WordPlay - Populism, Problems, and Solutions

David Leonhardt's Toxic Racialism

I receive daily email notifications of the columns David Leonhardt writes for the New York Times. The one I received a few days ago (linked here) could not have been a starker, more frustrating example of the compulsion so much of the intelligentsia to racialize every contemporary issue, even when that devolves into throat-cutting, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot politics and policy. 

The column was entitled 'How To Close The Racial Wealth Gap', and discussed various proposals to narrow the perceived inequality of wealth between Black and White.The article cited the fact that median wealth of a White family is $176,000 and went on from there. It is impossible to imagine an article or approach that missed the point more completely.

The major issue confronting our nation is the wealth gap, all right, but it is the gap between the ultra-wealthy - the 1% - and everyone else. It is not one that is defined by race. If wealth were distributed in any kind of proportional manner among the population, Leonhardt's approach might have some validity. But the distribution is in fact ludicrously skewed, which is why Leonhardt's racialism becomes irrelevant and even toxic. Let me illustrate.

Below is a simple 10x10 grid.

You will note that I have filled in the box on the extreme right. That represents the 1% who (per Thomas Piketty) now receive more than 20% of the GNP and almost certainly control an even higher percentage of the nation's accrued wealth. There is no question that they are predominantly Caucasian and Asian (er - the success of Asian ethnicity rather cuts across the racialization theme, but never mind), though there is a smattering of African-Americans. Ideally, the graph would show more continuum, becoming less and less dark as it spread out from the topmost right corner. But you get the idea.

The point is that the wealth differential that causes the racial gap isn't distributed ratably. It is concentrated in an extremely small fraction of the United States population, a fact Leonhardt either overlooked or chose to ignore.  The fact that the privileged 1% is not racially equal doesn't do anything for the millions of Caucasian families that stand outside the charmed area. They worry about how they're going to afford homes, educate their children, and resent bitterly the privileges that elite education and affluence provides the privileged. (Do Leonhardt and the other Democrats who meme this theme delude themselves that there's some sort of racial loyalty here? That struggling middle-class families console themselves with the thought that at least there are a disproportionate number of Caucasian families at the top? Are you kidding me? A disdain for elites of all kinds, and particularly the wealthy, has been a feature of American society from pre-Revolutionary days on.)

I can illustrate the point another way, with a thought experiment. You could close that median gap pretty quickly by elevating a small percentage of lucky African-American families into the charmed circle - those who win the lottery genetically, either with intelligence, athletic ability, charm and entertaining skills, or maybe the actual lottery. When we do that, we of course change the median as a matter of statistical fact. Hooray! Racial wealth has now been equalized! The 1% now contains the right number of African-American multi-billionaires.

Does Leonhardt think for a second this phantom equality matters to that huge majority of Black families left out? Not a jot. They have no more racial loyalty than the Caucasian families described above. What matters to them are the futures of their own children, their ability to maintain their own standard of living. African-Americans winning the billionaire war could matter less to them. It's still less than 1% of their number. It don't signify.

Leonhardt's column reaches the absolute nadir when he discusses a proposal of Cory Booker's for the issuance of baby bonds. I quote:

One political advantage of all of these ideas is that they are race-neutral: They disproportionately help African-Americans because the policies are economically targeted. 

Great, just great. Leonhardt is describing a program of general application that would have the effect of bolstering and maybe enhancing the endangered American middle class. Everyone who has given thought to the matter, from the Koch Brothers to Elizabeth Warren, would applaud that goal, even if they might have reservations about funding, administration, etc. But Leonardt can't champion a program of general application on its own terms. Instead, he has to find a racial or victimization hook to hang it on. Only then, as an afterthought, can he mention what should be the main point - that it helps society as a whole. You can only laugh or cry - I think of the New York Times joke headline:

World To End Tomorrow; Women, Minorities Particularly Affected.

But when you reflect on the implications to the big tent philosophy on which the Democratic Party used to pride itself, it isn't all that funny.

I'll drop the other shoe. If curing the racial wealth gap meant creating more ultra-rich and upper class African-Americans at the cost of reducing further the share of wealth of huge majority of Americans of all races, we would be going backward, not forward, in terms of the economic equality that actually matters. I do believe that Leonhardt and his ilk would probably agree with that proposition when put so starkly.  

But even so, he could not discuss the issue without finding a victimization hook. Heaven forfend we should actually discuss social action that benefits the larger fraction of society without regard to race, gender, or social status. (Why, some of them might even be Trump voters!) Even articulating an issue in big tent terms is secondary if it is possible at all. This one column could stand as a metaphor for the dilemma of the Democratic Party.

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Solutions - Mass Murder

A friend of mine asked me about solutions to the plague of mass random shootings.

You can begin by defining the problem correctly. The vast majority of guns and gun owners pose no risk of mass violence. The problem arises when (a) a small fraction of weapons capable of mass killing come into the possession of (b) an even smaller fraction of social misfits/terrorists who intend to use them for an act of mass murder. Defined that way, you don't need a massive regulatory overhaul or the repeal of the Second Amendment or anything that drastic. What you need is to create some methods to prevent (a) the use of those weapons, and/or secondarily, (b) the ownership of them by sociopaths. That should be doable without turning the word upside down. I'd like to ban them altogether, but I don't think that's doable given the present cultural war.

So we have to bell the cat. But how do we do that?

(1) The first idea is not to ban assault weapons as such, but - relying on the 'well-regulated' language in the Second Amendment  - to license them, and to require an extended course of education, comparable to driver's ed,  before the license is issued. I'd contract out that education to private parties, including the NRA,  with defined statutory minimum criteria  and number of class session, and subject to local police supervision. Inclusion of the NRA meets a number of its policies, which emphasize education, training, and socialization.

This may seem plain vanilla, but it isn't. Most of these shooters are profoundly anti-social. The requirement of education, attendance in a class, exposure to other classmates, and an instructor are real inhibiting factors. So is passing a written test. Moreover, it gives conscientious instructors an opportunity to observe behaviors and attitudes. Someone who exhibits a lot of questionable behavior might not get his license. He'll have to content himself with a handgun. How sad. My heart bleeds.

So far, so non-controversial. The next isn't.

(2) I'm going to use social media to create watchlists. We use them for air flight, and there is not the slightest reason not to use them in this context. You own an assault weapon, you're on one. You publicize manifestoes with Nazi or jihadist language, etc., you're on another one, a bit more exclusive. And if in addition you fall into certain profiles - young, male, suburban, unemployed, etc. - you fall into a third. You might just get a police call, what's known in the profession as a 'knock-and-talk', to be sure everything is on the up-and-up. That's actually the essence of good community policing.

So why isn't this the most unAmerican thing you ever heard of? Because - like no-fly lists - this isn't going to be secret at all. If you end up on a watchlist, you'll have a due-process right to challenge the inclusion and have your name excluded. Of course you can always divest yourself of the weapon and be de-listed at once.

(3) Finally, if you accumulate more than a certain number of these weapons, i.e., assemble an arsenal, the assemblage will be subject to periodic inspection.. These are potentially public nuisances, and they should be subject to periodic inspection (something like a building inspection) to be sure they are being stored and maintained safely. This is the Sandy Hook provision - I'm damned if society is obligated to allow some idiot parent to purchase a gargantuan number of lethal weapons, store them on the same premises as her disturbed autistic son, and the rest of the world has to stand by and trust her judgment. No way. She can content herself with a Glock (poor dear) and pay for storage elsewhere, or not buy them at all.

Lest any of you think this is 1984 scary, this is EXACTLY the same kind of protocol we have been using for terrorists since 2001, with some controversy, but basically public acceptance. (Do any of you disapprove of no-fly lists? Possession of an AK-47 is far more sinister than boarding an aircraft.) The difference from Gestapo/KGB lies in (a) the due process and transparency, and (b) much more important, what triggers all this concern isn't your world view, no matter how scary racist or totalitarian it may be. What triggers all this machinery is possession of a weapon that is potentially useful for mass killing.

None of this is difficult. We could do it all tomorrow. Instead, we will get all kinds of partisan and cultural attacks. There are millions of good quiet Americans of all races and backgrounds who do not feel comfortable and safe without a handgun at home, safely stored and with no conceivable potential for mass violence. Threaten even indirectly their right to that possession, and they will stand up for assault weapon possession, despite all their misgivings, for 'slippery-slope' reasons. They're more scared of cultural bigots than sociopathic assailants, which is sad, and wrong (in my opinion), but understandable. In proposing solutions, you take people as they are, not as you want them to be, and with tolerance for all types. So one step at a time. In proposing solutions, we want to eliminate that slippery-slope concern in the interest of consensus.

But we won't. Instead, the El Paso and Dayton incidents will become simply more sad and stupid chapters in the long running cultural war in this nation, ammunition for a different type of bigot than racial, the cultural kind. It has long been my cynical opinion that gun opponents (like climate control catastrophists) aren't really interested in solutions. They're interested in denunciations. The fun of moralizing, the illusion of moral superiority, is far more important to them than actually addressing the problem.