The Clintons: A Fact and a Thought Experiment

On January 26, 1998, President Clinton went on national television to speak to the American people and to try and save his Presidency. Among the things that he said was the memorable, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." That is the fact.

For the thought experiment you must think about the meeting that undoubtedly took place prior to the decision to go on national television and lie to the American people. The meeting would have included two or three of the President's most trusted advisers, and would have included Hillary Clinton. The arguments for the lie would include a discussion of the meaning of  "sexual relations" and whether what took place with Miss Lewinsky would qualify. The advisors obviously concluded that they could do a semantic dance around the President's relationship with Monica, and he would not really be telling a lie.  And someone must surely have said; "What happens if Monica pushes back and tries to embellish upon her sexual relationship with the President" (remember the blue dress). One of the advisers probably said: "We have that covered. We have met with Miss Lewinsky and told her that we have spoken with all her closest male and female friends and have dug up lots of dirt, and that if she speaks up, we will destroy her. In other words, she has been told what would happen to her if she says anything that contradicts what the President will say."

What I'm sure of is that such a meeting took place before President Clinton went on television to tell his lie. I am also sure that Hillary Clinton was among those close advisors. I am also sure that they discussed the possibility of "push back," by whom and how it would be handled. What was actually said is part of the thought experiment.  This was a high stakes game and I can only imagine the options that were considered.        

On Identities and Social Construction

All the people in my neighborhood who were called "shorty" were short. And all the people with dark skin were called "moolies," for mouliyan (eggplant in Italian--get it?). We may not have been school-smart but we knew that there were things called "facts"---not having a job was a fact; the police were a fact; my absent father was a fact. There was no social construction in this stuff, and no matter what you may wish for, it didn't change the facts. No matter how hard me and my buddies tried to get Junior Emerson into the neighborhood park swimming pool by claiming that he was Puerto Rican, it never worked. Junior was a light-skinned "moolie" but not light enough.

The social science mantra that race is a social construct is an idea that I learned as a graduate student and which I still believe. This means that people can "pass" if they are smart enough, thereby making race a product of social processes, hence a social construction. But there are limits to social construction. Kareem can't pass for short, except in a home for the blind.

But the idea of pure social construction was presented in social science before the research on DNA and the human genome. We can now trace our biological descent to any population in the world, which makes the idea of distinct races very questionable, but it doesn't mean that race is only a social construct. There can still be found distinctive "gene pools" that are "closed" with few links outside the pool, and there are gene pools with dominant and distinctive genetic material. So until we have further research it would probably be accurate to say that race is a "bio-social construct," which means that the defining power of one side of the construct will limit the power of the other side.

I don't think I would give a public talk today arguing that race is a bio-social construct; the public or the main street media are not ready for that level of complexity.

Trump

The audio-tape revealing Trump's comments about women and his predatory behavior are quite consistent with who I believe that he is.

First and foremost, he is what I have called a "hothouse kid," meaning that he was raised in an environment of controlled care and feeding. His growing up years were spent in Jamaica Estates (the closest thing to a gated community at the time). I was born and raised in Jamaica, but never went to Jamaica Estates because it was viewed as another world. He also went to a private school and a military academy during his pre-college years. In short, he never had the benefit of being a "city kid," which included contentious and combative male-male and male-female relationships.

His behavior as an adult has been noteworthy for trying to be the "tough guy" he was never able to be as a kid. I would guess that he was mostly fearful of other kids who were not in his social circle. So what you hear on those tapes is Trump trying to be one of the city boys, being tough and expressing his insecurity about women.

Should this disqualify him as a presidential candidate? That is for you to decide. 

Perot, Buchanan, Trump: Early Warning Shots

The mainstream media are having a great time with Donald Trump. He is the gift that keeps on giving. But while they "pile on" to reveal all his flaws, they have failed to place him in the proper political and economic context. The people who support Trump are angry and cynical, very much like those who supported other "outsider" presidential candidates in the past.

The first one that comes to mind is Ross Perot, who ran for president as an Independent against Bush and Clinton. He is remembered mainly for having pulled enough votes from Bush to give Clinton a victory. Perot received 18.9 percent of the popular vote, and no electoral votes. Among his most memorable lines as a candidate is the following: "This city is fueled with sound bites, shell games, handlers, media stuntmen who posture, create images, shoot off Roman candles, but don't accomplish anything. We need deeds, not words, in this city."

After the election, Perot continued his political activity by opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He is remembered for his predictions about NAFTA by telling the American people to listen for the "giant sucking sound" of American jobs heading south.

The second memorable presidential candidate was Pat Buchanan, the political commentator who ran for president in 2000 as the Reform Party candidate. Among his more colorful lines was to tell his listeners that "the people with the pitchforks will soon be coming to take what was rightfully theirs."

And now we have Trump, who from the very first moment he spoke told us of the "rigged system" that confronted the American people. The press would spin the meaning of the rigged system to be the political system, but that was not Trump's original meaning. He was talking about how he used his money to support all the political candidates he needed "to grease the skids" for all his real estate ventures.

Perot, Buchanan, and Trump are the continued expressions of the anger and cynicism of the American people, and should be understood as "early warning shots" against a rigged system where wealth and concentrated corporate dominance shape the political system that produces "free trade"
agreements and tax policies that benefit mainly the privileged class elites.

Immigrants and Ex-Cons

We have read of the impressive efforts of some communities to embrace and support immigrants from the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq. The collective effort by these communities should be emulated as they provide financial, emotional, and material support for immigrant families to become integrated into the communities in which they have located after coming to the United States.

We think it would be great if an effort of this sort were directed at helping some of the 600,000 inmates who each year are released and returned to the community. Unfortunately, more than one-half of those released will be re-incarcerated within three years of their release. After serving time in prison, ex-offenders face major challenges in finding jobs, housing, and general assistance to deal with reintegrating into the community.

The needs of ex-offenders are very much like those of new immigrants. What is needed is a program sponsored by State and Federal agencies to connect ex-offenders with community support groups and to provide the consistent message that there is a second chance for those who want to work at it. 

Election Prediction

All social scientists know that it is dangerous to predict, but the forthcoming presidential election is so overheated that we cannot resist. Thus, we predict that: 

Trump will win the popular vote, but Clinton will win the electoral vote. This will allow Trump to claim that "the game is rigged" and the battle between their followers will continue, as it is another gift to the media. On a more serious side, Clinton will seek to unify the country and will become more hawkish in foreign relations, as we "discover" that Crimea and the Ukraine are vital to our national interest, leading to a new Cold War with Russia.

Post-election comment.
We were correct in predicting a split decision, but we got it wrong as to who would win the popular vote and who the electoral college vote. The turnout for Trump in all the blue-collar union states was greater than expected. He obviously had an appeal to the tens of millions of blue collar workers and their families and friends who believe that their jobs are at risk, who have worked without a wage increase for many years, and who have lost their benefits (pensions and health insurance) as their employers have sought to reduce costs. We can now watch to see what President Trump will try to do for them.

Crime and Time

On September 2, 2016, the New York Times published an article by Josh Keller and Adam Pearce with the title: "This small Indiana County sends more people to prison than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., combined. Why?" The article began with a statistical documentation of the decline in prison admissions from 2006 to 2014 across many cities in the U.S. Yet despite this national decline the "small Indiana county" sent convicted offenders to prison at exceeded national trends. The preferred "explanation" for this odd statistic seemed to focus on the fact that the county was composed of citizens who were white, rural, and politically conservative. Since these maligned citizens were not involved in sentencing offenders, attention and criticism turned to the power of local prosecutors who were presumably elected by the citizens who were white, rural, and politically conservative.

Apparently preferring the "hick" explanation to this practice of sending convicted persons to prison, the article fails to examine the expansion of drug-related activity outside of the cities and into surrounding counties (that is, "rural areas"). Anyone who has studied the illegal drug business knows that you must treat it as a business, so the spread from cities to surrounding counties is evidence of the business practice of seeking new markets for the illegal drugs. Thus, when the "hicks" and their "out of control" prosecutors send drug offenders to prison, they are sending a message to the urban drug entrepreneurs that their business is not welcome in the county. It's like saying "no" to Wal-Mart because you prefer the local mom-and-pop stores.

We encourage you to read the article and see what you think may be responsible for this hard line version of "if you do the crime, you do the time."