Thomas follow up; New Yorker review

This letter was sent to the New Yorker though not published:

In his book review (Nov 12, 2007) titled "Unforgiven," Jeffrey Toobin asks " Why is Clarence Thomas so angry?"

I would argue Thomas’s anger reflects his tortured state of mind as he daily confronts the suspicions of perjury he almost certainly committed in 1992 in order to attain his seat on the highest court.

Anita Hill's allegations have become increasingly credible. After fifteen years of utterly stable respectability there is no clinical scenario that permits the possibility that she was insane or demented by sexual passion as was Thomas's defense. Nor could she, a conservative, modest Republican, have been politically motivated when, five years prior to the nomination, she bitterly complained to a confidant about being sexually harassed at work. Furthermore, Toobin points out, others have come forward with similar allegations about him. The preponderance of the evidence, clinical knowledge, common sense, and public opinion all point to the credibility of Hill's accusation.

Do we lack the imagination to consider what it must have felt like to be enticed by Senator Danford and his partisan committee cohorts to commit perjury—for he was under oath when making his defense—so as to categorically deny any and all of Anita Hill's allegations? This after having been selected by the white Right Wing as a token, black conservative, and in an inexplicable short time chosen and led, like a sacrificial bull, into the blinding arena of a Supreme Court nomination battle. No wonder he described as a lynching!

Why is the likelihood that he lied under oath never openly considered by Toobin nor in the media? Is it because lying to Congress under oath equals perjury, and the presence of a perjurer on the Supreme Court simply boggles the collective mind?

I suspect it tortures Thomas daily as he furiously contemplates the unforgiving price that his high position has exacted from his conscience. The white elites that conspired to thrust him into the Court must be proud of themselves and his performance. Thomas and the American people are left to suffer the consequences.

Clarence Thomas Revisited

Clarence Thomas in an unwise almost suicidal move has written his memoirs thus reopening the controversy over his sworn confirmation testimony regarding sexual harrassment of Anita Hill. In the book My Grandfather's Son he characterizes Hill as a "mediocre employee who was used by political opponents to make claims she had been sexually harassed." CNN has rushed into the fray and Anita Hill has written an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times in which she calmly repeats her allegations. Can our nation endure a perjurer as Chief of the US Supreme Court? We cannot. We must reopen the Thomas-Hill case

A Judge's Lies

Next to a dirty cop there is nothing as repulsive as a lying judge. Yet, amazingly, there sits on the bench of the highest court of the land a man who, in 1991, achieved that position by twice lying under oath; Clarence Thomas.

Short of having a confession on his part, the evidence against him in the case of Anita Hill is overwhelming:

She was a 26 year old recent graduate from Yale with a JD, a conservative from a rural Baptist background when she worked for Thomas.

She was 35 years old and a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, nine years later, when she accused him of harassment. Few people remember the details of his nomination hearings. Plain and simple, when Thomas was nominated, Anita Hill reluctantly, only because she was asked by the US Senate, accused him of having sexually harassed her during 1981-83 while he was her boss at the US Department of Education and then at the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).

Her testimony, under oath, was simple and straightforward: “He harassed me sexually and this is how he did it.” He had talked to her about pornographic films, group sex, about women having sex with animals, about sexual positions, about the size of his penis and his prowess at oral sex. He did, according to Hill, never touch her.

(see http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/GenderIssues/SexualHarassment/hill-thomas-testimony for the full record of her testimony.)

There is other corroborating evidence but her testimony is sufficiently convincing. He, also under oath, “unequivocally, categorically” denied that he had ever “had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill.” On the basis of this denial he was confirmed. Please note: under oath and never

In addition, even though he similarly denied, again under oath, ever discussing Roe v. Wade--an issue on which he protested neutrality-- the evidence is that he did discuss it with at least three separate individuals.

Pure Feminsit Dementia?

About Hill it was said that she was suffering of “pure feminist dementia,” probably psychotic and that she had hallucinated Thomas’ harassment and honestly believed it to be true. From a psychiatric point of view this is completely implausible. If she did actually completely manufacture these accusations (and persist in believing them for twenty years,) she would had been suffering from a pathology without parallel in psychiatric history. A serious, devoted, totally sane, high achieving professional who imagines, reports to friends and then harbors fantasies of harassment for five years before she reported them at the cost of endangering her successful career is simply not a credible story.

There is no possible motive or known form of mental derangement that could explain such actions. She was a fully functioning law professor before her accusations, has continued as a respected lecturer on sexual harassment and Supreme Court issues and continues to teach la--now at Brandies University--in the seventeen years since.

The other rather more lame explanations that were offered for her behavior, on the assumption that Thomas was innocent of her accusations, were that:

1. She was an incompetent lawyer and was jealous of Thomas’s success.

2. She made the accusations to propel herself to national fame.

3. She was in love with Thomas and was taking revenge because he rebuffed her.

On the other hand, it is virtually certain that Thomas harassed her to some extent as so many men have harassed women at the workplace before and since. But in a classic liar's nightmare Thomas gambled his appointment on the acceptance of his initial denial to Senate investigators. As the investigation proliferated Thomas's lies proliferated as well; he found himself eventually lying to his family, his fellow politicians and eventually hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The Tide Turns.

At the time of the hearings in 1991 the majority of blacks, whites men and women believed Thomas. No wonder, given the barrage of anti-Hill propaganda that was unleashed by the Republicans. Within one year as the dust settled the situation became clear and the polls reversed and most people believed Hill. Then in 1992, David Brock thoroughly smeared her with a string of anonymous and unconfirmed anecdotes of rampant sexuality in The Real Anita Hill; a book that became a instant best seller. Brock now recants and regrets having written, describing it as “a cruel smear disguised as a thorough investigation”.

Now that Thomas has reopened the issue in his memoirs, she is reasserting her accusation exactly as she made them then. Anyone who sees her reassertions will agree that she is thoroughly credible and not at all demented.

Thomas sits on the bench for life and votes and argues in the most radical manner clearly poised to vote down Roe vs. Wade, if and when it comes up. And the question never asked by anyone—Anita Hill, David Brock, or any politician--is: “Can our nation endure a perjurer as Chief of the US Supreme Court?”

An “Impeach Thomas” movement seems fundamentally important but just to point out and repeat that Thomas is very likely perjurer is bracing enough. Working women and feminists would rediscover common cause with this issue. It’s a great Internet, blog, MoveOn, Truth Out issue. Lots of information and data need to be unearthed and evaluated.

While attacking a black man was in 1991 a problematic act and probably the reason he was confirmed in a 48-52 vote, today with OJ behind us, it might not arouse African-American ire. The Clinton case is also instructive in this respect; the likelihood that Thomas will be impeached is small but questioning his competence as a Supreme Court judge seems a worthwhile goal.

Anita Hill is the one human being that knows for certain that Thomas lied under oath. Yet in her interviews she avoids making that statement: “Judge Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court today based on his perjured testimony at his confirmation hearings." Stated in that bold manner it should be instant front page news at this time, and catastrophic for Thomas. But she declines to make it.

Perhaps Thomas will eventually not be able to look at himself in the mirror and voluntarily resign. Dream on...

Claude Steiner

Two years to make our point

How can the emerging message from the Progressive liberal vision makers—“We are in this together”—be effectively conveyed to a public that has been under the influence of a relentless campaign to demonize the progressive agenda as tax-and- spend, soft on crime and terror, immoral and corrupt?

It seems according to recent research ("End of the end of ideology." American Psychologist , Oct 06 ) that people with a conservative political orientation score high on the variables of fear of death, fear of instability, threat and loss, and need for uncertainty avoidance, structure, order and closure.

In addition it has been found that there are differences between children which predict future political orientation far ahead of the establishment of such orientation. Preschool children described by their teachers as energetic, emotionally expressive, gregarious, self-reliant, resilient and impulsive were more likely to identify themselves as politically liberal, years later in adulthood. Children seen by teachers as inhibited, fearful, indecisive, rigid, vulnerable and over controlled went on to identify as conservative when adults. All this plus twin studies in which monozygotic twins tend to have more similar political orientations than fraternal twins indicate that these predispositions may have an significant genetic basis.

All of this suggests that significant crossection of the population—not surprisingly--is chronically frightened and in need of security assurance. Given those facts its undrestandable that terror alerts and hints that terrorists being fought in Iraq will come to our shores if we “cut and run” are effective motivators of conservative voters during elections. In fact, research further reveals that threat “precipitates” a conservative shift even among people who were not initially conservative.

It can be surmised that the shift to conservatism is an attempt to defend against insecurity. However it was shown in a longitudinal study of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack that a shift to conservatism did not bring well being but in fact increased chronic symptoms of PTSD and depression. So a shift into conservatism actually exacerbates a fearful attitude.

It is clear that the propaganda techniques of Karl Rove and the Republicans in the last years have perfected the exploitation of fear of threat, disorder, impulsive behavior and other insecurities by painting liberals as—literally—the enemy and the source of such threat. That is done by implying, or openly stating, that Democrats will coddle criminals and terrorists and let them loose on the streets, while the Protector in Chief makes assurances of unyielding defense of our security. Arguably, Bush and the Republicans are unique in their resolve to kill, prosecute, imprison, interrogate and--if needed-- torture evil doers who threaten our security. Understandably, given the fearful environment in the country, these are effective propaganda techniques.

Interestingly this view is not in total agreement with George Lakoff’s notion that the conservative presentation of the national family is that of a family headed by an authoritarian father. A protective, authoritarian father seems a more apt decsription.

The Republicans have effectively presented Democrats as willing to undermine our economic security with tax increases, erode traditional values with gay marriage and stem cell research, weaken the military and police and coddle criminals while allowing the untrammeled expansion of an inept government. Accordingly, Republican strategists sooth the fears of conservatives by promising to protect them from taxation, reducing wasteful government, maintaining a powerful military, and fighting against the "fatuous depravity of San Francisco values” by championing traditional values.

The received wisdom is that Democrats don’t have an idea or a plan. Yet one effective message is beeing developed by Democrats in recent years; the message of optimism and hope. Clinton played heavily on it and the remarkably successful Barak Obama leans on it consistently. It works because, while liberals may be energetic, emotionally expressive, gregarious, resilient and self-reliant, they are also seen as sour and remote in their attitudes. Scared people don’t want to hear elitist pessimism , doom and gloom but hope is not a plan. It is a good attitude but hope alone cannot be the message that will change American politics. A far more meaningful message is needed and that is emerging in the form of age-long progressive ideas of equality and justice recently embodied in the slogan: “We Are in This Together; Together we Win.”

How can this message of equality, justice, togetherness and hope be convincingly portrayed to the fearful voter? What could be more frightening to the average conservative than equality and freedom whether personal, economic or political? How do we persuade frightened people that security lies in equality and justice and togetherness? In fair taxes rather than no taxes, in diplomacy instead of military power, in freedom of individual expression and a large and benevolent government? Food for thought.

The Big Democratic Idea: We Are in This Together

Based on the work of the Wellstone Democratic Club Vision Committee

Two years after the lowest moment in modern American history—the reelection of GWB--Democrats have recovered some ground but are in a veritable frenzy seeking a unifying, substantial, convincing, no spin message. This message needs to persuade people that our side has a viable alternative rather than merely a relentlessly critical view of the Republicans. It seems that there is a message emerging in the progressive camp, after the necessarily short lived “new direction” of this electoral campaign. The message is: “We are in this together” in contrast with, as the Republicans would have it: “Every man for himself.”

The now failed neo-conservative Project for the American Century was the global expression of that self-centered American attitude: we the beautiful, triumphant people of America, dominating all others for our own benefit and for the benefit of the world.

Merely due to the complete breakdown of the Iraq neo-con project, Democrats have won back the Congress. But the systematic defeat of the progressive propositions across the country reminds us that the electorate is still profoundly conservative. Democrats have two years to present a credible alternative to our opponent’s failed agenda. “We are in this together; together we win,” is merely a rewording of the basic liberal, progressive belief in equality and justice. But it will have to convince Americans that our egalitarian views can deliver on the promise for a “new direction” or we risk losing the gains of this election. How does the idea that we are interconnected as equals and need to cooperate personally, locally, nationally and internationally translate into bread and butter issues and subsequent legislation?

Republicans offer as their program 1. Low taxes, 2. Traditional values, 3. Strong Military and 4. Small Government. To Low Taxes we counter: Fair Taxes, to Traditional Values we counter: Social Values to Strong Military we counter: National Security and to Small Government we counter: Efficient Government.

How can fair taxes, social values, national security and efficient government be achieved?
The answers are imbedded in the three-point statement from the Vision Committee of the Wellston Democratic Club:

1. We depend on an equitable social contract.

The Republican message is most clearly expressed in the call for lower taxes and an untrammeled market in order to assist those few individuals who are in a position to benefit from them. Winners will be rich, losers will be poor and (alas) they will always be with us. The result of the application of this clearly immoral view is becoming increasingly clear; the rich are getting shamefully richer and the poor are getting dramatically poorer, while the middle is getting hammered.

By "social contract," we mean the compromise struck between the realities of a capitalist market economy and the requirements of community life. Today, America’s social contract is unraveling. Over the past twenty-five years, conservatives have succeeded in weakening the laws and regulations that sought to make business’ goals more compatible with social ends. The rising wealth at the top and the growing insecurity of American working people is the consequence of a rogue capitalist economy untouched by social policy.

America is one of the best places in the world to succeed, largely due to the freedoms granted by our Constitution and by public investment --paid by taxes--in education, science and technology, law enforcement, and in transportation and communication infrastructure.
Conservatives belittle the role that government and public investment play in every aspect of our lives. Their tax reduction crusade has succeeded in re-distributing the national wealth in favor of the rich. The rich are spared taxation while revenues are being supplemented by local sales and payroll taxes, which fall heaviest on working people.

Investment in public education declines; the harm of racial discrimination continues. Decent paying jobs disappear while low paying service jobs proliferate. These massive problems can’t be solved through local charitable efforts but require a resolute national program that provides help and real opportunities to our fellow citizens trapped in the cycle of economic decay. Our security is threatened by the poverty of tens of millions of Americans.

All working Americans must be protected from the threat of disabling injuries, catastrophic illness and old age insecurity. These programs require fair taxation. We must restore progressive taxation so that the tax burden is larger on those who increase their wealth in our fertile, economic climate.

2. We depend on a dynamic economy.

We need to make common cause with the business world. The conservatives are correct in one point. Only a prosperous economy can generate the taxes that are needed to fulfill the social contract. For too long, progressives have been hostile to economic growth, business, and market-driven processes. Failing to present a real alternative to corporate America’s model of economic development is an unsustainable posture.

American workers are faced with gloomy realities, working longer hours in lower paying jobs while our industries go out of business or move to lower wage countries. Investment in our future—in education, science, research, infrastructure—is in sharp decline. We face irreversible environmental degradation. We are squandering our great productive potential, mortgaging our future, and failing to prepare for the challenges of the 21st century. We can only correct these trends in a partnership with American business interests.

We need to reeducate voters about taxes and the free market. Presently, our nation is under the spell of a dangerous, conservative creed about the harmful effects of taxes and any other attempt to interfere with the competitive market, which if left alone will find the best solutions to every problem. As a consequence needed market regulation is being legislated out of existence and anti-trust oversight ignored so that small numbers of huge corporations have been consolidating their control over vital sectors of our economy to the public’s detriment. Anti tax and free market views have become firmly established as received wisdom and need to be challenged.

Democrats are rightly suspected of wanting to raise taxes; only an effective government backed by sufficient taxes, representing all of us acting together, is in a position to develop a long-range strategy and invest in developing the infrastructure, science and technology that can put us on the path to healthy growth.

We need to use the economic instruments of government to re-shape and direct market mechanisms and to move development in a sustainable direction. Our future infrastructure, tax policies, business subsidies, publicly funded research, science and educational strategies, must shift towards renewable energy, and eco-friendly goods and services while we develop innovative environmental regulatory programs that are compatible with market mechanisms.

We can invigorate our economy, healing rather than amplifying humanity’s rift with nature with a crash program of public investment in eco-friendly science and technologies for transportation, land and water use, waste management and urban planning. These areas of research and development would fuel creativity and productivity and provide higher paying jobs

At the same time we need a strategy to guide America in the developing global economy. While taking action at home to insure that America can compete in the global economy, we must, at the same time, adjust to the developing world.

3. We depend on national security in a peaceful, multilateral, global community

Vital to our security is the creation of a framework that binds all nations for resolving conflicts peacefully based on diplomacy, cooperation and the rule of law.

Maintain a Secure Nation.
Replace military might with a national security regime that includes a strong, well trained military as well as alliances and diplomacy but even more importantly a well educated, economically secure and healthy citizenry to guide our government in making decisions in the nation’s interests.

Return to civility, diplomacy, and multilateralism in a law-governed world.
With the emergence of a global marketplace, the world community is developing principles and conventions to serve as a legal framework to govern the relations among states This is the best path towards a peaceful, stable and sustainable world. We must re-join the family of nations and return to methods of dialogue, diplomacy, and mutual respect with other states.

Work for a sustainable globe.
Disruptive migration, falling wages, global warming, resource depletion, pollution, and the danger of pandemic disease—can only be solved if we approach them globally. As one of the world’s great melting pots, a pioneer in constitutional and democratic government, and a leading economic power we have much to contribute to a peaceful, sustainable world.

Mi Casa es tu Casa; The Market and the Social Contract.

Evolutionary psychologists are discovering that the human being is driven by genetic, deeply imbedded tendencies, which though powerful are also amenable to being moderated and modified in their expression. One such genetic tendency is the competitive, hierarchical, territorial, ownership driven: “What is mine is mine” aspect of behavior; the other also genetically driven tendency supports cooperative, egalitarian, collective, mutual aid, “what’s mine is yours” behavior. These two strong but plastic and modifiable behavioral trends are largely mutually contradictory and require regulation and arbitration by a separate human capacity of rationality and control, which, in an advanced society, is represented by a democratic government of laws.

Competition vs. Cooperation.

The drive to compete and the drive to cooperate—are in a grand struggle in the present transition between millennia. The drive for hierarchy, territory and capitalist competition—a primitive drive arguably lodged in the reptilian portion of the brain--became ascendant toward the end of the 19th Century until its excesses brought about the communist revolution. The revolution was an attempt to bring to bear a second tendency--arguably lodged in a more recently evolved brain center, the limbic brain--the need to cooperate, act collectively, share resources and engage in mutual aid. But the communist revolution attempted to obliterate the basic need for individual effort, personal property and competition while failing to adequately represent the human need for cooperation thus creating abject failure for its ideals.

These two behavioral responses exist in all humans in varying degrees and in opposition to each other and have evolved into modern manifestations. The competitive, territorial, hierarchical, aggressive instincts have evolved in modern man into the market and its invisible hand. The egalitarian, cooperative herd instinct has developed into the social contract and its social welfare institutions. Both are essential to human survival; our continued existence depends on how they coordinate their contradictory, and at times mutually exclusive operation.

Both are fundamental aspects of human nature that, in order for humans to prosper, need to work together balanced by intentional, mutual regulation. The function of regulation is performed by a third part of the brain-- the frontal lobe-- the source of rationality and control, embodied in its modern manifestation by the law and democratic institutions. When the law fails to maintain the balance between competition and cooperation, the market and the social contract fall out of equilibrium and human development and further cultural evolution is halted or even reversed.

We are in a historical moment in which the flaws of the social contract have been revealed and exaggerated, while laisse faire capitalism is again reasserting its reign in world events. It is time to reestablish the ascendance of rationality and control--democracy, law and regulation--over these two tendencies if we are to avoid continuing catastrophic environmental damage, lawlessness, polarization of poverty and wealth, global conflict and chaos.

The Market and the Left.

People of the left have traditionally been deeply skeptical about capitalism, the market and competition. The market is, without a doubt, a powerful soulless machine that, if unfettered, can run over and destroy all that is alive as easily as it can aid in building it. But history has conclusively demonstrated that the competitive marketplace, if regulated, is also a powerful engine of productivity and a potential source of well-being. However, the market will not control itself; today the increasing unleashing of market forces by the Executive and the Republican dominated Congress is creating the polarization of wealth resulting in immense richness for some and abject poverty for others.

The left, arguably represented by the Democratic Party, has placed its hopes for humanity in the powerful psychological laws of cooperation and mutual aid while disdaining competition and individualism. Today, we are experiencing a backlash after many years of taking care of others through Democrat inspired government intervention, notably the New Deal and the War on Poverty. The conservative reaction against the inefficiencies of government involvement, represented by the Republican Party, has resulted in a catastrophic neglect of the social contracts that would bind the people of the US to each other.

Both the Democratic and Republican visions—welfare and laisse faire capitalism--are bankrupt. We must recognize that both powerful forces—the Market and the Social Contract—are equally important and need to be expressed if our people are to live out the promise of the US and its Constitution.


The Bush Administration.

The myth of the 2004 presidential election was that the country is divided between Christians people of faith and Godless liberals and that values and religion won. In fact, what caused people of the Christian faith to vote in large numbers for Bush was a subterfuge that persuaded them that the dangers that loomed over their lives were gay marriage, abortion and Saddam Hussein instead of the damaging results of capitalist excesses; deteriorating health care, failing education, underemployment and a debilitating, endless war.

As the war mongering, corruption, neglect and cronyism of the Bush presidency develop it becomes evident that his promise of "compassionate conservatism" with its hint of social contract protection was a mere campaign slogan in the service of the narrow and selfish goals of a small elite of corporate bandits. Recent polls show that people all over the US, religious or secular, Christian or agnostic, are appalled at the evident malfeasance of the so called conservative faction and are dramatically losing confidence in their leader and his program.

Conclusion.

We want to live in a just, balanced society that is good to all without unfair privileges for anyone. Well to do, poor and middle class folks want the same thing: an opportunity to create a good life for themselves, their children and grandchildren. That opportunity requires the right to participate in the market as well as to control and divert some of its gains by way of taxation; taxes to help educate, heal and provide security for those amongst us who, for whatever reason, have failed to make the market work for them.

In order to have the benefit of both a healthy market and a meaningful social contract we have to have a democratic system of just laws to manage their interaction. Fair taxation of wealth laws, fair tax collection laws, fair private versus public property laws are essential for an effectively functioning nation.

That is why it is essential that we on the left promote and support a world in which competition (the market,) and cooperation (the social contract) are seen as equally valuable human functions essential to the attainment of human security and well being as long as the law regulates them.

Claude Steiner

Governement Drowns

Grover Norquist a leading Republican has said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Drowning the government is equivalent to drowning children the elderly, the poor and the sick, and Norquist got his wish. At least a thousand people, most of them Democrats, black, and poor - drowned in the New Orleans basin. It would be overly paranoid to say that this was planned but it certainly can be said that it was expectable after Bush drastically cut the funds for the Army Corps of Engineers who would have reinforced the levies, and put an Arabian horse expert and failed executive in charge of FEMA.

However it was not GWB who began the process that inevitably led to this disaster. It has been going on for over twenty years when after the defeat of Barry Golwater a handful of corporations invested several billion dollars to launch a Right Wing take-over of our government. And I was with Ronald Reagan that the deliberate and intentional destruction of the US government took hold. Quote Reagan: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

The neo-Nietzshian neo-cons don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - most cynically - corporations. Let the corporations control environmental protection, medical care and old-age pensions

That is not the vision the Founders of this nation fought and died for. That government should "promote the general welfare" – was written into the preamble to our Constitution in 1787.

The reason Republicans want to remove government in its protective capacity is because they can then make an enormous amount of money when they privatize former governmental functions. And ultimately they would not really mind if as many of the poor and feeble died off--as soon as "humanely" possible, and stopped “draining” our budget with their needs. They got their wish partially fulfilled with Katrina.

And yet when Middle-Americans hear "smaller government," they nod their heads in agreement, not realizing the hidden agenda at work, an agenda which is beginning to affect all of us. Have the American people had enough? I hope so. It can all be reversed at the ballot box,
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Optimism

It seems that optimism was an important if not deciding factor in the outcome of the 2004 elections. Voters liked Bush better than Kerry probably because of his positive, optimistic attitude. Liberals tend to be realistic and eschew optimism to their peril

The 2005 Political Typology developed by the Pew Reserach Center examines the role that optimism played in the 2004 election and concludes that:

* Voters inclined toward the Republican Party are distinguished from Democrats by their personal optimism and belief in the power of the individual. (pg 2)
* Poorer Republicans and Democrats differ in their levels of optimism. Pro Government Conservatives (poorer Republicans in the typology) are optimistic and positive and Disadvantaged Democrats are pessimistic and cynical. (pg 5)
* The relatively moderate voters who have a positive view of their financial situation and the state of the nation in general ( the Upbeats in the typology) came out for Bush by more than four to one even though they have not usually formally identifyied themselves with either political party (pg 3)
* George Bush had the broadest personal appeal of any national political figure among the main independent groups, the Upbeats and the Dissafected.

Political Rhetoric; Clinton and Obama:

In his successful election campaign Clinton called himself the Man from Hope. The very successful Barak Obama bases his platform on optimism:

Thank you for believing…it is your abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation that make America a beacon of hope and freedom around the world

.

Hope--the hope that we hold in our hearts for our future, the faith we share in our dreams, the timeless conviction that in a nation of freedom and opportunity, anything is possible

Barak is as liberal as we can hope a Democratic Senator to be, yet to the liberal ear, this sort of optimism grates the sense of reality which seems to overwhelm the liberal mind. Liberals who are the fasted growing group of the Pew typology and are describes as lowest in participation in religious activities, seem to equate optimism with religiosity.

The Power of Positive Thinking.

Remember how appalled the intelligentsia was when The Power of of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale became a world wide fad? The book, which sold around 20 million copies in 42 languages is written in the language of simple church-going folk in the 1950s and was misread to simply imply that a happy smile can overcome all obstacles. But Peale took serioously the pain, difficulty and struggle of human existence, and for him there was no greater source of personal power to counteract that pain than the example provided by the Gothic tales of the Bible. He can be said to be a founding father of the human potential movement within which the notion that everyone creates their own reality was a dictum. That concept, say what you will, has enormous appeal because it empowers the individual and while we liberals sneer at it, we do it at our peril. The fact is that optimism and individual empowerment, quite separate from religiosity, are powerful tools. The arbitrary link of optimism with religion is being successfully exploited in today’s electoral politics; liberals eschew optimism and the Republicans make us pay for it.

Martin Selignman's Positive Psychology.

Martin Seligman PhD, is a prestigious psychologist, past president of the APA, recipient of multiple awards and the leading proponent of positive psychology a new, and to some shocking, recent direction in the field.

Says Seligman, based on his extensive research on optimism and hope.: "If you are a pessimist in the sense that when bad things happen you think they are going to last forever and undermine everything you do, then you are about eight times as likely to get depressed, you are less likely to succeed at work, your personal relationships are more likely to break up, and you are likely to have a shorter and more illness-filled life. That's the main discovery that I associate with my lifetime."

"In our research on the roles of optimism and pessimism we tested 15,000 applicants for life insurance sales, a difficult job with frequent rejection and a high drop-out rate. We measured, by questionnaire, the explanatory style (a metric of optimism and pessimism) of the regular qualified people who were hired. Also included was a special force of 129 people who failed the industry test - who wouldn't normally have been hired - but who tested very well on optimism."

"First, within the regular qualified group that was hired, the optimists significantly outsold the pessimists. Second, the special force of optimists who failed the industry test outsold everyone. In another study, when subjects were given a lower grade in a class or a slower recorded time in an athletic event, thereby simulating defeat, the optimists rose to the occasion and did better the second time around while the pessimists did worse."

In 1988, Seligman and Harold Zullow content-analyzed the speeches of 33 senatorial races for optimism or pessimism and sent their predictions in sealed envelopes to the New York Times. By choosing the most optimistic candidates as the winners, they were able to predict 25 of 29 races, including five out of six upsets. They did better than any other forecaster. This research may be behind the Clinton and Barak campaign themes though there is no doubt that both of them are truly optimistic and hopeful in their attitudes.

People prone to despair have a pessimistic explanatory style marked by brutal honesty. They are in Seligman's words, "at the mercy of reality," a characteristic than can be said to be shared with liberals in the Pew typology.


Transactional Analysis and Optimism.

In Transactional Analysis the much maligned and little understood OK/OK existential position was made famous by Tom Harris who, with his book I'm OK Youre OK outdid Eric Berne's two year best seller Games People Play. The OK?OK position is called the "universal position" because Berne assumed that "people are born OK" that is to say that people, in their innate state tend to health, healing, and a benign expectation and trust of others.

It has been shown through hundreds of studies that human beings strongly tend to be positive in their language, thought, and memory and that people who are psychologically healthy show a higher level of positive bias. The research also indicates that people with an OK/OK attitude are likely to be healthier and live longer. It has been postulated that optimism has driven human evolution and is an innate, adaptive survival mechanisms of the species, a view that coincides with Berne's. The age-long notion--Vis Medicatrix Naturae; Nature's Healing Hand--reflects the fact that we are genetically programmed for self-healing and nurturance.

When lost, according to Berne, the OK position can be regained as it is innate while the not OK position is tied to an acquired "life script" an arbitrary narrative or schema decided upon early in life, on which people tend to base the rest of their lives; in other words the pessimistic position or attitude is optional and can be redecided if we put our minds to it. Is the glass half full or half empty? This question turns out to be an important indication of human destiny. Evidence over the last centuries is that the human social condition-- barring an ecological catastrophe--is steadily progressing in the positive direction of equality, cooperation, democracy and humanitarianism which would tend to support the view that this is an innate trend of the species.

Optimism, Realism, Pessimism and the Religious Feeling.

Is it possible to be realistic and optimistic at the same time? Is it possible to be optimistic and not religious? It does not seem to the liberal mentality to be possible. Realistically it seems, we are going to hell in a handbasket. Yet realism, even if it leads to dire predictions through statistical methodology does not necessarily mandate a pessimistic attitude. Nor does an optimistic attitude or religiosity necessarily denote an unrealistic approach. Realism and attitude about the future are not necessarily tied together and are in fact aspect of different portions of the brain.

Realism, a product of the frontal lobe, makes predictions which in the case of complex systems like economics, the weather and health are variable in their accuracy especially if they are projected far into the future. Optimism, pessimism as well as the religious feeling which are emotional in nature are functions of the limbic brain. Even though connected through neural pathways these two portions of the brain tend not to relate to each other though they are fully capable of developing a neural connection.

Jimmy Carter learned the hard way how being realistic and speaking of malaise can get you unelected. George Bush has been groomed otherwise. His message is unrelentingly optimistic and was much preferred to Kerry's realistic stance. One clear outcome of the elections was that Bush with all of his studied ignorance, arrogance, malaprops and untruths was far more popular than Kerry. I attribute this to a wholly manufactured polarity of optimism and negativity between the candidates which was combined with a superb use of the effect of positive attitudes on the electorate, to make Kerry the less likeable candidate.

As an example on the crucial issue of the war, Bush's unwavering attitude was (and still is) "We did the right thing, it was a good thing, we are winning we are going to succeed." Kerry's message: "Wrong war, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons, catastrophe, mistake” was music to my liberal ears but had a hidden component of pessimism that threw voters sympathies to Bush.


One truly gruesome consequence of the realism, pessimism confusion is the oft experienced liberal glee—duly noted by Republicans--as a reaction to dreadful news of deaths in Iraq; a sort of desperate clinging to bad news as a way to prove ourselves right. Should it not be possible to sadly say “this is as was predicted” instead of feeling the pleasure of vindication? How f-----d up is that? Go figure…

What are we to do?

The joke goes: Martin Luther's history-making speech was "I have a dream" not "I have a complaint."

It seems that pessimism and cynicism are optional attitudes and not necessary even for those who are realists and not inclined to religious beliefs. So for those of us who are compelled to be pessimists by our make-up or background and want to get on the same page with the electorate, the word, albeit glib, is "Get over it."

Claude Steiner