What Motivates People?

I was just watching an episode of The Company You Keep, a new drama on ABC television in 2023, in which the main character, a conman, says that everyone is motivated by three things: money, power, and respect. I think that over simplifies it. I believe that fear and love are also great motivators for many people, for some being understood and accepted for who they are (which is I suppose related to "respect") is a motivator, and for a few faith might be a motivator.  Mulling about this discussion of motivation turned my thoughts to Tricia Cotham and what motivates her. 

Tricia Cotham, in case there is anyone out there living under a rock, is a 44 year old woman who ran as a Democrat for the North Carolina House of Representatives in 2022 and won, only to announce earlier this month (April 4, 2023) that she is formally switching her party from Democratic Party to Republican Party. The switch of her one vote gives the Republican party veto proof majorities in both houses, something they have long desired in dealing with North Carolina's governor, a Democrat. Democrats in her district, in North Carolina and across the nation are outraged that a candidate who presented herself as a liberal Democrat, squarely in favor of abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, higher minimum wages, health care as a right, and other major liberal issues, has switched sides and is now supporting Republican legislation to restrict those rights. 

So what was Tricia Cotham's motivation for this move. Her explanation at her press conference in early April was "bullying" by Democrats. To be honest, this doesn't pass the basic "smell test" or BS meter. This is a woman who spent ten years in the North Carolina legislature previously, from 2007 to the end of 2016, during which time both her words and her actions, the legislation she sponsored and that which she voted for, placed her clearly on the liberal side. Her 2022 campaign materials, her website, her campaign speeches all repeated the themes that she had supported during her previous years in politics. It is ridiculous to think that less than two months of so called "bullying" could offset an entire lifetime of political positions. Keep in mind also that while her official announcement of party change came April 4, there were actually indicators (on Instagram and other social media) that she was joining the GOP as early as February, and that in January at the beginning of the session, the Republican Speaker of the NC House, had given her chair of a major committee, something not normally given to members of the minority party. Then there is her voting record this year. There are a few votes in which she aligned with Democrats, but there are also votes where she aligned with Republicans. 

If we want to find Cotham's motivation, I think we have to ignore her facile complaints about bullying in the few months of this year, and look instead into the six years between her leaving North Carolina politics (end of 2016) and her return in 2022. There are several things that show up in the public record that might give us some clues. 

First there's why she left politics in 2016. In 2015, Tricia Cotham made an official announcement that she was not going to seek re-election to the North Carolina House in 2016. The reasons that she gave in her press conference were that her oldest child (5 at the time) was entering school the next year and that she wanted to spend more time with her family. However, some months later we learned that really wasn't the reason, as she instead launched a campaign for U. S. House of Representatives in 2016. That bid died in the Democratic primary in 2016 when she came in a poor 3rd behind Democratic incumbent Alma Adams. So she left North Caroline politics. 

Two things that public sources tell us about Tricia Cotham in the six years between 2016 and 2022 are that she and her husband divorced and that she was became very ill with COVID19.  During her tenure in office the first time, Tricia Cotham married Jerry Meek a lawyer who was chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, a position he had to resign due to her holding office. Meek is the father of their two boys. An article about the two of them emphasizes that an important part of their bond was their passion for politics and involvement with the North Carolina Democratic Party. 

In February 2022, before she had filed as a candidate, Tricia Cotham gave an interview with WSOC-TV about her struggles as a long-haul COVID 19 victim. In the interview Cotham was described as a "prominent former Mecklenburg County lawmaker". Cotham was suffering from her third time battling COVID (having gotten sick again in January 2022) despite having been fully vaccinated and boosted. She described herself as in "a lot of pain. My lungs hurt. I'm mentally drained."   In the interview she stressed the long term damage of blood clots and damage to her lungs, and how difficult daily life was. Her purpose in giving the interview was to stress the dangers of COVID and the reality of the long term damage that the disease could do.  There are in fact, a number of interviews that Cotham gave in February and March of 2023. Somewhere between the first one and those in later March, she had filed to run again for the N C House. In one interview, in very early March, she specifically referred to "receiving a call asking her to run" and how that call had that request had helped her in her recovery by giving her a purpose and a focus again. As March progresses, however, her answers on why she decided to run again, mention conversations with friends and family, but making the decision on her own, as a way of giving her life meaning again. There have been numerous indicators since the 2023 session began that COVID continues to make daily life difficult for Cotham, and she has missed a number of votes (a few crucial to maintaining Vetoes) because of COVID related medical appointments. 

So thinking about motivation again, it is probably not power that drives Cotham. The district in which she ran and won, is strongly Democratic. She is highly unlikely to win another term, even as an incumbent. So she did not do this to further her political career. She is most likely aware that the change in party has probably made her a one term representative. But I also suspect that she realized fairly quickly that long term COVID was impairing her ability to do the job of representative - she may have even realized that before she was sworn in, because campaigning is not an easy job.  The big question is did she know that before she even started the campaign: did she go into it knowing that she was going to switch parties, and that this was a short term gig? When did she change and what motivated her? 

Trumpers' "Swamp" Is Not The NYT's "Swamp"

 The New York Times, as part of their long series about Donald Trump's finances have done an excellent analysis of the ways in which he has used the presidency to enrich himself and his friends in Trump's Swamp published Saturday October 10, 2020.  This use of the term "swamp" in connection to politics and Washington, D. C. has been around for some time. In this view the swamp is the hoards of lobbyists from industries looking to gain some favor for their company or industry, looking to increase the profits of business. 

However, I have come to the conclusion over the past four years that Trump supporters (I started to say people on the right, but I'm not at all sure that's the same thing anymore), have an entirely different definition of the word "corruption" and an extremely different idea of what constitutes "the swamp"  than what I or the New York Times or probably most Americans would hold. 

The idea of a "swamp" that needs to be drained and the concept of a "deep state" seem to be intertwined by Trump supporters.  Trump supporters see the problem being the vast army of highly educated, specially trained, knowledgeable, experienced, mostly politically neutral, bureaucratic professionals that fill the ranks of public service.  This entrenched bureaucracy made up of experts has long been a bulwark against radical change (of any kind in any direction). Principles of formal rationality, a mass of laws and regulations, provide inertia against radical change. 

Trump supporters see this inertia against change problematic and want it gone. They see something wrong about people having a life long professional career in a government agency, whether they are scientists, data analysts, economists, law enforcement, social workers, postal workers, or anything else. This great pool of talent that actually staffs and makes government work is the "swamp" to Trump supporters. This is what they see as "corrupt," not the manipulation of government decision-making to increase private profit of individuals, businesses or corporations. As long as those individuals, businesses or corporations get some of their money from other non-governmental sources, this seems to be okay with Trump supporters. The manipulation of government decisions for private gain is viewed positively by Trump supporters, this is how they think government is suppose to work.  It is the scientists and engineers, the park rangers, accountants, social workers, lawyers and many other public servants that they consider to be inappropriately sucking at the federal teat. 

This idea that the principles of formal rationality, a mass of laws and regulations, provide inertia against radical change, has been long enshrined in critical Marxist theory analysis of the state (James O'Connor for example in The Corporation and the State: Essays in the Theory of Capitalism and Imperialism, 1973), with the additional observation that over the past 150 years this bureaucracy has been built, rule by rule, procedure by procedure to protect the long term accumulation of capital by the ownership class and the long term legitimation of the entire state structure (through programs that help mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism), even when it frustrates the short term whims of right or left. 

Thus the  idea of a "deep state" (although not that term) that is a bulwark against radical change in government is not new, and integral to a Marxist or critical theory approach to the State. Moreover, it has been viewed as problematic because it makes difficult rapid, radical change that would expand rights, increase diversity, reduce inequality, or other issues dear to those on the left. The only thing that is really new now is that this recognition of the deep state and view of it as problematic has been taken up by those on the radical right who wish to drastically reduce rights, decrease diversity, increase inequality, etc. 

I Secretly Love Global Warming

  In recent weeks I have been thinking a lot about why we as a society are so reluctant to seriously fight to eliminate carbon emissions. I am an environmental voter. I look for and vote for candidates that take environmental science seriously, who appear to understand climate change, and understand that the only real solution is to dramatically cut emissions of green house gasses, and that our carbon economy. As an individual I purchased well insulated housing, use energy efficient heat pump, keep my thermostat at 67 degrees (60 at night) in the winter and wear extra layers. We bought Priuses more than ten years ago, and before that sought out the most fuel efficient cars possible. I recycle, reduce, reuse. Never replace items (including electronics) until they completely give out. As both and individual and a citizen, I try to be environmentally conscious about all my decisions.

But...you knew there was a but coming! But, I love having 60 degree weather the first week in January. I love that our winters here in eastern Kentucky are overall so much warmer and milder than they were twenty-five years ago. Yes, I absolutely know all the reasons why this is problematic. I understand how extremely mild weather in January, creates problems for plant life cycles, and how plant cycles can get out of sync with animal life cycles of hibernation, migration, mating and new generations. But I love it. My nearly 72 year old, arthritic joints love it.

I also know that we are not only getting warmer winters, we are getting hotter summers (which I don't like quite so much). Moreover, we are getting much frequent weather extremes, including the horrific flooding event that devastated eastern Kentucky in July 2022. I know all this. I know that the long term problems are going to be even worse. That the underpinnings of modern agriculture and modern society are threatened by climate change. Yet I still love these mild winters, I find myself cheering when I see that the NOAA three month climate predictions show high chance of warmer than usual weather this Jan/Feb/March. It also shows higher chance of precipitation, but as long as it's not snow...

All this suggests to me that the crusade against climate change has a significant problem, because I can hardly be the only person who intellectually grasps the problems of climate change, yet still on a personal day to day business enjoy its fruits especially in winter time. Which means that there are many of us, regardless of well we understand the problems created by climate change, might balk about making real  sacrifices in the comfort and convenience afforded by a fossil fuel economy that are really needed in order to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Return to Zombie America

image from Umair Haque's article
on the American Collapse

Outstanding article "Why We are Underestimating American Collapse" by Umair Haque in Eudaimonia  looks at some of the human costs such as the epidemic of school shootings, the "opioid epidemic," the declining life expectancy of rural, white Americans.

This all fits in with what I've started calling  "zombie America." Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) on the inside but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life.

Not like science fiction: the decline of America

 I began reading science fiction when I was nine, and it remains even today sixty-two years later still my favorite flavor of fiction, but science fiction has taught us all to expect the end of civilization to come abruptly, dramatically and unmistakably. This has made us collectively blind to the real world slow, drip-drip erosion of our society. 

A good example of what I'm talking about is the novel (and now HBO series) Station Eleven, a story of an apocalyptic pandemic and its aftermath. The novel published in 2014, shows the disease a deadly "flu" killing something like 90 percent of the people infected, and its impact in disrupting society occurs within days. People die in the streets, in their cars, everywhere all at once, and almost instantly modern society as we know it is gone.  Some time in the last month or so, I ran across someone (on Twitter or in an interview) using Station Eleven as the rubric against which our real world COVID pandemic should be marked as not very serious. I wish I'd written it down, saved the Tweet or bookmarked the interview because it epitomizes the way we've ingrained science fiction as the arbitrator of what is and what is not the end of the world.

Make no mistake about it, we are already in the midst of the fall and decline of the great American democratic, post-industrial society. It has been going on for some time now, at least two decades, but probably longer than that. Let me make it clear, I am NOT a MAGA, I am not talking about trying to recover some fake golden age of the past. I see as good and positive trends the exact things that MAGA people hate: increasing diversity, greater political, social and economic power for women and people of color, increasing openness to alternatives to rigid gender boundaries and the celebration of all kinds of sexual orientations. I applaud marriage equality and support the Black Lives Matter movement. 

However, even if the MAGA crowd is wrong about what ails our society and who or what is responsible, they are on to something when they express anxiety about the decline of America. Extreme inequality in wealth, political power, and social opportunities are fundamentally distorting and destroying our society. A very small class of people benefit hugely, others benefit slightly and the vast majority find themselves living on the edge with little voice and less influence. 

The COVID pandemic did not cause any of this, but it exacerbates all the existing problems, continues tiny piece by tiny piece to help tear away at the fabric of society. The pandemic which has killed less than one percent of our population has nonetheless shredded our health care system, scratches at our supply lines, and creates a huge new class of disabled persons, and is far from over in terms of its impacts, regardless of our intentions to just "live with it." 

This Election Is Like No Other

There have been many signs that this election of 2020 is different from any election in my lifetime. Certainly there have been plenty of pundits in newspapers and on cable news shows telling us all that this is different, that people's vote matters more this year than ever before. 

But now I have irrefutable evidence that this is so, because my friend Debby made a political post on Facebook. While it is true that all she did was share an opinion piece by Dan Rather that outlined why "This is a battle for American democracy as we've known it," this is the first time in twelve years on Facebook that I've ever seen Debby make any kind of political post. In fact, in the more than 40 years that we've been friends I don't think I've ever heard Debby say anything political ever. Debby's Facebook page is almost exclusively dedicated to her family (parents, siblings, husband, adult children, grandchildren, dogs, cats, hamsters, etc.) and to her favorite cause: getting parents to read to their children. And I love her for this. You don't know someone as well as I've known Debby for forty years and not be pretty sure about their values and where they might fall on the political spectrum. But this is the first time I've ever seen her take a stand, clearly alienates her from some of the other friends on her "friends list". 

The thing is that Debby's not my only long time friend to suddenly emerge this September after a life time of keeping their political views quiet and become vocal about the dangers of a second term for Donald Trump. I live (as does Debby) in a geographic region considered "Trump country" and over the past month I've been surprised at how many of my previously quiet friends have started speaking out, and courageously (and courteously) standing up to their many friends and family members about this election. This vocal turn by a growing number of my previously "apolitical" friends, declaring that this election is different, that this current president is a threat to the America that they hold dear, tells me far more than any mass media pundit or celebrity that this really is an election like no other. 

The United States Postal Service as a Symbol of the Nation

In 1985 scientist and science fiction writer David Brin published a post-apocalyptic novel entitled The Postman. If you are not a reader of science fiction you might be more likely to remember the movie directed and starred in by Kevin Costner in 1997. During the early weeks of the pandemic shutdown back in April, when Trump first started making noises about undermining the U. S. Postal Service, I decided to re-read the book. 

The key idea of The Postman is that the United States Postal Service is more than simply a service to deliver mail and packages, it is a powerful symbol of our united nation. So much so that in a fragmented post-apocalyptic world,  men wearing the uniform of the USPS and carrying mail from community to community can be enough to jump start the economic, social and political unification of a country. 

The U. S. Postal Service provides enormous practical benefit to Americans regardless of their economic or social standing. In fact the lower your economic and social status is the more you may benefit from the USPS. Every address and community, no matter how small or rural must be served by the USPS.  If you don't get home delivery and can't afford a post office box you can still get your mail general delivery at your local post office. We may not be big senders of cards and letters in this age of digital communications, but we still do business by mail, pay bills by mail, get checks by mail, get medications by mail. 

However, the real point here is that far above and beyond the practical benefits of the U. S. Postal Service is the symbolic role it plays in our sense of all being citizens in one nation.  There are several examples that highlight this. One is the degree to which Americans have mythologized the Pony Express, a service that lasted a mere 18 months (April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861), that tied the eastern United States to the relatively new state of California.  For something that lasted such a very short time, the Pony Express lives in the American psyche as the epitome of nationhood - physically linking states together across a wilderness. Another is the beloved Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street in which the U. S. Postal Service delivers bags and bags of mail addressed to Santa Claus to Kris Kringle in the court room. If the mighty U. S. Postal service, an official government agency  could recognize Kris Kringle as Santa Claus, then that was enough for the judge. 

All those people salivating with dollar signs in their eyes, over the prospect of carving up the business of the Post Office and distributing it to for-profit corporations, miss this very important fact about the U. S. Postal Service. It is far more than a set of services, it is part of the fabric of America, and it is a symbol of our national unity. 

If we lose the United States Postal Service we lose our national soul. 

What Trump Really Wants is to "Militarize" the Border

For the past three years, liberals and other opponents of Trump, have been ridiculing the idea of the border wall as an unnecessary, nonsensical, boondoggle. This ridicule has increased in the last month as "The Wall" has become the basis for government shutdown (currently in its 24 day - January 15, 2019). There has been a proliferation of memes and cartoons about ladders and stairs, as opponents try to point out the senselessness of a physical border, especially out in barren, desert and deserted areas of the border, when human ingenuity is easily capable of circumventing any humanly designed barrier. Opponents tried to show that it was a pointless exercise.

Turns out we, the opponents of the wall, were the ones that just weren't getting the point. We didn't get that Trump and his supporters never were talking about a physical barrier sitting out in the open by itself. They were always talking about a defended border, a "militarized" border, a border with guard towers, spotlights, and machine guns. A border where those who attempted to cross the barrier would be shot.

How in the f*k did I not grasp this before? This isn't about a wall, the wall is just the the first, necessary step, the place for soldiers to stand, a place for the machine gun turrets. He and his supporters want a 2-thousand mile "Berlin Wall" or Korean DMZ.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1084650944846012417

That's what it has always been about, a militarized border, with guard towers and search lights, and automatic weapons, where soldiers patrol,  and shoot to kill anyone who dares cross the line.

This wall is not just a pointless, ineffectual waste of money, its the first step in turning our country into an armed camp.

We must say "No!" to this, because if we give in, it will never stop.

My Reaction to President Trump's Address to the Nation

 Last night, January 8, 2019, my husband and I sat down in my living room to watch President Donald J. Trump address the nation from the Oval Office. We watched the address and the brief Democratic Party reply, then turned off the TV and went to bed. 

Over the years, I have found it difficult if not impossible to sit down and watch any president make an Oval Office address. It does not matter whether the President was one I voted for and supported or one that I voted against, despised and loathed (Nixon and Reagan come to mind). My usual preference is to read the transcripts of presidential speeches after the fact rather than watch them live.  However, this time it felt essential to see and hear President Trump while he was speaking.

This morning I awoke to find that I felt more positive and optimistic about the future of our government and country than I have in quite sometime, and that Trump's speech was the primary cause of my change in feeling. After spending much of the day reading through media reactions and the reactions of both the liberals and conservatives (Trump haters and Trump supporters) in my Facebook and Twitter feeds, it would appear that my reaction to the President's speech is atypical.

Let me be clear: Trump's performance last night did nothing to dissuade me from the belief that he is the worst president of my life time. His address contained multiple factual errors (lies), and substituted anecdotes for data and did nothing to convince me that $5 billion dollars (or any amount of money) for a new physical barrier ("the wall") was a good idea. Nor did he convince me that there was a crisis on our southern border, other than a humanitarian one created by his administration. Every bit of data and research that I have seen suggests otherwise. [For a nice review of such research see this article by fellow sociologist Dudley L. Poston Jr. professor sociology and demography at Texas A&M University in College Station.]

What last night's speech did do was convince me that:

• Someone with substantial influence over Trump cares about the continuance of government functionality at some level. That this person or persons does not want a shutdown to continue for "months or years" and certainly does not want the entire system to lose legitimacy and break down. 
• Someone with substantial influence over Trump understands the negative consequences of a shutdown even if Trump does not.
• This person has enough influence over Trump to get him to do something he hates doing: reading an entire speech from a teleprompter without even a single deviation. 
• Trump is mentally competent enough to follow these instructions and to coherently read, without stumbling, someone else's writing using a vocabulary substantially larger than he himself uses on a daily basis for 8 to 10 minutes, even though he clearly disliked doing it. 

These are not small things. Especially since I had become convinced in recent weeks that Trump's utter disregard for the functions of government and consequences of shutdown would lead us to the complete disintegration of order and the rule of law within the next year.

Moreover, in his speech, before he said anything at all about a physical barrier or wall, he laid claim to issues that have long been supported by Democratic law-makers, many of which were already included in legislation passed by one body or another but not enacted:

"The proposal from homeland security includes cutting edge technology for detecting drugs, weapons, illegal contraband and many other things. We have requested more agents, immigration judges to process the sharp rise of unlawful migration fueled by our very strong economy. Our plan also contains an urgent request for humanitarian assistance and medical support." (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/us/politics/trump-speech-transcript.html)

By laying claim to these proposals, Trump's address laid the ground work among his base (who aren't going to any pay attention to Democratic claims that these were their ideas in the first place), to claim that he wrested these concessions from the Democrats in any compromise that might be reached, even if he is not able to get all the funding he desires for a wall. 

This had given me some small hope for negotiations today, however, latest reports suggest that Trump is still stuck on the $5.7 billion for a while and nothing else matters to him. So today's meeting ended abruptly with Trump walking out on Schumer and Pelosi.

Family not Business

Republicans and conservatives are always talking about how we need to run our country like a business; they also talk a lot about family values but never link the two together.

We would be far better served if we decided to run our country like a family - a good family not a dysfunctional one. Good families put their frailest and most vulnerable members first, making them a priority. Families sacrifice for their children and their elderly, giving their time, energy and resources to those who can least go out into the economy and world and fend for themselves. The adults in good families know they are protecting the future -- of themselves, their families, and society -- when they put their children first, and that they are acknowledging the sacrifices of their parents when they put their elderly first.  Good families do not abandon or kill their children and elderly when money gets tight, they look for new resources, a second job, government assistance, even illegal sources of income (not condoning the latter, just observing).

Businesses on the other hand, when money gets tight, put stockholders and top executives first and throw away the most vulnerable of their workers, forcing retirement on older workers, laying off workers, abandoning the very people who make the business work.

Our present government leadership (both Houses of Congress and the Presidency) are taking a business rather than a family approach to running the country, cutting off the vulnerable (cutting programs), rather than expanding resources (returning taxes to previous levels before the huge tax cut giveaway of 2018):

House GOP plan would cut Medicare, Medicaid to balance budget https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-gop-plan-would-cut-medicare-medicaid-to-balance-budget/ar-AAySglD?li=BBnb7Kz

This Congress has already cut the programs that care for children (food stamps, welfare, education, and many others), and now it's taking aim at our elderly. All to give those who already have enormous resources, more than they could possibly spend in their lifetime, even more. Let's start thinking of our society as a family and not a business.

May We Remember

Like many Americans the news of the deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, and of the police officers in Texas shook me to the core. Feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear, and from those anger, flooded me for several days. Then, like many Americans, ordinary everyday routine reclaimed my life, the knots in my stomach along with the anxiety, fear and anger ebbed. It’s not that I (we) forgot what happened, but I (we) could turn away from the immediacy and relax.

Lying in bed last night awake in the dark early morning hours, it finally occurred to me that this ability of most Americans to push these issues out of the forefront of our lives is part of the problem. Because the people most directly concerned – African Americans (especially young black men) and uniformed law enforcement – do not have this luxury.  Sadness, anxiety, fear and anger are embedded in their daily lives in way that the rest of us cannot really understand.  

However, the experiences of African Americans and uniformed law enforcement while similar in some ways are not identical.  

Sociologists use the term “master status” to encompass things those things in our lives that are central to our definition of self and our identity.  Both being “African American” and a “law enforcement officer” are important master statuses, central to the personal identity and sense of self of most of the individuals who can claim those statuses. The difference is that being “African American” is an ascribed status, one conferred at birth by having parents/grandparents with African ancestry, one imposed by society regardless of one’s own wishes, and impossible to exit except by death.  Being a “law enforcement officer” is an achieved status, obtained by study  and practice, consciously chosen as an occupation by an adult over other possible occupations; while far more central to a person’s identity than “working in a factory” or “flipping burgers,” achieved statuses such as law enforcement officer can be exited by choice resignation and retirement, or can be forced upon one by disability or death. Exiting the status of law enforcement by death is the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, law enforcement officers can and do take vacations from their status – they can take their family to Disney World and not be perceived by anyone else as a law enforcement officer.  There is no vacation from being African American.

So the thought came to me as I lay in the dark, that it is important for the rest of us – who are neither African American nor law enforcement – to remember the intensity of the fear, the anxiety, the anger and to remember that while we can let it go and get on with our lives, others must continue to deal with those destructive, life-corroding feelings every day. The goal is not to make us all live in fear and anger, but to use our memory to assist in building a society in which no one need feel that way every day. 

How Today's Media Hijacks Our Species' Threat Assessment Mechanisms

This post could be subtitled "why most people ignore data when deciding what threatens them."

Back in September 2015, husband (also a sociologist) was driving me to a doctor's appointment to get my recently damaged hearing evaluated.  I had been exposed to extremely loud, percussive sounds of an AK-47 shooting blanks less than 15 feet from me, during an "active shooter training" session at the college where I teach. We were discussing the extent to which most of the people we knew, both college colleagues, students, and neighbors persistently ignored or refused to acknowledge all the accumulated data on crime in the United States that violent crime has declined steadily for many years. 

Overall violent crime, as recorded in the Uniform Crime Report of the FBI, as steadily and consistently declined from 1993 to the present, both in total numbers ( a decline of at least 700,000 per year from 1993 to 2012), and in rate (a decline from a rate of 747 per 100,000 in 1993 to only 386 per 100,000 in 2012) (FBI Uniform Crime Reports). Violent assaults on police officers, and officer deaths and injuries from assault have declined from 2004 to 2013 (National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund). 

School shootings, the ostensible prompt for the "Active Shooter Training" that damaged my hearing, are no where near as common as media and the public imagination figure them to be. There does appear to have been some uptick in such shootings in recent years, but many media, social and political discussions of such shootings overstate the numbers by 100 percent,  both since Columbine in 1997 and since Sandy Hook in 2012.

Even the trends of the death of civilians at the hands of law enforcement officers - a topic much in the news - is not at all clear. The Bureau of Justice Statistics gathered data on "arrest related deaths" from 2003 to 2009. But the BJS determined in 2014 that the validity and reliability of the data was not good, and "that the data collection likely did not capture all reportable deaths in the process of arrest" and suspended further data collection and the publication of any reports after 2009 (Bureau of Justice Statistics).

The data suggests that for the most part, the risks of violence in our society have declined in the past thirty years, not increased.  Yet nearly universally Americans have greater fear and anxiety about violence.  Why is that? 

The human species, Homo sapiens, evolved over millions of years in dangerous environments, where they were often the prey of other species, and beset by a wide range of perils. The Homo sapien brain is wired by this evolution to respond to the sounds, sights, and other sensory input from our immediate environment.  Threats from poisonous snakes, spiders, loose rocks, cliffs, torrential streams, large predators, even other humans, had to be evaluated on the basis of patterns of sound and sight. Frequent sightings, increased the threat. (See an interesting NPR piece about sound and the evolution of the human brain).  

The ancient foragers survival in their environment was based on evaluating immediate sensory perceptions, not on the dispassionate analysis of statistical data.  Today, our immediate sensory environment is circumscribed within man-made buildings, walks, roadways, and man-made media.  Every where we go, in every home, in every office, in every doctors' waiting room, every public space we are exposed to sights and sounds of television - mostly news programs, and at least in this part of the world (central Appalachia) almost always Fox News (although it is hardly limited to Fox News).  The news programming that we see is mostly about dangers - dangerous people, dangerous events.  A single event is covered 24 hours a day for multiple days, the same images of threat (explosions, gun shots, shouting, fighting, confrontations, rubble) are repeated over and over again. The human brain is wired to evaluate threat based on frequency of occurrence. While the higher functions of the brain can remind us that this is all one incident, one discrete moment in time, usually a very long ways away from us, the old "reptilian" parts of the brain simply process the nearness of the sounds and sights that repeat over and over again over long periods of time. It is not surprising that most people interpret this sensory input from media as an increasing threat. Especially when there are leaders (with lots of media coverage) who encourage the fear and anxiety as a means to gather followers and political power. 

Zombie America - Installment 6

Four years ago, while thinking about conditions in the U.S., the phrase "zombie America" popped into my head. What is a zombie? The original use of the word is for a dead body, devoid of real life and soul, that is reanimated and caused to walk around by witchcraft or dark magic. In the ever popular science fiction of recent years, the concept of zombie has evolved to mean a person who has as the result of infection or exposure to unspecified substances been robbed of their humanity - of their personality, intelligence, soul and will - and transformed to a monster that kills and feeds on uninfected humans (especially their brains). Those that are not killed are also infected and become zombies themselves.

Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life. 

New evidence that American society is "walking dead" is constantly presenting itself. Through out the month of August 2015 stories about teacher shortages have popped up almost daily as many states struggle to put teachers in front of classes with the beginning of a new school year (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/us/teacher-shortages-spur-a-nationwide-hiring-scramble-credentials-optional.html ). Thousands of veteran teachers are leaving the classroom every year and no where near enough new teachers are coming up through the pipeline to replace them.  Veteran teachers are deserting the profession due to low pay, lack of classroom resources, schools obsessions with testing, proliferation of regulations and paper work, and lack of real instruction time in the classroom.  This is just one of the ways in which the American educational system is being hollowed out. 

The former center of automotive manufacturing in America in Western Michigan has become the canary in the coal mine for the rest of American society.  Flint, Michigan has recently (December 14, 2015) declared a formal state of emergency as the result of a wholly man-made disaster: the dramatic increase in lead in the cities water supply. Substantially increased levels of lead are showing up in blood tests of the cities children.  The increase in lead poisoning came when the city switched to the Flint River as a water source. Lead exposure in children is irreversible and impacts intelligence and general mental functioning, creating long term educational issues for communities with declining educational resources, not to mention the human tragedy involved. 

The Truths Hidden in Right Wing Survivalism

On a right wing web page, every other headline screams that Obama is responsible for impending disaster and doom to American society.  But hidden within the polarizing rhetoric is often startlingly accurate analysis of the real sources of the problems and the dangers facing America today: a capitalist economic system that enshrines greed and wanton wealth accumulation over economic and social stability and human needs. 

This short video is typical of the genre aimed at "patriots" and emphasizing individualism and family it provides a surprisingly fact based and astute analysis of coming food shortages around the world and their connection to social, economic and political collapse. 
 http://www.backyardliberty.com/vsl/index60.php

Of course this little video ignores important causal factors such as climate change, and the solution to social disintegration is a laughable attempt to by someone to make money within the capitalist mind set. Real solutions will have to be social, involving people in local communities where cooperation will be key.  But the video shows that many on the right, do have an accurate understanding of the very real fragility of our social and economic systems and recognize that food systems are the lynch pin.  Compare this to the discussion of food insecurity by major progressive environmentalists such as Lester Brown "Full Planet, Empty Plates" , and you see that the core analysis of the problem is the same. 

Zombie America - Installment 4

A year and a half ago, as I was thinking about the state of things economic, political and environmental in this country, the phrase "zombie America" popped into my head. What is a zombie? The original use of the word is for a dead body, devoid of real life and soul, that is reanimated and caused to walk around by witchcraft or dark magic. In the ever popular science fiction of recent years, the concept of zombie has evolved to mean a person who has as the result of infection or exposure to unspecified substances been robbed of their humanity - of their personality, intelligence, soul and will - and transformed to a monster that kills and feeds on uninfected humans (especially their brains). Those that are not killed also infected and become themselves zombies.

Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life. Pretty pessimistic stuff, right? 

Personally, right now, this week, this month, this past year, my life is pretty great. I have a job I really like (most of the time), enough income for current needs, and few debts (just my house). Since I have tenure I'm unlikely to lose my job any time soon, and I'm over 62 and not far from full-retirement age with (I hope) adequate retirement savings. So unless the entire U.S. economy and government break down completely, and civil disorder and anarchy overtake us I'm in pretty good shape personally.  The problem is that as a sociologist, I believe that such a break down with ensuing disorder and anarchy due to environmental problems, the inherent contradictions of capitalism and the cultural/political divisions of U.S. society, will occur before I die - or alternatively, attempts at repressive totalitarianism to maintain order will prevail in places for a while (think NBC TV's "Revolution") as an attempt (futile in the long run) to contain disorder.  

Most of the time I function happily and contentedly within my personal present. I enjoy the lovely woods and hills that surround my home, I enjoy my conversations with my husband, playing with my dogs and cats, interactions with friends, television and novels, and artistic activities. But, ugly reality intrudes through news stories, articles friends link on Facebook, and most of all through my work as a sociologist. Because it is my job to teach students about society and the environment, about social problems and about inequality. 

I do learn or discover many positive things as I do the research necessary to be an good instructor in these fields or just simply in interacting with the world. There are whole states, whole communities taking wonderful positive actions. There are many non-profit organizations and even more individuals engaging in positive actions towards an environmentally, economically, and politically sustainable future. Occasionally there are even political decisions at the national level that are positive (two from the Supreme Court in just the last few days - striking down the right of private companies to patent naturally occurring human genes, and striking down Arizona's discriminatory citizen test for voter registration). But the bad stuff just keeps coming as large corporations seem to be able to do whatever they please to make the profits they crave regardless of their human and environmental consequences. The rich get richer and the rest of us (not just the poor) and the earth get poorer, more beaten down and more broken. The good things seem like band aids placed here and there on a body gone septic throughout with drug-resistant infections. 

The sad thing is that in an absolute there are solutions. The problems with our economy, our political system and our environment are not written in stone. These are all humanly created institutions and they can be changed.  There are other countries that have made changes or are making changes that could cushion them from the worst of the fall-out from the United States spiral into chaos. But as a society we do not have the political will to change, largely because a huge percentage of voters and their representatives refuse to see our institutions as humanly created capable of being modified or even ditched for something better, insisting instead that they are "God" given, unalterable, sacred institutions. 

But there is something horribly wrong, horribly broken with a society and an economy that has more empty houses than it has homeless people (http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-we-cant-just-put-homeless-families-in-foreclosed-homes-2012-6), governors can sell off highways, colleges, prisons and other public resources rather than tax the rich (http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2013/06/14/wi-gov-walker-to-sell-off-highways-prisons-and-university-buildings-paid-for-by-students-and-donors/), and people in eastern Kentucky where I live think that the way to save their community is to bow down to everything the coal companies want, even if it is leveling the mountain behind their home. 

A Modest Proposal for Arizona

Arizona House Bill 2625 will allow employers to reject insurance coverage for contraceptives for their employees if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-2 Monday to endorse SB 2625 which would allow Arizona employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for contraceptives based on religious objections. Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.

“I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,” Lesko said. “So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

I propose an amendment for Arizona’s SB 2625. I am not aware of any Christian religion that officially states that men can have sex outside of marriage and/or for non-reproductive purposes while women may not. [There are many religions that not only allow but encourage non-reproductive (marital) sex by both men and women]. In practice there may indeed be such a double standard – but that standard is not found in actual official Christian religious doctrines. Indeed, the Old Testament reference usually used to justify the anti-birth control position refers only to men and their “seed,” and not to women at all.

Therefore to more truly meet religious objections to non-reproductive sex both outside and inside marriage, I propose the following: Any employer who wishes to deny medical coverage to any woman engaging in non-reproductive sex on religious grounds, must also deny medical coverage to any man engaging in non-reproductive sex.

In order to qualify for health insurance coverage of Viagra or other anti-impotency drugs, a man must 1) be married, 2) to a woman who is medically certified to still able to bear children (has not passed menopause, not had a tubal ligation, a hysterectomy, and does not have any medical conditions that cause infertility), and 3) who does not use contraception; additionally, 4) the man must have medical certification that he does in fact suffer from impotence due to physical causes that are treatable by anti-impotency drugs such as Viagra.

No employer is required to deny men health insurance coverage for anti-impotence drugs, UNLESS they deny women health insurance coverage for birth control on religious grounds.

Zombie America - installment 2

(Second in a series)

America is in decline. The signs are all around us.  These are the words with which I began this series, but I was wrong - it isn't just America, its the entire advanced industrialized world.

Advanced capitalist industrial societies are all zombies - we all died some time ago, we just didn't notice we'd become the walking dead.

The first indicator of this decline that I talked about in the first installment is the desertion of communities, first small towns, and now urban neighborhoods and cities.  All my examples were from the United States, because until today, I was unaware that the exact same trend is occurring in Europe.

Yesterday, I began reading a fascinating, almost lyrically written, work of non-fiction The Coming Population Crash And Our Planet's Surprising Future by Fred Pearce (Beacon Press 2010). There on page 87, at the beginning of chapter 10, were these words:

"Even at eight p.m. on a sunny summer's evening, the roads were empty in Chemnitz [Germany], an industrial center known for forty years as Karl-Marx-Stadt. The tiny summer houses on suburban allotments were deserted. I have seen the derelict, rust belt landscapes of former industrial towns before--not least in England, on trains from Sheffield to Doncaster or Birmingham to Wolverhampton.But this world seemed drained of people. In Bavaria, I had asked if anyone ever went to Dresden or beyond. Most shuddered at the idea. I could have been asking about Chernobyl. Of course there were people about, but far fewer than there once were."

Pearce goes on to give details of the abandonment of the industries, towns and cities of the eastern portions of Germany. In the eastern town of Hoyerswerda the main municipal activity is tearing down buildings and "giving street after street "back to nature;" a description that readily fits the conditions of Detroit in the U.S. as well.

The film below examines the dismantling of Detroit:

The second indicator that America is a zombie society, is the dismantling of basic public amenities such as roads, water systems, sewer systems that were once assumed to be part of modern community life. 

I live in one of the few areas of America that never achieved those things.  In the coal fields of eastern Kentucky where I live, municipal water systems have never reached more than 30 percent of the residents of this region. Municipal sewage service reaches only about 20 percent. The last significant expansion of water and sewer services in my county was 10 years ago (when my neighborhood got "city" water). Sewer was suppose to follow that within a few years, but never did. As I read reports about the retrenchment of such services in more urban communities, I begin to realize that sewer probably never is coming to my neighborhood.

Paved roads are being dismantled in America. Across the nation, smaller municipalities are finding that they can no longer afford the costs for the petroleum based components of paved roads.

In a Wall Street Journal article, "Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement: Asphalt Is Replaced By Cheaper Gravel; 'Back to Stone Age'" reporter By Lauren Etter describes the process in widening phenomenon:

"Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

The heavy machines at work in Jamestown, N.D., are grinding the asphalt off road beds, grading the bed and packing the material back down to create a new road surface.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel."

Roads aren't the only modern amenity to take a hit in recent years. In Jefferson County, Alabama malfeasance, fraud, construction problems, rampant political corruption and a series of debt and derivative deals that went sour have resulted in the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Soaring costs have meant soaring rates for water and sewer, that the poor of Jefferson County cannot pay. The poor of Jefferson County have found themselves cut off from municipal water and make due with bottled water for drinking and bathing, and setting up portable toilets in their yards in place of sewer service. That the poor are doing with less is nothing new in America. The most fascinating element of the story of Jefferson County, is that the middle class and affluent in Jefferson Counties suburban communities are responding to the high rates for water and sewer by installing individual septic systems. ("Third world in the U.S." BBC World, 14 December 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16172522

When affluent suburban communities start moving backwards, from municipal sewage service to private septic systems (and all the environmental problems those pose), something is very, very wrong in America. Something vital has died.

This morning I read a comment following an Internet news article by some anonymous reader of libertarian persuasion, who argued that there would be no loss of services like police, fire, and rescue workers, when (not if) libertarians were successful in cutting federal taxes and the size of federal government. This clueless commenter suggested that people would willingly start paying higher local governments taxes to provide all those services. As someone who has made a life study of community sociology, I know that tax austerity has its roots in local governments, and that the pressures for tax cuts, and the service cuts those tax losses make necessary are far more acute at the community and county level than at the federal level.

When towns are tearing up roads and cutting off water and sewer lines due to low tax mentality, how would communities ever compensate for the loss of federal funds for necessary services (like police, fire, rescue)?

"Friends of Coal"

There is a sociologically and politically interesting phenomenon sweeping the coal fields of Kentucky (similar things are happening is West Virginia) called the Friends of Coal.

Friends of Coal is the brainchild of a coal industry organization Kentucky Coal [note the nearly identical websites]. The Kentucky Coal Association central membership is coal companies and associate members comprised of businesses related to coal mining such as engineering firms, equipment firms, (even law firms) and individuals employed in the coal mining and related industries.

Friends of coal began as an exercise in what political pundits call "AstroTurfing" -- industry sponsored and supported activity posing as grassroots organizing -- but it has become a genuinely popular organization garnering membership, support and funding from thousands of Kentuckians from all walks of life. This may be a political first, a popular movement in support of a particular industry, not by its workers, but by a wide cross section of individuals and families living within the communities where an industry operates.

Not only does one see the bumper stickers, window stickers, yard signs, pins and t-shirts declaring "Friends of Coal" in eastern Kentucky. But most intriguingly, the Friends of Coal organization proposed a special issue Kentucky license plate (see photo at top taken at a stop light in Letcher County), which has been wildly successful and can be seen on cars (and especially trucks) everywhere in eastern Kentucky.

This may be the first time in the United States that an industry actively engaged in whole series of major political battles (over the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions, mountain top removal, and fly ash storage) has been able to get the general public to voluntarily help fund their public relations battle through a official state sponsored tax (license plate fees). Usually industries have to use their own monies (albeit coming from customers) for legitimation advertising and activities.

The average person in eastern Kentucky who sports a "Friends of Coal" sticker or license plate views supporting "the coal industry" as identical to supporting "coal miners." A view which flies in the face of the very long record of industry abuses of the health and safety of miners, and successful efforts to undermine unionization of coal mining.


Supporters of Friends of Coal fear that new environmental regulations will bring a sudden and abrupt end to all coal employment in the mountains. They lack awareness that the coal industry has done quite well on its own to cut coal mining employment despite many decades of special treatment and tax advantages from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Employment in coal in Kentucky has dropped by two-thirds from a high of about 48,000 in 1981 to 17,893 in 2006. [graphic from MACED based on data from CoalEducation.org].

co-opting opposition through leadership

My students in Appalachian Studies are currently reading a collection of essays on grassroots political and economic organization in Appalachia entitled Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change, edited by Stephen L. Fisher. This is not a new book; published in 1993 it has been a standard for Appalachian studies, social movements and political science courses for more than a decade.

Although I had read most of the essays when the book was published, I had not picked it up in the intervening 15 years. So re-reading the articles with my students has been a little like seeing them for the first time. However, I am seeing them with new eyes, with 15 years more experience of participation in grassroots organizations, and suddenly I'm not sure I like what I see.

Three grassroots organizations highlighted in part I of the book are Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM) of Tennessee, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), and the Community Farm Alliance (CFA)of Kentucky. SOCM was started in 1972 to deal with coal mining, especially strip-mining, issues in five Tennessee counties. KFTC began in 1981 as a response to unfair tax exemptions for large mineral owners in eastern Kentucky, and the abuses of the broad form deed by strip-mining. The CFA emerged in 1985 during a period of crisis in American agriculture to address the regionally specific agricultural problems of small farmers in Kentucky.

Reading this articles back to back in a short period of time, I was struck by the similar pattern that all three followed. Each of these grassroots organizations appeared as the result of intense concerns over clearly defined issues. Early members were strongly motivated by issues, and active in pursuing specific changes in laws and economic practices within their region.

Each of these organizations had at least one significant win early in their existence. Save Our Cumberland Mountains in its first decade successfully stopped one of the largest strip-mines every proposed (20,000 acres) by AMAX, Inc., which, had it gone forward would have dramatically increased the power of coal companies to circumvent water quality laws and destroyed water supplies for many in the area. SOCM may not have been successful at its overarching goal of ending strip-mining altogether, but the organization had a number of significant victories.

In its first decade, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth was successful in seeing an amendment to the Kentucky Constitution stopping the use by strip miners of broad form deeds to rob landowners of surface rights, pushed through legislation to give local control over decisions on hazardous waste incinerators, and stopped the exemption of wealthy mineral owners from property taxation.

The Community Farm Alliance was highly successful in getting issues specific to Kentucky farmers passed through Congress even though other farming issues did not fare as well in the 1986 farm policy legislation. Moreover, by 1990, the CFA was able to win a legislative victory in Kentucky for a new state lending program that would solve many of Kentucky farmers credit issues.

Despite substantial issue centered successes by all three organizations, each organization after its first decade shifted away from issue orientation to focus on community organizing and leadership training and education. Each of these three organizations, in order to continue to exist as organization turned their focus to recruitment, to building a funding base (from donations and grants), and to "empowerment" of their local constituencies.

The writers of the articles in Fighting Back all highlight this shift to community organizing and leadership development as a positive step in the evolution of more permanent grassroots organizations. Hal Hamilton and Ellen Ryan write (about the Community Farm Alliance) that:

"Community organizing is sometimes criticized as parochial because issue objectives are often achievable without fundamentally changing power relations. This criticism rings true if our view of social change is revolutionary or apocalyptic. Lasting change in power relations, however can occur incrementally. Probably the most important contribution of organizations like CFA is the nurturing of new leaders with experience, vision and commitment...an important group of people emerge from these campaigns with a vision of democracy that extends from local communities to the world economy."

But as I read these essays, and I reflect on the record of these organizations (through their websites and my own participation in KFTC), I find myself questioning the evaluation of the writers. I can see ways that conditions in the mountains have improved (e.g., levels of poverty in Appalachia are substantially lower today than they were 40 years ago which has far more to do with national economic change than grassroots organizing), but I can also see even more ways in which conditions targeted by some of these groups are many times worse than they were forty years ago. Strip-mining is an excellent example, although laws regarding reclamation are far stricter than they were, the sheer volume and destructiveness of strip-mining (via mountain top removal) are far greater, and federal and state controls over water quality impacts of strip-mining have gotten loser rather than tighter.

It does not appear to me that the last two decades of "leadership" training has had any real impact on the leadership in Appalachia. The experiences often do enhance the feelings of self-worth and confidence of the individuals involved, but those individuals have not, in any numbers moved into community, state or regional leadership positions. The political establishments in eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, and Northeast Tennessee seem to be little effected by the efforts of these grassroots organizations.

As I re-examine the history of these organizations, I can see that by shifting their focus to community organizing and leadership development they have been able to attract funding from large foundations; donations that in all likelihood would be less likely to flow to more militant issue oriented organizations. These three organizations have been successful in surviving where many others have disappeared, and have had some small input into the decision-making processes in their state and local governments. But have they exchanged genuine power for the semblance of leadership?

roots of anti-intellectualism in recent years

In the wake of this November's election of Barack Obama, dozens of media commentators have heralded this as a welcome respite in the anti-intellectualism that has dominated American society and American politics for the past thirty years.

One media pundit (sorry I can't remember who) has said that Obama, unlike other presidents of the last forty years is "openly intellectual." Sure Clinton was a scholar during his college years, but he down played his scholarly background behind a folksy southern persona, leading voters to think that he just might be a "red-neck." [By the way, if Jeff Foxworthy is right, I too just might be a red-neck, since the instructions on how to reach my house include "and then you turn off the paved road" and my house originally came with wheels].

It is tempting to say that the roots of anti-intellectualism in American politics come from the simple lack of brainpower of the common man (or woman). They aren't so smart so they mistrust anyone who is openly interested in the life of the mind and intellectual ideas. Given that Obama, "openly intellectual" as he is, garnered the largest percentage and larger number of the popular vote in recent history, suggests that such a simple explanation is not sufficient. Perhaps that is the motivation of a few individuals here and there, but it doesn't help to account for the way in which anti-intellectualism is structured into our society, especially into our educational system. Also it doesn't explain why Republicans candidates and voters are more likely to exude contempt of intellectual accomplishment even more than Democrats do.

The key to understanding anti-intellectualism is found in our economic system and its current troubles. It is clear, beyond doubt, that our economy depends upon people buying things. When consumer confidence goes down, and people cut back on their purchases, our economy tanks. Regardless of all the sanctimonious sermons about people spending more than they earn, and going into credit card debt, the reality is, that our economy has been built on people spending beyond their means.

In troubled times like these, the rational choice for individuals is to save their money and not spend it, but what makes sense for individuals is exactly opposite what is needed to recharge the economy. Certainly there are economic systems that do exist and have existed that do not rest on consumerism and credit, but ours is not one of them.

When the health of the economy depends upon ordinary people spending and consuming larger and larger quantities of material goods, society must provide incentives to make people desire to spend beyond their means. One important tool in doing this is to attach cultural and social values to material things. Advertising is one means of doing this. Through advertising values of family, success, achievement, sexiness, love, and many others, are attached to material products.

More than a hundred years ago, Thorsten Veblen coined the term "conspicuous consumption" to describe the role of consumption in establishing status. The only thing that has changed since Veblen's time is that the use of consumption of luxury goods has been pushed further and further down the income scale. As a result, even low income teenagers will pay $36-$46 dollars for an Abercrombie & Fitch logo t-shirt, rather than $4-$6 for a similar quality blank t-shirt at Walmart. Where the wealthy rely on their peers knowledge of designers style (if you couldn't recognize a Chanel suit, a Lily Pulitzer frock, or an Dior gown, on sight your opinion hardly mattered), lower middle class and working class young people rely on large graphics of "high class" names spread across their chests, backs and down their arms.

When consumption is the bedrock of the economy, and appeals to status are crucial to encouraging continual consumption, there is little room to tolerate alternative, non-consumption based sources of status. Intellectual, creative and artistic pursuits -- except to the degree that they represent monetary exchange -- need to be actively discouraged since they can distract people away from consumption.

Degrees are fine, especially if they come from expensive schools, its knowledge and thinking that are viewed as bothersome. About fourteen years ago, the commencement speaker at the public four year college where I was then employed was a politically appointed state bureaucrat in a Republican administration. He congratulated the graduates on receiving their degrees, and then offered himself as an example of someone who had managed to get a college degree "without letting college change" him, or his beliefs and opinions in any way. This young Republican bureaucrat was proud of the fact that he had come through four years of college unscared by any troublesome knowledge that would undermine in any way the prejudices and attitudes with which he had entered college.

Similarly, art that commands high sale prices is fine, but art for art's sake is not. Negative attitudes toward the National Endowment for the Arts, and the artists that it supports demonstrate this latter view. Conservatives consider the only good art is that which has commercial value. The only artistic value is the value of the market place.

The ordinary individual who expresses distrust, fear and contempt for intellectualism or artistic creativity, is not thinking about promoting consumerism, but there are those in positions of leadership and influence, in government and the media, who are consciously undermining non-commercial sources of status and life satisfaction such as intellectual and artistic endeavor.