Oh, it's personal.

President Obama went before the cameras to deliver an unscheduled largely extemporaneous eighteen-minute talk in the wake of the Zimmerman acquittal.  He spoke clearly and movingly because Trayvon Martin was not some abstract murder victim.  He was a token for something far larger — something very personal. Obama understands first hand the kind of racial profiling that led to Trayvon's death.  As an African American man he could put himself in the victim's shoes; visualize a son in the same circumstance.  The President's message was simple. For Black Americans, himself included, this killing and subsequent justice shortfall is personal.

When the fictional Michael Corleone declares "it's not personal, it's strictly business", we know he is being transparently disingenuous.  In fact, much of what any of us do whether in business, public or private life is personal.  Nowhere is that more evident than in today's politics, where the highly personal has become the order of every day.  Interestingly, that we have an African American president has much to do with this renewed personalization, including an unspoken and oft-denied racism that is the proverbial elephant in our national habitat.  And like Trayvon, Obama is just a symbol for our changed landscape.  It isn't simply a matter of, what is this guy doing in our white house?  It is also why are his fellow Others — Latinos, Asians, Indians, Gays, Lesbians, non-Christians and "nonbelievers" — coming to the fore and indeed seemingly on the brink of taking over?  What's happened to our world, they ask.

Let's leave the specific issue of race to another (soon to come) post.  What touched a chord in Obama's remarks was how close his personalizing the issue came to what I think is at the root of what we're experiencing in today's politics.  It's a personal that is right out there in Washington (especially in the House) and in a number of mostly, but not exclusively, Southern states like Texas and here in North Carolina.

There is something counterintuitive about this surge of extreme conservatism, one often rooted in religious right ideology.  After all, we do have Obama re-elected to his second term, a potential female front-runner to succeed him and multiple polls that show a shift to the left on public policies.  Fifty-seven percent of us think same-sex marriages should be legal and even more (63%) think they should have equal federal benefits.  According to Gallup, 72% of Americans favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.  The median age of conservative bastion Fox News viewers is 65 plus, while younger people consistently are found to embrace both change and diversity.

What's at play here, and the currently constituted Republican Party is the central character, relates to that what's happened to our world question.  More to the point, the old America, the one that is majority white, male dominant and Christian (especially Protestant), see what they counted on as their way of life slipping away.  Being part that select demographic, and regardless of their economic situation, they feel entitled.  They see both that entitlement and their way of life slipping away.  It has made them angry and desperate to stop the train from leaving the station.  We're seeing it in the House, where a Tea Party dominated GOP majority is seeking to starve programs dear to the President and to stop an Affordable Care Act that would extend benefits to many of the people they see as the Other.   Ironically, many of their constituents will be badly hurt by their actions.

The zeal to turn back the clock is even greater at the local level, especially where Republicans control both the governor's mansion and the state house.  This is what's happening in Texas and in North Carolina where the state legislature has passed bills that will undermine voting (more on that in my post on race), cut funds from education, including teachers' pay and eliminating tenure and rewards for advanced degrees.  Needless to say, abortion the long thorn in their religious sides is being attacked in an unmistakably coordinated restrictive legislative effort across many states including places like Ohio.

There is a mean-spirited element to all of this.  But it is the sense of frantic urgency, which reflects an understanding that the clock is ticking and time is fast running out.  It is always easier to pass legislation than to overturn it and their hope is that much of what they often claim to be "reform" will stick.  With a highly politically uneducated and ill-informed electorate, they may be right in the short term.  But we no longer live in their old America and the underlying changes under way are unstoppable.  Indeed, while the Occupy Wall Street never really became a movement, Republican in their current extremism may ultimately be faced with counter Tea Party.  Will that happen soon?  Americans are so democratically lethargic (especially on the left) that it's hard to say.  Even if it does, thanks to the way districts are drawn, the pain won't be eradicated overnight.  Perhaps that's not so bad because we sometimes need to feel pain before we act.

Looking at the next generation and to the wonderful diversity that is emerging across the land there is reason to be hopeful long term.  But given today's politics especially at some local levels and the support of a politically right Supreme Court, we're in for and are already having a rough ride.  Can things be more personal than that?

On a really personal note:  My late mother Hilde Goldsmith Prinz (1913-1993) was born 100 years ago today.  She was a person totally engaged with her family and with the world.  She would be pleased that Barack Obama is our president and equally appalled by the regressive things that are happening in this country and the divisiveness that abounds.  My interest in the world comes directly from my parents and my sometimes outrage, especially in the face of injustice, echoes their own.  So, too, does my hope.  My mother arrived here as a 24-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany.  She spoke no English, though learned it quickly and used it well.  America gave her a home, one she dearly loved, and she would have wanted other immigrants to find their place too.  Perhaps John F. Kennedy, with rhetorical flourish, proclaimed that he was a Berliner, her birthplace.  She proudly and without fanfare said "I am an American" and that she was, not for an occasion but for a lifetime.  I dedicate this post to her life. 

Theocracy under fire.

Ten days ago, The Pew Forum released a report entitled, Canada's Changing Religious Landscape.  It has been tracking our religious landscape for years, documenting a dramatic rise in the unaffiliated.  A similar, but even faster growing, trend is underway in our northern neighbor.  The "nones" whom I call transcenders now account for about one in four Canadians compared with one in five here.

As in the US, participation in religious services is down (27%), but more so than here (46%).  These attendance numbers rely on self-reporting not headcounts, so they may be overstated reflecting that people like to think they're going to church regularly.  In Canada, more young people also live without religion than do their parents and grandparents.  That said, one of the interesting findings in this report is that between 1971 and today, the number of Canadian transcenders 65 and older has actually grown threefold (4% to 12%), which is actually a larger percentage increase than for any other cohort.  Yes 12% senior non-religious is only half of the combined (all ages) total 24%, but it is still a meaningful number.  It may not definitively negate the notion that the older we get the more religious, but it makes one wonder if the attitudinal gulf between generations may narrowing in the years ahead and at an accelerated pace.

All research must be taken with some caution.  Results are highly dependent on who the respondents were, what they were asked (wording counts) and how the study was carried out — there is difference, for example, between telephone and face-to-face interviews.  Pew's report relied heavily on telephone interviews undertaken by the Canadian arm of the highly respected General Social Survey. The two countries' numbers are not direct comparisons since the dates covered differ.  The latest Canadian count of transcenders is as of 2011; the latest US numbers are from 2012.  This in itself is not necessarily significant, but is an indication of the varied interpretive challenges we face in reading research results.

It isn't merely a matter of how to read research; it's also of who reads it.   You and I can encounter the exact same numbers and draw somewhat different conclusions based upon our own bias or interests.  A few days after releasing the Canadian study, Pew reported on another entitled Growth of the Nonreligious: Many Say Trend is Bad for American Society.  What they found was the 48% of overall respondents said that the trend was "bad" while only 11% thought it good.  No doubt 48% is "many" but if you add the 39% of Americans who said it didn't matter, then a larger (combined) number (50%) didn't think it was bad.  Let's call it 50-50.  The point is, headlining the people who think it bad as "many" colors the perception — it's true, but perhaps not necessarily as balanced as the body copy that follows would suggest.  In fact, it reports the even split.  We think of the media as the prime source of misleading (eye catching) headlines, but let's not think they are alone in that, or that their motives are sinister.

It is not surprising that citizens in our "religious country" think the current trend away from religion is not a good thing.  Needless to say, active churchgoers feel more strongly, especially among the more orthodox faiths.  Unfortunately, this is a singular study, so we have no way of knowing if attitudes are changing, something we might expect considering the "growth of the non-religious".  Even so, among the numbers that I found most interesting is that, while 74% of churchgoing "white" Catholics thought the growth of transcenders is a bad thing, only 39% of Hispanic Catholics felt that way.

This attitudinal difference between "white" and Hispanic members of the same faith may signal the potential impact of changing demographics in a country that is rapidly becoming more diversified.  And of course the role of changing demographics in the political landscape is of central importance.  That we are finally seeing some action on Immigration reform reflects the growing significance of Hispanics in the electorate, a group that is touted as the fastest growing in the land.  But, as pointed out in earlier posts, transcenders are growing even faster and still outnumber Latinos.  Little is said about that demographic and how it will play in the years to come.

Little is said, but that doesn't mean transcenders aren't noticed or that their growing numbers haven't produced a reaction.  Much of what moves the Tea Party ideology is to combat what they see as diminished religious values.  They definitely think the growth of the non-religious is a very bad thing, but also understand that in the face of rapidly changing demographics theirs may ultimately be a losing battle.  This explains their hyper-aggressive, almost frantic, enactment of anti-marriage equality and anti-abortion legislation in those states whose governments they now control (Texas for some time, North Carolina only in the last year).  Governors and legislators may take cover by invoking state's rights or fiscal conservatism, but these laws are all religiously based, and it's a religion of a certain orthodox kind.  The clock is ticking on their way of life (in some cases a way already passed).  Their only hope is that, once on the books, these laws may be hard to overturn.  There actions are have a terrible negative impact on LGBTs, women and indeed on all of us, but these fringe zealots are on the wrong side of history.  Their religion card just doesn't play the way it once did, their theocratic ways are under fire.

To be sure, the political divisions in this country are rooted in different approaches to economics and even to a clash between federal and state's rights.  But for certain religious orthodox the struggle is just as much between religion and secularism.  The vast majority of mainstream religious don't agree, but for these people God's governance and "traditional" (think marriage) ways based on divinely revealed law are on the line.  And that brings me to Egypt.  Much conventional and digital ink has spent against the proposition that the principle struggle engulfing the Muslim world is between Sunni and Shia.  There is much truth to that.  But an equal, and in some ways more far reaching, struggle is between those who believe in a religious verses secular state.

I am not alone is being torn between what looks like a setback for democracy in Egypt while recognizing that Mohamed Morsi's rule strayed far from the democratic way.  He may not be a cleric, but it would be fair to say he is more of a theocrat (Sharia Law, etc.) than a democrat.  By the way, the same can be said about many of those who now hold power in the states I mentioned, though they would vigorously deny it.  The Morsi government's demise can be attributed to a number of factors including economic decline and its sheer incompetence.  In some respects, his failure can be attributed to the fact that it is easier to criticize than to govern, doubly so if you have been on the outside for so long.   Oppositions like the Muslim Brotherhood that have been denied opportunities to govern at any level for decades simply lack the human infrastructure and experience to do so.  But it was ultimately Morsi's autocratic and undemocratic ways that did him in.  He came to power because Egyptians had just deposed one dictator; they didn't want another.

Seasoned observers like Tom Friedman and Roger Cohen have suggested that Morsi's downfall fits a pattern of growing resistance to religious rather than secular rule in Muslim countries.  The recent demonstrations against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reflect a pushback against his efforts to move away from years of secular governance.  The Egyptian situation is still in flux and making predictions about the outcome would be premature.  We also don't know how Turkey will turn out and whether the more moderate elected president in Iran will have any impact on its theocratic regime (though that seems unlikely). We Americans love our democracy and sometimes forget that others may not share our enthusiasm.  Unlike George W. Bush, I don't think a wish for democracy is innate to our species, much less democracy as we define it.  Too many of our fellow human beings have opted for something else.  Consider Putin's Russia as an example of that.

With regard to the Muslim world, we should remember that it is largely dominated by the religious orthodox.  Orthodoxy of this kind isn't democratic, just the opposite.  It fosters top down leadership by an elite and often by a singular autocratic leader.  That's true with the Ayatollah in Iran, the Wahhabi monarch in Saudi Arabia and, yes, the Pope in Rome.  The pope may not be a dictator in the political sense, but once in place is an absolute ruler with extraordinary powers.  Pope Francis just elevated two of his predecessors to sainthood effectively making them super human and potentially the object of prayer.  And he did so by fiat, in the case of John XXIII bypassing one of the requirements.  Absolute rulers can do such things. 

The growth of transcenders is unnerving orthodox religionists in the United States.  In a place where so many "secular" governments have been despotic —Iran, Egypt, Syria or Iraq — the suppressed religious have often led the revolutions.  Now in power, some of their populations seem to be feeling buyer's remorse, albeit not necessarily in rejecting religion from their own lives.  Whether the growth of transcenders in the West will be echoed in the East is unknown (and in the short term unlikely) but whether religious governance can prevail in the world of the Internet where what's happening here is quickly known there and visa-versa is an intriguing question.  Stay tuned. 

_____________________

My book Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars is available in print and as an eBook.  Both versions are available at Amazon; the electronic iBooks version can be found at iTunes; a Nook version at Barnes & Noble.

Gulf

With 8.8% unemployed, fifth highest in the nation, The State of North Carolina just cut off 70,000 of its citizens from long-term unemployment benefits.  Along with that heartless action, the state became the first in the nation to forfeit federal long-term benefits ($700M) for its people altogether.  The Department of Labor estimates that this action will impact 100,000 more of the jobless by year's end.  If that weren't enough, the state is scaling back its own payment program, which will drastically reduce benefits to the eligible.  All of this, with strong Chamber of Commerce support, is being done in the name of accelerating the repayment of its federal debt.  Yes, and its being done on the backs of the least fortunate.  Add to that the lower income and higher sales taxes are still to come.  Who do higher sales tax hurt most?  Right, those with the least.

As Paul Krugman writes in a piece worth reading, what's happening in North Carolina is being repeated in other states many under Republican — often Tea Party — control.  Texas is enacting its own regressive legislation.  Both southern states hope to repress voter turnout with Voter ID mandates, something now possible, thanks to last week's Voting Rights Act decision.  Oh yes, things have changed.

It is a bit of sadistic irony that on the very day North Carolina's benefit cut off was going into effect, the NY Times was reporting on America's 200 most grossly overpaid (my characterization, not theirs) chief executives of public companies with $1 Billion plus revenues.   What Larry Ellison, already a billionaire many times over and the third richest American, has done to merit $96M in 2012 compensation is a mystery to me.  But then, the same can be said for virtually everyone on the list, especially in contrast to the average hard working employee in each of their public companies.

Ninth on this years list, at $36.6M is Marissa A. Mayer, Yahoo's new CEO.  Mayer's compensation is not unusual for newly recruited chiefs of troubled companies.  She is no doubt a very smart and capable executive who played a significant role in Google's success.  Nonetheless, her compensation is still outsized; a further symptom of what has gone wrong in our companies, and indeed in our country, resulting in a totally inexplicable gulf between those at the top and virtually everyone else.  There is no way to justify ether their compensation or more so the disparity.

Some may find it at least heartening that a woman is among this year's top ten.  But lets not break out the champagne.  Only eight others — that’s right 9 out of 200, join Mayer.  Call it the glass ceiling or gender gap, it all adds up to the fact that fifty percent of the population remains vastly underrepresented, disenfranchised if you will.  And that's not all.  The top 200 remains almost entirely the domain of white men at a time when the country's demographics have taken a sharp turn in a different direction.  American Express's Kenneth I. Chenault ($28 Million) has again made the list and near the top (17th), but you'll have to search hard for other African Americans (McDonald's Donald Thompson, $13.8M, and Merck's Donald Thompson, $11.1M).  Ah, is this a great and progressive country or not?

Have we learned anything in wake of the financial meltdown and Great Recession?  Quite apparently, we have not.  Virtually all of the top bananas at those to-big-to-fail banks made the list.  Millions of Americans remain uninsured and everyone is wringing their hands about the mounting costs of healthcare, but twenty CEO's in that category are in the top 200, taking home their millions.

Many of these top earners are ostensibly being rewarded for high, sometimes extraordinary profits, but their companies are only hiring at an anemic pace, if at all.  What is it they say, life goes on.  Well yes, but hardly in the same way.  Those North Carolinians who the same companies are not putting on the payroll will have trouble feeding their families and keeping a roof over their heads.  There is a difference between a diet and life style of caviar and humble black beans.  The color of the two foods may be that same but that's where the similarities end.  Sixty associates (7%) along with a 110 support staff members have been laid off at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, one of the country's largest and most prestigious law firms.  Three Hundred partners (average income $2.2 Million) will remain on board though 30 (10%) of them are expected to see some reduction in pay.  Don't lose sleep over any of them, because few of them and their intact counterparts will lose sleep over the associates and support people whose futures are now in doubt.  A job loss today often has larger, even permanent, consequences — lawyers checking us out at Whole Foods or manning the counter at Starbucks (if they're lucky). 

The words "new normal" permeated the Weil story because its cutbacks reflect the problems faced by other mega law firms with bloated staffs and the fees that go along with feeding a large beast.  Business is down and fee pushback is the new normal. Indeed, the new normal has become a popular mantra of our times whether with changed economics or the reach afforded to governments by advanced technology to monitor our phone traffic.  If we should fear anything, it is latching onto that terminology, giving into the new normal as if there is nothing that can be done.  Those 70,000 unemployed in North Carolina soon to be joined by 100,000 more may suck it up and suffer in silence, the new normal.  But this disparity between the top 200 (along with their rarified crowd) and the most everyone else can't go on forever.  Small protests are underway in Raleigh, the state capital, but are sill made up largely of those who sympathize with rather than are the direct victims of cuts.  We aren't seeing Cairo or even Istanbul kind of protests.  Yet!  As the gulf widens and its obvious inequities continue unabated, this acquiescence and apathy can't last forever.  How long do you think it will take the top 200 to get that message?  How long will it take the rest of us?

SCOTUS

SCOTUS has now spoken and done so inconsistently; undermining and upholding civil rights in the same week.  On one hand, the Roberts Court essentially neutered the Voting Rights Act that has provided protection for minorities from discrimination at the polls.  In the same vein, it insured an uncertain future for Affirmative Action; a program aimed a leveling the playing field for all Americans.  And then, the same Court struck down The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law that discriminated against married Gay and Lesbian citizens by denying them the same federal rights and benefits accorded to their heterosexual counterparts.  Then in ruling the plaintiffs had no standing, it effectively confirmed the Appeals Court overturning California's Proposition 8.  It was a week that provided opportunities to both cry and cheer.

In its decision on the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice Roberts (joined in his opinion by four conservative colleagues) contended that times and conditions had changed.  And so they have.  An African American sits in the White House and more people of color hold public offices and vote than was the case when it was first enacted or renewed.  The bottom line is that Roberts and company doesn’t think southern states should be singled out any more, that voter suppression is a thing of the past.  I invite him to visit North Carolina where I live and where a newly empowered Republican super majority in the legislature and a newly elected governor are seeking to undue years of progress.  And yes, now that the Court has spoken, a voter ID law like the one to be implemented in Texas (another southern state) is at the top of their agenda.  Add this week's ruling to Citizens United and its fair to say the Roberts Court has had a profound impact on the electoral process, one that has especially impacted negatively on the disenfranchised, exactly those who need and deserve to be heard most.

In terms of our society, the DOMA decision may turn out to be the most important of the week.  In it the Court effectively put its stamp of authenticity on same-sex marriages, performed in twelve states.  By equalizing benefits it equalized the marriages.  But the decision is far more than symbolic.  It will have a meaningful economic impact on couples who will now be able to file joint tax returns, be treated equally on inheritance taxes (the issue that was brought to the Court) and benefit from a host of programs available to other married couples.  Working out the mechanics of implementation will be challenging and that in itself may be one of the ruling's dividends.  As the federal government reconfigures its eligibility lists and programs, it is likely to run up against conflicting state laws.  Litigation is bound to follow and may ultimately lead to the Court facing the inherent Constitutional question of equal rights.

And that of course brings me to the Court's punt; it's non-decision in the Proposition 8 case.  Many of us had hoped that this case, argued by a non-partisan dream team of advocates, might settle the matter of marriage equality.  If DOMA is unconstitutional, shouldn't state laws like North Carolina's marriage amendment, be as well?   But the Court wasn't ready and perhaps we should have known it.  Most significantly, it turns out, Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn't ready.  The tipoff came just a month ago when the most senior liberal Justice spoke at Chicago University's Law School.  Ginsburg, who had been a strong and unwavering proponent and supporter of abortion rights, is having second thoughts about the marquee Roe decision.  She hasn't changed her pro-choice views but seems to think Roe was a tactical mistake.  With hindsight, the Justice suggests that the Court's legalizing abortion across the country in 1973 was premature and in fact stopped a legalization momentum that was building among the states.  In effect, cutting off the process before the country as a whole was ready, set off a backlash of ugly divisiveness that remains to this day.

Here is how Meredith Heagney reported her talk on the Law School's website:

"My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.

“Roe isn’t really about the woman’s choice, is it?” Ginsburg said. “It’s about the doctor’s freedom to practice…it wasn’t woman-centered, it was physician-centered.”

Whether Ginsburg is right in her analysis can be debated.  The countless women whose lives were impacted, and in some cases saved, by Roe might rightly disagree.  But it seems clear that Ginsburg's reasoning — her tactical reasoning, I'd argue — drove her to supporting a punt on Prop 8.  By ruling the plaintiffs had no standing, the Court effectively sustained the ruling made at a local level.  California will soon become the 13th state to provide for marriage equality and as many as twelve other states are expected to follow in the coming months.

Marriage equality is in our future and we are fast moving toward it.  It's pretty well agreed that the Court, to bring along the inevitable holdouts, will ultimately have to take the decisive vote they avoided this week.  One would hope that would happen sooner rather than later.  But what I was thinking about this week was more than the issues at hand.  While there were some surprise alliances, especially on the California case, we see a Court that, like the Congress and the country, is deeply divided, ideologically and politically.  In past Courts who appointed a Justice didn't seem to matter as much as how that jurist developed once exposed to decision making.  Justices appointed by conservative presidents might emerge a moderate or even liberal and ones appointed by liberal chief executives might turn in another direction.  That time, it would seem, is gone.

What is the Roberts Court?  Well it is one whose majority was appointed by Republican presidents and who hold fast to a shared conservative ideology.  This Court tends to be pro-business rather than pro-labor, it seems to want to put an end to any special treatment for minorities, and it likes to cede more power to the states and less to Washington.   While the current majority likes to criticize previous Courts, especially the Warren Court, as being activist, this group is clearly more than holding its own in that regard.  As Adam Liptak reminds us in his Times analysis of the Roberts Court, the Chief is only 58 and could be in place for decades to come.  That's true — and disturbing if you believe in term limits, which I do — but the makeup of federal courts is in the hands of the president and senate.  A number of the justices are advanced in age and what happens in the next decade, will determine if the Roberts Court of today will be the Roberts Court of tomorrow.  A swing of just one vote can make the difference.

In that regard, from where I sit, nothing can be more important in the years ahead than insuring a Democrat succeeds President Obama.  But first things first, a president needs a like-minded senate majority to move forward and confirm his appointments. The redistricting of the past years has stacked the deck against Democrats in the House, a place where all politics is absolutely local.  But statewide elections are not as impacted by narrow and often oddly drawn lines.  When it comes to both 2014 and 2016 I'd suggest that two words be kept top of mind at all times are: Supreme Court.  Adam Liptak says Roberts takes a long calculating view and is deft at moving the Court to the right.  But ultimately numbers do count and who serves as  president will have more to say about numbers than the Chief.  Tomorrow's Roberts Court could look and act very differently than today's.

Obama, Snowden and the Press

I have long been, and continue to be, a strong supporter of Barack Obama.  Evidence of that can be found in my posts going back to early 2007, my contributions to his two campaigns and a my share of door knocking here in this now almost completely "red" state.  Like many others, I was thrilled by yesterdays announcement that he would employ executive powers to move aggressively forward on climate change.  It is in that context that I find myself both mystified and troubled by the Administration's record on matters of privacy, its aggressive pursuit of whistle blowers and its often-hostile relations with the press.  All of that is evident in the Snowden Affair.

During the 2008 campaign the press often referred to the candidate as "no drama Obama", a branding attributed to Air Force General Tony McPeak.  Unlike many contenders for the highest office in the land, this man was cool and controlled.  If there were tensions within, they were subdued by a leader who literally didn't tolerate what had become a norm in the Clinton and then the McCain campaigns.  Whether or not the no drama moniker fits, my own sense is that Obama is at the core an extremely private person.  That explains his still small circle of advisors, his lack of interest in "schmoozing" with Hill folk and a reluctance to engage often in one-on-ones with the press.  Aside from several first term appearances on 60 Minutes with Steve Kroft, it was only last week (almost five years in) that he agreed to an extended sit down with Charlie Rose.

And it is Obama's own premium on privacy that makes his stance on surveillance so very mystifying.  Not merely has the President carried forward a Bush/Cheney initiated program, he has both embraced and, if anything, broadened it.  Doing so has largely inoculated him from criticism on the right, but it has infuriated many of his natural supporters in the middle and left.  Even those who may not find it infuriating, still see it as deeply disheartening, further evidence of the right's huge influence on America's present.  Democrats have long been at a disadvantage on matters of national security and now seem to be performing cartwheels to prove that "it just ain't so".  It's time for them to stop proving themselves.  We want to be judged by the values we protect, not the corners we cut in the name of maintaining security.

If keeping track of what telephone numbers we're dialing is deeply disturbing, equally so is even the slightest intrusion on press freedom.  In his Times piece discussing NBC's David Gregory's controversial questioning of The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, David Carr writes:

"If you add up the pulling of news organization phone records (The Associated Press), the tracking of individual reporters (Fox News), and the effort by the current administration to go after sources (seven instances and counting in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media), suggesting that there is a war on the press is less hyperbole than simple math. ... For the time being, it is us (the press) versus them (federal officials)..."

The issue here is not whether the press and government at times (or often) find themselves adversaries — that's what a free press is all about — but if the government is using its muscle to prevent reporters from doing their job.  There is much to criticize about today's media, many reasons for us to have lost confidence in them as independent observers.  That said, we all have a big stake in protecting their integrity, something that impacts directly and deeply on our own.  This includes their right and need to protect sources. 

If mystified by Obama's stand on privacy, I'm totally at sea about the current travels of Edward Snowden.  In my first post on this subject, I called him a hero.  His decision to leak information about how our government is intruding itself on our privacy in the name of national security is potentially a catalyst a long overdue national discussion.  In the face of others silence, that was heroic.  My fear now is that Snowden's behavior since this story broke may be undermining the very discussion that I had expected would ensue and that President Obama has endorsed.  The behavior of the messenger (the hero) may well get in the way.

Clearly Snowden has the right to protect himself from prosecution.  The usual course for doing so is to engage legal counsel.  Given his many supporters, getting a first class lawyer and the necessary funding for a defense would hardly seem a problem.  But Snowden, unlike other whistle blowers, chose to leave the country.  That's understandable.  That he chose China and now Russia as havens, albeit temporary, is to say the least curious.  Leaving aside, that these were our primary adversaries during the Cold War, neither country can be described as a protector of either citizen privacy or of a free press.  If American can be faulted in this regard, these countries are monsters in comparison.  Dick Cheney's suggestion that Snowden might be a spy may read ludicrous, but connecting those dots would make for an easy and credible spy novel.  We know little about the former CIA employee, but his travel itinerary certainly isn't enhancing his credibility.

None of us have any control over Mr. Snowden or know what his next steps will be.  The secrets he laid bare are claimed to have done "irreversible and significant damage" to the nation.  Maybe so, but at this point we don't know that to be the case.  The idea that our adversaries don't know that technology is being employed as a surveillance tool is hard to believe.  We have no control over the whistle blower or over what the government will say to defend its program or do to prosecute him.  What we can control, or at least influence, is the critical conversation about privacy and the limits of government intrusion.  We can't allow Snowden's odyssey to distract us.  That will be hard at a time when we as Americans seem to prefer drama to substance.  If the press really wants to protect their own independence and freedom, here's a chance for them to show it by keeping their eye and ours on the ball.  This time around they clearly have a vested and immediate interest in substance, in adopting the no drama ways of the President whom they and we have been calling to task.

Comments on the Supreme Court's three momentous decisions will follow soon.

Because we can.

In the midst of the 2012 campaign Mitt Romney was having a car elevator installed in his California beachfront house.  Four years earlier, John Edwards held himself out as the voice of the poor while building North Carolina's most expensive private residence.  Neither candidate seems to have understood the message they were conveying about themselves or how out of touch they were with the vast majority of American voters, regardless of party.  Mitt Romney and John Edwards are both (though not equally) wealthy.  Politicians are not known for speaking with unfettered candor and with good reason.  Remember what trouble Mitt brought upon himself with his 47% remark.  Let's assume for a moment that they saw us like Romney saw his peers in Boca Raton and we asked them why they were lavishing themselves with such excess?  "We're doing it", they might answer (and accurately so), "because we can".

These one-percenters may seem remote from us and their "because we can" response especially so — but not so fast.  In truth, there is much that happens today in what both our government and we do that derives from "because we can".  Perhaps we don't own over-the-top (much less multiple) dwellings but technology, for example, has freed us up to do many things that would have unthinkable in an earlier time.  In many cases, and regardless of age or circumstance, we do them just because we can.  Surveillance and spying is nothing new but technology has changed the ball game dramatically and, with the recent focus on what the government is doing, we fear that they are being far more invasive than necessary, just because they can. 

You may agree or not with my assessment of Edward Snowden as more hero than traitor.  The government has charged him with violating the Espionage Act for exposing the PRISM program.  He's on the move as I write this and who knows how that will play out, or how we'll feel the more we know about him.  What concerns me now is not so much Snowden but — and on this we can probably agree — that we finally engage in a serious public conversation about the degree to which our privacy should be invaded to maintain our security.  Among other issues we need to sort out is what safety risks we are willing to endure in the name of preserving our privacy (assuming that's possible in the digital age).  We should understand that even if we are willing to give up a considerable degree of privacy there is no guarantee that bad things won't happen.  No security program is fail-safe.  We are told than many plots were prevented by PRISM, but the Boston bombing did happen on the program's watch.  Its alleged perpetrators somehow evaded this intrusive surveillance.

What I'm suggesting in this post is a much broader conversation, one that drills down way beyond matters of national security into our personal lives.   It's hard to walk a street today or to be in an enclosed place whether our home, a grocery store or a museum without seeing someone, often many someone’s, tapping away on their smart phones either texting or searching the web.  The Internet has made it possible to do considerable research without ever setting foot in a library.   Books can be ordered, or increasingly downloaded, without visiting a bricks and mortar bookseller.  I so rarely write them that when a leasing company wanted me to provide a canceled check to verify a request to join their automatic payment program there was none to provide.  By the way, the bank no longer returns any cancelled checks, so even the two or three I write annually is of no use in that regard.  Countless people now have Facebook pages where they can share a running narrative of their every movement or thought.  Through Twitter accounts they can engage in endless "conversation" and share their opinions on any subject of their choosing. You will likely have hundreds of examples like these, things you or others do because we can.

This blog is posted on the Internet.  Anyone, in most parts of the world, can access it at will.  It is a public expression and, like many other bloggers, I am voicing opinions, some of them controversial.  I try very hard not to misstate facts and to attribute quotes properly, often backing them up with reference links.  But I could do the opposite.  I am free to write at will and to express whatever thoughts I may have — free to do so because I can.  The question I always ask myself, and why more of my blogs are stillborn in my computer than uploaded, is if I should?  In my case, that's often because of a personally set discipline to write only when I (hopefully) have something to add to the conversation.  But the point is, "if I should", is always top of mind.

Most of us, myself included, are not always or consistently asking that question.  Some of us don't ask it at all.  We've become accustomed to doing a cursory search for say a lighting fixture on Google and suddenly finding ads for such fixtures on a sidebar at Huff Post.  It's accepted that a similar search on Amazon is likely to be followed by "targeted" emails in our inbox.  We just accept this as the way of our world.  We accept and largely ignore this "way" rather than thinking of it in terms of privacy invaded.  Searching on line, we accept, is different than browsing unnoticed at Home Deport, Macy's or Barnes & Noble.  Know your customer, a long established maxim of good retailing, has come to mean something very different, a customized service follow-up, yes, but a far more invasive one.

So when the government invades our privacy it is one that has already been compromised, a self-inflicted compromise at that.  GPS tells us where to go, but it also lets others know where we are.  Just watch an episode of NCIS or CSI and you'll know exactly what I mean.  This is not to suggest that we throw our mobile phones into the recycling bin, but that we recognize and more importantly remain constantly aware of their privacy robbing attributes.  Just because we can doesn't always mean we should.  Needless to say, this is far easier said than done.  Beyond all else, we are not fully in control, not by a long shot.

Understanding that, we must also recognize that what's required of us is not only restraining ourselves from thoughtlessly doing what we can, but also considering what constraints should be imposed on others.  Others doesn't only mean the government about which such a fuss is now rightly being made, but the many eyes and ears the step across our personal line every day.  It's good that Amazon remembers what vitamin tablets I use and what water filter is required in my refrigerator, but should it have the right to turn my every search into a sales pitch?  The answer may be that I don't care or that these reminders may be useful enough in the aggregate that I am willing to ignore the useless and not consider it overly invasive.  Should we ask the government to intervene and compel them to give us a choice or should we ask them to do so or to stop, hoping that other voices will add weight to our request?  Personally I prefer the second option because bringing the government in here has potentially unintended consequences.

Arresting the government's intrusion into our privacy is of course something else entirely.  Absent political/citizen action and legislative restraint, the NSA is unlikely to alter its surveillance programs.  In this case, the government is the vendor and we are the customers/stakeholders.  We haven't the power to get them to change their approach without getting others to join in.  PRISM is a call for public discussion and hopefully for mitigating action.

In the end, disciplining ourselves with regard to "just because I can" requires a different and more aware mindset.  It demands that we ask, "do I really want to do or say that" and, more to the point, in that particular medium.   How much do I want to share on Facebook and what pictures do I want to send out from my iPhone (or at times even take)?  In our time there is so much that we can just do and every reason to embrace the empowerment of that ability.  But it seems to me it's time to build the "should we" question into our everyday lives.  For sure some people have imposed a should on their young children, but in the long run imposing one upon ourselves will prove far more important and necessary.

  

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My book Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars is available in print and as an eBook.  Both versions are available at Amazon; the electronic iBooks version can be found at iTunes; a Nook version at Barnes & Noble.