An Independent Voice

"... swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism." Is that what the promised land of America has become? ...

An independent voice is not charged with engagement in a popularity contest. Since it is not owned, an independent voice has no obligation to maintain neutral positions on important issues for the sake of parity. The charge is to answer the following question: Which is the correct position? Theodore Roosevelt once reflected that

Personally I have not the slightest sympathy with debating contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a given proposition and told to maintain it without the least reference to whether those maintaining it believe in it or not.  I know that under our system this is necessary for lawyers, but I emphatically disbelieve in it as regards general discussion of political, social and industrial matters.  What we need is to turn out of our colleges young men with ardent convictions on the side of the right; not young men who can make a good argument for either right or wrong as their interest bids them.  There is no effort to instill sincerity and intensity of conviction.  On the contrary, the net result is to make the contestants feel that their convictions have nothing to do with their arguments. 

Today, many of the positions of one of the two major national political parties are to such an extreme, out of touch with mainstream reality, that moderate voices within the party like Bob Dole and Olympia Snowe say it should “close for repairs.” Can an independent voice be fairly accused of a fatal bias or undue influence in favor of the other party for consistently bringing out the same point?

What does an independent voice sound like? And not sound like?

Take the example of an Exxon executive, dependent upon the company’s fortunes. Would that executive be the optimal source from whom to get an objective handle on the public environmental safety considerations of fracking, absent empirical proof? Or whether Canadian Tar Sands oilfields should be developed for US consumption through the mechanism of the Keystone Pipeline? Take another example of the entrepreneur, who happens to deploy outsourced human labor in far away factories to “make a living” here in the US. Is this the ideal critic of the bottom line performance of the Obama administration's policies on domestic jobs creation? Or the pace of economic recovery, which historically depends upon the mass purchasing power of the ordinary citizen?

Commercial allegiances aside, can a political party influence an independent voice, thus negating it? In answering this question, would it be helpful to know whether the individual behind the voice is employed by or otherwise beholden to party due to considerations of position or patronage?  Would it also be helpful to know whether the party’s influential ideas have been de-commissioned for over a century?

What is the essence of an independent voice? Does it not tow its own direction on the path less traveled? Perhaps the views of a political party which happen to be in alignment merely strengthen the validity of a position taken. And on issue upon issue, if it seems to turn out that way consistently, perhaps it is not an independent voice which is biased but rather the bankruptcy of the other party's views. Do we sometimes mistake the difference?

Where do our beliefs come from? Is the pursuit of happiness genuinely concerned with helping people first? Or does self-government have some other primary calling? Was the ordinary citizen placed upon the earth to collect things and change money? Or to serve?  America cherishes a storied tradition of individual initiative, incentive based. But doesn’t our political creed hold out the promise of such things only in the larger context of a collective social identity - that we are all in this together? How about the psychology of support for the weakest link?

Unbridled selfishness, ambition and greed are necessary ingredients to unlock the fantastic material successes of capitalism.  They also expose the darker side of human nature, personal achievement and private reward notwithstanding. More than a hundred years ago, T.R. understood that the “Material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.”

But what happens when purely business or political decisions clash with considerations of morality? Does business utilize a moral compass? Are the twin pillars of "continuous responsibility of government for human welfare" and stewardship of the environment, especially "efficient use of finite resources and scientific management of renewable ones," merely expenses on a cold financial balance sheet for private gain?

Notions of rugged individualism pretty much went out with the Great Depression of 1929, until President Reagan resurrected that nostalgic notion in the 1980s. But here we are in the 21st century, our national life, T.R. having forewarned, “bringing nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.” It is here that an independent voice cannot forever remain silent.

Weren't material possessions conceived to serve us? Then why does it appear that we are enslaved to them? Are we both daring and foolish enough to consider a more sanguine approach? If in T.R.’s words the “conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress,” then is it yet time for a new epoch in American history?

-Michael D’Angelo

The Hundred Yard Dash

Has the black man caught up?  Consider the metaphor of the hundred yard dash...

White men like me from the south (of Europe, that is) stand accused of breeding a race of human beings decidedly inferior to those from Europe’s western and northern sections. Still, I suppose I’m not completely in tune with the plight of Latinos, African Americans, Asians, the so-called “people of color.” Or women, for that matter.

By way of example, one day an African American student asks me a simple question. “Why is it,” he begins, “that a black person has to be wildly successful, beat insurmountable odds, fly like superman, to become that nationally popular one-in-a-million hip hop artist, before he is able to afford what is to most white people the common luxury to reside in an affluent southern California neighborhood like Beverly Hills? While, for example, his white neighbor on one side just has to be a dentist - his white neighbor on the other side an insurance salesman?” Frankly, I have never looked at it that way before.  But, of course, once I do take the time to think it through from the student’s perspective, I surmise he has a point.

And if those are the odds for the plight of the ordinary black man, then just where does the “lower” class of white men, like me (the ones who are not white Anglo-Saxon protestant), slot in? Many white people today resent the fact that blacks receive at least a perceived, unfair advantage through the mechanism of affirmative action. This controversial program gives a hiring preference based on race, ethnicity or gender over the application of a similarly situated white male citizen. Many white men, especially on the lower rungs, believe that, perhaps, it is time to reverse or undo affirmative action, that enough has been done, that blacks, anyway, have effectively “caught up.”

I pose this question to a professional colleague whose ethnicity is a mix of African American and Asian. He answers without hesitation: “Hell no! The black man is not even close to catching up.” He proceeds to relate a metaphor I’ve not forgotten. A white man and a black man each line up to compete in a hundred yard dash. The white man is fit and all trained up, with state of the art running gear. By contrast, the black man has a pair of lead shackles locked around his bare ankles. The gun goes off. The race starts. The white man zips along smartly, sporting a huge smile. When he gets to about ten yards from the finish line, someone in the crowd has the decency to call for the black man’s shackles finally to be removed. The crowd waits impatiently, wondering why the black man hasn’t caught up, fully recovered in an instant from deep injuries sustained over 350 years of legally sanctioned subordination. He must just be lazy, they conclude.

It is argued that whites typically lack empathy for their black brethren, taking for granted things that do not come as naturally or predictably for blacks. For example, one of my white colleagues is known to speak rather casually about having inherited his father’s successful printing business. Although it is largely due to his efforts that the business has taken off to the next level, he tends to speak as if such businesses commonly grow on trees. After all, it’s just a printing business, right?

Working people are also rather nonchalant about the financial cost and economic drain of social programs for their dispossessed co-workers. Programs such as workers’ compensation to protect the injured and unemployment insurance benefits to protect those who have been the subject of layoffs are routinely criticized. Even successful, self-employed entrepreneurs tend to complain about the social costs of subsidizing the failed business ventures of others in a brutal, survival of the fittest, take no prisoners mentality.

Of course, the situation changes when the working man loses his own job. Then, as the saying goes, it’s not a recession, it’s a depression. Suppose, for example, the self-employed entrepreneur happens to be a GM dealer, whose father ran the business proudly before he did. For years, all the entrepreneur says he wants is the “government” simply to get off his back and stay out of his life. Until, that is, the music stops playing, GM declares bankruptcy on account of decades of incompetent management, and the entrepreneur is finally left without a chair. All of a sudden, the attitude changes, fundamentally. Then the government must step in, naturally, to help him in his time of dire need.

Lastly, I can only chuckle in considering the story of a woman who tells me she has no idea how she is going to pay for her child’s college education. She is therefore going to vote “Democrat” in the next election, as one of the ordinary people to whom the party has strong appeal. The next time I see her, however, her politics have undergone a complete transformation. Now she is preaching how the Republicans must win the next election. “I thought you were going to vote Democrat?” I interject matter-of-factly. She confides that she has been the grateful recipient of a generous bequest from her parents, which covers the child’s education in full. And all of a sudden, everything changes.


-Michael D’Angelo