Category Archives: Make a difference

A Forced Pause.

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Unfortunately I will need to take a bit of time off from this blog. After months of misdiagnoses and a change in GPs, my precious son is in Starship Hospital about to have major surgery. He already has had one invasive procedure and the big one comes tomorrow. It is absolutely heart-breaking to see him asleep on the table surrounded by surgeons and hooked up to tubes. He is in a lot of pain but is trying to be strong even though he, his mom and I are all frightened by what might happen in the worst case. We are doing our best to reassure him but fear sometimes get the better of mum and I.

If you can spare a thought for the Pablo clan, it will be appreciated. We feel that although we have confidence in the medical team at Starship, we need all the help that we can get.

Thanks.

Flashback Friday: Before paths diverged.

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This picture was taken at an end of year celebration hosted in the early 2000s by the Green Party at a trade union hall on Great North Road. In it are three individuals whose paths crossed at that moment in time. One is a university lecturer. One is a university student who was a Green Party activist at the time. One is a young political commentator/stirrer/gadfly. At the time of the photo the three were connected by the fact that the student was in the professor’s class on Revolutions and Insurgencies and the commentator sat in on the class as well as interview the professor from time to time on political subjects. All were supporters of the Green Party at the time (the Donald, Fitzsimons, Tansczos, Bradford, Locke years when it was truly a “watermelon” party).

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The young guy was on the rise in media circles, the young activist was idealistic, energetic and enthusiastic in promoting environmental causes, and the academic was known more for his love of triathlons than anything else.

Flash forward twenty years. Who are they and what are they doing now?

A word on post-neoliberalism.

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I recently read a critique of the market-oriented economic theory known as “neoliberalism” and decided to add some of my thoughts about it in a series of short messages on a social media platform dedicated to providing an outlet for short messaging. I have decided to expand upon those messages and provide a slightly more fleshed out appraisal here.

“Neoliberalism” has gone from being a monetarist theory first mentioned in academic circles about the primacy of finance capital in the pyramid of global capitalism to a school of economic thought based on that theory, to a type of economic policy (via the Washington consensus) promoted by international financial institutions to national governments, to a broad public policy framework grounded in privatisation, low taxation and reduction of public services, to a social philosophy based on reified individualism and decontextualised notions of freedom of choice. Instilled in two generations over the last 35-40 years, it has redefined notions of citizenship, collective and individual rights and responsibilities (and the relationship between them) in liberal democracies, either long-standing or those that emerged from authoritarian rule in the period 1980-2000.

That was Milton Friedman’s ultimate goal: to replace societies of rent-seekers under public sector macro-managing welfare states with a society of self-interested maximizers of opportunities in an environment marked by a greatly reduced state presence and unfettered competition in all social (economic, cultural, political) markets. It may not have been full Ayn Rand in ideological genesis but the social philosophy behind neoliberalism owes a considerable debt to it.

What emerged instead was societies increasingly marked by survivalist alienation rooted in feral capitalism tied to authoritarian-minded (or simply authoritarian) neo-populist politics that pay lip service to but do not provide for the common good–and which do not adhere to the original neoliberal concept in theory or in practice. Survivalist alienation is (however inadvertently) encouraged and compounded by a number of pre- and post-modern identifications and beliefs, including racism, xenophobia, homophobia and social media enabled conspiracy theories regarding the nature of governance and the proper (“traditional” versus non-traditional) social order. This produces what might be called social atomisation, a pathology whereby individuals retreat from horizontal solidarity networks and organisations (like unions and volunteer service and community agencies) in order to improve their material, political and/or cultural lot at the expense of the collective interest. As two sides of neoliberal society, survivalist alienation and social atomisation go hand-in-hand because one is the product of the other.

That is the reality that right-wingers refuse to acknowledge and which the Left must address if it wants to serve the public good. The social malaise that infects NZ and many other formally cohesive democratic societies is more ideological than anything else. It therefore must be treated as such (as the root cause) rather than as a product of the symptoms that it displays (such as gun violence and other anti-social behaviours tied to pathologies of income inequality such as child poverty and homelessness).

As is now clear to most, neoliberalism is dead in any of the permutations mentioned above. And yet NZ is one of the few remaining democratic countries where it is still given any credence. Whether it be out of wilful blindness or cynical opportunism, business elites and their political marionettes continue to blather about the efficiencies of the market even after the Covid pandemic has cruelly exposed the deficiencies and inequalities of global capitalism constructed on such things as “just in time production” and “debt leveraged financing” (when it comes to business practices) and “race to the bottom” when it comes wages (from a labour market perspective).

I shall end this brief by starting at the beginning by way of an anecdote. As I was trying to explain “trickle down” economic theory to an undergraduate class in political economy, a student shouted from the back seats of the lecture hall “from where I sit, it sure sounds more like the “piss on us” theory.

I could not argue with that view then and I can’t argue with it now. Except today things are much worse because the purine taint is not limited to an economic theory that has run its course, but is pervasive in the fabric of post-neoliberal societies. Time for a deep clean.

PS: For those with the inclination, here is something I wrote two decades ago on roughly the same theme but with a different angle. Unfortunately it is paywalled but the first page is open and will allow readers a sense of where I was going with it.

A test of civil society.

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The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed as a public health versus economic well-being argument, with the logic of infectious disease experts being that we need to accept short term pain in the form of social deprivation and loss of income in order to achieve long term societal gain once the infection has run it course. However, some business leaders argue that a prolonged shut-down of the productive apparatus will cause irreparable harm to the national economy out of proportion to the health risks posed by the pandemic, and thereby set back the country’s development by twenty years or more.

The lockdown is a classic test of the age old philosophical question behind the notion of the “tragedy of the commons:” Should we pursue the collective good by accepting self-sacrifice in the face of an invisible threat and uncertain common pay-off, or do we pursue immediate self-interest and opportunism rather than accept material and lifestyle losses amid the same uncertainties and invisible rewards? Needless to say, it is not a straight dichotomy of choice, but the poles of the dilemma are clear.

Another thing to consider is a principle that will have to be invoked if the disease spreads beyond the ability of the national health system to handle it by exceeding bed and ventilator capacity as well as the required amount of medical personnel due to CV-19 related attrition: lifeboat ethics. If the pandemic surpasses that threshold, then life and death decisions will have to be made using a triage system. Who lives and who dies will then become a public policy as well as moral-ethical issue, and it is doubtful that either government officials or medical professionals want to be placed in a position of deciding who gets pitched out of the boat. So, in a very real sense, the decisions made with regard to the tragedy of the commons have serious follow up effects on society as a whole.

One thing that has not been mentioned too much in discussions about the pandemic and the responses to it is the serious strain that it is placing on civil society. Much is said about “resilience” and being nice to each other in these times of “social distancing” (again, a misnomer given that it is a physical distancing of individuals in pursuit of a common social good). But there are enough instances of hoarding, price-gouging, profiteering–including by major supermarket chains–and selfish lifestyle behaviour to question whether the horizontal solidarity bonds that are considered to be the fabric of democratic civil society are in fact as strongly woven as was once assumed.

There is also the impact of thirty years of market economics on the social division of labour that is the structural foundation of civil society. Along with the mass entrance of women into the workforce came the need for nanny, baby-sitter and daycare networks, some of which were corporatised but many of which were not. Many of these have been disrupted by the self-isolation edict, to which can be added the shuttering of social and sports clubs, arts and reading societies, political and cultural organisations and most all other forms of voluntary social organisation. Critical services that rely on volunteers remain so rural fire parties, search and rescue teams, the coastguard and some surf lifesaving clubs are allowed to respond to callouts and maintain training standards. But by and large the major seams of civil society have been pulled apart by the lockdown order.

This is not intentional. The government wants the public to resume normal activities once the all clear is given. It simply does not know when that may be and it simply cannot spend resources on sustaining much of civil society’s infrastructure when there are more pressing concerns in play. The question is whether civil society in NZ and other liberal democracies is self-reproducing under conditions of temporary yet medium-termed isolation. The Italians hold concerts from their balconies, the Brazilians bang pots in protest against their demagogic populist leader, Argentines serenade medical and emergency workers from rooftops and windows. There is a range of solidarity gestures being expressed throughout the world but the deeper issue is whether, beneath the surface solidarity, civil society can survive under the strain of social atomisation.

I use the last term very guardedly. The reason is because during the state terror experiments to which I was exposed in Latin America, the goal of the terrorist state was to atomise the collective subject, reducing people to self-isolating, inwards-looking individuals who stripped themselves of their horizontal social bonds and collective identities in order to reduce the chances that they became victims of the terrorists in uniforms and grey suits. The operative term was “no te metas” (do not get involved), and it became a characteristic of society during those times. At its peak, this led to what the political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell labeled the “infantilisation” of society, whereby atomised and subjugated individuals lived with very real fears and nightmares in circumstances that were beyond their control. Their retreat into isolation was a defence against the evil that surrounded them. Today, the threat may not be evil but it is real and pervasive, as is the turn towards isolation.

I am not suggesting that there is any strong parallel between state terrorism in Latin America and the lockdown impositions of democratic governments in the present age. The motivations of the former were punitive, disciplinary and murderous. The motivations of the latter are protective and prophylactic.

What I am saying, however, is that the consequences for civil society may be roughly comparable. Many Latin American societies took years to reconstitute civil society networks after the dictatorial interludes, although it is clear that, at least when compared to advanced liberal democracies, the strength of democratic norms and values was relatively weak in pretty much all of them with the exception of Uruguay and Costa Rica. Yet, in places like NZ, democratic norms and values have been steadily eroded over the last thirty years, particularly in their collective, horizontal dimension.

The reason is ideological: after three decades of imposed transmission, market-driven logics vulgarly lumped together as “neoliberalism” are now a dominant normative as well as structural trait in NZ society. The country has many, if not more hyper-individualistic self-interested maximisers of opportunities in the population as it does those with a commonweal solidarity orientation. Lumpenproletarians populate both the socioeconomic elite as much as they do the subaltern, marginalised classes. Greed is seen by many as a virtue, not a vice, and empathy is seen as a weakness rather than a strength.

The ideological strength of the market-oriented outlook is seen in business responses to the pandemic. In NZ many want bailouts from a government that they otherwise despise. Many are attempting to opportunistically gain from shortages and desperation, in what has become known as “disaster capitalism.” Some try to cheat workers out of their government-provided wage relief allowances, while others simply show staff the door. Arguments about keeping the economy afloat with State subsides compete with arguments about infectious disease spread even though objectively the situation at hand is first a public health problem and secondly a private financial concern.

The importance of civil society for democracy is outlined by another political scientist, Robert Putnam, in a 2000 book titled “Bowling Alone.” In it he uses the loss of civic virtue in the US (in the 1990s) as a negative example of why civil society provides the substantive underpinning of the political-institutional superstructure of liberal democracies. Putnam argues that decreases in membership in voluntary societies, community associations , fraternal organisations, etc. is directly related to lower voter turnouts, public apathy, political disenchantment and increased alienation and anomaly in society. This loss of what he calls “social capital” is also more a product of the hyper-individualisation of leisure pursuits via television, the internet (before smart phones!) and “virtual reality helmets” (gaming) rather than demographic changes such as suburbanisation, casualisation of work, extension of working hours and the general constraints on “disposable” time that would be otherwise given to civic activities as a result of all of the above.

The danger posed by the loss of social capital and civic virtue is that it removes the rich tapestry of community norms, more and practices that provide the social foundation of democratic governance. Absent a robust civil society as a sounding board and feedback mechanism that checks politician’s baser impulses, democratic governance begins to incrementally “harden” towards authoritarianism driven by technocratic solutions to efficiency- rather than equality-based objectives.

The current government appears to be aware of this and has incrementally tried to recover some of the empathy and solidarity in NZ society with its focus on well-being as a policy and social objective. But it could not have foreseen what the pandemic would require in terms of response, especially not the disruptive impact of self-isolation on the fabric of civil society.

It is here where the test of civil society takes place. Either it is self-reproducing as an ideological construct based on norms and values rooted in collective empathy and solidarity, or it will wither and die as a material construct without that ideological underpinning. When confronting this test, the question for NZ and other liberal democracies is simple: is civil society truly the core of the social order or is it a hollow shell?

Given the divided responses to this particular tragedy of the commons, it is hard for me to tell.

Parsing the Democratic Primaries.

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I am about to mail my overseas ballot to Florida so that it can be counted in the Democratic primary on March 17. In Florida you have closed as opposed to open primaries, which means that one must declare a party preference in order to vote in a party primary. Unlike open primaries, independents are excluded from primary voting in Florida (although they are allowed to vote in the general election in November). The restriction on primary voters impedes voting on local candidates and ballot initiatives, referenda and local ordinance amendments that are not included on the general ballot.

Because of this I registered as a Democrat in the early 2000s. I primary voted for Kerry in 2004, Clinton in 2008, Obama in 2012 and Sanders in 2016. My vote was based on rationales that included anyone against Bush 43 in 2004, a female over a dark-hued male in 2008 (because I thought that changing the gender of the presidency was more significant than the color of the guy in it), support for a good president under difficult circumstances in 2012 and support for a democratic socialist in 2016 (in order to pull the Democratic Party platform to the left when running against an unhinged maniac because the writing was on the wall by March that Trump was going to win the GOP nomination and my thought was that even if Bernie lost to Clinton it would force her to adopt some of his policy initiatives because she needed his supporters to vote for her). My selections lost the general in 2004, lost the primary in 2008, won general re-election in 2012 and lost the primary in 2016. Because the ballot is printed well in advance, I have a choice of sixteen candidates, most of whom dropped out of the race a while ago.

This year the Democratic primary campaign has two axis points. The first is generational, as elderly candidates (defined as those over 60) vie against younger ones. Biden, Sanders, Warren, Steyer and now Bloomberg are staffing the geriatric front, while Klobuchar and Buttigieg are what is left of the young guns. Of the oldies, none other than Sanders appears to have medical issues of consequence and all appear to attract support without regard to age. So agism will not be a factor in the election, especially given that Trump is in that age bracket as well.

The second axis is ideological. Warren and Sanders represent the “progressive” side of the Democratic coin, whereas Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer represent the pragmatic side.

Within these camps there are divisions as well. Sanders has long described himself as a democratic socialist and for many years campaigned and won elections as an independent, only joining the Democratic Party in 2016 (and again in 2019) in order to run for president (he continues to serve and run for re-election as the junior Senator from Vermont as an Independent and campaigns as a democratic socialist in that state). Warren is a social democrat, not opposed to capitalism per se but interested in humanising it. Like Sanders she is a junior Senator from a liberal Northeastern state (Massachusetts, where she replaced the temporary excuse for a Senator now serving as Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand, Scott Brown). Both have been effective legislators, although Warren is seen as a bit more ideological than Sanders within the confines of the Senate Democratic caucus and Sanders, despite his somewhat crusty personality, being more amendable to intra-party compromise.

Both of these candidates are challenging the Democratic establishment. They repudiate the corporate orientation of the Democratic National Committee and the “centrist” policies of the likes of the Clintons. Not withstanding support from the “Squad,” they are not particularly well-liked by their congressional peers or the party establishment but have mobilised strong grassroots support. Warren has a (now distanced) corporate background and has agreed to some SuperPAC (third party unlimited bundled) funding. Sanders has not and continues with his grassroots, small donor approach to campaign financing.

On the pragmatic side, there are two billionaires, Bloomberg and Steyer. They appeal to voters based on their business success and the fact that they are not conmen like Trump. Bloomberg is a former three term mayor of New York City, where his crime fighting policies have come under fire for being racist and discriminatory (the so-called “stop and frisk” policy targeting African and Latino young males). He also has been the subject of numerous sexual harassment complaints and lawsuits. Steyer has no political experience to speak of but also does not have the baggage associated with it.

I will not vote for either billionaire on principle given that the Democratic Party is supposed to be the party that defends workers within the US political system. As for the pragmatic non-businessmen, Biden is the quintecent Washington insider, an integral member of the corporate/centrist faction with the party. He has vast experience in many important roles, including that of Vice President under Obama. But his experience has been checkered and now hangs like an albatross across his neck when it comes to electoral appeal. While it is true that he is certainly a better alternative than Trump, he also seems to be losing a bit of his mental edge. It is one thing to be a deranged lunatic throwing insane red meat rants and tweets to his base while feathering the nest for his family, cronies and friends from the Oval Office (Trump). It is another to be seen as doddering when trying to convey maturity and seriousness of purpose. So Biden is not the guy for me.

Buttigieg and Konuchar are interesting. She is a former prosecutor turned Senator from a conservative north Midwestern state (Minnesota, where only the snow is whiter than the population). She is seen as bringing that good old midwestern practicality to her politics, and she works hard to be seen as the voice of reason given the limits of US political discourse. Buttigieg just ended his eight year term as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, the city where he was born and where he was widely popular except for in the African-American community (since he removed a popular African American police chief and condoned hard police tactics against minority suspects). The novelty of his candidacy resides in the fact that he is young (38), gay, and served as a military intelligence officer in Afghanistan in 2014. His positions largely mirror those of Klobuchar, and like her he campaigns on his centrism, common sense and a dedication to public service. The two of them project themselves as non-traditional but reasonable alternatives to the Orange Weasel as well as the leftists in their party. They tick a number of constituency boxes that are important for Democratic voters, so their appeal has the potential to transcend their policy proposals.

Conventional wisdom is that “socialists” cannot win US general elections. The DNC and mainstream corporate media are working hard to undermine the Sanders and Warren candidacies as “unelectable.” The pragmatists are trying to capitalise on this perception, warning that to nominate a leftists is to guarantee victory to Trump.

At one time apparently afraid of the threat posed by Biden, Trump now appears to believe the truth in the “no socialist” line, yet cleverly harps on how Sanders is getting a raw deal from the DNC and media. Remember that part of the reason Biden has fallen in the polls is that Trump’s smears against him and his son relating to the Ukraine, which resulted in Trump’s impeachment, have in some measure stuck. Now, with Biden trending down, Trump sees his easiest path to victory being a one on one with Sanders, contrasting his national populist bombast with the Senator’s critiques of the system as given.

We even have the Russians apparently wading into the mix, supporting both Trump and Sanders in their 2020 disinformation and hacking campaigns. This is apparently due to the fact that a) they were very successful in 2016 when implementing this “undermine from within” strategy in favour of Trump; and b) both Trump and Sanders are correctly seen as “disruptor” candidates, so no matter who wins so does the Russian subterfuge. Trump, of course, denies any Russian meddling and forced the resignation of intelligence officials who made the claims to Congress. Sanders has repudiated any and all Russian interference no matter who is favoured. Regardless, Russia has inserted itself into the election narrative in, yet again, a central way. Somewhere Stalin is smiling.

That is the background to my primary vote. My choice remains difficult. I am leaning towards a progressive, so it will have to be Warren or Sanders, again, so as to not only get one of them into office but to re-frame the parameters of the Democratic policy platform. But I have major problems with both. Sanders comes off, in my eyes, as a stooped over cranky guy with medical issues who is the political equivalent of the old man yelling “get off of my lawn.” He may be right on his policy prescriptions but he is somewhat off-putting, and his refusal to come clean on his recent heart attack and underlying condition may be exploited by Trump in the event that he wins the nomination.

Likewise, Warren reminds me of someone’s grandmother preaching a holier than thou gospel while glossing over some of the contradictions in her past. Trump has already given her a racist nickname and he and his operatives will go to town on her if she has any dirt in her past. Even so, her dismantling of Bloomberg in the Nevada debates was excellent and showed that she has the acuity and spine to go after powerful adversaries. She may have a chip on her shoulder for a variety of reasons, but if she can use that as a motivational force I say good on her.

Klobuchar and Buttigieg are more personally appealing and both seem likeable as well as articulate and competent. Trump is going to have a hard time attacking them on personal grounds unless there is something sordid in their past. Professionally, in spite of some rumblings about both of their records in public office, there appears to be nothing that is disqualifying. But they clearly have the corporate/media backing, with Buttigieg in particular appearing to attract major money from deep- pocketed interests. That is worrisome because, no matter how much certain well-heeled liberal elites hate Trump, their support comes with strings attached.

My preference would be to vote for president/vice-president tickets in order to get a balance amongst them. I regret that Kamala Harris dropped out of the race, because she seems like a very tough cookie from a liberal state who could could easily shred Trump in any head to head. Female and of color, she hits the identity politics checkmarks, but she is not progressive. Perhaps she is lining herself up for a VP run or a cabinet post, but I question whether either of those options is better than where she is now as Senator from California.

Sanders and Warren will not likely share a ticket together. It is unlikely that they would go with any of the pragmatists unless Klobuchar or Buttigieg change their policy proposals. Biden might go with the younger pragmatists but they are unlikely to welcome him onto the ticket, and the progressives will run from him. A Klobuchar/Buttigieg ticket or vice versa would be an attractive proposition for many people in spite of the limited regional appeal they have outside of the midwest. Individually, however, they will have a hard time appealing to progressive Democratic voters.

So a major question I have is about the feasibility and popular appeal of a progressive/progressive, pragmatic/pragmatic, progressive/pragmatic or pragmatic/progressive ticket in November. That question will not answered until after the Democratic Convention in July, so I have to return to who I prefer for the top spot.

All of these possibilities rest against a backdrop of defensive voting. I mentioned this in posts about the 2016 election and I was wrong. What I said then was that voters from groups that Trump scapegoated and demonised would come out and vote against him in numbers, seeing Clinton as the lesser evil in that equation. Asians, Muslims, Hispanics, African Americans, LBQT folk, feminists, youth, leftists–I was sure that they would rally against the clear and present danger that was Trump back then. But they did not. Instead, they stayed home, thereby handing the victory to him (44 percent of eligible voters abstained from voting in the 2016 presidential election). Sure, a lot of this was due to the Russian disinformation campaign, including the leaked Clinton emails to Wikileaks and the FBI investigation into her communications security one month out from Election Day. But a lot had to do with disenchantment with the system in general and the lack of progressive, or at least sensible Democratic options.

I am not so sure that apathy will prevail in 2020. Trump is no longer a possibility but instead is a reality. The harm he has caused is tangible, not potential. Another four years of him will be, from the standpoint of Russian saboteurs, a strategic wet dream. So it is possible that previously apathetic voters will come to the plate this time around and, if nothing else, use the lesser evil approach to vote against Trump’s re-election.

There is another thing to consider. in 2016 the Republican National Community and GOP political establishment all argued that a centrist was needed in order to defeat the Democrats. A ‘safe pair of hands” with a stronger grasp on foreign policy and committed to the pursuit of trade, etc. was the key to success. Someone like Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Mitt Romney. The whole point was to demonstrate strength with a conservative tilt. Instead, they were sidelined by a xenophobic, bigoted sexual predator with narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies who made gutter-level, crass rightwing populist appeals to the stupidest and greediest segments of the voting population. That carried him first to victory over the GOP elites and then to victory over the mainstream establishment candidate (thanks Steve Bannon).

And then the GOP fell in line behind Trump, so the decent into hyper-partisan lunacy is now complete.

Perhaps then, it is the same with the Democrats. Perhaps the DNC is wrong and a centrist is not the answer to Trump. Perhaps the Democratic corporate elite and media centrists are not reading the pulse of the Democratic electorate correctly and have misjudged the thirst for real progressive change lying latent (and not so latent) in the land. Perhaps, having once been given hope, now there is real thirst for change, and that change starts with nominating a Democratic presidential candidate who can not only defeat the corporate-backed centrists and then Trump, but also defeat the institutional obstacles (say, in healthcare, immigration, education and foreign policy) now standing between meaningful reform and more of the same.

After all, the polls and the pundits suggest that the US electorate is more polarized than ever. So why would a centrist strategy work, especially when the other side has gone full tilt in favor of a demagogic Mad King?

In the meantime, who the heck am I going to vote for?

The end of small “d” democracy?

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As a part of the second generation of “transitologists” interested in the causes, processes and consequences of political regime change, I was exposed to a considerable amount of writing on democratic theory and practice. After all, if one is going to study the reasons for democratic collapse, authoritarian rise and fall and the re-emergence, restoration or first appearance of democracy, one should have a pretty good grasp on what democracy is and is not. In recent years the theme amongst third and fourth generation transitologists includes the unfortunate subject of democratic decline, something that is global in nature and has been evident in mature as well as relatively nascent or immature democracies over the last decade or so.

In a book that I wrote about the relationship between the State, organised labour and capitalists in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in the transition from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s, I used my understanding of democratic theory to break down what it looks like in practice. I distinguished between procedural democracy, which is the (electoral) means by which incumbents of political decision making positions are selected, and substantive democracy, which are the institutional, social and economic dimensions underpinning the procedural level and which gives it intrinsic merit.

Without going into the type of detail that a 400 page book carries in it, it is at the substantive level where small “d” democracy signs in. Large “D” Democracy basically refers to the procedural and institutional bases of a particular form of elected political representation–rule of law, separation of powers, universal franchise, horizontal and vertical accountability etc. Although there is overlap with the institutional dimension, small “d” democracy refers to societal and material traits that are inculcated in a politically organised collectivity–a polity, in other words–and which have the potential to become self-reproducing. Over time, concepts like equality, fairness, consensus and consent, mutual respect, toleration and compromise move from being ideals or notions about the proper social order to being baseline characteristics of small “d” societies. These values do not just inform collective decision-making at all levels. They imbue individual behaviour with a personal ethos grounded in them.

In short, the substance of democracy is ideological, which determines the values upon which its institutions and procedures are founded.

Entire careers have been made studying the procedural and institutional bases of democratic political systems. Electoral analysis, polling, constitutional law, legislative studies, party politics, executive relations with the judiciary and legislature–all of these fields (and more) have focused on the mechanics, interactions, processes and personalities involved in the formal side of big “D” Democracies. They assume away, ignore or take for granted that their subjects are underpinned by an ideological foundation grounded in collective agreement on behaviour and representation. This misses a fundamental aspect of the social construct known as democracy.

Put another way, focusing on the procedural-institutional aspects of democracy without considering its substantive dimensions is akin to studying a hollow shell.

Consider this: we repeatedly hear about the importance of the “rule of law,” that no person is above the law and that democracies are founded on laws, not people. But a universal law prohibiting people from sleeping on park benches in fact only prohibits some people from doing so. The practical impact of universal laws, to paraphrase Gramsci, descends through a complex tissue of class, racial, ethno-religious, gender and other vulgarisations on its way to becoming enforceable edicts, with the effect being that law enforcement is often non-universal or discriminatory in nature. In order for universal laws to be universal in application, there needs to an underpinning consensus that they be so regardless of circumstance.

That is where the substance of democracy–its ideological foundations translated into everyday social practice–matters. And that is also where the core problem of democracy currently lies.

International polling over the last decade or so shows a steady erosion in support for democracy and, more alarmingly, greater dissatisfaction with democracy amongst younger people. The erosion of support for democracy is linked to the emergence of elected authoritarians like Dutarte, Bolsonaro, Orban and Erdogan, but also in the rise of the Alt-Right and various nationalist populist movements across the globe. The problems of of democracy appear to be both institutional and ideological.

Institutionally, most advanced democracies display signs of sclerosis. Lobbying, corruption, clientelism, patronage, gerry-mandering, vote-buying and voter suppression, rank partisanship and other pathologies have turned the institutional edifice upon which most current political democracies are perched extremely brittle. That has increased public cynicism and distrust about politics and politicians to the point that the disapproval is of the system as a whole, not just a few “bad apples.” That in turn has made contemporary democracies susceptible to manipulation by external actors using disinformation and psychological operations campaigns in order to exploit social cleavages and further sow divisions from within, knowing that these will be reproduced rather than ameliorated by the political class.

The problem is compounded by the elimination of what used to be called civics education in secondary schools. Replaced by non-critical “social studies” programs that fail to address both the structural and ideological bases of democracy, recent generations of students have no real grasp on what democracy entails. Among the worst areas of confusion are the notion of “rights,” especially with regards to the comparative rights of majorities and minorities and the exercise of freedom of speech. This occurs against a backdrop of increased vulgarisation of social discourse at all levels, so what used to pass as informed debate on contentious issues has now descended into shouting matches and ad hominem attacks from the halls of parliament to local board meetings, ratepayer assemblies and a host of community AGMs ( I write this as I am in the process of filling out my local government voting papers and in light of what I have seen and heard about recent “meet the candidate” events).

More broadly, the focus on rights without regard to responsibilities ignores the mutual second best trade-offs that lie at the core of democratic social culture. To recall: in a democracy no one gets everything they want all of the time but everyone gets some of what they want most of the time, with the guarantee of being able to revisit contentious issues at regularly scheduled intervals (politically, in the form of elections and referenda). That is the core of small “d” democracy: acceptance and reproduction of the values of toleration and compromise based on notions of quality and fair play.

That is the crux of the matter. Large “D” Democracy persists in that it has a procedural and institutional facade with much history and to which much attention is paid. But it is substantively corroded from within and without, and worst yet, it lacks the ideological glue that would allow it to continue to survive as a genuine political alternative to various forms of authoritarianism.

Therein lies the the problem. From politicians to institutions to individuals, the small “d” value system that once sustained big “D” Democracy appears to have diminished into a faint echo. What is left within big ‘D” Democracies is partisanship, opportunism and authoritarianism disguised as problem solving, “common sense” and freedom of expression. Rather than civic minded people of virtue interested in public service, big “D” Democratic politics is increasingly populated by charlatans, demagogues, self-interested grifters, con artists and hypocritical reprobates of various stripes.

With politicians acting in bad faith, partisan cleavages deepening, foreign actors (state and non-state) manipulating news and younger generations ignorant of what democratic values are and are not, it should not be surprising that as a cultural norm, small “d” democracy is on the wane.

Even so, there is room for hope. Things like student climate activism, Code Pink direct action campaigns and the spontaneous activities of a wide range of community groups are signs that there is a thirst for small “d” democracy around the world. But that requires returning to the notion of democratic values as a starting point for any discussion about collective action, political participation and interest group representation. It requires confronting undemocratic bullies who lead local government bodies and volunteer organisations as well as those in the halls of parliament. It needs, in other words, a re-appreciation of the basic social value structure that overrides collective and individual egotism and which forges fresh horizontal solidarity ties between groups as well as their vertical ties to political representatives.

That is a matter of education, not politics.

First a massacre, then the push back.

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During the first hours and days after the terrorist attack in Christchurch, I tried to be optimistic about what could come out of the event. I saw it as a window of opportunity and teaching moment, a time to grieve, heal and reflect on what New Zealand is as a society. I thought that we could finally confront the elephant in the room: that underneath the veneer of tolerance and egalitarianism there is a dark underbelly in New Zealand. It is called racism.

For the first week it seemed that the opportunity was going to be seized. The government responded with empathy and compassion for the victims and with decisiveness when it came to banning certain types of military-style weapons and parts that can be used to modify hunting weapons into military-style ones. It is pondering how to give the killer a fair trial without turning it into a martyr-making propaganda circus. It is reviewing hate speech laws and has ordered a Royal Commission inquiry into how the attack happened and the intelligence failures that may have contributed to it. The majority of the nation followed its lead and demonstrated that most Kiwis are, in fact, decent people.

However, in the ensuing days the national conversation has been side-tracked. After a period of silence or contrition, rightwing outlets are back to their old enabling games. Outlets like the virulently Islamophobic Whale Oil and slightly more moderate blogs have enforced some degree of moderation when it comes to the language used by authors and commentators, but the hateful tone toward the “Other” remains the same when read between the lines. The rightwing rallying cry is defence of free speech, in which the ruse used is to deliberately conflate protected offensive speech with hate speech in order to demonstrate that “liberal” democratic values are under siege by overzealous Lefties using the tragedy and their control of the state apparatus to impose their will on dissenters. This risable argument is supported by some on the venerable Left who seem to be more concerned about defending the rights of nasty white people rather than consider the fact that it is those people who facilitated and enabled the nasty white guy’s mass murder of a bunch of brown folk whose sole crime was to exist (and who made a point when doing so by gunning them down when they were practicing their faith in their houses of worship).

Diversionary tactics aside, let us be clear. When it comes to free versus hate speech the issue is simple: any speech that incites, encourages, supports, applauds or otherwise instigates or excuses violence against individuals or communities because of who they are (as opposed to anything they have done, although even there the call to violence is debatable), has crossed the line from protected speech into hate speech. Offensive speech remains protected, but the urging of violence is not. The issue is not about causing offence; it is about causing harm.

The gun lobby also has decided that amnesia is the best part of public virtue so now moans and whines about “law-abiding” people losing their gun rights thanks to the government’s legislative reforms, conveniently forgetting that the killer was a law-abiding loser until the moment he stepped out of his car down the street from the Masjid al-Noor on Deans Avenue. Here too, the issue is simple (and I urge readers to look up my blog colleague Lew on Twitter to see his very reasoned explanations of the matters at stake). Tightening of licensing requirements and enforcement of laws governing purchase of semi-automatic weapons and removal of conversion kit and military-style weapons does not infringe on the privileges of the gun-owning majority (note that it is a privilege to own a gun, not a right no matter what the bloody NRA would have us believe). The law changes do not prevent anyone from using guns as tools to target shoot and kill critters. It just helps lower the human body count when a gun owner goes off the rails (do not get me started on the “but then only criminals will have such guns” argument because that is a matter for strict law enforcement, and law enforcement must have the will to, well, strictly enforce the law rather than play nice with gangs and assorted other bad guys).

Then there are the closet racists who have emerged into the light like the Hamilton city councillor and Immigration officer (?!), who besides ranting on Facebook (a prime vector for hate speech in spite of recent bans on white supremacists) about immigrant “scum” in Europe after the Paris terrorist attacks now says without a hint of irony that NZ needs to “move on” from the Christchurch event. He is joined by a-holes like Brian Tamaki, who claimed that the call to prayer on the day of national remembrance a week after the attack was proof the Sharia was being imposed on NZ. He appears to not be the only non-Pakeha religious leader (if you can call a fraudster con artist that) with this sentiment, as I have been told by informed community members that Islamophobia is very much a staple part of sermons in some Pasifika Christian churches.

Assorted talkback hosts and politicians are now in full “whataboutism?” mode, trying to equate the evils of Muslim extremists (and Islam itself) with those of other fanatics (while conveniently avoiding their ideological cause). This follows the denialism of such (perhaps as of yet closeted) politicians as Gerry Brownlee and Lianne Dalziel, who claim (Brownlee in very pointed remarks directed at me) that they were unaware of any white supremacists in Christchurch or anywhere else in NZ. Sensing an opportunity, people with ideological personal and agendas are in full throat, be it as purported experts on gangs and terrorism or pushing lines such as that the 1881 assault on Parihaka is a comparable atrocity (in which no one died).

Let’s not muddy the waters. Arguments about gun control and free speech and the historical grievances that are part of the national story are all diversions from the essence of post 3/15 New Zealand. The core subject is that of racism and the cesspit of bigotry in which it festers, from the enabling head-nodders to the inciting megaphones to the keyboard cowards to the actual perpetrators of physical and psychological (yes, they exist) hate crimes against people who supposedly are “different.”

This is not just a problem with a few skinheads. It is a problem for all. Some Pakeha hate Maori. Some Maori hate Chinese. Some Chinese hate Polynesians and some Polynesians hate Palangi. Some Maori and Pakeha hate Chinese and some Chinese reciprocate the feeling. Some hate Muslims and some hate Jews. Some hate Muslims, Jews and anyone who is brown, black or “yellow.” Some hate gays, lesbians and transgender people. Some hate red heads. Some hate the notion of equality when it usurps patriarchy or heteronormative values. Some hate is individual, some of it is institutional and some is systemic. Some hate involves relationships and asymmetries of power, but not always. Hate comes in multiple cross-cutting dimensions that serve as the foundation for ongoing bigotry and racism. In contemporary Aotearoa it may be a minority sentiment that is fractiously manifest rather than uniformly presented, but it is the wretched garden in which the bitter fruit of bigotry and racism are sown and reaped. And it is endemic in NZ.

THAT is what the national conversation should be about. That is what our children should be taught about. That is what the enablers, accomplices and purveyors of racism must be confronted with. This is no longer a time when we can look the other way, say “she’ll be right” and hope that the unpleasant stuff just goes away.

3/15 changed all that, and it is time to stand up and be counted. And being counted is not to just have academic panel discussions and government inquiries and commemorations. It is about confronting racism and bigotry wherever it rears its nasty head and however it is specifically manifest: on the streets, in buses, in shops, in schools, in sports clubs and volunteer organisations, in churches, in local politics, on-line, on talkback radio and in town halls and community fora–whenever the trolls rise there must be righteous people willing to call them out for what they are: ignorant fearful losers looking for scapegoats for their own failures in life.

It is hard to confront someone, especially if they are bigger or in groups. So strategies must be developed to help the average person perform this important civic duty. That means gaining the support of and involving the authorities so that complaints can be made and charges laid without undue risk to the good people calling out the antisocial misfits. Because if all we do is talk about what a bummer racism is and then go back to our own self-interested lives unwilling to actually walk the walk of daily anti-racist conviction, then we truly are a nation of sheep.

Rest thee well, Greg.

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TVNZ journalist and news reader Greg Boyed died this week while on holiday in his wife’s home country, Switzerland. Unknown to me and many others, he was fighting depression and it appears that it got the best of him.

I knew Greg professionally because he interviewed me a few times. But I knew him personally as well because his wife and son attended the same playschool that I did with my son for a couple of years. Greg would come by regularly to share parental duties and he and I would reflect on the world of children and the larger world around us. From those conversations and my professional interactions with him, I can say that Greg was a good man with a keen mind and a fair heart, an honest journalist and a loving father. I am deeply saddened to see him go and I grieve for his widow and son.

In a business full of poseurs and shills, Greg was the real deal. He will be missed not just by his colleagues but by his audiences as well.  He is the second journalist friend of mine who has departed this realm in recent months, in similar circumstances. I can only despise the darkness that comes upon such talented and decent people and can only hope that others going through what they did can find the help that they need in order to carry on well before the darkness finally envelopes them.

May his whanau find comfort in the legacy he has left behind and in the affection and respect he received from a broad swathe of people.

Rest easy my friend.

In the US, what is needed is a Broad Front.

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The mass murder of 17 high school students and teachers in Florida at the hands of a deranged gunman has once again prompted public outcry about the need for better gun control in a country where gun-related violence is at epidemic levels. Foremost amongst those leading the charge for legislative reform in and around the 2nd amendment are teenagers, led by classmates of those killed and supported by a legion of kids nation-wide who have decided that they will do what their parents could or would not do: confront the National Rifle Association and the politicians in its pocket on the issue of who should have access to firearms, and which firearms should be made legally available to the citizenry.

Sadly, noble intentions notwithstanding, I fear that their efforts may be in vain and the movement will whither and die before any significant change can be made. Think of it this way. In this instance we have a mentally ill teenager kill other teenagers and staff at his former school. Teenagers are largely good if difficult to deal with, but there are enough of them (such as the killer) who push the boundaries of acceptable social convention for nothing more than self absorbed thrills. So one could say that not all of them are the precious flowers they are now being made out to be and that the loss of some teenagers (even if not these), while tragic, does not actually represent a complete waste of untapped human potential. I do not mean to be insensitive or cruel, but instead am trying to put things into context.

Because there are those other incidents to consider. For example, what about Sandy Hook? There 20 primary school kids were murdered along with six staff. These were little kids, still innocent, still wondrous, still untouched and untainted by the distractions of teenage life and attractions of the adult world. And yet, even as then president Obama tried to get the Republican controlled Congress to do something when it came to mentally ill people having legal access to semi-automatic weapons, nothing–as in zero–got done. A movement in their memory was started and yet it failed to gain wide-spread traction across the country. Little kids–precious, innocent kids– were murdered and nothing was done. So why do we think that the deaths of some teenagers will suddenly change the terms of any national discussion about guns?

I suggest that it will not change unless the teenage #NeverAgain movement joins forces with other social movements in what can be called a Broad Front (or, as the Maoists used to say in its original incarnation, “United Front”). The objective is to join together otherwise seemingly disparate groups in common cause. That is because if the #NeverAgain crowd go it alone they can be isolated and divided from, if not against, other mass based collective actors seeking systemic and institutional reform. This type of stove-piping or siloing makes divide and conquer tactics on the part of the status quo easier to accomplish, especially when the teenagers in question are not monolithic on the subject of gun control and may not have the type of national reach that they aspire to (say, for example, amongst adolescents in North Dakota, Idaho, West Virginia or Wyoming, where the gun and hunting culture is ideologically hegemonic).

Instead, what the kids in the #NeverAgain movement need to do is establish links with groups such as Black Lives Matter, the #TakeaKnee anthem protesters, the Women’s March on Washington, LGBT groups, unions and professional associations (including those that represent professional athletes, musicians and other artists), student governments, Hispanic, Arab, African-American, Asian and other identity organisations, religious entities, political organisations, pacifists and peace advocates, medical and psychiatric associations and lobbying groups, chambers of commerce, even local governments. The common cause is rejection of the existing gun culture and the agents of death that represent it in politics, to include the NRA and the media types and politicians who parrot its lines. The Broad Front can then rally around a few simple, good sense-based propositions regarding the who/how/what and whens of gun ownership in a diverse and democratic (as of yet) society. The unifying thread in both facets is the belief that the mental, physical and social costs of the current gun ownership regime far outweigh whatever benefit it may have in terms of personal and collective safety, and that since most of the costs are paid by taxpayers while the benefits are accrued by weapons manufacturers and dealers, the interest groups that represent them and some individuals rather than society as a whole, the current gun culture is reactive rather than proactive in its approach to commonweal costs and biased in favour of death merchants rather than children.

Interestingly, there is a parallel and example provided by the Argentine “Nunca Mas” (Never Again) movement that emerged from the ashes of the military dictatorship of the 1970s and early 1980s and which grouped a wide swathe of organisations in the effort to find justice for those victimised by the junta and to put an end to the culture of impunity that led to the so-called “dirty war” in which so many innocent lives were lost. In name and in broader intent, this is exactly what the English hashtag eponym movement is all about.

Organizing a Broad Front around the #NeverAgain movement will be hard to do but that is what collective action is all about–organizing people by making them think outside of their own personal circumstances and in terms of the collective good. For the #NeverAgain movement there has to be a conscious, deliberate and systematic effort to reach out and establish horizontal solidarity ties with other mass-based organisations and collective agents with agendas for change. There are few subjects that can unite a wide array of ideologically diverse and often narrowly-defined interest and activist groups in a heterogeneous society such as that of the US, but if there is one that can do so, it is the issue of gun control.

And a Broad Front can be made from that.

Goodbye to a good soul.

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Yasmine Ryan died this past week in Istanbul. She was only 34. She was an intrepid, dedicated, courageous and honest journalist, someone who unlike so many others vying for attention in the New Zealand media landscape, went out and did the type of serious investigative reporting that is now all but absent in her country of birth. Her death is not only a loss to her family and friends. It is a loss to the journalistic profession as well as New Zealand’s reputation for providing impartial perspectives on matters of political and social import world-wide.

Yasmine was a student of mine when we were at the University of Auckland. She went on to work at Scoop here in NZ, then Al-Jazeera and other outlets in the Middle East. Before her death she was working for TRT World, the Turkish international television news service. Her articles appeared in many important publications, including the Guardian, Independent, Sunday Star Times, Washington Post, LA Times, New York Times, Middle East Eye and Foreign Policy, and she was a contributor to outlets such as CNN, CBC, NZ National Radio and NZ TV One News. She co-authored a book about the Ahmed Zaoui case in New Zealand, helped produce three documentaries on contemporary Arabic politics and society and was a 2016 World Press Institute Fellow in the US who most recently had been elected to the board of the International Association of Women in Television and Radio. Fluent in French and English and well versed in Arabic and Spanish, she lived in France, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia before her move to Turkey a little over a year ago.  She traveled exhaustively and had a global network of friends and professional contacts who are now left to mourn her loss and the void that she left behind.

Yasmine was and is a special inspiration to women entering the journalistic profession. Her desire was not to work her way up to talking head status on the local news by reporting on cats in trees and celebrity sightings. She was not interested in cozying up to politicians, yukking it up on breakfast shows and posing on red carpets at awards shows.  Instead, her focus was on providing an outlet for forgotten voices and views seldom aired in mainstream Western outlets, and to offer in-depth analysis of events and trends that often received no more than cursory coverage outside of the places in which they occurred. Endowed with great personal courage, she left the comfort of her homeland to become an freelancer in a region not known for its encouragement of independent women in that profession. Her writing about what became known as the “Arab Spring” and its aftermath cemented her reputation as a first-rate reporter in North Africa and the Middle East, and her subsequent work confirmed that she was an extraordinary talent even at such a young age. That makes her departure all the more difficult to understand.

A GiveaLittle page has been set up in her memory in order to help her family cover the expenses of returning her home. It can be found here. Please consider donating.

May your eternal rest be a peaceful one my friend. You made a difference.