will civility have been dealt a death blow?  Will childish antics become the norm among politicians and businesspeople?  Will children grow up embracing the kind of nonsense that is his modus operandi and see themselves justified in all types of anti-social behavior?

There are many examples of how one can become numb to horrible things, inured to bad behavior, jaded by idiotic acts.  The biggest danger of Donald Trump is not his policies, as repugnant as they may be, but rather the possibility that we may in the end lose our sense of outrage and allow him to undermine our code of ethics and morality.  No, my dear Republican friends, the ends do not justify the means!

In Praise of Physicians and Scientists

As 2018 draws to a close, I want to make a strong statement about the tireless and often under-appreciated efforts of physicians and scientists.  It is a sad truth in our society that we love to be cynical and suspicious about motivations.  Sometimes this cynicism is warranted, but it is often a herd instinct that has no real foundation in fact or evidence.

Many of our brightest citizens pursue careers in medicine and science.  In doing so, they typically work longer hours, and in the case of scientists, receive lower compensation, than other professionals.  I would add engineers to this description, but since I am an engineer, it would be somewhat self-serving!  So I will simply reference a previous blog on this topic: http://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2014/11/thoughts-on-panic-over-engineering-and.html .

Science, and medicine in particular, have advanced dramatically in the last two hundred years. They have brought us out of darkness, given us incredible mobility, freed us from many forms of drudgery and physical discomfort, developed untold numbers of new materials and products, and improved our health and longevity in dramatic fashion.  They have also unleashed terrible destruction in the form of weapons and have wrought changes on our society that sometimes seem unsettling and alienating.

It is fashionable to complain about physicians; to enumerate situations where diagnoses have been mistaken or where medical knowledge is incomplete; to conjure up an image of the revolving door doctor’s office, where little time is spent with each patient and the bills seem out of proportion to the services rendered.

To be sure, the cost and delivery of medical services is far from a perfect system.  And there are certainly some physicians who are compensated more generously than a truly equitable system would prescribe.  But the fact is that medicine has benefited human society incredibly and we owe much of the enduring joy of living to the herculean efforts of the medical community.

Many people who indulge in wholesale criticism of modern medicine tout the results from natural or homeopathic medicine, chiropractic, Eastern medical traditions such as Ayurveda, Chinese and others.  No doubt these have something to offer – we are far from knowing everything about health and the human body – but many of these traditions were around for the last several thousand years and didn’t result in a general advancement of human health.

One merely needs to recall a few of the horrors of 18th century life to understand the miraculous impact of allopathic medical progress in the last two hundred years: 

• ·         Child birth was practically Russian roulette – one percent of women giving birth died in the act.  If you had 10 children, you had a 1 in 10 chance of dying by one of those births.  Today the percentage is one hundredth of that, and the few deaths that occur would generally be preventable if medical coverage were more universal.
• ·         The chance of a child dying before its 5^th birthday were generally 1 in 5, or 20%.  Today, the rate is 2-3 in 1000, which is about 0.2%.  Most of those are in impoverished populations who don’t receive good medical care.
• ·         The overall life expectancy was about 38 years.  That is somewhat deceptive, because if you made it to 10 years old, that life expectancy jumped to 58.  Still, it is dramatically shorter than the current 80 years in most of the developed world.
• ·         Epidemics raged throughout Europe and the rest of the world in previous centuries.  Today epidemics are very rare and most of the diseases that were incredibly deadly in the past (plague, smallpox, polio, typhoid fever, cholera, etc.) have been either completely eliminated or dramatically curtailed.

In more recent times, the progress made in the reduction of cardiovascular disease (which, by the way, is one of the primary reasons for the increasing global longevity) and the treatment of cancer is truly remarkable.  Also, the life expectancy for many chronic diseases such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis and others is much higher in recent years.

These wonderful improvements are a combination of medical care, sanitation, pharmaceutical discoveries, and many other contributing factors.  But the basis for all of this progress is medical science and the scientific method.

The scientific method insists on a rigorous approach to attaining knowledge.  It does not take a few anecdotal results and draw conclusions.  How many of us have cited the case of a friend or acquaintance who had success from some unusual therapy and implied that this is ‘evidence’ of its efficacy?  True science does not rush to a result.  It insists on numerous trials and experimentation with unyielding objectivity and rigor.  It can be frustratingly slow and tedious, but it is the only way to arrive at a conclusion that will yield predictable results and successes.

A couple hundred years ago, death from illness was all around us.  No one grew up without experiencing the pain of losing a close friend or relative from an early death.  Today, most of us have had the joy of sharing life with family and friends with very rare intrusions of grief from a sickness or death.  We have a long line of physicians and scientists to thank.

Diet and Eating

In this season of eating and over-eating, I find myself once again amused by all of the self-help offerings on dieting and eating healthy.  As a somewhat analytical person, I find it difficult to give much credence to most of the advice. 

Many people say that diet is a simple matter of intake versus metabolic work.  If you consume X calories and the work that your body does is less than X, then you will gain weight.  If the work is more than X you will lose weight.  I have seen these types of calculations done based on the amount of exercise one does each day.  I don't buy it!

As an engineer, I think in terms of conservation of mass and energy.  Food is mass, but it is also stored energy.  Food and drink are consumed.  A certain part of this food and drink is excreted, either as urine or feces.  The amount of this excretion can vary dramatically from day to day or over longer periods.  Moreover, the amount of energy that is extracted from our food as it goes through our digestive tract may be up or down regulated based on the body's needs. The energy content of this excretion would be important in any calculation of net energy or caloric gains/losses.  Has anyone measured this?

The body also converts part of the food and drink into energy.  The energy used by the body might be characterized as typical daily metabolism and work (which may vary considerably or may be fairly consistent – does anyone really know?) as well as extra work that may be associated with exercise, stress, climate conditions and other external phenomena.

Some of the consumed food and drink may be converted to other forms of stored energy and deposited somewhere in the body.  And conversely, some of the stored energy in the body may be converted into energy to accomplish the work of the body. The control functions for these mechanisms are probably poorly understood, yet they are essential to a full understanding of the process.

Thus, there are many parameters in the diet equation – intake, excretion, exercise rates, various forms of metabolism and their rates, conversion rates and efficiencies, etc.  These parameters may vary dramatically from person to person and from week to week.   

Some of these parameters may be affected by the body’s desire to maintain an equilibrium state.  For example, I have been on several cruises where I have eaten massive quantities of rich foods.  Doing a basic energy equation of the type promoted by many diet experts would indicate that I should be gaining weight rapidly during the 10 days or so of that cruise. 

But my experience is that I gain no weight at all!  I do notice that my excretion seems to be at a markedly increased level, if I may be so indiscreet!  Can it be that my body is trying to maintain its current ‘form’?  I have no doubt that if I were to continue that type of culinary indulgence I would soon begin to gain weight, but I am not eager to run that experiment!

I suspect that the body has a certain inertia in terms of its weight and size.  As evidenced by the challenges facing dieters, it appears that the body fights change even when it is not in an ideally healthy state.  The good news is that this helps us avoid ballooning every time we go through a rough patch with food, but  the bad news is that if you are fat it may be more daunting to convince your body to stay trim even when you are successfully cutting your calories.  But in the end, if you eat less calories than you burn (assuming you can calculate these amounts correctly!), the law of conservation of energy will eventually favor your discipline with a good result!

Why I Hate Twitter (and other thoughts on Social Media)

Social media is ubiquitous.  Human beings are social animals, so it is logical that social media serves a purpose at some basic level of human need.  But with so many different forms available and the distractions growing exponentially, perhaps it is useful to take a close look at social media and understand what it accomplishes and what it may indeed damage in our human social fabric.

In the beginning, there was letter writing.  This was the original social media. Before letter writing the only way to interact with another human being was to engage them verbally, face-to-face.  Letter writing probably emerged as a way to communicate when people were not close enough to meet.  But as time progressed, writing a letter became something more than just a substitute for a conversation – it became a way of expressing one’s thoughts more profoundly and preserving them.

Letter writing required time and effort – finding pen (or quill) and paper, addressing some form of envelope or package, and interacting with some form of letter carrier system.  Thus, a letter was generally not simply a short note, but rather a thoughtful short (or even long) essay.  After all, every letter had the possibility of permanence, of being a legacy of some sort. Moreover, the number of letters one could generate was relatively limited, and it seemed prudent to avoid wasting one’s energy on frivolous or meaningless output.

When you are speaking in real-time with another person there is no opportunity to carefully consider the topics at hand and employ all of one’s logical and emotional faculties in crafting responses.  There is simply not enough time.  A letter allows one the time and distance to explore an idea, sorting and weighing all of its components and antecedents, and finding the best way to articulate the result.

So letters became a way for people to interact with some depth, and we have volumes of historical letters – love letters, philosophical letters, letters of scientific inquiry, letters of conviction, humorous letters.  These inform much of the history of the human race.  They are a wonderful testament to the inventiveness and profundity of the human spirit.

But once the computer entered into our lives, the letter was soon replaced by email.  With the logistical overhead now virtually eliminated (no paper, no envelope, no stamp, etc.), the nature of this ‘letter’ changed dramatically.  A few words or a phrase could be typed and fired off with minimal effort. Email took away the motivation to carefully nurture thoughts and emotions before committing them to pen and paper.  It resulted in an exponential growth of remote, indirect communication, but it also cheapened it.

An email has no aura of permanence, even though it can of course be preserved and is occasionally a very embarrassing or damning piece of evidence.  Its ephemeral nature and ease of composition allows us to indulge our laziness.  We lose the discipline of organized thought and careful word crafting.  Email is generally a throwaway.

With the rapidity that has characterized this age of information, email soon spawned many new digital children –  initially texting and various forms of chatting through messenger services, and later the plethora of social media that now inhabit our personal devices – facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin, snapchat, instagram and many others.

Many of these social media involve a different type of social interaction than traditional letter writing or even email.  Facebook, youtube, snapchat and Instagram all are primarily photo and video sharing, with some comments, humor and messages tossed in.  To some extent, these replace and extend the old social custom of inviting friends over to see your vacation slide show or home movies.  It is interesting to recall how painful these episodes were and how often they were ridiculed, yet we now willingly, or let us say, addictively, subject ourselves to an endless parade of photos, memes and videos day and night.

Much could be written about whether the proliferation of these photos and videos and their subliminal messages and ‘likes’ enhances our friendships, or about its effect on our self-image or happiness.  To the extent that these media allow us to maintain relationships or re-discover them, they offer some benefit.  But do we really want to immerse ourselves superficially in so many outside lives – voyeuristically participating but not truly sharing any of these experiences?   I have read studies that indicate that the addictive nature of facebook and other similar social media leads to depression and insecurity, as we find ourselves confronted with the dream world of our peers that often overshadows our own mundane existence.

But to me, the worst offender in the world of social media is twitter.  This form of social media is the lowest common denominator, the ultimate sound bite, the catalyst and amplifier of rage, indignation, spite, pretension, and mockery.  As opposed to a sincere, careful attempt to address an issue or develop an idea through an essay, article or blog, a tweet is a loose cannon, a reflexive and trivial missive, a cynical ploy to get views and provoke responses.  It does not seek to be thoughtful or erudite, only perhaps clever and provocative.

For politicians and celebrities of all stripes, twitter is another way to stroke one’s ego – the very thought that thousands or even millions of people hang on your every word, however banal and self-serving, is intoxicating.  Who are the legions of followers? Do they have so little of substance in their own lives that they must grovel in the twitter feed of potentates like peasants at a coronation?

And then there is the ‘fake news’ and the fantasies, conspiracies and hysteria that seep through social media like poison gas across a battlefield, sinking deep into the neurotic brain tissue of the masses and destroying all rational thought and analysis.  Twitter is the ultimate tool of the demagogues and their henchmen.  One has only to look at the corrosive effect of our tweeter-in-chief to understand that twitter is more foe than friend.

Social media is the modern Pandora’s box, the genie that will never, ever be stuffed back into its bottle.  It is, in my view, a recipe of one part goodness for five parts woe.  Is it not better to nurture a small number of deep social relationships than a surfeit of shallow ones?  At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly and like a sad voice crying in the wilderness, I say the arrival of the social media panoply is not cause for celebration, but rather a warning bell for our society, our relationships and our future. 

Ignorance: No Longer Bliss!

Americans are wonderful, energetic people.  We work hard, play hard and are typically friendly and generous.  But we have always been a bit ignorant.  Even though we have many of the world’s best scientists, mathematicians, computer programmers, economists, doctors and social scientists, and conduct much of the world’s research, on average we are woefully ignorant when compared to other industrialized nations.

We are proudly illiterate in geography, as so many studies have revealed.  Why learn about the rest of the world when so few of us will ever travel outside the country?  We have little use for foreign languages, probably for the same reason.  Less than 1% of Americans are proficient in a foreign language that they studied in the classroom.  Travel to Sweden and you will find that even farmers who rarely venture from their towns and villages can speak flawless English and perhaps French as well.

What about history?  Well, it seems that Americans know almost nothing about world history, and damn little about our own American history.  Even college students demonstrate depressingly little knowledge of history or any of the other social sciences, probably because they are primarily focused on football games, frat parties and an occasional business course (forgive me for a little spiteful hyperbole . . . . )

When it comes to math and science, the ignorance goes into warp drive!  Most Americans cannot do basic percentage arithmetic (calculating profit margins, discounts, etc.).  Most haven’t the faintest clue how all of the technology at their disposal works and are more or less helpless when it goes awry. 

Almost half of our citizens believe that God created the earth and human beings in their present form less than 10,000 years ago, a belief that flies in the face of two centuries of acquired knowledge in multiple scientific disciplines – geology, climatology, biology, genetics, etc.  This is compared to other industrialized nations, where generally less than 20% have a similar belief.

Why are Americans so ignorant?  One would think that with our wealth and freedom and energy and ingenuity that we would be the most knowledgeable country on earth!  But almost the opposite is true – we are indeed one of the least knowledgeable, and seemingly proudly so!

One might argue that for much of our history our ignorance was reasonably well-suited to the task at hand – we focused our energy and intellect on taming the land and building a formidable commercial engine to stimulate business progress and lifestyle improvements. We disdained the elitism and classism of our European forbearers, perhaps with the attitude that spending much time in intellectual pursuits was a waste of time and a distraction from the pursuit of material gain and being productive.  Ignorance was, for the time, bliss.

But over the last 100 years or so, as our nation has found its fate interwoven with that of the rest of the world’s in an ever more complex economic, political and scientific web, that ignorance has become a rather large liability.  Many of our citizens were easy prey for demagogues such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace.  Need I say that there is one more to add to this list?

When the Internet emerged as the great intellectual equalizer, there was hope that our citizens would tear themselves away from NFL football and reality TV shows just long enough to acquire a new awareness of the world around them.  But alas, in a sad but beautifully ironic twist, the Internet is doing just the opposite – it is serving up steaming piles of pseudo-knowledge that catalyze our citizens’ deepest fears and insecurities.

Manipulation of the mob has always been the goal of those that seek power and ignorance is its strongest ally. Now the Internet and social media provide a mouthpiece that reaches across the entire planet.  Our own made-in-America ignorance, once so innocent that it was almost quaint, is still rampant, but sadly it is no longer blissful.  If we are to avoid devolving into a banana republic of warring factions and paralyzed government, then we must seek out reputable sources of information and seriously embrace the responsibility of being world citizens.

Revolutionary Zeal

It must be discouraging these days to be a revolutionary!  What ideology can a revolutionary seriously embrace in this modern age? Is the age of revolution over?

Communism has lost its allure in the past thirty years or so, and capitalism has ascended to an unrivaled position as the king of the ideological hill.  In the U.S., Marxism and communism were only ascendant for a relatively short period of time during the first half of the 20^th century.  But aggressive repressive measures in the 20’s and again in the 50’s eliminated much of the popular support, even among intellectuals.

Socialism, which many in our country equate with communism, has also taken on pariah status in the post-Reagan political climate.  The mere coupling of the words ‘socialized’ and ‘medicine’ is enough to doom any effort for single payer healthcare!

But if we can for a moment cast aside our reflexive disdain for anything that hints of communism, it may be illuminating to try to understand why Marxism and all of its associated ‘isms’ appealed to so many people and whether there is something to be learned from the revolutions and upheaval that they spawned.  We have no doubt done these concepts something of a disservice by only viewing them through the lens of the violence and death that accompanied them.  After all, there is plenty of death and violence that one may lay at the feet of capitalism as well!

The world is not a perfect place, and there must always be people who dream of making it better than it is.  These are idealists.  Social, political and economic systems are the currency of dreamers, of idealists.  Without idealists, the world would never have progressed beyond the chaotic and tyrannical states that defined civilization for millennia.

Today finds the world in a more peaceful and economically stable state than ever before in history, despite a seemingly endless depiction of bad news in the media (which is merely performing the service that we demand –  that is, keeping a fickle public titillated with violence, sex and tragedy).  The simple fact is that less people die each year in violent conflict than ever before.  Less people die from starvation and disease.  There is less slavery (although it does still exist!), less persecution of minorities, less subjugation of women and more freedom of expression.  Even natural disasters have less impact than before, although this trend may be reversed as we produce more in the future through our impact on climate.

We continue to face many diverse challenges in terms of keeping conflict at bay and providing secure and stable environments for people around the world.  There are religious extremists and a few rogue states, and tensions between the great powers (Russia, China and the U.S.) are re-surfacing.  But clearly the last great hurdle in achieving a more peaceful and healthy world is the lingering social and economic inequality across all populations. 

In the developing world, there has always been a very small class of wealthy oligarchs – a plutocracy – that receives most of the wealth of the nation.  The good news that large numbers of people across the world have slowly clawed their way out of dire poverty does not change the fact that the political, social and economic structures in the developing world are generally rigged and corrupt, primarily benefiting a very few.  Sadly, there seems to be little or no improvement in this regard in most developing countries over the last 50 or 60 years.  Paul Theroux, a travelogue author of some renown who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa in the early 60’s and then made an extensive tour again in 2005, made a strong argument that Africa is actually in a worse state now than when he was there just after most states had claimed their independence.

Perhaps even more disturbing, there appears to be an increasing chasm between rich and poor in many developed nations that had previously built up very strong middle classes and seemed to be on the path to a very equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity.  There are several factors in this sad trend – automation, globalization/outsourcing, the gradual weakening of unions, and the extreme stratification of salaries to name a few.  This chasm has led to populist, nationalist and anti-globalization/anti-immigrant movements that threaten to re-route or even blockade the march to global peace and harmony.

Can the world continue to become more just and equitable in a steady, peaceful manner?  Are inequities, corruption and poverty entrenched and intractable, or can they slowly be eliminated by good people with noble motives?

Will the poor, as Jesus famously said, ‘always be with us’?  Well, as a side note, what Jesus actually meant in that passage is subject to much debate.  But it does beg the question – is income and opportunity disparity an inevitability?

Even generally good people with good intentions contribute to the bias in opportunity and wealth.  I do not take bribes or take part in any outright corrupt business practices, but I am complicit in certain areas of elite privilege.  For example, I readily take advantage of networking and connections to find jobs or opportunities for my family and friends.  I use my resources to provide advantages for my children in education and experience that others do not have.  These are relatively small things, and it is natural for a parent or friend to do such things, but who can argue that these small actions do not insidiously preserve the exalted positions of those with power and wealth?

And if these seemingly innocuous actions contribute to the continuing reign of the elite, then one can only guess at the impact of more venal efforts to rig the system.  The powerful and wealthy will naturally do everything they can to preserve their status, and they have many effective tools at their disposal.  Even very ethical people find it easy to rationalize their indiscretions.  The less ethical don’t even pretend.

The highly vaunted meritocratic nature of our society can certainly benefit high achievers and risk takers, but it is likely that this phenomenon has a narrow effect – mostly on a small group of top performers.  The bulk of the population is not particularly mobile either upwardly or downwardly due to factors of birth, family, education and social status.

Liberty and freedom are the most highly prized attributes of our society for many good reasons.  But they also contribute to some of our problems. We chafe against rules that dictate our behavior.  We believe that our good deeds must be done voluntarily, not forced by government or societal regulation.  For example, we are not forced by law to recycle.  It is voluntary.  We are reluctant to allow the government to dictate the gas efficiency of our vehicles – we love our SUVs!  We are free to send our children to expensive pre-schools, private schools and elite universities, and to organize internships and job opportunities through our connections.  We are free to separate ourselves from the poor and live in gated communities.  We are free to keep most of the money we get from our jobs or investments, regardless of how absurd the amounts may get.  These freedoms give the rich and powerful, and even the middle class, an incredibly potent tool to maintain their status and wealth.

If societies are indeed somewhat static and the inequities resistant to improvement, then the possibility of revolution arises.  The downtrodden are long-suffering, but eventually they will not be placated with empty promises of future good things.  The trickle-down, all-boats-rising tide of human development is a more comforting illusion to the consciences of the rich than to the hopes of the poor.  At some point, it all begs credulity.

Marxism emerged as a product of the industrial revolution in the euphoric vein of other scientific and pseudo-scientific theories.  The Age of Enlightenment seemed to guarantee that the physical world, and indeed, all human endeavor, could be understood by analysis of the laws of physics, chemistry, geology, evolution, or, in the case of Marxism, the laws of dialectic materialism and economics.  Much of the allure of Marxism, and consequently, communism, came from its apparent scientific inevitability.

The industrial revolution had also put human misery and injustice in stark relief for all to see.  There appeared to be no way to ‘evolve’ into a more equitable society and the capitalist class seemed hardened and intransigent.  Class warfare leading to a dictatorship of the proletariat sounded like a relatively good deal to factory workers performing 12 hour shifts six days a week under inhumane and dangerous conditions!

The first waves of revolution and union organizing had a sobering effect on the business owners and they slowly and reluctantly began to accede to some of the workers’ demands, while also aggressively pulling all of the levers necessary to brutally eliminate all revolutionary activities.  This shifted the balance just enough to avoid full-scale communist revolution in most of the industrialized world, where higher wages and better general living conditions tempered the revolutionary zeal.   But revolutionary ideologies and movements found fertile ground in the developing world, where poverty was horrific and injustice even more entrenched. , These revolutionary efforts were often buttressed by independence movements seeking to shed colonial or imperialist control.

In the west, we have found it convenient to characterize social and economic revolutions as ‘evil’, noting the reigns of terror, the purges, the lack of freedom and the frequent famines.

But for the revolutionaries who believed they were remaking the world into a better place, the ends justified the means.  They were merciless, but they believed they were heeding historical lessons that necessitated their behavior.  For example, Lenin saw how the generous treatment of the bourgeoisie by the Paris Commune in 1871 backfired and resulted in wholesale slaughter of the communards once the reactionary forces rallied.  He was not going to make the same mistake and thus the so-called ‘Red Terror’ was initiated.

Committing horrific acts (‘evil’) for a perceived greater good is something every society does and somehow justifies.  The Allies civilian bombing of Germany and Tokyo, which resulted in the deaths of millions of ‘innocent’ civilians, is a perfect example.  One man’s evil is another’s heroism.  In the view of revolutionaries, imperialists, militarists, fundamentalists and other zealots, there are no ‘innocent’ people.

A similar paradox can be detected in our view of freedoms.  We cannot comprehend how the Soviet Bloc and Cuba could justify preventing their citizens from emigrating to Western countries or how they could impose such rigid control of their societies.  But if you have the goal of creating a new society and radically changing the behavior of people – eliminating greed, competition, nepotism and selfishness – then it is expected that many will want to flee and it is the duty of the state to ensure that they stay and participate in the revolution.  From the perspective of the revolutionary, the curtailment of freedom is worthwhile if the ultimate goal is achieved – the new human and the new state! 

Sadly, none of the communist revolutions have had much success in achieving this goal.  Violence seems to beget more violence, and it generally produces ruthless leaders prone to megalomania and paranoia.  Additionally, the centralized planning and control of economies, and the elimination of individual ownership of businesses and property, produced very poor economic results.  Either the ‘new man’ was never properly formed, or it may simply never be possible to create such a being given the idiosyncrasies of human nature.

But the notion of human beings sharing the earth and its bounty in a more equitable fashion can still stir the soul. The current stymied state of progress in social justice has begun to spark new revolutionary movements.  Marxism will no longer be the foundation of such movements and to date no adequate replacement has been proposed.  Like the Populist movement, modern revolutionaries are more likely to define themselves in terms of what they detest than what they embrace – Occupy Wall Street and the Antifas are good examples.  This type of revolutionary model is more angry than romantic, and will struggle to attract the necessary critical mass for any real change.

What seems clear to me is that violent revolution is no longer a good option for achieving positive change.  Violence amplifies the unpleasant traits of humankind and destroys the civil basis for progress.  Instead, we must slowly chisel and grind away at the stone of society like a renaissance sculptor, trusting that a form of great beauty will eventually emerge. But part of this effort to free our better angels must be a more enlightened understanding of the history of human revolution and the quest for social justice.  As in all human endeavor, much evil was afoot, but there were also many noble intentions.  We must learn from all of it.