Fragile Foundations and Enduring Challenges Other Books by Max O. Stephenson Jr. RE: Reflections and Explorations Volume II: A Forum for Deliberative Dialogue. Blacksburg, Va.: Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance in Association with VT Publishing, 2017. Editor, with Lyusyena Kirakosyan. RE: Reflections and Explorations: Essays on Public Policy and Governance. Blacksburg, Va.: Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance in Association with VT Publishing, 2015. Editor, with Lyusyena Kirakosyan. Arts and Community Change: Exploring Cultural Development Policies, Practices and Dilemmas . Oxford, UK: Routledge Publishers, 2015. Editor, with Scott Tate. Building Walls and Dissolving Borders: The Challenges of Alterity, Community and Securitizing Space . Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishers, 2013. Editor, with Laura Zanotti. Peacebuilding through Community-Based NGOs: Paradoxes and Possibilities Sterling, Va.: Kumarian Press, 2012. With Laura Zanotti. Exploring Low-Income Housing Delivery Systems: Roles of Nonprofit Organizations in the United States . Seoul, South Korea: Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements, 2010. With Sang Ok Choi, Hye Seung Kim and Sung Je Jeon. Fragile Foundations and Enduring Challenges Essays on Democratic Politics and Governance MAX O. STEPHENSON JR. VIRGINIA TECH INSTITUTE for POLICY and GOVERNANCE in ASSOCIATION with VT PUBLISHING BLACKSBURG, VA Copyright © 2019 Max O. Stephenson Jr. Foreword © 2019 Jack Davis Afterword © 2019 Anne Khademian First published 2019 by the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance in Association with VT Publishing. Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance 201 West Roanoke St. Blacksburg, VA 24060 VT Publishing University Libraries at Virginia Tech 560 Drillfield Dr. Blacksburg, VA 24061 The collection and its individual chapters are covered by the following Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. The above is a summary of the full license, which is available at the following URL: https:/ /creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.) Fragile Foundations and Enduring Challenges: Essays on Democratic Politics and Governance / Max Stephenson Jr. ISBN: 978-1-949373-09-7 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-949373-08-0 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-949373-07-3 (paperback) 1. Political science. 2. Public policy (Law) 3. Public administration. 4. Education, Higher. 5. Com- munity development. 6. Social Movements. 7. Democracy. 8. Neoliberalism. 9. Electronic books. I. Stephenson, Max O. II. Title: Fragile Foundations and Enduring Challenges. III. Title: Essays on Democratic Politics and Governance. Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge copyright owners, but the authors would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to their attention, so that corrections may be published in future editions. Book cover images by Cathy Grimes and Meaghan Simonich. For Jessica Whose Joy and Wonder Provided An Enduring Example to All Who Encountered Her Contents Acknowledgments xiii Foreword by Jack Davis xiv Introduction 1 Section I Early Warning Signs (2010-2013) 1 Democratic Expectations: A Nation of Toddlers? 11 2 Coping with Anguish in America 13 3 Evan Bayh had it Right 16 4 Fear on the Border 18 5 A Tale of Two Interpretations 21 6 Peacebuilding as Disciplined Imagination and Maturity 24 7 Democracy at Work? The Age-Old Challenge of ‘Local’ Majoritarianism 26 8 Rhetoric has Consequences 29 9 American Federalism and the Enduring Myth of a False Sovereign 31 10 The Debt Crisis and American Governance 34 11 The Politics of Choosing between Scylla and Charybdis 38 12 Are We Witnessing the End of Shame in American Political Discourse? 41 13 The ‘Southern Strategy’ Revisited 44 14 Pondering the Character of Democratic Community and Possibility 46 15 Revisiting Dual Sovereignty 48 16 The Idea of the Nation 50 17 Democracy's Enduring Tensions 52 18 Can a Democratic Electorate be held Accountable? 54 19 ‘Abandoning the Poor’ as a Political and Social Strategy? 57 20 Policy-makers, Policy-making and the ‘American Dream’ 61 21 Voting Access Restrictions: Democracy in Choppy Waters 65 22 On American Unity and Individualism 68 23 On the ‘Idea of the Nation’ 71 24 Undermining Democratic Self-Governance via Ideological Absolutism 74 25 When Turnabout is not Fair Play 77 26 Through a Glass Darkly or Weighing the Price of a Partisan Mobilization at any Cost 81 27 When Bad Theory Leads to Poor Policy 85 28 The Policy Paradox Implicit in Defining Freedom as Agency 89 29 Counting the Costs of Policy-Making by Ideological Abstraction 92 30 Egypt and the Enduring Challenges of Democracy’s Preconditions 96 31 Democratic Governance as Fear-Filled Dissembling 99 32 Blaming the Poor 104 33 Discounting the Future 108 Section II Undermining the Fundaments of Democracy (2014-2015) 34 Democracy, Freedom and Heterogeneity 113 35 Presence and Absence and Democratic Agency 117 36 The Puzzle of Malignant Social Fantasies 120 37 Privatism and its Discontents 124 38 On the Uses and Misuses of Rhetoric 128 39 On Fear, Killing, Torture and Rationalization 132 40 Pondering Human Dignity, Democracy and Freedom 136 41 Fighting Poverty and Banning Books 140 42 A Disquieting Enervation of Democratic Possibility 144 43 Tolerance and Preserving Democratic Possibility 148 44 Presence and Democratic Leadership 152 45 Musings on Takers and Civic Identity 156 46 On Death and Democratic Imagination 160 47 On Moral Courage, Social Norms and Self-Governance 164 48 Reflections on Democratic Leadership and Popular Exploitation 168 49 Acknowledging the Lessons of History 172 50 On Epistemology and Democratic Politics 176 51 The New Absolutism in American Politics 180 52 Institutionalizing ‘Doublethink’ and the Challenge of Democratic Deliberation 185 53 Another Turn of the Wheel 190 54 Of False Analogies, Fabled Claims and Caution Flags 194 55 The Once and Future Perils of Popular Rule 199 56 A Pope’s Plea for the Commons, Democratic Governance and Social Justice 203 57 The Shared Roots of Genocide and Systematic Persecution 208 58 A Portrait of a Cruel Imaginary and a Sketch of an Alternative 214 59 Rediscovering the Democratic and Economic Possibility Inherent in Imagination 218 60 ‘Ascription by Assumption’ and Democratic Politics 223 61 On Perfidy, Penury and the Danger of Depravity 227 62 Trumpism: The Politics of Fear and Fecklessness 231 63 On Imagination, Trust and Democratic Governance 235 64 A Flâneur Reflects on the Simmering Crisis in American Politics 239 65 Outrageous Rhetoric, Political Alienation and Democratic Deliberation 244 66 A Tipping Point in American Politics 249 Section III Prelude to a Crisis (June 2016-June 2017) 255 260 265 270 274 279 284 288 293 298 304 309 314 318 323 328 333 338 343 348 352 356 361 365 67 A House Divided: Blaming the Poor 68 Guns, Ugly Fantasies and Democratic Politics 69 The State of the Union: An Angst-Filled Trajectory for Self- Governance 70 On Anti-Political Correctness Posturing, Human Dignity and Self-Governance 71 The Common Good, Today’s GOP, Morality and Democratic Politics 72 A Descent into Brutish Crudity and Demagoguery 73 The Road Not Taken 74 On Three Ways of Looking at a Political Phenomenon 75 On Frame Ambiguity and Democratic Politics 76 Democratic Mobilization, Deliberation and Civic Health 77 Homo Faber: The Triumph and Perils of Narcissistic Politics 78 The Danger Within 79 Moral Ambiguity, Moral Courage and Democratic Politics 80 A Terrible Inevitability? 81 Moral Imagination and Democracy 82 Fear and Bigotry: Democracy’s Achilles Heel? 83 Reaping a Whirlwind: Delegitimating Self-Governance 84 Pondering Power and Injustice in Democratic Politics 85 Post-Truth Politics, Trump and Coal Country 86 In Search of Democratic Deliberation 87 A Demagogue Attacks American Governance 88 Electoral Carnage, American Style 89 A Nest of Paradoxes 90 Defining Democratic Legitimacy Down 91 A Tale of Democratic Political Frailty, Fractiousness and Human Dignity 370 92 Bullying, Derision and Democracy Make Poor Bedfellows 375 93 On the Misuse of Rhetoric and its Consequences for Democracy 379 94 Lies, Legitimacy and Democratic Truths 384 95 “Democratic Deconsolidation,” Freedom of the Press and the Primacy of Politics 389 96 Of Ignorance, Expertise, Demagoguery and Democracy 393 97 Pondering a Once Shared Covenant, Preaching Limitless Individualism 398 98 Heedless Policy Cruelty 403 99 Human Rationalization, Alterity and the Challenge of Moral Courage 408 100 Privatism and Relentless Attacks on Democratic Values and Human Rights 414 101 A Remediable Choice or Continued Democratic Decline? 419 Section IV Democracy in Danger (July 2017-August 2018) 102 The Struggle to Control America’s Identity 427 103 A Clear and Present Danger 432 104 Voices from the Appalachian Coalfields 438 105 When a President Embraces and Celebrates Hate 444 106 Rationalizing Away the Imperative of Deliberative Self- Governance 448 107 A Toxic Brew of Media Polarization, Extremism and Untruthful Advocacy 452 108 Chilling Lessons from the Vietnam War Resonate Today 458 109 Reflections on Capacity Building and Community Change 463 110 On Human Cruelty and Alterity 468 111 Reflections on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at Thanksgiving 472 476 480 486 491 496 501 506 510 514 519 524 529 112 Fear and the Moral Imagination: The Oil and Water of Democratic Self-Governance 113 Revisiting a Central Puzzle of Democracy and of Current U.S. Politics 114 On Human Darkness and Democratic Possibility 115 “Scraping off the Essence of Things” 116 On ‘Changemakers,’ Education and Democratic Self- Governance 117 Mobilizing Rhetoric as Emblem of Enervating Democratic Capacity 118 Of Democratic Greatness and Infamy 119 Revisiting the Foundations of Democratic Self-Governance 120 “Seeking What No Other Man has Found or can Find” 121 The Fearsome Power of Hate 122 An ‘Infestation’ of Lies 123 Prophetic Imagination and the Current American Governance Crisis 124 A Calculated Attack on Human Rights and Dignity 535 Afterword by Anne Khademian 539 About the Author 544 Index 545 Acknowledgments All authors owe a debt to those who support their work and I am surely no exception to that well-worn rule. I would like to thank my colleagues at the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance for supporting me as I fretted over the commentaries that appear in these pages as I wrote them. Nancy White, David Moore, Mary Beth Dunkenberger, Regina Naff, Andrew Morikawa and Heather Parrish have all listened and provided feedback as I have mused out loud about my thinking. Regina and Heather ensured the timely publication of the columns once I had written each. I am also indebted to Dean Jack Davis and Professor Anne Khademian for their essays that appear within this volume and for their long-time encouragement as I have produced these commentaries. Likewise, John Dooley, Chief Executive Officer of the Virginia Tech Foundation, has long supported me personally and this series more particularly. I thank him. I want also to thank the PhD and master’s students with whom I have worked and interacted during the years I have written these essays, as many of them have listened to nascent arguments and shared insights that have surely sharpened many of the efforts that appear here. It would be impossible to capture all I have learned from our interactions or to name all of them and list the ways I have benefited from each. Suffice it to say, my debt is surely incalculable. Peter Potter and Robert Browder of Virginia Tech Libraries and Publishing have provided excellent technical support in all facets of design and production of this volume. I am also most grateful to Cathy Grimes and Meaghan Simonich for providing permission to use their photographs for the book’s cover. Finally, I wish to thank my colleague and Institute Senior Research Associate, Dr. Lyusyena Kirakosyan, for her help with organizing and producing this volume. I am extremely grateful for her invaluable assistance. As always, I am responsible for any errors that may remain despite the support and assistance of this long list of individuals. MOS Jr. November 17, 2018 Salem, Virginia | xiii Foreword by Jack Davis Traversing the Landscape of Democratic Governance Democracy requires faith. Like any belief system, democracy is an overarching term that encompasses multiple points of view, is frequently challenged and remains viable only with a committed priesthood. Fundamentalism is counter to its multifaced doctrine. It works best when it is ever present in dialog, legislation and jurisprudence. Every citizen of a democracy has oversight capabilities and responsibility, regardless of race, income, gender, ethnicity or religion. It is from this humble position, that Max Stephenson begins his timeless journey to inform and enlighten all of us. Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation. 1 Governance reveals democracy. Governance is a human inevitability, but democracy is just one of its many belief systems or forms. As a human construct, it distinguishes itself by being a product of the many, not the one. As such, democracy is, by its nature, rarely clear or efficient. While others avoid or ignore the past, Stephenson keeps us in time and context. Pundits (and sometimes United States Presidents) are focused on 20-second sound bites, and few adopt the deliberate and time-consuming researched focus that Stephenson takes. He is without exaggeration, erudite, learned, scholarly, knowledgeable, well-educated, well-read, bookish, intellectual, academic, studious, and literary. His writing can sometimes be scary in its pessimism, but more often hopeful in its optimism, and always is astute. We wouldn’t want anything less from a critical observer who is at times a silent alarm, and a light in the dark. He is a window into the future, through the now. Fragil e Foundations and Enduring Challenges: Essays on Democratic Politics and Governance is a trail guide through the difficult landscapes of democracy and governance. Drawing on analogy, metaphor and historical xiv | Foreword by Jack Davis precedent, Stephenson opens our eyes to future landscapes, complete with beauty and pitfalls. We are left to make our own decisions about how to proceed, as we should be. Democracy is a process, not a doctrine. Stephenson is a learned guide that helps us navigate our political world. In his 10 years of writing, he has given us current challenges in the context of history and projections of the future. Reading his essays is like sitting down with an erudite scholar, discussing the fundamentals (without the ‘ism’) of democracy, the politics of human relations, how we perceive natural phenomena, and the challenges we face in this current political incarnation. His four-section organization allows one to pick and choose one’s interest areas, or to read in sequence the evolution of a complex political intrigue. Either way, secrets are revealed that help us understand the sheer folly, or the critical impacts, with which we are faced. The reader is taken like a pilgrim on a single-focused march of faith. Enjoy the journey and contribute your findings to a form of governance that respects the sanctity of the individual in a collective process. Jack Davis, FAIA LEED, A.P. Reynolds Metals Professor of Architecture and Former Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Virginia Tech Notes 1 Atifete Jahjaga is a Kosovar politician and stateswoman who served as the third President of Kosovo. She was the first female President of the Republic of Kosovo, the first non-partisan candidate and the youngest female head of state to be elected to top office. Read more at: https:/ /www.brainyquote.com/quotes/atifete_jahjaga_506715. Foreword by Jack Davis | xv Introduction “On the Brink of Everything” The Genesis of this Book More than a decade ago, I wrote my first commentary after being persuaded to begin doing so by the persistence of two colleagues. One kindly argued I had much to contribute to the national conversation concerning American policy and politics broadly understood, while the other suggested that writing a column on a more or less regular basis might enable me to connect the activities of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance, which I serve as director, to broader trends in United States policy and politics. I at first addressed only the second of the two arguments my colleagues had offered, and I began to write a quarterly commentary, Tidings , concerning the larger questions raised or reflected in Institute projects. Associates in the Institute and beyond reacted warmly to those original efforts and I meanwhile continued to ponder the justification for what I was doing as a writer. It occurred to me that the strongest reasons for writing about the nation’s politics were related to my affiliation with a leading Land Grant university that takes its engagement and outreach mission seriously and that my professorial position gave me a platform to serve, however humbly, as a public intellectual. To my knowledge, University of California, Los Angeles historian Russell Jacoby was the first scholar to employ that term in 1987 in a provocative book that decried the decline of the class of writers he so labeled. Jacoby argued that those authors, now less in evidence, wrote for an educated, as opposed to a specialized, public and did so with clarity and verve. Meanwhile, as he put it, the major share of the nation’s intellectuals had, “not disappeared, but something has altered in their composition. They have become more professional and insular; at the same time, they have lost command of the vernacular, which thinkers from Galileo to Freud had mastered.” 1 As I thought about what it would mean were I to take Jacoby’s argument and concern seriously, I imagined that doing so would require drawing on relevant professional scholarship and learning in a fashion that might | 1 traverse traditional disciplinary boundaries and be approachable for an audience of interested and knowledgeable individuals beyond the academy. More, I thought about what I wanted to do analytically with these essays. I certainly have had many models who were journalists, not to say intellectuals, considering politics for the public from whom to choose, including, Mark Danner of The New York Review of Books , Timothy Egan and Roger Cohen as well as Paul Krugman (the lone academic on this list) and Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times and Michael Gerson and Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post These columnists routinely write thoughtfully, lucidly and trenchantly, but few of them, as distinguished as they are, self-consciously connect their columns concerning American politics to the requisites of democratic theory. That, and my penchant for wanting to draw connections between politics and literature, language and culture, might be my defining niche. Nonetheless, having drawn these distinctions and painted this picture of what appeared to me to be appropriate aims, I could not, and did not then know what seeking to realize them would mean in practice. That would come only with writing the essays. And so, in January 2010 I began writing a new and periodically published commentary series called Soundings . I chose that name in part to point to the two most common definitions of the term: “the action or process of measuring the depth of the sea or other body of water; information or evidence ascertained as a preliminary step before deciding on a course of action” that addressed current concerns in American politics and policy- making and sought to tie those to long-term issues linked to self-governance and democracy. 2 In a sense, I sought to connect the two most used meanings of the word together in my own way. From January 2012 until January 2015, I wrote weekly Soundings commentaries. Starting in January 2015 and to date, I have published Soundings essays on a bi-weekly basis. Taken together, these commentaries constitute an oeuvre all their own. Nevertheless, when, recently, a colleague referred to me as a “prolific” writer, I found myself puzzled by that descriptor as I have never regarded myself in such terms. Rather, I have fallen into writing as vocation and that has occurred while producing these commentaries. Parker Palmer, the renowned educator and author, recently wrote a book looking back over his eventful life as he entered his eighth decade. 3 One chapter of that volume concerned how he came to be an author and his discussion of that topic struck me because in it, he argued that writing had for him taken the character of a vocation and was not simply a job or a part of other 2 | Introduction professional responsibilities. That is, writing became and remained a compulsion for him, undertaken not to satisfy someone else’s expectations, but instead to help him work on the knotty problems he continuously found himself encountering and about which he persistently wanted to know more. Here is how he put this point: Novices are often advised, ‘write about what you know.’ I wouldn’t call that bad counsel, but I’d extend it a bit: ‘Write about what you want to know because it intrigues and puzzles you.’ That’s the hunger that keeps me engaged with a craft that I find endlessly challenging and of which sportswriter Red Smith said, ‘There’s nothing at all to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.’ 4 Just so for me. I have found writing these commentaries has helped me address nagging concerns about the relationship between human nature and democratic possibility, between self-governance and humankind’s boundless capacities for avarice, cruelty and quest for power, and between humanity’s equally powerful potential for good and just action and its frequent embrace of a will to power and of evil. All of these questions are as old as humankind and equally enduring in their centrality and significance. As John Steinbeck wrote in his novel, East of Eden : A child may ask, ‘What is the world’s story about?’ And a grown man or woman may wonder, ‘What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?’ I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. 5 Writing these essays required that I consider carefully these more profound concerns to seek to discern how current political or policy turns reflected deeper currents in human history. In so doing, I have often uncovered additional issues and still thornier paradoxes whose character demanded exploration. These challenges have at once been Introduction | 3