Robert Samuelson to Middle Class: I find your lack of faith disturbing

Robert Samuelson says the middle class is thinning out because it doesn't believe hard enough:

What the middle class faces today is a crisis of faith. Being middle class is more than attaining some threshold income. It also involves embracing a set of beliefs that, unfortunately, have been severely shaken. 

Middle-class Americans believe in opportunity, stability, reward for effort, a brighter future and the ability to control their lives, as sociologist Herbert Gans showed in his 1988 book “Middle American Individualism.”

Anybody who endured any bout of unemployment during the Great Recession would be bound to have their faith in such precepts shaken. There's nothing like wondering if you're going to be poor forever to make you question the American dream. And that's true even if you got back on track, somehow. I've got a good job these days, one of the best I've had, but I'm also deeply aware of how fragile it all is — how lucky I am to have found my way back.  The underlying faith I used to have that things would generally be on an upward trajectory? Gone. I miss it.

Samuelson adds:

The economy is more random, unstable and insecure than we imagined. It is less susceptible to policy engineering. The fact that the upper classes can better shield themselves against its upsets naturally breeds resentment.

That's not quite right. The resentment is bred more from the fact that the upper classes are shielded by government from the vagaries of the economy more than the lower classes are. Banks were too big to fail, our tax dollars bailed them out, and executives kept on collecting bonuses. Middle class home buyers found themselves stuck with underwater mortgages,meanwhile, and got lectures about responsibility. The people most directly responsible for screwing the economy suffered little, if any, long-term consequences. The rest of us are still living with consequences in many cases. Hard to have faith when lived experience contradicts it.

The disaster that is the F-35

Yikes:

Total taxpayer losses in the failed Solyndra solar-energy program might come, at their most dire estimate, to some $800 million. Total cost overruns, losses through fraud, and other damage to the taxpayer from the F-35 project are perhaps 100 times that great, yet the “Solyndra scandal” is known to probably 100 times as many people as the travails of the F-35. Here’s another yardstick: the all-in costs of this airplane are now estimated to be as much as $1.5 trillion, or a low-end estimate of the entire Iraq War.

Netflix Queue: The Master

Lots of thoughts inspired by my viewing of The Master on Netflix, but the easiest to convey is this: Joaquin Phoenix's face in this movie is an amazing thing, a craggy and broken down work of art. So amazingly photographed by Paul Thomas Anderson and his crew.

After New York: A question about police, protests, and the limits of politics

Since it now seems to be a common theme on the right that critics of police practices enabled the (horrible, awful, only-to-be-condemned) murders of two New York cops, a question:

What is a permissible level of protest regarding police activities?

What is a permissible level of criticism?

Are any protests or criticisms permissible, or do they by definition contribute to a lawlessness that endangers police lives and thus our civic order?

The war in Afghanistan is over. Long live the war in Afghanistan.

Well, that was anti-climactic:

The United States and NATO formally ended their war in Afghanistan on Sunday with a ceremony at their military headquarters in Kabul as the insurgency they fought for 13 years remains as ferocious and deadly as at any time since the 2001 invasion that unseated the Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 attacks.

We've been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for 13 years. We're going to keep on fighting and dying in Afghanistan ... only not quite as quickly as we have been. That's not war anymore? George Orwell, call your office.

Big-government conservatism

Robert P. George, natural law theorist extraordinaire, is in my morning paper:

Considered as isolated acts, someone's recreational use of narcotics, for example, may affect the public weal negligibly, if at all. But an epidemic of drug abuse, though constituted by private acts of drug-taking, damages the common good in myriad ways. This does not by itself settle the question whether drug prohibition is a prudent or effective policy. It does, however, undermine the belief that the recreational use of drugs is a matter of purely private choice.

A lot of my conservative friends are fans of George, I think, and look to him when making arguments against gay marriage. (He's talking about pornography in the current column, though.)

What's striking, though, is how closely this argument for drug prohibition mirrors the argument for, say, banning old-style lightbulbs in favor of more energy-efficient modern models — a project that caused no shortage of chest-beating among many of the same conservatives who are allied with George on matters of morality. It's an odd concept of liberty and governent's proper role in our lives that anguishes over lost light-bulbs but feels free to deny the marriage contract to individuals. 

To my Republican friends, a note on race

Too often, I end up in conversations about race and politics that end up a free-for-all about which of the two major parties does more to appeal to modern racism. It's a circular argument, and I think it does more to block progress on the topic than it does to help.

So, here's my own small and meager attempt to break through.

I acknowledge that, for much of its history, the Democratic Party has been the party of white racism.

I believe that white racism is probably the single most destructive force in American history.

I acknowledge that it was Democrats who kept anti-lynching bills at bay for much of the 20th century.

I acknowledge that it was Democrats who kept civil rights bills at bay for much of the 20th century.

I acknowledge that LBJ said and did racist things, and sometimes voted for racist legislation.

I acknowledge the Dixiecrats were an offshoot of the Democrats.

I acknowledge that Robert Byrd was at one time a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

I acknowledge that on occasion, there are those in the Democratic Party who exploit racial solidarity in cynical ways, for personal or political gain. I acknowledge that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have sometimes earned the cynicism they're offered as a result.

In short, I acknowledge that the left side of the political spectrum has a problem, historically, with racism — and that this is true because America, historically, has a problem with racism.

And I acknowledge that I (and many on my side) are quick to see racism on your side and much more forgiving when we detect it among our putative allies.

To whatever extent I am party to these sins: I repent.

I cannot control or even influence how you discuss and approach race. But do not let my own approach harden your heart so that a productive conversation is impossible. I acknowledge my errors, and those I am heir to.

And I hope someday, the conversations we have on this topic can be productive, full of reflection, instead of never-ending attempts to assign blame to somebody else. Wisdom begins with humility — knowing how little we know, knowing that we, and those who came before us, have often fallen short.