Dasgupta - The demise of the nation state

Rana Dasgupta's recent article in The Guardian (Dasgupta, 2018) predicts the continued decline of the nation state and proposes new ways of relating globally are underway. While the decline of the nation state may frighten those from historically strong western nations, the reality of the world in which we live is that a new international order will emerge that includes:

• Global financial regulation - building systems to track transitional money flows, to transfer a portion of them into public channels, and seriously address global redistribution.
• Global flexible democracy - national governments themselves will be subjected to a superior tier of authority.
• New conceptions of citizenship - deregulating human movement will match the deregulation of capital: it is unjust to preserve the freedom to move capital out of a place and simultaneously forbid people from following.

Key quotes from Dasgupta's essay that substantiate the need for, and reality of, these changes:

• The most momentous development of our era, precisely, is the waning of the nation state: its inability to withstand countervailing 21st-century forces, and its calamitous loss of influence over human circumstances.
• ...the current appeal of machismo as political style, the wall-building and xenophobia, the mythology and race theory, the fantastical promises of national restoration - these are not cures, but symptoms of what is slowly revealing itself to all: nation states everywhere are in an advanced state of political and moral decay from which they cannot individually extricate themselves.
• Today's failure of national political authority, after all, derives in large part from the loss of control over money flows. At the most obvious level, money is being transferred out of national space altogether, into a booming 'offshore' zone.
• The destruction of state authority over capital has of course been the explicit objective of the financial revolution that defines our present era.

If Dasgupta is correct, the opportunities and mandate for leadership and citizenship will be inescapable. Those who will benefit most in the world-wide and connected community, and will create mutual benefit for all, will be those who understand leadership and citizenship in very different ways.

Wood - John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - Friends Divided

Citizens and politicians often debate American exceptionalism. Gordon S. Wood’s Friends Divided: John Adams & Thomas Jefferson (2017) explains that this debate goes all the way back to the founding “fathers” and how they viewed the basic qualities of humanity and how that would influence the structures and processes of governance.

As very influential figures in the days leading up to the American Revolution, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson came from very different backgrounds which led to divergent ideas about how to structure the new government of the American colonies. Adams arose from humble beginnings, strove for credibility, and was suspicious of those with privilege, believing that the power of money would corrupt. Jefferson was an aristocrat steeped in privilege, holding vast property and utilizing slave labor to work the land, and confident that the “Age of Enlightenment” would create a free and prosperous society. Even with their differences, the two men found ways to complement each other’s ideas as they drafted the ideals and structure of the young nation.

Once they moved into the Presidency, first Adams as a Federalist and then Jefferson as a Republican, their views changed and they drifted apart, often expressing deep disagreement with each other. The Federalist view was to create a strong executive branch and complementary legislative bodies committed to establishing services to benefit citizens. The Republican view was to minimize government’s role, leaving matters of citizen welfare to the individual or local government. Both opposed Hamilton who had created the financial infrastructure that formed the basis for the political power of the federal government and the fiscal-military state.

Both men had European appointments after the Revolution which biased Adams toward British culture and governance and Jefferson toward France, with a particular affinity toward its revolutionary inclinations. Adams preferred the British separation of powers to protect against abuses of privilege while Jefferson preferred open election to any and all roles (assuming that the candidate was a property owning male). This resulted in Adams being criticized as a “monarchist” while Jefferson was praised for his advocacy of education as a way to prepare citizens for their democratic responsibilities.

“Jefferson told the American people what they wanted to hear – how exceptional they were. Adams told them what they needed to know – truths about themselves that were difficult to bear.” (p. 7) Wood attributed this essential difference as the reason Jefferson was more highly regarded in his day and why his name is more revered today. Yet, the fact is that Jefferson held an inherently elitist idea of himself and America while Adams lauded direct labor and the emerging middle class it birthed.

It took many years after their terms for the two to reunite. The renewed bond of their last years was sealed when both died on July 4, 1826, the day commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the founding of country they shaped. Before they came to their deaths, both Adams and Jefferson came to a similar conclusion about the difficulty of democracy - that democracy required a great deal of its citizens, specifically that “each citizen must somehow be persuaded to sacrifice his personal desires for the sake of the public good.” (p. 115) In the end, owing to an overly optimistic view of humanity’s potential, Jefferson was apparently unprepared for the shortcomings of the country he had helped create. Adams remained resilient and hopeful that the systems he created would prevail, even in the face of inequities he believed were natural and persistent in human capacity.

As others have written (most recently Coates in We were Eight Years in Power, 2017), there is copious evidence that the United States has portrayed itself as exceptional but has failed in ways that disprove its claims. Reflecting on Wood’s skillfully crafted compilation of John Adams’ and Thomas Jefferson’s contributions to the founding of the United States, the question of the modern era is if Jefferson’s exceptionalism or Adams’ more cynical view is more defensible. Which is most likely to secure for its citizens a guarantee of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (as drafted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence)? Jefferson would have relied on the enlightened goodness of humanity while Adams would have advocated separation of powers and checks and balances to protect against the abuses of power and privilege.

National Geographic - Special Issue, April 2018

My typical posts on this blog are about books I've read, travel, and encounters that stimulate questions or insights about leadership. I don't often review magazines but was compelled to note the April 2018 Special Issue of National Geographic magazine, Black and White, because it is truly boundary breaking.

The introductory message, "To rise above the racism of the past, we must acknowledge it," by Susan Goldberg places this issue of National Geographic in context. After recounting 130 years of evidence that National Geographic has often exoticized or marginalized difference, Goldberg writes, "So let's talk about what's working when it comes to race, and what isn't. Let's examine why we continue to segregate along racial lines and how we can build inclusive communities. Let's confront today's shameful use of racism as a political strategy and prove we are better than this."

From the first page to the last, the story of race as a social construct designed to categorize and discriminate unfolds with data, pictures, and examples that inform in ways National Geographic has perfected throughout its history. I read every word and hope that other readers will as well. With a readership of 5,200,55 in the U.S.A. and 6,685,684 worldwide, National Geographic could make a real difference in shaping the views of race from previous notions that stereotyped and demeaned to one that affirms the diversity within U.S.A. borders and around the world. There is hope since it's "Advertising Opportunities" page indicates that "more opinion leadership read National Geographic than any other magazine."

Coates - We Were Eight Years in Power

I was initially attracted to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ writing when I read Between the World and Me (2015). His We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) is a collection of Coates’ Atlantic articles, contextualized within Coates’ reflections of his own experience surrounding each piece. It draws the sad parallels between the post-Civil War Reconstruction era (which was 8 years) and the election of the first African American President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama (who held two 4-year terms = 8 years).

As a privileged white American, it is hard to summarize the depth of despair conveyed in Coates’ Atlantic pieces and narrative that connects them all. I felt disappointment, disillusionment, and the loss of confidence that racial strife in America can change. Yet my life is not impacted in the same way as persons of culture living in the U.S.A. Still, and it may be my privileged perspective that allows me to see hope, Coate’s writing lifts up the resilience, perseverance, and continued resistance that are required to achieve the essential systemic changes necessary to bring about equity and justice in the U.S.A. and elsewhere.

We Were Eight Years in Power is organized in eight chapters and an epilogue. Some of the most stunning realizations from these chapters include:

• What white supremacists fear most is black respectability and good governance – because it proves the narratives of dysfunction to be false.
•  Lauding black Americans as descended from kings of Africa may be uplifting but is generally untrue – most black Americans came to America in slavery and it is their resilience under these circumstances that is most laudable.
• The founding of America used language of “liberty and justice for all” but did not intend this for any more than a privileged few – the journey of black Americans to respectability and forcing the U.S.A. to live its ideology could save us from continued hypocrisy.
• The economic system of the early immigrants to America relied on plunder – the land was exploited and people enslaved and abused while trade was pursued to benefit a select aristocracy.
• Barack Obama was a black American and much more – while clearly seen as exceptional, Barack and Michelle demonstrated that all racial and cultural group members can be so much more than the stereotypes that entrap them.
• The “twice as good” commitment of black Americans who satisfy the expectations of whites is part of the problem – while black families may encourage their children to be twice as good to succeed, it also requires that they harbor no anger toward those who oppress them.
• The sins of slavery did not stop with slavery – the systems and conditions that black Americans face are irreconcilable without the willingness for the U.S.A. to have the difficult conversation about reparations.
• Jim Crow laws and later illegal actions taken by the government and its business entities perpetuated disadvantage – not only must the achievement gap be closed but also the injury gap (i.e. - segregation, red-lining, predatory lending).
• "The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay" – not having the conversation threatens America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world. (p. 201)
• The incarceration of black men is an extension of previous wrongs – the number is out of proportion and far more severe; it can only be interpreted as intended to continue to oppress black men and families.

In the concluding chapter, “My President was Black,” Coates wrote, "Obama’s greatest misstep was born directly out of his greatest insight. Only Obama, a black man who emerged from the best of white America, and thus could sincerely trust white America, could be so certain that he could achieve broad national appeal. And yet only a black man with the same biography could underestimate his opposition’s resolve to destroy him.” (p. 324)

The resentment of many white Americans over a President who happened to be black, coupled with the trust of that very President in the goodness of American citizens, led to a “white tribe united in demonstration to say, ‘If a black man can be president, then any white man – no matter how fallen – can be president.’” Then they elected him...