Liberal, Conservative: Can We Decide What These Words Mean?

What do the words liberal and conservative mean any more? What about left and right? No one is sure. Certainly not the news media who throw the terms around without a thought to definitions that make sense. Conservatives in America are neo-liberals when it comes to the economy. Neo-conservatives call for liberal intervention.
In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb gives a potted history of the word liberal and calls for clarity and uniformity of usage by the mainstream news media. It’s a confusing world, imprecise language doesn’t make it easier to understand. Let’s have a classification clarification conference so we can all know what we’re talking about when we say, You are a Liberal. (or a Conservative.)

Year 1 Trump report: Crazy or a member of the Club?

The big question at the end of Donald Trump’s first year in office is: Is he crazy or just typical of his social class? Anti-Trump forces constantly question his mental state in the hopes of provoking his cabinet into forcing him out via the 25th Amendment.

In this FRDH podcast, host Michael Goldfarb looks at whether Trump is crazy or is he just a typical country club kind of person. Are his words about shithole countries and immigrants any different than you would hear most Sundays at the country club?

Among people of a similar social caste and with the unwritten rules of any club – you can say what you like and it will not be repeated outside the four walls of the clubhouse – when the talk turns to politics men and women, can vent their opinions on matters of politics and foreign affairs and race and immigration.

The language used, will frequently be exactly the same as Trump uses.

The solutions for political, economic and international problems will be as simplistic, although perhaps not expressed as crudely as Trump expresses his views. But they will be expressed with the absolute certainty of people who have money.

In this FRDH Trump Year 1 anniversary podcast the focus is on understanding the President as a product of his class … not a madman.

America 2017: Magical Thinking vs Reality

America in 2017: was the story of Magical Thinking vs Reality. For Trump voters it was a confirmation of everything their “unbiased” news told them. For the anti-Trump brigade it was believing too many of the rumors they saw on twitter. Reality was the victim in this car crash. 2017 challenged the very notion of a fact-based, mutually acknowledged reality that is essential for creating a stable society. Finding facts on social media like twitter became impossible. Twitter is about Outrage Outrage Outrage. It was like outrage had become a form eroticism. Makes me feel so good to feel so outraged.
Back in pre-history, when the second President Bush was prematurely swaggering about victory in Iraq, his dark angel, Karl Rove told the New York Times, “we create our own reality.” Liberals – here defined as all those who didn’t vote for Bush and a lot of people who did – shook their heads at Rove’s arrogance. This group proclaimed it was part of the reality based community. And as nemesis followed hubris and Iraq and then the economy disintegrated on Bush’s watch this group congratulated itself for sticking with reality.
But this same group was now ignoring facts and indulging in magical thinking. Trump wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what was proclaimed on twitter and in the opinion columns of the mainstream media. Wishful thinking or magical thinking is not reality-based thinking … that is how Trump had changed his opponents. And it’s one of the most important aspects of 2017 in America.

Republican Party Is Now a Faction How it Happened

The Republican Party has become the people James Madison warned us against: a Faction. In any country, the most dangerous thing that can happen is for a group and its political representatives to act as if their view alone represents the nation. That thinking leads to the view that they alone “are” the nation and that those who disagree with them are not of the nation – even if they are fellow citizens, born on the country’s soil. When this happens in a democratic republic, like the US, and the view takes over a political party, then the threat to the national fabric is mortal.

And that is the heart of the crisis in America today: The Republicans are no longer a political party but a faction.
The danger of factions was noted at the foundation of the United States. In Federalist paper #10 James Madison defined faction as, “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

The Republican Party has been slowly morphing into a faction for almost 70 years. In this FRDH podcast the history of this change is told through applying the words of the Declaration of Independence to current Republican behaviour.
The Declaration of Independence is really a bill of divorcement, a declaration before the community of nations of the causes leading the states to separate from Britain. As I read through the list this past holiday it was amazing how many could be applied to the Republican faction today.

Republican factionalism leads their elected representatives to upend existing Constitutional customs and norms and defamed the design of Madison, Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers by refusing to cooperate with anyone not of their group The design of the founders was a constitutional order that provided a mechanism for balancing the inevitable competing points of view that would grow in a society where people were free to follow different religions and debate ideas freely. Without respect for these rules the system cannot work.

The result is the United States has, over the last quarter of a century, become ungovernable and now, more than at any moment in my lifetime is on the edge of some kind of catastrophic disintegration.

Hanging Together or Separately

July 4, 2017. America is not a happy place. It is splitting apart rhetorically and if only a fraction of the threats posted in social networks are acted on it will split apart in other ways. In this FRDH podcast Michael Goldfarb looks at how Americans have forgotten Benjamin Franklin’s words on hanging together versus hanging separately. How can Americans rediscover their links to one another? Extremely violent rhetoric amplified by broadcast media always precedes violent acts. Nations, particularly multi-ethnic nations like the US, can disintegrate in months with a concentrated campaign of angry words against a particular group in the society: Yugoslavia, Rwanda … it took less than six months to foment civil war.
Hanging together, keeping the faith, solidarity … unity has been challenged by this new epoch of economic instability. Liberals are concerned but don’t risk their own security to help and Evangelicals go to Church but don’t risk talking to those who won’t pledge allegiance to their political faith. Neither side makes contact with one another.
Thousands of individual acts of solidarity grow into a social norm. On July 4, 2017, it is clear: the terrible rent in America’s social fabric can not be repaired without it.

Trump’s First Hundred Days in office have been like no other presidents. There is no deep channel you can follow in trying to write the First Rough Draft of History for this man’s presidency you are constantly going this way and that on jagged currents. This FRDH podcast rambles looking at Trump as an avatar of a new society which emulates what it watches on TV unable to distinguish between reality and reality TV programs. “It’s a Kardashian world and he’s the Kardashian candidate.”

It also analyzes the precedents for Trump and the resistance to him. Ronald Reagan was the first president to gain the presidency following a television career. It looks at what resistance to Reagan was able to achieve.

It also criticizes the current practice of journalism via social networking sites, particularly Twitter. Do you think Woodward and Bernstein would have got to the bottom of Watergate if they had been tweeting every little twist and turn of the story. Give FRDH podcast 17 minutes and forty-five seconds and I will give you something to think about for the next hundred days.

Trump and Security: What’s the Policy?

President Trump’s foreign and security policy: What is it? Does the military know? As American war ships steam towards the Korean peninsula and American diplomats argue with Russian leaders about Syria this FRDH podcast is a conversation with historian Robert Bateman, Lt. Col (ret) of the US Army. Bateman, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq is currently a fellow at the New America think tank and a contributing columnist for Esquire magazine. He gives a nuanced analysis that non-specialists can understand explaining Trump’s doctrine … or lack of it. He also comes up with some surprising historical analogs for the chaos president.

Statistics Facts News Truth History

Facts are the building blocks of journalism leading, hopefully, to the truth, and the FRDH, First Rough Draft of History. In a world overwhelmed by data and statistics facts are easy to come by, but can numbers alone tell a story?
In 2016, the bulk of institutional journalism missed the rise of Donald Trump because the numbers said his victory wasn’t possible … then it was.
In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb says journalism’s increasing reliance on data is behind this failure. Lies, damned lies and statistics have led reporters down a blind alley. He argues for a different approach to reporting the world, one that places a deeper reliance on the rational imagination. He borrows a word from the German enlightenment for this technique, “einfühlung.”
It’s a word coined by philosopher, historian, and clergyman Johann Gottfried von Herder in the 18th century. Google translate says Einfühlung means empathy which is accurate up to a point but doesn’t quite get at Herder’s intention. Einfühling means “in feeling,” feeling your way into a story.
For an example he takes listeners on a journey through his past to Northern Ireland and the years he spent getting to know Protestant paramilitaries. Then returns to the present to Ohio in 2016 at the height of the Presidential campaign.
In writing FRDH, the first rough draft of history, who you gonna trust: a data set or an eyewitness story?

Resistance is a beautiful word. It is a Romantic word. It is the word of the moment. But what does resistance really mean? Are you a resister if you simply say you are? Anyone can call themselves a resister and put a hashtag in front of it. Does that make them part of the “#resistance?”
Real resistance has an objective and it comes at a price.

This FRDH podcast tells several stories of resistance from recent history to see if they have something to teach those who want to resist President Trump.

French resistance: Almost from the moment the German Army overran France in June 1940 there was resistance: acts of non-cooperation with German orders or scrawling anti-Nazi graffiti on walls. It was spontaneous and uncoordinated and it had little effect. The new administration of the country took shape: a zone of occupation run by the Germans in the north headquarted in Paris. A French run government based in Vichy oversaw the south. Very quickly this new normal became established fact.
From the beginning, the resistance – think of it as being written without a capital “r” at that point – was as disparate as French society. All manner of people and groups “resisted’ without any central coordination. The resisters came from the right and the left, men and women. They were catholics, protestants and jews.

Vietnam War resistance: Non-cooperation with the draft was called resistance. An organization named “Resistance” was started by David Harris. Harris served time in a Federal Prison for his anti-draft activities.

Artistic resistance from the 1930’s in America.

Resistance is a beautiful word … but it is just a word. It is a name for something, it is not the thing itself. It is not action. If it helps people get over the shock of change to add hashtagresistance to their messages … fine but more important than the word is this question: What is a meaningful way to act in a political order you find wicked or shameful? Should you act as an individual or be part of an organization? Is speaking out resistance? or just a first step towards it?

Give FRDH 15 minutes and I will give you the past as prologue to the present.

This is a meditation on PTSD and Donald Trump and does the shock from PTSD make it impossible to see Trump and his actions clearly. In this FRDH podcast, Michael Goldfarb analyzes whether his experience of war and reporting from societies that slipped from stability to civil war affect his judgment about the state of America in the Age of Trump.

He asks whether committing journalism in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq has left him with PTSD. Does his knowledge of how quickly well-established societies can disintegrate into Civil War render it impossible to see the Trump effect clearly.

What percentage of a society wanting to fight is necessary for a civil war to start? In Northern Ireland and Bosnia, Goldfarb learned that civil war is a minority occupation. How many people on each side are willing to fight – not metaphorically, but physically fight – for their vision of what their country should be? Is there a critical mass at which point violence becomes inevitable?

There is no data set on this question, of course, so it’s a matter of speculation. Listen for nine minutes and 48 seconds and you will hear how the past can provide a meditation for the present on American Society, PTSD and Donald Trump.