The Elephant in the Discussion of Public Benefits

Over a few days in the last week, I have gotten into an involved discussion over the state of health care in the United States, specifically the problem of a proposed bill that would cut $880 billion from Medicaid, the government program which provides health insurance for the lower income citizens of our nation. These are working class people, the working poor, but also the disabled, the seriously ill, seniors who are below the poverty level, and those in nursing homes. These are the most vulnerable of our population, and one party is determined to stop helping them. And because they are poor, if this lifeline is cut, they will simply have to do without meaningful access to health care. (And no, the ER is not a substitute. Try managing cardiovascular disease or cancer or diabetes using the ER. Or getting a timely diagnosis of a fixable problem.) This is the primary reason why the nonpartisan CBO estimates that about 28 million will lose health coverage as a result of the GOP plan.

In the course of this discussion, a common thread keeps coming up:

These people should pay for themselves. It is immoral to take money from those who deserve have earned it, and give it to those who do not deserve it haven’t earned it.

The working poor are accused of being lazy, of not caring enough to take care of themselves, and so on. No amount of facts will sway these people either. I have pointed out that someone who earns $10 an hour as a single person is in this category - and the same earner with a family of four is actually below the poverty level. No, the poor deserve to go without health care, and the real problem with the world is that we reward the the poor, who don’t deserve anything, with benefits, taking funds away from the wealthy, who have “earned it.”

I may well blog in more depth at some point about how Social Darwinism has become the guiding ethic for the Right - and for far too many American Christians. But for now, I just want to look at a little history.

About four years ago, I ended up researching the connection between the Christian Patriarchy movement and White Supremacy, and I ran across a fascinating and chilling document from the past.

Looking back, I believe this was the turning point in my journey away from the Republican Party and from my former political beliefs in general.

But, you asked for my opinion of this fearful question of the negro in our common schools. It is not necessary for me to repeat the points so strongly put by “Civis.” To one of them only, I would add my voice: the unrighteousness of expending vast sums, wrung by a grinding taxation from our oppressed people, upon a pretended education of freed slaves; when the State can neither pay its debts, nor attend to its own legitimate interests. Law and common honesty both endorse the maxim: “A man must be just before he is generous.” The action of the State, in wasting this money thus, which is due to her creditors, is as inexcusable as it is fantastical. I do know that not a few of our white brethren, before the war, independent and intelli­gent, are now prevented from educating their own children, because they are compelled to keep them in the cornfield, labor­ing from year’s end to year’s end, to raise these taxes to give a pretended education to the brats of the black paupers, who are loafing around their plantations, stealing a part of the scanty crops and stock their poor, struggling boys are able to raise. Not seldom has this pitiful sight made my blood boil with in­dignation, and then made my heart bleed with the thought. (From The Negro and the Common School)

That quote is by Robert Lewis Dabney, a Confederate chaplain, purveyor of viciously racist (and sexist) ideas. The whole article is worth reading, because it pretty clearly lays out the exact same argument made by the Right for why it is supposedly immoral to spend tax dollars on the poor.

After discovering this quote, and realizing that - at least back then - the argument against public sector investment was based on racism and a desire to dehumanize and deprive African Americans of full access to society, I started to look a little closer at the subsequent history.

And guess what? It turns out there is a real history of race as the undercurrent in our discussion about public benefits. (Yeah, I know, I’m late to this realization…)

First, let’s unpack the Dabney quote.

Dabney makes the argument that it is “unrighteous” to tax whites to pay for public schools for blacks. This is such a direct parallel to the argument made today that it is startling. The idea is that wealth “belongs” to those who happen to have it (in many cases because of systems which benefit them at the expense of the poor) and that it is morally wrong to change that. Basically, this is the spirit of “I deserve and earned everything I have, and the fact that you don’t have it is not my problem.”

Second, note that Dabney claims that using funds to benefit blacks deprives whites. This too is the exact same argument, that spending funds on health care (or other benefits) for the poor causes hardship to those who deserve what they have. This is also the false dichotomy at work. It isn’t “either we educate blacks or we educate whites.” As it turned out, whites still got educated after we started funding public schools for blacks. Heck, whites still get educated after Brown v. Board of Education.

Third, Dabney insists that blacks are lazy thieves, and don’t really benefit from the education. Again, this is the exact same argument made today.

And there is more, if you read the entire article. Dabney claims that public education for blacks will cause them to become dependent on government.

Dabney complains that his tax dollars - which are rightfully his, of course - are being taken from him for a project he deplores.

In what sounds appalling today, Dabney dismisses the counterargument that as long as blacks can vote, shouldn’t they be educated with a statement that he doesn’t think blacks should have the vote, so why should he pay to educate them.

And there is more: public education just encourages idleness in blacks. Education encourages him to be uppity, rather than content and hardworking at the manual labor to which he is destined. And the training for manual labor should be started at age five, and if necessary, blacks should be “apprenticed” to white folks. Hmm, at some point, this starts to sound a lot like slavery. Or at least Jim Crow, right?

And Dabney goes on to condemn the idea of education being in the public sector at all. He argues that people should take care of it - pay for it - themselves. Whites can fund their schools, and blacks can fund theirs. And even the low income whites? They should just fend for themselves. Hmm, this too sounds familiar. Let the poor take care of their own health care - they surely can make it happen if they try hard enough. And if they can’t, well too damn bad.

It struck me at the time, and strikes me even more now that this is the exact same argument.

All we have done is change the terms slightly. We now do not expressly say “negroes,” but just use “lazy takers.” The rest is the same.

How about the history of public benefits? The more I read, the more I am struck by the fact that the popularity of any government benefit is directly related to which people it is perceived as benefiting. In the case of public schools, it is clear Dabney deplores them primarily because they benefit blacks. But there are more.

Here is an early example: The Homestead Act.

This is the government program that allowed my immigrant ancestors in the 1880s to rise from poverty to the middle class. We got free land from the government (plundered from Native Americans).

Technically, the Homestead Act was available to non-whites, but whites (including 1st generation immigrants) were overwhelmingly the beneficiaries. Why? Well, you had to start with enough to farm the land - seeds, animals, tools - and build a shelter. How would you get that? Well, you might save a grub stake. Or you might borrow money. Neither of these were readily available to non-whites. This isn’t to say that blacks didn’t homestead. Some did. In fact, there is a historical African American settlement not too far from where I live, preserved as a state park.

But for the most part, this was a program that benefited whites, not blacks. I would say equally important was that it was perceived as benefiting whites, and that is what ensured its popularity.

Another example: Social Security

When the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, it did not apply to all workers. It specifically excluded domestic workers and agricultural workers.

Much ink has been shed about why this was, with the official SSA position being that it was “administrative,” that is, that it would be too much work to collect payroll taxes from small farms and from families that employed servants. But I think this is too simplistic. The issue isn’t whether the act was intended to exclude non-whites, but whether the fact that it did in practice tend to benefit whites much more than blacks contributed to its popularity.

In fact, 65 percent of the black workforce (and 66 percent of other, non-white races) were excluded from Social Security. These government benefits largely went to whites for decades, until the law was changed.

Those who discount the racial aspect point out that more whites were excluded (by numbers) than blacks. This too misses the point. If two thirds of white men were excluded, there is no way in hell the act would have passed in that form. If things were reversed, with most non-whites getting benefits, while whites were excluded, there would have been mass hysteria over the bill.

Again, perception is key. When most of us whites think of Social Security, we think of grandma. We don’t think of the ghetto. Social Security is (for good reason) a wildly popular program, which has made old age less of a terror for all of us.

Later on, Medicare and Medicaid were created, and their parallel yet divergent courses also shed light on the way that perception as to who gets benefits determines perception of the program. Both Medicare (which is a single payer, heavily subsidized, guaranteed issue insurance for the elderly) and Medicaid (which is similar, but for the poor, disabled, and those in nursing homes) were established in 1965. This was one year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This fact is vitally important.

The Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow and Segregation. But Medicare and Medicaid were vital parts of this change too. Neither Medicare nor Medicaid would pay anything to hospitals or other medical providers that segregated, either by excluding non-whites OR by physically segregating patients in the hospital. Money talks, and this desegregated hospitals overnight.

It is easy to forget that prior to this, it was literally impossible for many blacks to obtain health care, even if they could afford it. Doctors and hospitals would not accept them.

Medicare is linked to Social Security, and shares its perception as being the way to take care of grandma. Medicaid, on the other hand, is squarely in the sights of the GOP as a program to be abolished. Perhaps this is because it is perceived as benefiting people of color - those moochers - at the expense of whites.

Let’s look back too at the segregation issue. Along with desegregation, the Medicare/Medicaid system also brought poor people into middle and upper class hospitals. A hospital that took Medicare had to accept Medicaid as well, so the poor - and non-whites - suddenly could afford medical care. There are people I know from my grandparents’ generation who still complain about having the “riff-raff” in the waiting room with them.

Just one more comment on this. It is in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and the ensuing kerfuffle over Bob Jones University’s insistence on remaining segregated - that the Religious Right was founded - on a pro-segregation platform. At the same time, there was the recognition that naked racism wouldn’t necessarily play as a political cause. The Religious Right made an intentional pivot to abortion as the cause celebre, while embracing a libertarian and Social Darwinist economic vision - same result, but without the racist baggage.

Now, with the triumph of the Paul Ryan sorts, the official economic policy of the GOP is indeed one of Social Darwinism. (This is in contrast to even 9 years ago, with George W. Bush, who still believed that we should try to alleviate suffering.) The teachings of Ayn Rand, of Ludwig von Mises, and of Murray Rothbard are the official doctrine of the Right at this point. A discussion of the specifically Social Darwinist views must await a future post.

But it bears mentioning that all three of the above called for the abolition of civil rights laws. Rand herself said that the Civil Rights Act was worse than Communism (!!). Von Mises abhorred the Civil Rights Act, particularly the part that forbid employers from refusing to hire non-whites. Rothbard too made abolition of the Civil Rights Act central to his economic vision.

I do not believe the embrace of these ideas by the Right is an accident. It allowed people to come to the same policies while still thinking well of themselves.

I believe that at an emotional level, whether it is acknowledged to one’s self or not, we are still fiercely tribal creatures. Our willingness to share with others is directly proportional to how alike we perceive them to be. When we denigrate others as “lazy moochers,” or “unwilling to work hard,” or say they “didn’t earn it,” we aren’t envisioning our own children, our own relatives, our own tribe. We are envisioning “those people,” whoever they happen to be.

With 150 years of US history showing an ongoing problem with racism - really our national sin - it seems unlikely that we would be saying the same things about who does and does not deserve basic needs like health care unless we, deep down, meant the same thing. Even if we have somehow overcome the racial element, we have merely shifted into class hatred, and view all the poor (not just the brown ones) with contempt. Whatever else this is, it is in no possible way a Christian sentiment.

I’ll end with this thought:

For 150 years, we have justified withholding public benefits of various sorts, from education to health care, because of racist views. We have used certain arguments about why we shouldn’t help those outside our tribe.

Now, once again, we are making the exact same arguments, just with a more esoteric explanation - really a utopian philosophy that everyone benefits when we refuse to help the poor. Is it really likely that we rejected our racism, started from scratch, and came to the exact same conclusion, but this time for totally valid reasons? Or is it more likely that we continue to harbor the same tribalist, selfish instincts, and the same belief that non-whites are just a bunch of lazy moochers, unworthy of the basic humanity we grant to ourselves and those like us. We just know that we can’t say that out loud - even to ourselves…

***

More Dabney racism. 

***

The worst part about all of this is that every single person who made the above argument to me was:

1. White
2. Male
3. Middle to upper class
4. Considered himself to be a devout Christian

I believe that the reason that American White Evangelicals (and Dabney back in the day) have embraced the Social Darwinism of Ayn Rand, and also embraced the lies about the poor that go along with it, is that they are faced with a lot of cognitive dissonance: the founder of our religion clearly tied our eternal destiny to how we treat “the least of these,” so we have to have some rationalization for why we do not do what Christ commands - and why our politics works toward the opposite goal. Perhaps I will write about that in the future.

***

Note on comments: Please read my Comment Policy before commenting.

Also, for purposes of this post, I will delete any comments that repeat the same talking points, particularly:

1. The poor are lazy
2. Taking taxes and redistributing them is “theft.” I already know the Rand/Von Mises/Rothbard position.
3. It isn’t the job of the government - it is for private charity. See below. And, if you can show any society since the invention of modern medicine, which has provided healthcare for its poor without government aid and only with private charity, then fine. But I have been able to discover evidence of any such thing.

I doubt anyone can honestly dispute that terminating or cutting funding for health coverage for the poorest citizens will cause them serious hardship. If you believe there is a better way to do it, you need to show the following:

1. A concerted effort to create said alternative. Speculation isn’t enough: it must be currently ongoing as an effort.
2. Such effort MUST be actively seeking out the poor, the sick, and those with preexisting conditions. If not, then it really isn’t addressing this problem. It may well be good, but it isn’t sufficient.
3. Such effort MUST have sufficient funding - or a viable plan to obtain it - to cover a $880 Billion shortfall. Because if it doesn’t, it will not be able to actually cover the poor, the sick, etc.
4. Such an effort MUST have a way of keeping the healthy from fleeing and leaving the sick to fend for themselves - otherwise, it will collapse.
5. Such an effort MUST cover those outside of the tribe. So one that is just for christians of a particular theology (including no alcohol,tobacco, etc.) or just for people who do not have mental health issues will by its nature exclude many.
6. It must be prepared right now to absorb 28 million who will mostly be sick and poor. If it cannot step in immediately to assist those who will be cut off, then it is illusory. If you burn my house down, it is of cold comfort that someday in the future, someone might rebuild it.

So, this rules out existing programs like Medi-Share, which does not fit any of the conditions except the first. If you try to sneak your “alternative” in and it does not satisfy these conditions, I will delete your comment. 

Saint Patrick's Day and Immigration

I have kind of toyed with whether to write my own post, or simply link Libby Anne of Love, Joy Feminism’s post. I decided to add a bit while acknowledging her outstanding work in locating and collecting the racist materials of the past.

In 21st Century America, we have no problem celebrating Irish heritage - even those of us with no known Irish blood. My brother proudly plays fiddle in an Irish band. I wore green to the office today. Shamrocks, Celtic and pseudo-celtic imagery, and Irish flags will be everywhere. The Chicago River will be dyed green as usual.

Now imagine for a moment if we took out “Irish” and substituted “Mexican.” Hmm, not quite the same sense of pride? Nope, more like, “fly the AMERICAN flag!” and “go home!” and “Build That Wall.”

Or imagine it with Middle Eastern Muslims instead.

But the Irish are - in 21st Century America - viewed as safe, and as "real" Americans.

But it was not always thus.

Rather, every single slander and stereotype about Latino and Muslim immigrants today was in fact used about the Irish during the 1800s when they were the disfavored immigrant group.

The Irish were seen as dirty and subhuman.

The Irish were seen as failing to assimilate.

The Irish were seen as an invasion by a foreign religion intent on imposing their laws on us.

The Irish were portrayed as longing to kill the “real” Americans.

The Irish were seen as paupers leaching off of the “real” Americans.

The Irish were seen as diluting the “true” American culture.

The Irish were seen as taking jobs away from the “real” Americans.

The Irish were stereotyped as drunk and lazy.

The Irish were stereotyped as sexually dangerous to American women.

The Irish were seen as fraudulent voters.

The Irish were portrayed as bringing harmful, intoxicating substances to the US.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The bottom line is that racism and xenophobia are the same in any era - only the victims change. (I could also cite the anti-Chinese hatred in the 1800s and 1900s, the anti-Japanese sentiment in the 1930s and 1940s, and the anti-Italian propaganda of the early 1900s. Or the anti-German sentiment from the 1840s and later the 1940s. And let’s not forget the Jews either, who have been a disfavored group through most of our history. Many perished in the Holocaust because we turned them away.)

There was actually a political movement (labeled the “Know Nothings”) devoted, like the Tea Party and the Alt-Right today, to the exclusion of immigrants. Their positions sure look similar, and contain similar reasoning.

It is also interesting to note that foreign-born immigrants made up a much higher percentage of the population back then than it does now.

There is nothing unique about the Latino immigrants of today, or the hateful response to them. And ditto for Muslim immigrants (the 3.3 million Muslims in the US are overwhelmingly ordinary people looking for a better life, just like me and you.) They just happen to be the favorite targets of racial hatred and xenophobia at our moment in history.

So when you bristle when I point out that this is racism or complain about my tone, remember that it is Mexicans and Muslims today, but it was likely your ancestors and mine that were the targets of hate and exclusion in the past. Racism and xenophobia were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

Complements of Love, Joy, Feminism, here are some of the racist cartoons about the Irish back in the day. I have also added a few of my own:

Well look at that: building bombs, cheating at the polls, gunning for the "real" Americans, and lazily sponging off everyone else.

Foreign invasion by the unclean. 

Servants rising against their masters. Also, dehumanization by portrayal as apish.

Another one showing Irish  as a stupid apes.

Say goodbye to religious freedom: Catholic/Irish Sharia is coming...and also voting fraud.

The lovely English nurse contrasted with the Irish ape. 

 Sacrificing the Democratic Party to the Catholic Church. Again, note the portrayal as an ape.

 

Showing the similarities of the African-American to the Irish: both are subhuman apes.

How the Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day: by rioting. Also note "open season on the police." Compare to modern claims that Muslims celebrated 9-11 (not true) or that Cinco de Mayo means drunkenness and rioting by Mexican-Americans. And the accusation that Black Lives Matter means attacks on law enforcement.

 Bringing intoxicating substances into the US. An ape, of course. 

Taking the jobs from the "real" Americans. 

 

Immigrants as paupers sponging off of the "deserving." 

Irish apes as the ones who refuse to assimilate.

***

A few links:

First, these on America’s troubled history on immigration, with the altruistic instinct in constant battle with xenophobia:

Trump’s Muslim Ban and the Long History of American Nativism

America’s Long History of Fearing Refugees

Green Beer and Rank Hypocrisy

And this one on the rejection of Jews fleeing the coming Holocaust. Very interesting to see the horrific things said about Jewish children.

The Refugee Ban That Kept 20,000 Jewish Children Out of the US

And, it can’t hurt to click through to Libby Anne’s post and give her some traffic:

Why Trump’s Irish Merchandise Broke My Irony Meter

How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I’m almost making a habit of reading modern novelists’ non-fiction works before I read their fiction. (See, for example, David Foster Wallace.) I’m not sure after this that I am dying to read The Replacements, but it’s not because I disliked this book. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed this collection of essays. But they are short, and the novels tend to be long, and I have just a little hesitation about whether the style would wear thin after 300 pages. Actually, this is more of a concern with Wallace than with Franzen, because Wallace seems to like a more experimental form, which I enjoy in smaller doses. Franzen is pretty straight forward, and if his essays are any indication, is ruthlessly organized in his plotting.  

This collection contains works from roughly 15-20 years ago, which means that the cultural references will often take you back to 1995 or so. The middle of the Clinton years, so to speak, and the years when I was in law school, trying to be the good conservative kid, while progressively realizing just how screwed up the cult we were in was. Also, eventually moving out, getting a job, and getting married. Quite the transition time for me, and, as it would later turn out, the nation.

It was kind of weird, given my own experiences of the time, to read the perspective of someone who combined the role of “cranky old man” with the politics of a liberal - one that had a lot in common with 2016 Bernie Sanders, in fact. Maybe it was the fact that even now, most of the cranky old men griping about the young people tend to be conservative. Or that most of the old men - particularly the cranky ones - that I know, are both strongly Republican and lean toward retrograde ideas about gender and race. Or that the Right at this point in time is dominated demographically with old white men. So the “old white male liberal” is a bit of a new experience.

On that note, what I found the most off-putting about Franzen is the cranky old man act. But, to be fair, he knows he is a cranky old man. So he asserts his crankiness while trying to defuse it by acknowledging his own bias. I was simultaneously irritated at him while being forced to grant that he too was criticizing himself. I forgot to write down a quote to illustrate this, but if you read the book, you’ll recognize it.

Probably this tendency comes out most in his most famous essay, entitled “Why Bother,” which originally ran in Harper’s under the name of “Perchance to Dream,” a title Franzen did not pick, and didn’t like. The version in this book has been edited and shortened from the original. Franzen intended to make it a bit more clear, and less wordy - although it is still really long, something I should know considering the length of some of my posts. I actually found this particular essay to be one of the weaker ones. It’s decent, and it makes a number of excellent points about culture, literary works, and so on. The strongest part, in my opinion, is a conversation with Shirley Heath that is recounted, on the topic of what makes good fiction resonate. To quote extensively from Heath on the feedback she had received about literature, works of fiction are

“the only places where there was some civic, public hope of coming to grips with the ethical, philosophical and sociopolitical dimensions of life that were elsewhere treated so simplistically. From Agamemnon forward, for example, we’ve been having to deal with the conflict between loyalty to one’s family and loyalty to the state. And strong works of fiction are what refuse to give easy answers to the conflict, to paint things as black and white, good guys versus bad guys. They’re everything pop psychology is not...This is precisely what readers are saying: that reading good fiction is like reading a particularly rich section of a religious text. What religion and good fiction have in common is that the answers aren’t there, there isn’t closure.”

It is no accident, in my opinion, that the great religious texts rely so heavily on the story. Easy answers are hard to find in real life, and the easier the answer, the more likely that it is complete bullshit. In fact, most of the “easy” answers are only easy because they disregard most of the issues. Things are usually much more easy when you can dismiss the consequences to other people or other groups. (See, for a modern example, the fact that the “easy” answer of “no more Muslim refugees in our town/state/nation” is only easy if you disregard the needs of the refugees. If their deaths are okay with you, then I guess the answer is easy…)

This has been my quibble with American religion over the last decade. Evangelicalism seems premised (in practice) on the belief that the answers to all of life’s deepest questions are easy, that the answers are universally known, and the only reason their particular answers (spiritual and political) are not universally accepted is that the other side is wholly evil. Not only does this not match with reality, but it seems contradictory to the scripture we have, which is nothing if not full of messy, messy stories with no easy answers. To force it into a straitjacket they way the Evangelical Industrial Complex has is to do violence to the text and to the intent of the writers. Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox on this one.

Also on the topic of literature and readers is “The Reader In Exile.” Although it has its anti-technology moments, Franzen does his best to avoid the worst of this tendency. What is more interesting is his exploration of who the readers are in our society. Some, like me, are readers because we grew up with books and were raised by readers. Others, though, became readers as a means of self-preservation - and many of these end up becoming writers. It’s a fascinating essay, whether you agree with Franzen or not. One line was especially memorable.

Blaming the novel’s eclipse on infernal technologies and treasonous literary critics, as Birkerts does, will not undo the damage. Neither will the argument that reading enriches us. Ultimately, if novelists want their work to be read, the responsibility for making it attractive and imperative is solely their own.

I have wondered what Franzen would make of the fact that, 20 years after he wrote this, it is his generation, the Baby Boomers, who are least likely to have read a book in the last year, then either Gen X (my generation) or the Millennials. I think the kids are alright. It’s the grownups I worry about.

I should mention a few of the other essays. If you read nothing else in this book, please, please read “My Father’s Brain.” Franzen tells the story of his father’s Alzheimer’s Disease, and how it impacted the rest of the family. This is, hands down, one of the most haunting - and accurate - depiction of the reality of dementia that I have read. It is unflinchingly honest, and yet compassionate. I work in elder law, and deal with the legal side of these issues, and Franzen nails it. Everyone should read this essay.

Also fascinating was “Imperial Bedroom,” a response to the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. Franzen was horrified by what he viewed as an intrusion of the private on the public. In his view, it wasn’t that the parties’ right to privacy had been violated, but that the public’s right to have some areas of life free from the dirt of private relationships had been breached. In perhaps the most understandable “cranky-old-man” instance, he felt that this was part of a greater problem, exemplified by Viagra ads, a general lack of boundaries between what was for public consumption, and what was private. And it was the public sphere that suffered, not the private. I’m not entirely certain that I agree on this point. Sometimes the private is very relevant to the public. (These days, the age and power differential is the most relevant, not the sex itself.) But his feeling that there is no “public” place to escape from the private smut is warranted.

The better part of this essay, though, was his clear-headed analysis of the “declining privacy” hoax. I’ll lay it out for you. There is a truism that modern technology/culture/consumerism has lead to a terrifying loss of our privacy. This is poppycock. Anyone who has lived in a small town knows that it has never been easier to retain one’s privacy. A modern city dweller like myself may reveal a bit about me in this blog, or on Facebook. Sure, my purchasing habits are known by faceless global corporations. But for the most part, my business is my business.

In a small town, it wouldn’t be Walmart corporate that knows what brand of deodorant I wear. It would be likely every other person in town. If my client has a child out of wedlock that she places for adoption, a few people will know, and there will be a (confidential) government record somewhere. But in a small town, everyone would know, and if she couldn’t leave town, her life would be forever irrevocably changed.

Similarly, in our modern world, it is easier to go against the culture of one’s tribe without losing everything. My wife and I left fundamentalism, and we have paid some prices with certain friends and family. But in a small town, we probably would have had to cut all our ties and never come back. Now, these decisions are considered “private” in a way they weren’t before. One need not pretend to a religion one does not believe in order to avoid being burned at the stake.

Franzen’s very best point, though, is that what we talk about as “privacy” issues are not really about privacy at all. They are about liberty. Franzen breaks down the so-called “privacy” torts, and makes a good argument that they are actually about freedom. Freedom from trespass, defamation, and theft, specifically. From there, he argues that our fears of loss of privacy actually correspond better to fear of the specific harm inflicted. To give an easy example, I am not really worried that someone might know my social security number. It’s that someone might use that number to steal from me by taking my money or running up debt in my name. I’m not really afraid that my DNA might be analyzed, but afraid that the information therein would be used to deny me health insurance or a job. That BevMo knows my alcohol preferences doesn’t threaten me, but the idea that I might be denied a civil right because of what I drink is problematic. It isn’t the information, it’s what is done with the information.

I really should mention “Lost In The Mail” as another excellent essay. Franzen tells the story of the great US Mail debacle in Chicago, where mail was being buried, burned, and all kinds of things other than delivered. He didn’t do the investigative reporting on the case, but doggone does he tell the story well. It is moments like this that made me seriously consider getting his novels. He can tell a compelling story, even about the Postal Service, and make it thrilling.

Just a quick mention of a few others. “Erika Imports” is about his job as a teen working for an eccentric German immigrant entrepreneur couple. (That’s a lot of long words in a row, but that is the best description.) “Sifting the Ashes” is about tobacco, his addiction, and the overheated politics. “First City” is an interesting musing on the good and bad of New York City, and cities in general. It’s nice to see someone advocate for cities, rather than sugarcoating the small town and the all-white suburb. “Scavenging” is about finding and re-purposing old junk as a starving writer. And about obsolescence. And other things. It’s good. “Control Units” is a frightening inside look at the Prison Industrial Complex. One of the issues about which I have parted ways with my former political tribe is on the astoundingly high incarceration rates in our country. This essay predates our current criminal reform movement by a couple of decades, but the link of prisons and money was apparent even then. “Meet Me In St. Louis” is about the promotional filming he did for Oprah’s show before he was dis-invited. I love the exposure of the contrived nature of the biopic, and the complex emotional landscape of returning to roots one has both left and ultimately rejected. Like the description of his father, the moments involving his childhood home are lacerating and real. “Inauguration Day, January 2001” tells of tagging along with a Socialist protest of the George W. Bush inauguration.

There is one final essay I really have to mention in more detail. “Books In Bed” is a hilarious sendup of sex advice books and magazine articles. And sex writing in general. I feel I have found a kindred spirit in my dislike for modern sex scenes in books. Look, I’m no prude these days. My objection is most definitely not based on moral considerations. My objection is based, as is Franzen’s, on aesthetic considerations. Because sex scenes are almost always such terrible writing. To re-purpose a really awful music and sex joke, sex scenes are a bit like premature ejaculation, because you can feel them coming but can’t do anything about it. (Sorry, don’t mean to offend, but the metaphor really fits.) The whole time, it’s “no, no, please, don’t!”

Likewise, sex advice is usually terrible. Beyond terrible. Laughably bad. But it isn’t intended to be useful so much as to relieve anxiety.

I think Franzen really nails the root issue of our modern sexual anxieties.

Sexual anxiety is primal; physical love has always carried the risk that one’s most naked self will be rejected. If Americans today are especially anxious, the consensus seems to be that it’s because of “changing sex roles” and “media images of sex” and so forth. In fact, we’re simply experiencing the anxieties of a free market. Contraception and the ease of divorce have removed the fetters from the economy of sex, and, like citizens of present-day Dresden and Leipzig, we all want to believe we’re better off under a regime in which even the poorest man can dream of wealth. But as the old walls of repression tumble down, many Americans - discarded first wives, who are like the workers displaced from a Trabant factory; or sexually inept men, who are the equivalent of command-economy bureaucrats - have grown nostalgic for the old state monopolies. What are The Rules if not an attempt to reregulate an economy run scarily amok?

This is a brilliant metaphor! I firmly believe that mankind is better off under a free (if regulated) market rather than command-economy Communism. I’m not eager to go back to the Soviet days anywhere. And likewise, I am a Feminist, and I would not seek to go back to the days when women were essentially bought and sold like property - but had more of a guarantee of lifetime financial support in exchange for their monogamy and tolerance of the promiscuity of males. I would not deny abused women the right to divorce, nor would I abolish contraception, which has also done much to grant women control of their destiny.

But I would not deny that the crumbling of Patriarchy and Soviet Communism has resulted in displacement and anxiety. With freedom comes a certain loss in security. The old relationships must be renegotiated. And there are losers even if most are winners.

I think Franzen is absolutely correct that a major loser in the new sexual economy are sexually inept men. On the one hand, men without wealth have an easier time of it, but on the other, it isn’t enough to be a rich white man to guarantee marital and sexual success. I’ll confess that I have experienced this anxiety, being a short and not particularly attractive man. Once upon a time, I could simply work hard and become successful, and I could “buy” a woman for my wife. Now, I have to earn it sexually as well as financially. And that brings performance anxiety. (To be fair, I actually ended up finding a woman who wanted me, so the anxiety turned out in practice to be seriously overblown. That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it.) But while the risk of failure exists in this scenario, either through inability to attract a mate or inability to keep one, the payoff is (in my opinion) worth it.

Franzen’s point that the old “winners” of the previous system find themselves on the outs, and therefore focus on returning the old system rather than adapt is outstanding. This explains pretty much the entire Christian Patriarchy movement. Seriously, though, read this essay. It’s outstanding.

This book was a good introduction to Jonathan Franzen. I think I will have to read some of his fiction now. There is a vulnerability about his introspection and self-awareness that is refreshing, and his writing is fantastic. Even though I do not fall on the same part of the political spectrum as he does, I think he has plenty to say to us all about our times and our politics and about life in general.