Can We Save the Truth?

Is there truth? During the late 20^th century, the humanities became enmeshed in esoteric discussions about truth. Deconstructionists argued that all writing was relative to the writer, whose identity and biases created work that might be true for the writer, but not for other people with different identities. This argument came out of a radical critique of Western white male hegemony, which has since been expanded to the analysis of all forms of hierarchy. White supremacy, male chauvinism, homophobia, and all other kinds of discrimination lead to claims by dominant groups that they possess truth, when they are actually only expressing their self-interest.

This line of thinking was taken up especially by literary scholars, who argued that every text has multiple, perhaps infinite meanings. There is no true interpretation of a piece of writing. When this was expanded into other disciplines, it became more confusing. Some historians argued that it is impossible to make a true historical statement. Every statement can have multiple, even contradictory meanings. Excellent examples of this would be statements that really do depend on the position of the author: Wikipedia’s article on Fort Seybert in the Allegheny Mountains is mainly about fighting at the Fort in 1758, and includes the phrase “the Indians massacred 17 to 19 people”. Such statements were assumed to be truths until recently, as long as the number of dead were accurate. But: the attackers were not “Indians”, but members of the Shawnee and Delaware tribes; “massacre” implies mass murder, when this was one battle in a war begun by white invaders of Native American lands; etc.

Much historical writing had to be rewritten to remove what turned out to be obvious biases in language and meaning. Much remains to be done.

Scientific ideas also were criticized as claiming truth when there was none. An example that has upended many social assumptions is the idea of gender, a seemingly biological concept. How do we tell the difference between a man and a woman? We should not simply adopt traditional ideas, supposedly scientific, which are merely social ideas put into scientific language. In athletic contests that question has led to many controversies about who may compete against whom. The relativists’ argument would be that gender is a matter of self-definition, not truth.

Does this mean that there is no truth? That any statement can be shown to be untrue by people with a different point of view? Objectivity is impossible, so there is no objective truth.

I always have regarded these questions as irrelevant to my work as an historian and political commentator. I recognize that every historical statement can be attacked as not precisely true. Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Well, certainly not exactly six million, which is an estimate, the best one we have. Many of the people the Nazis murdered as “Jews” did not consider themselves Jewish. Many more millions were killed by the Nazis using the same methods in the same places – they should not be left out of the concept of Holocaust.

I’m sure that nearly every sentence I have ever written could be taken apart and shown to be not as true as some other much more complicated formulation.

Please pardon this lecture on abstruse intellectual arguments. They were all the rage when I was a graduate student, and tended to make doing historical writing difficult. For my own writing, I have settled on a method of writing and rewriting in which I seek to improve places where I use imprecise categories and labels, where I slide over gaps in my knowledge with vague phrases, where my ignorance leads to false statements. I find and fix many such places in the process of revising. I hope to produce writing which is as close as possible to being objective and true. That I have such goals indicates that I do not accept the idea that there is no truth. I do believe that truth is very hard to reach, that nearly every proposition in history or science can be improved by more work, that we are imperfect seekers of truth. So we can approach truth, but perhaps never reach it.

At last we arrive at my point. When these arguments were raging in the academy, conservatives were greatly annoyed. Conservative historians asserted that relativists were ruining everything, that truth did exist. They criticized post-modernism as a mask for moral relativism, connected this immorality with the popular movements of the 1960s, and asserted their own moral primacy (the Moral Majority).

I was prompted to write this because of the great irony that the political conservatism, which once argued for objective truth, now relies on the broadest attack on truth that we have ever experienced. Political lies are nothing new and nothing inherently conservative. President Lyndon Johnson’s lie about a North Vietnamese attack on American ships in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 led to a disastrous expansion of the war, which was extended by years of lying laid out in the Pentagon Papers. But today we suffer from a multiplication of lies as a Republican tactic to win elections.

The platform of the Republican Party about climate change and health care, two of our most pressing issues, is just one big lie. The use of a fabricated story about Ukraine and Joe Biden is a set of lies, that then led to one of the greatest scenes of collective public lying in American history, the response of Republican Representatives and Senators to the impeachment.

We are being bombarded with carefully crafted lies throughout cyberspace, designed to distort the results of the 2020 election. False stories about Joe Biden and Ukraine have already spread virally to millions of people. Fighting them takes enormous effort and resources, well beyond anything that will be deployed this year.

Disinformation spread by bots can come from anywhere on the globe. The technology is non-partisan. But the use is not. Russia’s online campaign in 2016 was designed to help elect Trump. The Trump campaign is now using one of these Ukraine stories in various media. CNN refused to run it, but it’s up on Facebook.

The intersection of a Republican Party which sees no value in distinguishing between truth and lies and an emerging technology that makes spreading lies incredibly easy is a great political danger. Is there truth? Not if those in power in America don’t care.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

February 4, 2020

A Special Time

I went to the annual city-sponsored celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., on Monday. Jacksonville’s Mayor, Andy Ezard, inaugurated these yearly breakfasts a decade ago. Every year a speaker helps us think about what MLK said, what he wanted to happen, and how he lived. There is often music, and we sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, a hopeful song: from “the dark past”, “the gloomy past” “that with tears has been watered”, to the present, “the place for which our fathers signed”, to the future, “Let us march on till victory is won.”

Some years, that song and the celebration around it do lift hope, because the present is evolving to a brighter future that is joyous to imagine. But not today.

Today hope means believing that we will soon stop going backwards, that this moment is just a hesitation on the journey toward the unity we seek. Sometimes hope makes way for despair about how things might get worse.

What American governments since the 1960s have created in order to undo centuries of prejudice, discrimination, and persecution, the Republican Party is dismantling. I don’t say that Trump is doing this, even though his name is on every new policy of his administration, because he is not alone. Republican politicians across the country are doing this work themselves, defending the work of their colleagues, and pledging allegiance to the man who is leading the charge backwards.

Two authors of distinguished books on the history of race in America just wrote articles for the New York Times for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, which tell us where we are and what is being done in our names. Michelle Alexander published “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” 10 years ago, when Trump was just a glittery real estate con man. She showed how the explosion of the number of Americans in jail in the wake of the “war on drugs” was at its heart “another caste system — a system of mass incarceration — that locked millions of poor people and people of color in literal and virtual cages.”

The numbers must be printed to make their proper impression. These are careful estimates only, because fuller data does not exist, but they are the best estimates we have. Between 1980 and 2010, the proportion of Americans in prison tripled to 1%, but the proportion of African Americans in prison also almost tripled from 1.3% to 3.1%. The racial disparity remained about the same, as American governments imprisoned so many more Americans. In 2010, one out of three black men had a felony conviction in their past, and one of every ten were in prison or on parole. That was true for only one in fifty of the rest of the population.

This happened in Boston, where African Americans were subject to police observations, interrogations, and searches at seven times the rate of the rest of the population. It happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when African Americans were nine times as likely to be subject to police investigative detentions. And so on.

Alexander shows that both Democratic and Republican political leaders gave the US the dubious distinction of having more than one fifth of the world’s prisoners and the highest incarceration rate in the world: 756 per 100,000, while most countries imprison fewer than 150 per 100,000. Both Boston and Charlottesville were dominated by Democrats.

Now she delivers a shorter message: our nation must move back to the path toward racial justice from the detour we are taking. Obama and the national Democratic Party did not do enough to reverse those trends. But that is a long way from what has happened in the past 3 years. She is clear that the transition from Obama to Trump moved us from a hopeful discussion of racial reform to an era of white supremacy, clothed as returning to greatness.

Richard Rothstein published “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” three years ago. He also covered the long history of discrimination that Alexander described, but this time from the point of view of housing segregation. In fine detail, Rothstein explained how the federal government throughout the 20^th century, under Democrats and Republicans, used its vast financial powers to promote further residential segregation, notably in the new postwar suburbs. Where I grew up, in the giant Levitt developments on Long Island, the federal government insured his loans on the condition that African Americans would be excluded from buying his houses.

This has been the American way for centuries, putting an unfair economic burden on African Americans. 1968 appeared to put an end to federal complicity in the segregation of American housing. Through the Fair Housing Act, included in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, groups who are discriminated against in anything to do with housing can use the legal system to demand redress. That Act was passed in the wake of MLK’s assassination.

But discrimination continues, taking less obvious forms. An example of how this occurs out of our sight comes from Syracuse. Since 1996, property has not been reassessed in the city, which seems like merely local government incompetence. But since then, the values of homes in white neighborhoods have risen much faster than homes in black neighborhoods. Reassessment would shift some of the weight of property taxes toward those much more valuable white homes. Not doing anything means that black homeowners have been paying an increasingly disproportionate share of property taxes. The city government in Syracuse is dominated by Democrats.

Rothstein’s article in the NYTimes shows how Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is directing his vast bureaucracy and billions of dollars away from the process of desegregation. Since he was a candidate for President in 2016, he has argued that efforts to fix racial segregation are bad “social engineering”. Now HUD is trying to make it impossible for residents in a community like Syracuse, where government or business policies discriminate against racial minorities, to prove that in court. One of the far-reaching policies of the Trump administration which makes fighting discrimination more difficult.

These are pieces in today’s national puzzle of race. Martin Luther King has missed more than 50 years of change in race relations, in party politics, in the American landscape. But his yet unrealized dreams can still inspire hope

Hardly anything is more worth fighting for.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

January 21, 2020

Winnowing the Democratic Field

Twenty-eight Democrats put their names in to run for President. Now only 12 are left, most of whom have little chance. Why have some candidates survived, while others had to drop out?

First, please note that the above paragraph is not actually correct. In fact, at least 305 people have registered as Democratic presidential candidates for 2020, along with 153 Republicans, 53 Libertarians, and 22 Greens. The great majority are not serious contenders and won’t appear on any ballot. They have no chance, because the media pay no attention to them, so we have never heard of them. They attract no campaign funds, so only the Federal Election Commission, with whom they filed their papers, knows their names. It might be interesting to examine this long list to see who takes this step and why.

How did the 28 racing Democrats become “12”? Or maybe it’s really only the 6 who will debate tonight in Iowa. But beyond the 6 stands Michael Bloomberg and $1 billion.

So this is complicated. I’ll say up front that I mined information from these places:

Politico’s site about all the polls among Democratic candidates over the past year through December;

nice charts of the ups and downs in the polls of most of the candidates at Real Clear Politics and Wikipedia;

the constantly updated New York Times story about all the candidates, in and out;

an enormous amount of facts about the Democratic debates at Wikipedia.

It’s been confusing, but delightful to see so many serious and skilled people with the most diverse identities making a serious run at the Presidency. There is nothing like it anywhere else in American history or in American politics today. I’m trying to reduce my own confusion here, and this is longer than I usually write.

Many of the Democrats had little name recognition beyond their own state:

Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska

John Hickenlooper, former Governor of Colorado

Wayne Messam, mayor of Miramar, Fla

Seth Moulton, Congressman from Massachusetts

Richard Ojeda, former West Virginia state senator

Tim Ryan, Congressman from Ohio

Joe Sestak, former Congressman from Pennsylvania.

Three similar candidates managed to qualify for the first or second debate, but it made no difference:

Steve Bullock, Governor of Montana

Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington State

Eric Swalwell, Congressman from California.

They got no attention because they got no attention.

Several who remain officially in are also mostly unknown to Americans outside of their own states, where the heavy weight of the 2020 campaign has not yet landed:

Michael Bennett, Senator from Colorado

John Delaney, former Congressman from Maryland

Tulsi Gabbard, Congresswoman from Hawaii.

In December, over 30% had still not heard of them. Tulsi Gabbard might appear to be a different case, since she got to the 5^th debate, while Bennett and Delaney didn’t debate after July. Perhaps the controversy she caused by some unorthodox foreign policy positions and a history of anti-gay advocacy attracted a bit more attention and funding. But she peaked at 2% in national polls in December, where she remains, and she has already had her last debate. Of those who had heard of her, more than half had an unfavorable opinion.

Only one other candidate had underwater favorability ratings from those who knew of her: Marianne Williamson. If Gabbard was unorthodox, Williamson came out of left field. Her political history consisted of an unsuccessful run for Congress in California in 2014. She is not a politician, but a very successful author, self-help guru, and political progressive. She came at this campaign from the side, and always stood out among her rivals, all politicians. She wants to cure our spiritually diseased society with love. Williamson only debated twice and then her continued inability to get over 1% in any polls doomed her ability to shift American politics toward feelings.

This uniquely unfavorable polling data for Gabbard and Williamson could have an explanation in today’s hot question: can a woman get elected President? At the moment Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are heading toward a disastrous he-said no-he-didn’t confrontation on that question, that adds charges of lying to charges of sexism. I’ll interrupt the flow of candidate data to say that I don’t think it is automatically sexist to believe that a woman can’t win in 2020, or to say it. Nobody denies that Clinton’s gender hurt her vote in some way. How many of those disinclined to vote for a woman in 2016 have changed their minds? This is a legitimate question for discussion and each answer, yes or no, deserves to be heard. Sanders might know something about American voting patterns that would make his judgment about whether a woman could win useful.

I happen to favor Elizabeth Warren, and I constantly hear and see opinions that she can’t win, because a woman can’t win. But that takes us back to unfavorability. It might be that a dose of sexism raised the unfavorability ratings of Gabbard and Williamson. Kamala Harris also had notably high unfavorability. But in the latest poll this month, Warren and Sanders had the best favorable to unfavorable ratios among all candidates. That ratio appears to me to be quite stable. As new people learn about a candidate, the favorable and unfavorable piles grow at the same pace. It may be that the incessant scrutiny of Warren’s personal impression on voters, as opposed to chuckles at Sanders’ angry old man cuteness thanks to Larry David, displays media stereotyping. Voters appear to have gotten beyond this.

To get back to the list: some candidates did succeed in gaining national attention.

Beto O’Rourke had a national reputation as former Congressman from Texas and a losing Senatorial candidate a year ago, but he could not repeat the magic of that campaign. He never got beyond that hurdle of 2% in national polls, below which so many candidacies failed.

Kirsten Gillibrand and Bill de Blasio, Senator and Mayor from New York, were probably better known than the western Congressmen and Governors who dropped out early, but they also went nowhere. She, and especially he had too many people who disliked them.

Julián Castro won election 3 times as mayor of San Antonio, then served 3 years as Secretary of Housing under Obama. He did well in the first 4 debates, but ended up under 1% in polls and dropped out last month.

Among the many sitting Senators who got into this race, three were able to stay in the race in the second tier:

Corey Booker from New Jersey

Kamala Harris from California

Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota.

Their names were broadly known, especially the first two. They all participated in the first 5 debates from June through November, creating clear campaign personalities. And they all remained in the second tier, except for a brief breakthrough for Harris reaching third place and 15% in July. Then she fell precipitously to below 5% in December and dropped out. Neither Booker nor Klobuchar have been above 3% since July, but they hung on. Booker just dropped out and Klobuchar remains in, but I don’t see much hope for her. All the latest state polls have her at or below 4%, except for Iowa, where she is counting on her Midwestern roots to move her up in the field. But even there, she only gets 6% to 8% in fifth place.

On Monday, Booker dropped out. Tuesday’s debate will have only white candidates. The winnowing of a historically diverse field of candidates to fewer all white debaters was not due to Democratic National Committee debate rules or to black candidates’ inability to raise funds. The choices of black Democrats made the difference. In November, black voters preferred Biden, Sanders and Warren, with only 2% for Kamala Harris and under 1% for Booker. The Washington Post-Ipsos poll in early January confirmed what had been obvious since the beginning of the campaign. Joe Biden is the most popular choice among black Democrats, at 48%, concentrated among blacks over 35. Bernie Sanders is second at 20%, Elizabeth Warren at 9%, Booker at 4%. Even as a second choice, Booker could get only 8%. Booker could only get third place as best able to handle issues important to blacks, but most significant, only 2% thought him best able to defeat Trump.

Deval Patrick, two-term Governor of Massachusetts, considered opening a campaign in 2018, decided against, then jumped in three months ago. But he got less than 1% of black voters in January, a bad sign.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York, has become a wild card in this race. He had been talked about as a presidential candidate every election since 2008. He registered as a Democrat in October and opened his campaign in November, too late for the earliest primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. He is financing his own campaign, so he will not meet the donor thresholds for participation in the debates. He is better known across the country than any of the candidates except the top 4, and has risen suddenly in polls to tie Pete Buttigieg for 4^th place. Can he go higher? Maybe not much, because he is viewed more negatively than anyone else among the top 10 candidates.

Tom Steyer is another billionaire who said he wasn’t going to run, then changed his mind, and began a campaign in July. In October he was only known to 64% of those polled, like the many candidates who dropped out, but that had climbed to 71% in December, and 75% this month. He is polling at or below 4%, but he appears to be rising, and is staying in. Billions buy ads, and I have seen a number of them, even in Illinois, so he is becoming better known.

Steyer and Bloomberg demonstrate the necessity of money, lots of money, for American politicians, especially presidential candidates. Billionaires represent .0000003% of the US population, but 2 out of 12 remaining Democratic candidates and 1 (guess who?) out of 3 Republicans.

Andrew Yang is also in a category by himself. He is a tech entrepreneur and author, who has never run for public office. His signature proposal is that the government fund a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for all Americans. His focus on the economy and his unique persona have brought him a devoted following and much media attention. He qualified for all the debates until tonight, where he misses some of the polling qualifications. He ranks above politicians like Klobuchar and the billionaire Steyer, but at 5% he doesn’t yet threaten the leaders. He ranks sixth in all states but California, where he is fifth.

What about the top 4? Amidst all these comings and goings, the top 4 have remained pretty firmly in place. Joe Biden has been leading the whole time, but in the most recent polls has fallen to just under 30%. He also led in nearly every state poll, except for the most recent Iowa poll, where Sanders beats him. Bernie Sanders seems locked in second place, but he has narrowed the gap in national polls from about 15 points to 6 points in the latest poll. He is competing for the more progressive voters with Elizabeth Warren, who seemed to pass him in September, but has fallen back to third since then. Pete Buttigieg has been in fourth place for months, briefly jumping up over 10% in December, but falling back to 8%-9% now. He may also see hope in Iowa, where he does better, but in states with significant black Democrats, he does poorly.

Looking toward the next few months, the New York Times shows us how much money each candidate has collected and how much media attention they get. The top 4 have each collected more than $35 million, with Bernie leading at $61.5 million. They also get the most media attention. Everybody else is far behind in contributions, all under $16 million. Bloomberg occupies a peculiar position, since he has collected no contributions for his entirely self-funded campaign, yet ranks 5^th in the national polling average at 5%. Steyer also has elevated himself from the pack of also-rans, by qualifying for the January debate, as he did for the December debate, through heavy advertising in the early primary states.

Tonight’s debate may shake things up, but that seems unlikely to me. The next important moments will be the caucuses in Iowa on February 3 and the primary election in New Hampshire on February 11, two of the whitest states in the US. Caucuses in Nevada and an election in South Carolina follow later in February, with much more diverse populations. After these contests, the projections and predictions will multiply, with a much firmer basis. Losers will drop out and their supporters will look for a new home. I think the tug of war between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party will continue into the summer.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

January 14, 2020