Two Elections: Russia & America, mirrors of Apathy & Stability

Russia's 2016 Parliamentary Elections--Sunday, September 18 2016

Last Sunday, about 48% of eligible Russian voters (according to official data) turned out to give Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party a victory in the 4th parliamentary election since he came to power.  It's been dubbed Russia's most boring election yet.  The government probably manufactured about two fifths of its victory through fraud, but the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th place parties all support the Putin system, too, and the only parties that truly stand as opposition attracted the votes of barely a twentieth of those bothered to show up.  This is one of the lowest turnout national elections Russia has seen since the fall of Communism (although the 36% of Americans who voted in our last Congressional elections is even worse).  Are Russians suffering under Putin's regime, and thus desirous of a change, but too afraid to vote for it?  Or is the Russian electorate genuinely quiescent because hardly anybody is really that dissatisfied with the system?

Two years into Russia's most severe recession since the 1990s, the latter answer seems correct to me.  From my many trips there, and contacts I keep up with friends and former students there, the impression I've always had reflects the perspective one Russian facebook user posted about on Monday, to explain why Russians of his generation don't come out in support of the opposition.  The late 1980s and 1990s in Russia were so horrific, economically, and left such an indelible mark on Russians' political consciousness, that they have become the touchstone for comparison to determine how things are now.  In 2016, budgets have been cut, inflation is up (especially on food), and in a few places wage arrears (employers--including government entities--can't make payroll, and so simply fall into arrears in what they owe workers, sometimes for weeks or months) have shown up again.  But unlike the 1990s, nobody is losing their life savings to inflation.  People all have jobs and enough to eat.  Apartment blocks aren't wallowing in horrific states of dilapidation, nor being blown up by terrorists.  People have cars, access to health care, and many can still afford seaside vacations (many in newly-acquired Crimea, which is ironically probably cheaper now than it was three years ago, the last time Russians vacationed there under a Ukrainian government).

Could things in Russia be better?  Of course they can--Russians were doing extremely well economically less than a decade ago.  But that was under Vladimir Putin's rule, as well, so why vote against his party?  Today's democratic opposition, as disorganized and divided by petty personal ambitions as it is, is also directly connected in Russians' minds to the 1990s, the Yeltsin era--and economic depression that has no comparison in the minds of today's Russians.  The idea that a European standard of living and degree of public freedom, a reduction of corruption and the installation of a pluralistic society with the levels of comfort and opportunity that people enjoy in Germany, France, the Low Countries, or even the Central European post-communist countries that are now in the EU seems unrealistic for most Russians.  These social goals, that inspired Ukrainian protesters in late 2013 and early 2014 who wanted to bring that country into the family of Europe simply don't look plausible in Russia.

So then, why rock the boat?  On the whole, Russians would prefer the known path they are on, even if it seems headed downhill, than to blaze a trail off in a new direction--perhaps over a cliff.  And the majority of Russians would really just rather live their own lives, attend to the prospects of their own family, friends, and themselves, then wear themselves out engaging in politics, which at best cannot change things, at worst could be dangerous, and in any event will be exhausting and dispiriting to those who have any public spirit to begin with.

Americans: Citizens or Subjects?  Participants in Democracy?

The majority of Americans are almost exactly like the majority of Russians, in terms of how they feel about commitments to their own, personal, private spheres vs the public sphere and participation in their own democratic government.  Americans have a far higher quality of democracy than do Russians: far less corrupt, far more open to participation (which is far safer), far more avenues to voice their opinions, and far more competition and capacity to hold their leaders accountable than Russians.  But while some Americans take up the privileges and duties of citizens of a democracy, the vast majority of them don't act like they live in or care about democracy--they act just like the majority of Russians do.

Here in Texas, I've been working in the past week to register voters, which means walking up to complete strangers, asking point-blank if they're registered to vote yet, and if they want to, then helping them fill out a brief form.  While many students and grocery-store customers have been willing to, the great majority are not willing to register.  Of those who won't, many will respond that the choice they face for president this year is so dismal that they're not interested.  Others, expressing something similar, say it won't matter who they vote for, because all the choices are bad.  (The majority of those who refuse have clearly not even thought enough about it to articulate, or probably even have, a reason.)

While these opinions are certainly disputable, what is indisputable is that the reason we have the two most unpopular major-party nominees in history is that the huge majority of Americans didn't care to participate in the primaries: On the Democratic side, about 17 million people voted for Hillary Clinton, and 14 million against her, while on the Republican side, 13 million voted for Donald Trump, and 16 million against him.  While the fairness, process, funding, and media attitudes during the primaries are all open to criticism by those who don't like one, the other, or both candidates, the greater truth is this: 160 million Americans eligible to participate in the process that produced these two candidates failed to do so.  Maybe some were physically, financially, or bureaucratically unable to participate, but not all of them, nor surely even a significant portion.  If just one tenth of those who failed to show up when we picked our major party nominees (a process that's been virtually unchanged in most of our lifetimes, that is taught about in required classes in middle schools, high schools, and many colleges--at least here in Texas it's required), had done so and voted for other candidates--against Hillary & Donald--we would have a different pair of nominees this November.  This is indisputable.

The fact that those who claim they won't participate now because they don't like the choices on offer have no one but themselves to blame (their own failure to participate during the primaries) is piquant, but probably not worthwhile to dwell upon.

Perhaps worthwhile is why the majority of Americans, like the majority of Russians, can't be bothered.  There are lots of negative pressures or personal failings we could assign as causes for how low people's interest & desire to participate is.  But still, this is America, the country that claims a unique history, tradition, and very identity with Democracy.  Moreover, this is the government that rules the land--that holds power of life and death over everyone ("a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence"), that decides peace & war, how much you'll have to pay in taxes or traffic fines, controls education, trade, abortion, infrastructure.  It's really important, and not just for "this election."

But my answer to the question of why so few Americans care to participate in what's regularly upheld as a hallmark of American-ness takes a different approach than a speculative weighing of the costs & benefits of expending the rather scant resources of time & energy to participate.  I'm interested in opportunity costs: what else are Americans doing with the small amount of time & effort that they could otherwise have spent on registering to vote, generating enough of an opinion to cast a vote, and then casting it?

They're doing much the same things Russians do: they're eating dinner, going grocery shopping, answering a friend's text, heading to work.  Often they're dealing with their kids, maybe watching TV, possibly working long hours, maybe at multiple jobs, or exhausted from doing the same.  They're trying to figure out which Costco account to sign up for; they're trying to get tenure; they're talking to their spouses or taking care of elderly relatives.  They're fixing their cars or mowing their lawns, or snapchatting with a potential hook-up.

They're engaged in their private sphere of social and economic activity--family & friends & career & household (including both work & entertainment).  These take up so much of most people's time & energy, that there's nothing left over for democracy, even though the bare minimum of voting takes very little effort, for most people.

This is certainly not true of everybody--after all, 60 million people did vote in the primaries, and an additional 60 million or so will probably vote in November; and many people go to school board meetings, or volunteer time for charity work.  But I'm not speaking of those people; I'm talking about the ones I can't get to register to vote.  Public-spiritedness may be alive and well in a fraction of the American population today, but that fraction is too small.  Indeed, at the last Congressional election in 2014, I know a number of political science professors who didn't bother to vote.  If educators within the very field of politics, responsible for the instauration in future generations of the values of our American democracy are too pre-occupied with trials and travails of their own private spheres to vote, there's a big problem in America.

The private sphere has been so valorized in America, and the fields of activity that contribute to private flourishing--education, career, kids, house, cars, nutrition, fitness, entertainment, insurance, tax-planning, retirement, vacation, health care--have undergone such hypertrophy in both their number, and more importantly, the imperatives of attending to them, that for the vast majority of Americans, there is no obligation to one's (or one's family's) private flourishing too small push out any activity undertaken in the public spirit.  Even among those with the most resources, who've gotten the best educations and high-paying jobs, we often congratulate ourselves for fulfilling the bare minimum requirement of democracy by merely voting.  The idea of stumping for candidates, volunteering time to register voters, or even running for office is barely conceivable to most of us--we're too busy to make democracy work.

One of the most pernicious catalysts of this problem is social media: facebook posts about politics and the election are a palliative for many people's pinches of conscience about participation (especially academics) that emotionally exempts us from the responsibility to actually do anything outside the virtual world that might make a real difference, to connect with the unengaged, or with people from different walks of life.

Now I'm sure that most people who post on facebook about how terrible this or that candidate is, or how desperate the stakes of the elections are, or how unjust are the agents of justice hired by our elected official, do almost always vote.  But we should see that as a  bare minimum.  Many give money, too, which does do something, but also alienates the donor's political responsibility onto some paid staffers somewhere, who are overworked & underpaid (often to an unconscionable, and now actually illegal degree, by Democratic no less than Republican candidates), usually undertrained, and often hamstrung by a lack of willing & able campaign volunteers.

If everybody who posts on facebook about politics spent an equal amount of time signing up new voters, phonebanking for the campaigns of the candidates who would address the injustices that bother them, or knocking doors to identify supporters & get out the vote, instead, we would go a long way towards making American democracy real, rather than the money-dominated, mass-media-manipulated, de-personalized and anti-community elitist affair it appears to so many to be.  I challenge everybody who reads this to catch yourself before you post or re-post something about the election, and instead spend those few seconds looking up how you can volunteer locally to register voters, or help your preferred candidate or party.  And then actually do the volunteering.  As I found out when registering voters this week--whether ex-felons or college students who didn't know they were eligible, it can be really uplifting and inspiring.

America & Russia: The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity

I challenge us all (myself included!), because we need it--we need our American democracy not to come to resemble Russia's.  Because there are those who want it to, the ones backing the presidential candidate who has lionized Russian president Vladimir Putin, although for the most part, they know not what they do.  This is one phenomenal inversion of the Russian case in America: if Russians are hesitant to stand up for change in the face of a poorly-performing autocracy because they know--and are afraid--of how much worse things can get, then a dangerously large swath of Americans are pushing for the destruction of our values and institutions because they don't know how good they have it.

It's true that in the past few decades, things have gotten worse for a lot of people in America.  Income inequality has gotten worse in this country, the jobs on offer are worse and less stable than they were before and the expenses most Americans face are harder to afford. Higher education seems more out of reach to many Americans than it used to be.  The solutions that America has used to address racism, crime, drugs, low-quality education, and deficit spending have evolved their own pathologies and problems.  But to submit the whole system to the guidance of someone like Donald Trump is to call for a leap into the abyss (I suspect I'm preaching to the choir for anyone likely to come across this blog).

If the 1990s are the reference-point for Russians, and as problematic as Russian society is today, they won't risk standing against injustice & corruption for fear of returning to that abyss, for Americans backing Trump, the reference-point is the imagined era when America was "great."  And the dark reflection of Trump supporters being so enamored by the force of anemoia (I had to look this up) that they will risk any amount of upheaval, corruption, and destruction offered by a sexist, violent, bullying, lying, arrogant, faithless, corrupt excuse for a businessman whose entire career has been devoted to swindling people, and whose only qualification to be leader of the free world is his celebrity, is a reality that would have been unthinkable in any previous era of American democracy.  (Ironically for the implicitly backward-looking slogan of his campaign, there is no way that someone as ethically bankrupt and devoted to private gain at the expense of other people and the public good could ever have come this close to the presidency in any historical era of American greatness he or his supporters might point to.)

Fortunately, those American voters so callous, foolish, and (in some significant proportion) undoubtedly racist enough to desire to loose Trump's blood-dimmed tide upon the world are not so numerous enough to overwhelm this nation.  They're only about 4% of our population, to judge from primary voting.  And yet 4% filled with passionate intensity may easily bully and bludgeon the rest of us into submission, if we continually show so little conviction as to spare no time from our "busy" schedules for any but the bare minimum of democratic participation.

We friends of justice, equality, and democracy may feel like the biggest enemies we are fighting are Trump, and racism, and the Koch brothers.  But the truth is that our biggest enemies are our own pre-occupations with the private sphere, our own fears that we will not flourish sufficiently if we don't devote almost every morsel of time & energy to our careers, families, children, homes, nutrition, etc.  I may feel good that I spent six hours registering voters this week, but that's the first real political action I've participated since the end of my stint with Bernie Sanders six months ago.  I've been as woefully reluctant to cut into my private sphere as anybody.

But from now on, I'll pledge not to.  I'll start with the next 17 days of voter registration here in Texas, but I won't let it end on November 8th.  Please join with me, pledge mutually, as did the fifty-six signatories twelve score years ago--whether you're already engaged in multiple public spheres and activities, or whether you like me have fallen submerged into the all-consuming private sphere, and want to turn over a new leaf--a real one, not just a virtual one.  Make some campaign calls!  Find out how to register voters in your area!  Knock on some doors for a candidate who will lead us higher up the mountain towards a more perfect union, rather than over a cliff into the abyss.  Leave a comment if you want, so I'll know you're with me, and have the conviction Yeats was so concerned for the lack of!

We are Delivered: Reflections on the Food Stamp Challenge (post written by Dan)

Dan enjoying a dinner Republicans would be irate about (if paid for with SNAP benefits)
Steak, potatoes, green beans, and of course, alcohol!

It's now been a while since the end of our Foodstamp Challenge, and you see here the celebratory mood that attended our first meal "off of Foodstamps".  I'd like to say that the reason we haven't been heard from for days was the alcohol- and red meat-fueled three-day bender that we went on once we were released (and we did feel like it was a release!), but that's not exactly accurate (though after our martinis & a bottle of wine, we did forget to feed the cat his wet food before we went to bed.

Gorky is not amused.

The truth is we've been packing up for our move.  We leave town in just two days, and have been hemming and hawing over what books we should put in storage, and which ones to bring to Charlottesville (will I really get around to going all the way through The Brothers Karamazov in Virginia?  Or am I just kidding myself?).

I want to reflect on our experience of the Foostamp challenge, but it will probably take a few posts to really think seriously about it.

The one thing I'll say now is that being on Foodstamps, that is limiting all of our consumption the way we did, really did feel like a kind of culinary imprisonment.  Now, we could have drunk wine or beer, and had a cocktail or two throughout the Foodstamp challenge; there is no regulation or oversight of SNAP that actually prohibits these or any other kinds of treats while on Foodstamps, if you have some cash to pay for them, not just your EBT card.

But a lot of voices on the right exhort the moral wrongness of anybody on SNAP affording themselves any physical or emotional comforts beyond the basic needs of human survival.  There are arguments about using "taxpayer dollars" to pay not just for the virtuous consumption of the four foodgroups, but the unvirtuous consumption that extends beyond them.  Some forms of consumption are moral, and others deserve opprobrium.

Of course, there is little complaint from the right when the wealthy buy alcohol, tattoos, cigarettes, or other morally problematic products (and indeed, there's even a double-standard for the poor & the rich on illegal drugs).  But somehow, wealthy people's consumption decisions are morally unassailable.  Personal freedom of choice somehow entitles people to any choices they want--if they are wealthy.

An argument for the justification of policing poor people's consumption choices goes like this: "it's not their money; it's taxpayer money!  So we should get to exert control over, or at least pass moral judgment on what people on Foodstamps buy."

But poor people pay taxes, too!  15.2% payroll taxes from the first dollar of employment, plus income taxes, plus sales taxes that often add up to far higher percentages of their income than the wealthy investor classes (they mostly get to pay just 15% on investment income, even if it runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or 20% once it gets to half a million or more).  So that "taxpayer money" is poor people's money, too!

Moreover, where is the outrage at other morally problematic expenditures, of far larger amounts of "taxpayer money"?  Somehow it cannot be found--at least not on the right.  There exists a great desire in certain halls of conservatism to morally judge and control poor people's behavior--and that desire has found increasing expression in American government policy for a long time in a way that privileged people like me & Jasmine rarely feel.

Well, we got a feel for it while we did the Foodstamp challenge, and it feels terrible.  It does not feel like freedom; it does not feel like opportunity; it does not feel like America.  The minuscule taste we got showed me that to be poor in this country is to be unfree, to be watched, judged, controlled, and bereft of true choice in one's life, much as life is for people who live under totalitarian or theocratic dictatorships.

We're glad to be done with the Foodstamp challenge.  It feels like we live back in America again.

Comfort as Privilege

One impression I carry with me from childhood is of Cybill Shepherd swiveling around in a futuristic egg chair offering a defiant answer to a question that may or may not have been articulated in the hair color commercial: "Because I'm worth it." I would say that statement irritated me as a kid, probably because, without realizing it as such, I did not feel included in it. And I was underage for the target audience. To kids we market via basic, nearly primal desires for things like power, speed and sugar. To adults are added more esoteric and engineered desires curated by lifetimes of receiving all kinds of messages to the point where they feel unartificial and ineluctible. One that has been on my mind is the notion that to treat yourself by buying something is a virtuous act. Consider the pride with which a working mother might announce that she had her nails done, or how a college-age child might lecture a parent on how they need to work less and golf more, or how a department or office might tell its administrative assistant that she needed to take a day off to spend the gift certificate they pooled for at the spa. Work is the premise, or thesis, and the spa is the antithesis. The synthesis is robust capitalism in which workers self-medicate with consumption. I like the spa as much as the next person, but I'm very aware that I can't afford to go to one unless I'm working enough to make it seem much more necessary.

But I've been thinking less about how work necessitates consumption than about what kinds of consumption are open to what kinds of people. Plenty of people work long hours, but not all of them are well-remunerated for it. A family of four with two parents working 40-hour a week at minimum-wage jobs would earn about $2,550 a month, qualifying them for food stamps (the monthly cut-off is $2,668).  Yet I know many people, including Dan and me, who are able between them to work less than two full-time jobs and still exceed the SNAP threshold by a large margin. Those people can not only afford to pay for food from their income, but they can afford a much broader array of "treats" to add a certain level of comfort to their lives. Dan and I live pretty frugally, and there are many non-necessities we forego, such as tobacco, dining out frequently, driving new or expensive cars, clothes, or shoes, or living in a big apartment. If we become more affluent in the future, we will no doubt partake of more of those non-necessities, beginning with a living space that has two bathrooms and a dishwasher. Some of the non-necessities we do afford ourselves we would consider treats, like going out to dinner occasionally, or international vacations; others, like purchasing a farm share and more sustainably-raised meats, don't really confer any special treat sensation, but they are consumption choices we make to gratify our sense of justice and stewardship of animals and the environment. Then there's alcohol.

Alcohol is definitely something we'd call a treat, but it's also a basic part of our diet and our social lives. To me, it's impossible to think about good food without the beverages that go with it because I expect to have them together and I enjoy them so much more together. Like a salad of beets, goat cheese, and walnuts, it's hard to say which of the two would be best without the third, and that's how I feel about most foods without wine or beer. Alcohol also is an ingredient in much of our entertainment: our favorite thing to do together is to mix a cocktail and enjoy it together while we talk or cook or both. It's difficult to write about this and feel that many readers will appreciate my attitude towards alcohol for what it is and not write me off as an alcoholic or an apologist for my own self-indulgence. I'm keenly aware that the prevailing attitudes towards alcohol in our culture are fraught in many different directions. This is a country of bingers and abstainers, and I'm not a registered dietitian telling you cheerily to have one glass of wine with dinner for the bioflavanoids. I'm saying that across the world and throughout history alcohol has been at once a more casual and more indispensible part of human culture than it is presently in the US, and I really appreciate having it as a part of my life to be infrequently, although sometimes, eschewed or overconsumed, but for the most part used the same way people have used that even less-likely demon, bread, as a basic and beloved part of each day.

Being without alcohol this week has me thinking about the notion of comfort. With all alcohol off the table, I feel distinctly bereft of this comfort, and without the option for comfort. Some of this comes from the lack of other things that foodstamps could buy: I can't have a candy or an extra apple if I feel peckish, or just to make the fun of the evening seem to "last" a little past dinner. I can't make tea in the afternoon or an extra pot of coffee if we want it. But it's mainly that the light has been going out of our dinners and their preparation because they're forced into what feels like an excessive deprivation. Thus, the biggest thing I have learned so far about what it feels like to be poor is that the poorer you are the more limited the scope of comforts you can afford is. Booze is expensive, folks, although it hasn't always been that way and it isn't that way everywhere in the world. In the fruit stores in southern Italy where I bought food for many of our blustery picnics, they sold wine from kegs decanted into reused water bottles that were cheaper than Coke. Why can I have a coke this week, or any kind of candy, but no rotgut nero d'avola?

Consider that comfortable is a euphemism for rich: why do we consider comfort so much the province of the affluent, and ridicule the poor for the imagined sushi and lobster they are all eating, but congratulate the wealthy for taking themselves out for a sixty-dollar steak that will be cooked by someone making minimum wage? Why are we forcing the poor to comfort themselves, who for damned sure need comfort no less than the affluent, with tobacco and sugar while we enjoy the heart benefits of nice wines and wild-caught fish?

I have been dubious for some time, probably since September 11, of the weird and inflated status that safety seems to hold in our society. As the country dashed off to war against unknown enemies, I felt that the most abstract conception of our own safety (the victims were already dead, as were the perpetrators [not counting the people who would develop respiratory ailments as a result of their roles in the rescue and clean up who have found it hard to get their care paid for]) was used to justify actions that seemed reckless and unjust. And whose safety did those wars promote? When you look not only at the numbers, but at who died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hard not to see them as the willful sacrifice of a poorer, less well-advocated-for sector of the society for the future safety of who knows whom? Safety was important in that historical moment, but not the safety of the soldiers. In an interview she did for the New York Times, Marilynn Robinson articulated very well this dubiousness I had long felt about how safety was functioning in our society: “What it comes down to — and I think this has become prominent in our culture recently — is that fear is an excuse: ‘I would like to have done something, but of course I couldn’t.’ Fear is so opportunistic that people can call on it under the slightest provocations: ‘He looked at me funny. So I shot him.’” Fear has been used as an excuse for instituting new policies and upholding others, but I would argue that it is the fear for the safety of the already safest members of our society that has motivated politics in recent years, while the least safe grow only more vulnerable in our gun-ridden world of widening income inequality. The poor are poorer, the rich more scared, and everyone has greater access to guns, especially children. We know, too, that the poor are not only the most likely to encounter physical violence, but to live in the areas most prone to noise, air and land pollution, the most susceptible to the ravages of natural disasters, and with the least access to quality education and decently-priced, well-stocked grocery stores.
The bottom line is that the amount of money we have is not related to our virtue, our worthiness as human beings, or how much right we have to the basics of human survival or to the unnecessary "treats" that make life livable, whether they be the wine that makes a meal really good, the martini at the end of the work week, or a well-founded sense of personal security when we eat our meals, breathe our air, leave our homes, or do our jobs. I'll be thinking of that during the next debate in which rich and thickly-sponsored politicians debate what the poor deserve.