When Killing and Praying Cease

ISIS would not have close to the followers it has if all it offered were slaughter and praying. We in the West are, for the most part, not willing to examine the totality of the ISIS message. As harsh as their militaristic view of Sunni Islam might be, they have proved themselves to be able administrators – sending up viable taxation, public services, police power, petroleum export, etc. – in the lands they have conquered. They are masters of media, from old world radio and television to the nuances of social media and its massive reach around the world. Media professionals are often ranked higher within the ISIS hierarchy than some of their best soldiers.

NY Times journalist, Thomas Hegghammer, examined the writings and social media posting of ISIS stalwarts and how ordinary members described their lives and depicted themselves within the ISIS world. “Using autobiographies, videos, blog posts, tweets and defectors’ accounts, I have sought a sense of the cultural dimensions of jihadi activism. What I have discovered is a world of art and emotions. While much of it has parallels in mainstream Muslim culture, these militants have put a radical ideological spin on it.

“When jihadis aren’t fighting — which is most of the time — they enjoy storytelling and watching films, cooking and swimming. The social atmosphere (at least for those who play by the rules) is egalitarian, affectionate and even playful. Jihadi life is emotionally intense, filled with the thrill of combat, the sorrow of loss, the joy of camaraderie and the elation of religious experience. I suspect this is a key source of its attraction.

“The corridors of jihadi safe houses are filled with music or, more precisely, a cappella hymns (since musical instruments are forbidden) known as anashid. There’s nothing militant about this traditional genre, which dates from pre-Islamic times. But in the 1970s, Islamists began composing their own ideological songs about their favored themes. Today there are thousands of jihadi songs in circulation, with new tunes being added every month. Jihadis can’t seem to get enough anashid. They listen to them in their dorms and in their cars, sing them in training camps and in the trenches, and discuss them on Twitter and Facebook. Some use them to mentally prepare for operations: Ayoub El Khazani, a 25-year-old Moroccan man who attempted a shooting attack on a Paris-bound train in August, listened to YouTube videos of jihadi anashid just minutes before his failed operation.

“Anashid are closely related to poetry, another staple of jihadi culture. Across the Arab and Islamic world, poetry is much more widely appreciated than it is in the West. Militants, though, have used the genre to their own ends. Over the past three decades or so, jihadi poets have developed a vast body of radical verse. Leaders from the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani to Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri often include lines of poetry in their speeches and treatises. Foot soldiers in Syria and Iraq sometimes hold impromptu poetry performances or group recitals in the field.

“In any large jihadi group there might be a few people who specialize in composing or memorizing poems. These poets can be anyone from within the movement, men or women of any rank. The Islamic State’s most famous poet is a Syrian woman in her 20s who goes by the name Ahlam al-Nasr, or Dreams of Victory. (While jihadi women generally socialize separately from men, the Internet has allowed women to take a more active part in the movement’s cultural life.) Her most famous collection, “Blaze of Truth,” contains lines such as “Shake the throne of the cross, and Extinguish the fire of the Zoroastrians / Strike down every adversity, and go reap those heads.”

“Perhaps more important than poems for jihadis are dreams, which they believe can contain instructions from God or premonitions of the future. Both leaders and foot soldiers say they sometimes rely on nighttime visions for decision making…

“Jihadi culture also comes with its own sartorial styles. In Europe, radicals sometimes wear a combination of sneakers, a Middle Eastern or Pakistani gown and a combat jacket on top. It’s a style that perhaps reflects their urban roots, Muslim identity and militant sympathies. The men often follow Salafi etiquette, for example by carrying a tooth-cleaning twig known as a miswak, wearing nonalcoholic perfume, and avoiding gold jewelry, as they believe the Prophet Muhammad did.

“As new recruits shed their jeans and track suits for robes, as they memorize the words to the Islamic State’s anashid and learn to look for glimpses of paradise in dreams, they discover a whole new lifestyle. Music, rituals and customs may be as important to jihadi recruitment as theological treatises and political arguments. Yes, some people join radical groups because they want to escape personal problems, avenge Western foreign policy or obey a radical doctrine. But some recruits may join because they find a cultural community and a new life that is emotionally rewarding.” New York Times, December 19^th.

To understand what attracts recruits, people otherwise devoid of meaning within the societies they have grown up in, facing a general disdain for Muslims all over the West, one must address not just the call to arms or the religious fervor that we think defines it all but the cultural pull that reaches into ancient roots and provides a socially relevant context for the redefining of self into a very dangerous cult. For young people seeking a definition of self, finding where they fit in and belong, we must be very careful to provide meaningful alternatives, a social choice that gives them meaning without killing, judging people on extreme criteria and without the hate that has given rise to one of the earth’s most terrible philosophies of faith that we have seen in a very long time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while ISIS is a rather clear enemy to most of us, to defeat it, to silence its deadly message, we need to understand the whys and wherefores in rather extreme detail to put a stop to is powerful attraction to disenfranchised Muslim youth.

A Strict Reactionary Court

The federal judicial system is quite complex, and the judges are all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. We have ninety-four districts (each having at least one bankruptcy court and the balance of regular federal district courts), twelve appellate courts sitting all beneath the United States Supreme Court. There are also specialty courts (e.g., tax courts) and administrative bodies that sit very much like courts. Federal appointments all.

Not surprisingly, the justices generally have the same political bent of the President who chose them, not always in lock-step with the relevant party affiliation but sharing the presidential values of theman (so far anyway!) who appointed them. There are occasional surprises. The Earl Warren Supreme Court (1953-69), appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, surprised the world by becoming the most civil rights activist court in history.

Scholars have tracked the voting records of Supreme Court appointees to correlate their opinions, over time, with the underlying philosophical bent of those who appointed them. The results? “Most members of the court make more decisions favorable to the president who brought them to the dance than they do to subsequent presidents, even those of the same party, according to a new study by two prominent Supreme Court experts.

“The law professors say what they call the ‘loyalty effect’ is evident even when other factors such as ideology and a personal relationship with the appointing president are taken into account… ‘However, the loyalty effect is much stronger for Democratic justices than for Republicans justices,’ write Lee Epstein, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Eric A. Posner, of the University of Chicago.” Washington Post, December 20^th.

The notion of “loyalty” may more reflect a notion of reciprocal “gratitude” for the appointment. Over time, does this gratitude diminish? What happens when the appointing president leaves office? Epstein and Posner say we spend way too little time looking at the “gratitude” factor and its influence in judicial policy opinions, that perhaps it is the most important criterion in understanding how the court reaches decisions.

“The usual explanation for how a justice votes is ideology, Posner said. ‘But it’s hard to imagine a justice recently appointed voting against a major initiative of the president.’ (As it turned out, Justice Elena Kagan went halfway, upholding the law’s constitutionality but voting against a major Medicaid feature of it.)

“Judicial independence is a mainstay of American democracy, but politics plays a vital role in how a justice gets his or her job. Presidents look for those with similar views and values. A president, after all, can serve no more than eight years, while his nominees to the court stay for decades…

“In theory, a justice owes nothing to his or her political benefactors — the lifetime appointment can be revoked only through a cumbersome impeachment process.

“But Epstein and Posner supposed there had to be some sort of loyalty. They studied the Supreme Court appointees of presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Obama, covering the Supreme Court terms of 1937 through 2014. They examined cases in which the president, a federal agency or an executive branch actor such as the attorney general was a party.

“All but one of the justices examined voted at least a majority of times for the appointing president, with the mean being about 65 percent of the time. But again, Kagan emerged as the anomaly in the study.

“According to Epstein and Posner, Obama’s former solicitor general has voted his way only about 49 percent of the time. But the data for Kagan is more limited. She came onto the court just before the October 2010 term commenced, and she recused herself in 17 of the cases that were studied because of her previous government work. If she had voted Obama’s way in those cases, she would be closer to the mean, they said.

“Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. alluded to the process in a short speech at the White House after he took the oath in 2005… He thanked President George W. Bush for selecting him and praised the team at the White House for skillfully guiding his nomination. He thanked the senators for how they comported themselves and for approving his nomination. And then he said he looked forward to getting to work heading the third branch of government and the one that would pass judgment on the president’s actions and the Congress’ laws.

“Because they are supposed to be independent, the justices fret about appearances. Epstein and Posner quote former chief justice William H. Rehnquist as contending that ‘institutional pressures’ within the court ‘weaken and diffuse the outside loyalties of any new appointee.’” The Post. These observations seem intuitive, except most of us, including the judicial appointees all- too-frequently, just seem to address the ideological reasoning. The passage of time may tame some of these gratitude inflections, but they most certainly color some of the most important decisions in our history.

A presidential judicial appointment, particularly to the highest court in the land, almost always exceeds the tenure of the appointing president himself. This small body of justices often wields more power than any other group of political animals, from Congress even to the president himself. Pound for pound, person for person, they may well be the most powerful political forces in our nation. To the extent we can discuss their proclivities, understand their motivations, perhaps we can accelerate the movement of biased political appointment to neutral bastion of the American judicial system that will not work without stringent neutrality.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the Supreme Court is such an important body that we cannot lose our focus on their decisions and the biases of those making those choices.

It Would Be Laughable… If It Weren’t So Terrifying

The only thing that scares me more than growing global terrorism is what those who believe they are protecting their citizens are doing to encourage more. I strongly recommend that you read all of my Middle Eastern blogs starting with my October 20^th background piece on the history local religious animosity. After listening to the GOP presidential debates on December 15^th, I found myself shaking my head at the level of callous “solutions” to ISIS and other comparable radical jihadism posited by each and every speaker. So many factual errors. How can you mount a strong strategic defense against this horror without understanding the players, their goals and the perception of the United States in the eyes of the rest of the world? Following the dictates of virtually any of the candidates would make things so much more dangerous for us.

First, understand how idiotic we are with the largest military on earth (41% of the global military budget) that has not won a war of significance since World War II. Where we have fared consistently badly is against insurrection and asymmetrical warfare. Haven’t won any of those major conflicts recently. Our military efforts at regime change in the Middle East have created a level of instability in that region that has never been seen before… which is saying a lot about that volatile area. We did much that with help from agricultural damage generated by climate change, in which we more than contributed our share of toxic effluents into the atmosphere.

Let’s face reality number two. ISIS wants our troops in mass fighting them on the ground in the Middle East. If they cannot get that, they would accept American carpet bombing of their territory, which would incite neutral Muslims into accepting the United States as the leader of a war on Islam. Trust me, with all the footage from GOP candidates freely available, ISIS is already getting more help from these candidates than they could have envisioned one short year ago. Their leaders believe God has ordained their triumph against us.

So ISIS leaders really are probably adding a wish to their prayers that any one of the militant Republican candidate wins the White House. Is that wish so strong that they are actually incented to mount more incidents of terrorism across the United States to maximize that result? Or are there enough lone wolves who are so angry at such anti-Islamic rhetoric that they will attempt those attacks without direct orders from ISIS? Is all this talk putting us in more danger? And as I have blogged before, what exactly is the motivation of regional Muslim nations to do what the United States wants them to do against ISIS: putting the ground forces against these terrorists now? So far, Sunni nations have been anything but aggressive against ISIS for reasons I have blogged about repeatedly. There is so much U.S. anti-Muslim rhetoric, anti-Muslim sentiment, that Arab nations actually are more resistant to helping the U.S. than ever before.

Afghanistan is super-dangerous again. Iraq is totally destabilized. The GOP wants the details of the president’s strategy to be shared with the general public. That’s brilliant! Let’s send a detailed copy of our battle plan, our use of Special Forces, the placement and numbers of U.S. and allied forces, etc. to ISIS. How can anyone demanding such full disclosure have the remotest claim to being our Commander in Chief? Dumb and Dumber? Seriously.

And underestimating the impact of climate change on present and future terrorism will blow back and haunt us terribly. “The protests and violent conflict in Syria that began in 2011 originally took U.S. security analysts by surprise. Early in the Arab Spring, the State Department had ranked Syria near the bottom of a list of Middle East and North African nations most likely to experience upheaval. Five years later, we have a hopelessly war-torn country, land occupied by ISIS, and the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

“They shouldn’t have been surprised. Three years earlier, a Syrian bureaucrat had issued a stark briefing to U.S. and U.N. officials warning of a ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that could undermine his country’s stability.

“Syria's President Bashar Assad had stifled human rights, democracy, and economic opportunity for many years (with the complicit support western governments)—but that's not what was worrisome. The truly destabilizing factor was drought. Beginning in 2006, northern Syria plunged into the worst drought in its modern history—its unusual length and severity likely caused by the planet’s changing climate. Exacerbating the drought's effects, the government had for years grossly mismanaged the country’s aquifer resources, encouraging water-hungry cash crops and allowing groundwater levels to deplete. Poor farmers were left with nothing after crops failed. Agriculture collapsed.” FastCompany.com, December 16^th. Millions of farmers (almost all Sunnis), no longer being able to make a living as their property turned to useless dust, were torn from their farms, abandoned by the governments (most Shiite), to become the backbone of the support for ISIS and other terrorist groups.

“Water is currently a concern and potential source of instability throughout the region. Jordan was already water-stressed, largely due to inefficient management and infrastructure, and now it is absorbing millions refugees from Syria. In the Sahel region of Northern Africa, drought and conflict have displaced millions of farmers and herders over the last few years. Yemen’s capital city Sana’a may be the first city in the world to run out of water (and it might happen as soon as 2017), a situation that has played a part in its ongoing civil war and power of extremist groups there.

“‘Water is one of those things that gets swept under the carpet, and no one is talking about it because it’s not a sectarian thing,’ says Middle East human rights researcher Mahmood Monshipouri, referring to Yemen. ‘There’s no question: The lack of water in the Middle East has empowered extremists.’ This happens in several ways: When people are desperate to meet their basic needs, there is greater competition for scarce resources, which can exacerbate existing ethnic, tribal, or religious tensions between competing groups. People are also more vulnerable to those who offer easy answers to their problems. More directly, terrorist groups have made it a strategy to control water resources as a tactic to exert control over populations. ISIS, for example, has taken over dams and drained marshlands to control the flow.

“Conflict related to water-stress is not new. But, says [Francesco Femia, director of the Center for Climate and Security in Washington, D.C.], there’s growing evidence that climate change will increase the likelihood of state failure and conflict, given other political and economic conditions.

“One study projects that temperatures in the region could be physically too hot for human inhabitants by 2100, if climate change goes unchecked. In 1950, per capita renewable water resources were four times greater than today. By mid-century, according to the World Bank, they will drop even further—possibly to 11 times less than the global average. Out of 33 countries predicted to experience "extreme water stress" by 2040, 14 of them are in the Middle East. ” FastCompany.com. Meanwhile, the GOP candidates are telling us that we not need do anything to address climate change, since we still (in their blind eye) have no proof that man’s actions contributed significantly to the problem. Really?

Since both house of Congress and these vocal presidential candidates are part of that climate change denial group, surely that has to be the position under which our armed forces must operation. Thankfully, the U.S. military (which reports to the Commander in Chief) knows that climate change is one of the biggest factors they face. They get it. And they have issued long, detailed internal reports about the threat and have taken rather substantial steps to prepare for the consequences, from resulting extremism to rescue capacity. It is a high priority with our Department of Defense and our uniformed officers.

“The military believes in it. And it’s already preparing for a world with a climate that’s hotter, more volatile and more destructive. It is evident in the armed forces’ investment in solar energy to power their bases and in their experimentation with renewable, non-petroleum ‘bio-fuels.’

“And the Defense Department’s commitment to addressing climate change is also apparent in the kinds of equipment it buys. Today, the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, part of defense giant General Dynamics, is building a new ship for the Navy that’s ideal for dealing with the consequences of a warmer, more volatile world.

“The $500-million Expeditionary Mobile Base vessel [pictured above] — 784 feet long from bow to stern — combines all the most important features the military believes ships will need to respond to the more frequent and more severe natural disasters.

“A modified version of a commercial oil tanker, the base ship boasts vast storage capacity for hauling emergency supplies, a huge flight deck for launching and landing helicopters and other aircraft, and plenty of internal space for people and medical facilities. By deliberately taking on water, the Montford Point-class ‘Expeditionary Mobile Base’ can bring its lower deck level with the sea, allowing it to easily launch hovercraft and small boats. Observers have described the new ships as ‘ports at sea.’” Reuters, December 9^th. If only those who would command the military had remotely the same care and common sense to understand what they are really up against. They clearly do not.

I’m Peter Dekom, and just because a candidate repeats a concept repeatedly does not remotely make it true or even a good solution.

More than a Touch of Class

We’ve watched as the actual buying/earning power of 70% of Americans has steadily eroded over the past couple of decades, as the middle class has contracted to the point where it no longer represents a majority of us, and as the highest reaches of the economic ladder are farther removed from the average and the bottom than at any time in modern history. The notion of upward mobility, mostly through the playing field-leveler of ‘quality’ public education, has all but vaporized in a cacophony of slashed public school budgets, exploding college tuition rises without offsetting financial aid, and fights that prioritize teaching “creationism” over academic excellence. Automation and rising artificial intelligence are sucking up once lucrative manufacturing and administrative tasks as the United States face more direct global competition than ever before.

The fact is that socio-economic change has written the pages of history since man first began recording his experience on this planet. And here it comes again, creating a polarization within our nation we’ve never seen before, fighting values battles that were supposed to have been resolved by the Civil War as if that lethal conflict had never happened. We are dealing with challenges from within and without by forces that severely threaten our way of life. So you may be wondering how parents at differing parts of the economic spectrum are raising their children in the face of these seminal changes.

Pew Research Center addressed that question in a recent survey, and the December 17th New York Times summarizes those findings: “The lives of children from rich and poor American families look more different than they have in decades.

“Well-off families are ruled by calendars, with children enrolled in ballet, soccer and after-school programs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. There are usually two parents, who spend a lot of time reading to children and worrying about their anxiety levels and hectic schedules.

“In poor families, however, children tend to spend their time at home or with extended family, the survey found. They are more likely to grow up in neighborhoods that their parents say aren’t great for raising children, and their parents worry about them getting shot, beaten up or in trouble with the law.”

All Americans want what’s best for their kids, and most understand the benefits of having the money to spend on their growing up. But there is an underlying philosophical difference between the well-off and those struggling with money, just as there are vast differences between those with higher educations and those with less desirable level of schooling.

“Middle-class and higher-income parents see their children as projects in need of careful cultivation, says Annette Lareau, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist whose groundbreaking research on the topic was published in her book ‘Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life.’ They try to develop their skills through close supervision and organized activities, and teach children to question authority figures and navigate elite institutions.

“Working-class parents, meanwhile, believe their children will naturally thrive, and give them far greater independence and time for free play. They are taught to be compliant and deferential to adults.

“There are benefits to both approaches. Working-class children are happier, more independent, whine less and are closer with family members, Ms. Lareau found. Higher-income children are more likely to declare boredom and expect their parents to solve their problems…

“Yet later on, the more affluent children end up in college and en route to the middle class, while working-class children tend to struggle. Children from higher-income families are likely to have the skills to navigate bureaucracies and succeed in schools and workplaces, Ms. Lareau said.” NY Times.

We do live in a complex society, where knowing how to deal with a legal system that invades every corner of life, finances and banking, knowing how to use various tools and connections to discover solutions that are not obvious or intuitive, networking, and understanding how to acquire skills and find economic opportunities often define success, failure and marginalization. And those abilities are not evenly spread across society. Even our vocabulary differentials can impede movement up that socio-economic ladder.

Rich folks have moved increasingly away from the urban and rural decay that surrounds the lower classes; often the well-heeled thrive in gated communities or lavish apartments with doormen at the guard. It wasn’t always so, and perhaps the future of urban planning can undo some of the damage caused by this separation.

“In the Pew survey, middle-class families earning between $30,000 and $75,000 a year fell right between working-class and high-earning parents on issues like the quality of their neighborhood for raising children, participation in extracurricular activities and involvement in their children’s education.

“Children were not always raised so differently. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is 30 percent to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than those born 25 years earlier, according to Mr. Reardon’s research.

“People used to live near people of different income levels; neighborhoods are now more segregated by income. More than a quarter of children live in single-parent households — a historic high, according to Pew – and these children are three times as likely to live in poverty as those who live with married parents. Meanwhile, growing income inequality has coincided with the increasing importance of a college degree for earning a middle-class wage.” NY Times.

It’s going to take a major societal focus to manage the transition to this new economy. We need to apply every ounce of charity we have, every bit of understanding and empathy we can muster and a major commitment of time, money and effort to fix this. If we really care about our fellow Americans.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is high time we all prioritized helping each other to rebuild what we had before.

What Fiscal Conservatives Really Want

The 1964 loss of the presidential election by GOP candidate Barry Goldwater spelled the death knell for a political party based primarily on fiscal conservatism. The ten percenters then realized that they needed to embrace enough voters to capture fifty-one percent of the vote. Fiscal conservatism wasn’t juicy enough to snag another forty-one percent of the electorate. They soon discovered that they could crush the Democratic political (patronage) machine that governed much of the south and the southwest by appealing to an even bigger machine: social conservatism represented powerfully by Evangelical Christians. Evangelical, rural white traditionalists bit into that effort… hook, line and sinker.

Indeed, the bulk of those white, Evangelical-leaning voters were hardly rich, although there were a lot of them within the middle class. But the ten percenters discovered that if they could just add a few “social conservative” elements to the GOP platform – starting out with school prayer, “pro-life” anti-abortionist policies and anti-evolution practices (adding anti-gay, anti-feminist and anti-immigration policies as time moved on) – their new constituents would vote in lockstep even if they made their own economic life more difficult. This new constituency was even willing to sacrifice quality public education, infrastructure and public services that were simply cost-burdens richer folks weren’t fond of paying for.

The wealthy embraced this “easy button” to getting low taxes, with lots of loopholes designed specifically for the wealthy to grow their net worth accordingly, and to reduce those pesky financial and environmental regulations that cost the rich more than they were willing to pay. Yes, social conservatives were willing to vote for legislation that would make their water less potable, their air less breathable, and would tilt the financial world to rob from the poor and give to the rich… if only their legislators would toe the Evangelically-approved line.

A moribund Republican Party exploded with control of the majority of governorships and state legislatures. They used their newfound power to Gerrymander themselves into seemingly inviolate control in election after election, having relegated their local Democrats to carefully isolated pockets where their votes simply would not matter. As the Supreme Court further empowered the mega-wealthy, allowing the wholesale purchase of media space and time to allow influence peddling on a scale never before witnessed in the free world via decisions like Citizens United, GOP power seemed unstoppable. The changed landscape even allowed the most brazen candidates – like Donald Trump and neophyte Ben Carson – to make the most amazing and ultimate unprovable claims while increasing their voter popularity.

But it does come down to what the ten percenters… really the one percenters today… really want as their price for having fomented all of this social conservatism. What exactly is their price? Let’s look at one example. Illinois’ mega-billionaires – with lots of support from outsider billionaires – decided to make this bastion of liberalism cave to the power of their wealth. “The richest man in Illinois does not often give speeches. But on a warm spring day two years ago, Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire founder of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, rose before a black-tie dinner of the Economic Club of Chicago to deliver an urgent plea to the city’s elite.

“They had stood silently, Mr. Griffin told them, as politicians spent too much and drove businesses and jobs from the state. They had refused to help those who would take on the reigning powers in the Illinois Capitol. “It is time for us to do something,” he implored.

“Their response came quickly. In the months since, Mr. Griffin and a small group of rich supporters — not just from Chicago, but also from New York City and Los Angeles, southern Florida and Texas — have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, a concentration of political money without precedent in Illinois history.

“Their wealth has forcefully shifted the state’s balance of power. Last year, the families helped elect as governor Bruce Rauner, a Griffin friend and former private equity executive from the Chicago suburbs, who estimates his own fortune at more than $500 million. Now they are rallying behind Mr. Rauner’s agenda: to cut spending and overhaul the state’s pension system, impose term limits and weaken public employee unions.

“‘It was clear that they wanted to change the power structure, change the way business was conducted and change the status quo,’ said Andy Shaw, an acquaintance of Mr. Rauner’s and the president of the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan state watchdog group that received donations from Mr. Rauner before he ran.

“The rich families remaking Illinois are among a small group around the country who have channeled their extraordinary wealth into political power, taking advantage of regulatory, legal and cultural shifts that have carved new paths for infusing money into campaigns. Economic winners in an age of rising inequality, operating largely out of public view, they are reshaping government with fortunes so large as to defy the ordinary financial scale of politics. In the 2016 presidential race, a New York Times analysis found [Ocotber], just 158 families had provided nearly half of the early campaign money…

“[To] a remarkable degree, their philosophies are becoming part of a widely adopted blueprint for public officials around the country: Critical of the power of unions, many are also determined to reduce spending and taxation, and are skeptical of government-led efforts to mitigate the growing gap between the rich and everyone else.

“‘There was never so much money behind these efforts,’ said Iris J. Lav, formerly a senior adviser at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning economic think tank in Washington… ‘It has gotten much stronger in the last five or six years,’ Ms. Lav continued. ‘There’s the sense of an opening, of a discontent with the old model. It’s about social insurance, the social compact — who’s responsible for whom?’” New York Times, November 29^th. Amazingly, the notions of fiscal conservatism – never a part of anything religious (in fact, quite the opposite, as lifting the less privileged used to be an Evangelical, biblically-mandated basic) – soon became an essential new Evangelical value. The story of what fiscal conservatives want, and what they are willing to concede to the white traditionalist conservatives, has become the story of the new United States. Down on government spending, our public primary and secondary schools have fallen in global rankings from first to somewhere between seventeenth and twenty-third (and falling), our infrastructure is collapsing around us and China is zipping by us in government-supported (job creating) research.

Not reliant on a vibrant America, with assets neatly placed around the globe and deeply supportive of an outsource-driven global economy, the mega-wealthy have continuously decreased their stake in America. They like living here still (moving’s a bitch!), but they really do not care how much their surrounding Americans are struggling or that 70% of Americans have made less in real money, year after year, for decades. Since they send their kids to private schools and live in protected enclaves with expensive European-made cars and clothes, they do not care if local schools are awful or that local clothing manufacturers have just done out of business.

In fact, our plunging educational system – with priorities that focus more on teaching creationism than math and science – allows a growing undereducated number of voters to continue to perpetuate a system that is totally designed to allow the mega-wealthy to profit at the expense of the masses. But history also teaches us that a society predicated on specialized privilege, while the quality of life dwindles for the majority, will stretch only so long before it snaps. And when it snaps, all those “Constitutionally protected” guns will decide the new alignments in the new political system that arises. I wonder if that is the future the one percenters expect… or want.

I’m Peter Dekom, and until we wake up and truly understand what we are doing to ourselves, we will not end our death spiral to a regime change I doubt any of us really wants.