Celebrate Our E Pluribus Unum

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We celebrated this week one of the purely American holidays, though Thanksgiving is replete with irony. A nation that treated it’s Native American benefactors with shameful cruelty uses their generosity to the Pilgrims as a role model.

Similarly, the history of the treatment of African Americans in this country is appalling. But millions of white Americans, if they gave it a moment’s thought, would give thanks for the remarkable courage, persistence and creativity of African Americans without whom this country would be a poorer, duller, lesser place.

It is easy at this moment to despair that the arc of history is not bending toward anything remotely resembling justice. Elections just concluded were tarnished by racist robocalls and state-sponsored efforts to suppress the minority vote. The President contributed his usual vile remarks, oblivious to the fact that refusing to be politically correct is often synonymous with being morally incorrect.

Trump, who with his father first made headlines for being prosecuted for discriminatory housing practices in Queens, dismissed the better educated, more experienced Stacy Abrams as being unqualified for the governorship of Georgia. It was soon to be stolen by a crude throwback to the days of Lester Maddox. Trump slandered Colin Kaepernick as unAmerican for exercising his First Amendment rights. He regularly brands exemplary public figures and public servants such as LeBron James and Maxine Waters as low I.Q.

This sort of talk was out of date when Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek were permanently tarnished for expressing their casual bigotry on TV in the 1980s. The Greek said blacks were great athletes because they were bred for strength on the plantation, and Campanis suggested there were no black coaches, managers or quarterbacks because they “lacked the necessities.” That is, low I.Q.

And yet, African Americans have carried on in the face of an apparently never-ending ability to fail to see reality. We all share the same DNA. And since we all came out of Africa, ironically, we are all African American. In the face of persistent discrimination, African Americans keep right on excelling by overcoming hurdles they should not face.

As we watch the NFL this weekend, lo and behold, the playing fields are filled with black quarterbacks who apparently passed the I.Q. test — Russell Wilson, Cam Newton, Dak Prescott, rookie phenom Lamar Jackson, potential MVP Patrick Mahomes. And the coaching ranks have been enriched with minority contributors including two Super Bowl winners, Tony Dungy and Mike Tomlin.

The arts in America are unimaginable without African Americans. Their music is the soundtrack of all our lives and has been for over a century, — from Louis to the Duke, the Count, Ella, Miles, Nat, Ray up to the present, not to mention actors, dramatists, authors who have won Pulitzers, Tonys, and the Nobel Prize. They have made contributions in science and have filled CEO chairs in businesses including American Express, Xerox, Merck, and McDonalds without inheriting the business from the fathers.

African Americans also occupy leadership positions at important philanthropic institutions including the Carnegie Corporation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Way and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. American food is also difficult to imagine if the contributions of African American influences were subtracted. Scottish cuisine, perhaps? And we can hardly forget that two of the most beloved, aspirational figures at present are African American women — Oprah and Michelle.

I was a young man when the Civil Rights generation of Martin Luther King Jr. asked the country to live up to its ideals, and white segregationists shamed themselves and our country by aiming fire hoses at peaceful protesters, siccing dogs on them, beating them, jailing them, murdering them, and yet their victims persisted. And still they persist.

A typical example of the uphill battle for respect concerns a National Museum of African American History and Culture, first proposed in 1915. Nothing was done until a new push was begun in 1970 after the Civil Rights era reforms. It still took until 1989 for Congress to entertain the idea, but another 15 years for the Smithsonian to sign on, Congress to actually vote yea in 2001, and a plan to emerge in 2003. Finally, in 2016 the museum opened.

At first a spot on the National Mall was refused because there was, supposedly, no more room. Congress also declined to fund the project fully, requiring private donors to bear much of the cost for the building and to help fund the creation of a collection. Foes surely assumed the notion would fail for lack of support. And yet the backers persisted, led by Rep. John Lewis, and in the first year three million visitors arrived to celebrate a place of honor in the nation’s capital.

Next year, fifty-three African Americans will serve in the House for the 116th Congress. Eight of nine new members were elected from majority white districts, which is a hopeful sign. Why should we not entrust the country to African American legislators? They have served with distinction on the Supreme Court, in leadership roles in the Armed Forces, and as the most recent President of the United States, a man who, compared to Trump, is as Shakespeare said, of the devolution from Hamlet’s father to his usurping uncle, “Hyperion to a satyr.”

So this Thanksgiving, perhaps all of us oblivious white Americans, part of a shrinking majority, ought to admit we owe an unacknowledged debt to our fellow Americans — Native, African, Hispanic, Asian, you name it — and give thanks for their presence and their part in making this a richer, more various country,

We also ought, at the very minimum, to speak up when any of us are dismissed, diminished, disrespected and denigrated. We are all Americans. Treating any of us with anything less than equal justice and respect has been wrong for almost 500 years and still is. Enough’s enough.

Defenseless

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Young people may lack sufficient experience to realize that many things that used to work no longer seem to function. Those of us with more mileage on the odometer of life have enough data to make invidious comparisons.

Yes, people used to get polio, but when vaccines were discovered they didn’t refuse to take them because they believed in urban myths. Yes, in industrial America there was appalling environmental pollution, but cities rarely allowed drinking water to give residents lead poisoning.

In the news last week you could learn that the VA unintentionally cut off benefits to thousands of vets who depend on them. Why? Because their ancient data processing equipment went cuckoo when a simple software update was attempted. And they seem to have no idea how to fix it, potentially putting 450,000 people at risk of deprivation.

Similarly, outmoded voting machines in Georgia and Florida made a recount of votes an endeavor fraught with peril and uncertainty. Do we see a theme developing here? Could it be that cutting government spending for ideological reasons (and in order to give tax breaks to those who don’t need them) has real world consequences?

Is winning re-election by bribing the one percent and lying to everyone else worth the loss of faith in democracy, shortchanged vets, and poisoned drinking water? How about an existential threat? Are voters really prepared to risk their lives for an anti-big government ideology?

Those may be the stakes according to a new report by the National Defense Strategy Commission. It found that the military edge of the United States has degraded dangerously. As a child of the Cold War, I grew up in a world where paranoid fear of imminent nuclear Armageddon was one feature of life we could rely on.

The Russkies were always coming, elections hinged on who “lost” China, and any military investment by the Communists meant we would all be incinerated if we didn’t counter it with a response double, triple, quadruple the size. “Overkill” wasn’t a pejorative, it was an article of faith. Though Churchill did supposedly argue that even conventional bombing could eventually do no more than make the rubble of the enemy bounce, and nukes would be even more quickly excessive.

But an arms race and overkill were very good for the bottom line of the military-industrial complex. We still spend an absurd amount of money on defense — $716 billion this year — four times as much as China and ten times as much as Russia. But the report argues it isn’t necessarily well spent and faults Pentagon strategic planning for “questionable assumptions and weak analysis.”

It concludes that our adversaries have studied us and have learned from our successes and perhaps even more from our follies. While we have squandered trillions on small, regional, interminable, inconclusive conflicts, they have been preparing for major confrontations.

As a result, we are “at risk of being overwhelmed if forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.” The Far East, Europe, and the Middle East come to mind. The report finds our ability to counter such large scale threats “under-resourced” and “insufficient to defeat a major enemy while deterring other enemies.”

An adversary like China has one a huge advantage in manpower, and another important advantage over our free enterprise, democratic system. Single-mindedness. If Xi Jinping and his advisors decide a priority is cyberwar capability or a blue water navy or 10,000 tanks, there is no debate. Vast resources are committed, manpower mobilized, and the decision from the top is implemented — or else.

In our system, the buying of weapons systems is influenced by competing services, lobbying by suppliers, located in the districts of friendly congressmen, and the guns are financed in competition with butter. Often compromise plays a part. New shiny objects are easier to sell than expensive maintenance and upkeep of existing systems or, conversely, penny-pinching causes outmoded gear to be preferred over the risk of the untried but needed innovation.

The Defense Strategy Commission’s recommendations include: For the Navy, more and improved subs and sea lift capability; for the Air Force, more reconnaissance and stealth bombers; for the Army, more armor, long range precision missiles and air-defense logistical forces. Our nuclear deterrent needs to be modernized and more air and missile defense added. Perhaps most importantly, a large commitment for R&D is required, especially for “leap-ahead” technologies.

Doing all that would require the military to bite the bullet and abandon the old to afford the new, but it would also require taxpayers to swallow the bitter pill of taxes sufficient to finance safety in a changing environment. There was a bipartisan, public consensus on the need for security at whatever cost during the Cold War. The result may have been appalling waste, but not thermonuclear war.

Is it possible to achieve the same level of commitment today? Highly unlikely. Trust has been squandered by inconclusive foreign adventures of dubious utility. In Korea, to some extent, but certainly in Vietnam and Iraq where the conflicts were fraudulently sold and incompetently pursued. Now we may actually face a serious threat from a powerful adversary, but a cynical public may no longer be willing to believe anything their political and military leaders tell them. The flock of boy who cried wolf ended badly when a real threat loomed but nobody listened.

We Ain’t Got Fun

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It’s official! After a protracted and, frankly, insulting process to choose a site for a giant 50,000 person HQ2 for Amazon, the decision has been made to have two new subsidiary HQs employing 25,000 each.

Guess what? Seattle will be joined by New York and Washington with a consolation prize of a 5,000 person logistics center in Nashville. So, first the hopes of a couple hundred Podunks that never had a chance were dashed. And now the hopes of fifteen other finalists have also been gone up blooey. Instead of a trip up the Amazon, 235 cities are up the creek.

This is a denouement entirely in keeping with our haves-and-have-not times. So much so that the first thought I had was of a 1920s song that became especially salient in the Great Depression.

There’s nothing surer,
the rich get rich
and the poor get poorer.
In the meantime,
in between time,
Ain’t we got fun.

But the only places having fun are the winners, who were already winners. And they have to pay for the pleasure — a whopping $2 billion in tax incentives and cash. But if, as Amazon announced, the decision came down to “one of the most important criteria, the ability to find and attract talent,” and if Washington and New York both had the built-in talent pool Amazon craved, then why was a big competition and even bigger bribe required?

Amazon also said a $5 billion investment in construction would also be required, but it wasn’t clear if the company would foot that bill or expect the lucky cities to also kick in part of that cost. It is certainly the case that Virginia Tech plans to create a new campus near Amazon-Arlington for a modest investment of $1 billion. Will Old Dominion taxpayers enjoy ponying that up, along with the half billion in incentives already committed to snag the HQ?

It can be argued that paying to attract a booming business employing thousands of highly paid workers makes more sense for the tax base than a city coughing up half a billion for a football stadium, the least justified expenditure of tax dollars imaginable, but the many residents of New York and Virginia who won’t get a highly paid job at Amazon may be less than thrilled at having to tithe to the church of Bezos.

I have no complaint about Amazon’s amazing success and handy services, but surely they can afford to fund their own growth out of their mammoth revenues. And the bigger issue is the increasing enrichment of a few of the country’s great urban centers and the ongoing impoverishment of great swaths of the rest of the nation that are deemed beneath the dignity of mighty corporations.

It wasn’t always thus. In the industrial age, proud cities like Wilmington, Peoria, Moline, Cincinnati, Akron, Dayton, St. Louis, Racine, Minneapolis, and dozens more like them thrived as homes to major hometown employers. In the list above, respectively: DuPont, Caterpillar, Deere, Proctor and Gamble, Goodyear, NCR, Monsanto, S.C.Johnson, and 3M. Today, not so much.

In the Amazon gold rush, a few smaller cities not on the coasts made the short list — Columbus, Indianapolis, Newark, Pittsburgh, but they clearly had no chance. They might have offered a relatively low cost of living, but could hardly compete on the basis of tax incentives, educational institutions, or the cosmopolitan attractions supposedly prized by a labor pool of young tech types that were the sine qua non of the exercise.

Obviously, if even such finalists as Toronto, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta and Austin didn’t measure up, what chance did the other 200 also rans have? Places like Tucson, Birmingham, Hartford, Des Moines, Kansas City, Grand Rapids, Greensboro or Cleveland? No chance. Flyover country, the Outback, the Red State land of the yokels never had a prayer.

I get it. If I were as rich as an Amazon software engineer or manager, I’d like to live down the street from the Met or the National Gallery of Art, Broadway or the Smithsonian, too. Not to mention a thousand good restaurants and all the luxury goods and services wads of money can buy.

But if all the booming tech businesses of the future choose to locate in the same few coastal megalopolises, is it good for the country, or even for the companies themselves? Silicon Valley itself was once a contemptible backwater — a place of orchards that grew fruits and nuts, not tech start-ups. Los Angeles was nowheresville until a few film makers seeking sunlight showed up, followed by defense plants during World War II. Now both are increasingly unpleasant places to live.

Concentrating wealth, power, opportunity, culture and the good life in a few cities so expensive that cops, firefighters, teachers, sous chefs, sales clerks, garbage men, bus drivers can’t afford to live there looks like a fool’s bargain. Instead of utopia, something darker, more crowded, dysfunctional, and uninhabitable may result. Especially if it leaves the rest of the country’s people — also known as customers — un- or under-employed, aging, abandoned, penurious, hopeless and irate.

You’d think the tech geniuses would be smart enough to see they are engineering a dystopia
they may live to regret. Maybe they should get their heads out of their algorithms, portfolios, private jets, gated mansions, and self-regard long enough to read or watch an occasional cautionary tale from H.G.Wells (Morlocks and Eloi), Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” Vonnegut’s “Player Piano,” “Brave New World,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “Les Miserables,” most of Dickens and Zola, Dante’s Inferno, “Gulliver’s Travels,” ”Lord of the Flies.”

Some people have seen they future, and it doesn’t appear to be the doyens of Siliconia. They seem to suppose the money will roll in no matter how great the economic inequality becomes. Or, perhaps they believe that, by the time the music stops, they will have engineered an escape hatch worthy of an very rich arrested adolescent. It is no accident so many tech billionaires are less interested in social justice or environmental protection than in magic longevity pills, their own island, or a second home on Mars. Space, the final gated community.