2016 and the Death of Ethics

2016 closes out apparently as the year of death.  For many it will be remembered as the year that saw Prince, Princess Leia, and many other royalty of Hollywood and music die.  It was the year that aging icons of the Baby Boom generation died and when all the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll did in many of the Baby Boomers themselves.  But another death occurred this year–the death of ethics.
For many 2016 was the year of the death of democracy in the USA and across the world.  Yes and no is the answer.  For good or bad Brexit and Trump point to the strength of populist of democracy and a sign that main stream politics cannot ignore certain voices.  For many, Brexit and Trump are only the tip of an iceberg at something more fundamentally wrong across the world
If one can define ethics to include terms such as justice, fairness, compassion, toleration, dignity, and fair play, ethics to a large extent took a major hit in 2016.   It is easy to point globally and in the United States to how Trump unleashed an ugly side of American politics.  He may not have caused it but he certainly helped enable, resurrect, and personify the ugly side of America that has been here since the days when we burned women as witches in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-93.  It is that sense of fear and prejudice, ignorance, misogyny, that has always been part of the ugly underside of America that became perhaps mainstream and acceptable again.  It reared itself in the sexism confronting Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and of course in Trump’s where his comments about women, immigrants, Muslims, and just about everyone else not WASP failed to doom his campaign but instead seemed to strengthen himself at every juncture.  It’s not clear what is worse–what Trump dared to say and got away with it–or the fact for so many they said he had the courage to say what they had been thinking for so long.  Trumpism simply captured the underbelly prejudice and a lack of toleration and respect that still existed in our society.
But Trumpism is merely the name for a similar way sweeping the world that features Brexit in the UK, LePen in France, and Orban in Hungary, just to name a few countries.  It is about a intolerance for difference, for immigrants, and for outsiders of any shape.  But these political movements are also again about the lack of human compassion for the plight of Syrian refugees and others who seek a better life elsewhere.  But all of these movements are also about other forms of indifference.  In the USA and across much of the world people starve, the gap between the rich and poor grows, and many are marginalized.
In the US we have an opioid addiction problem which is merely a symptom for deeper issues of poverty, yet there seems to be little interest or will in addressing these issues by either party.  As some of my Democrat friends say, why should I care about these people, they voted Republican, whereas as some of my Republicans friends say, why should I care about gays, lesbians, the poor, and people of color, they vote Democrat. We cannot agree whether Black Lives Matter, Police Lives Matter, or All Lives Matter.  I saw too many people I know take leave of their political and ethical senses, intolerant of political disagreement and basic facts, guilty of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. I never knew human misery and compassion wore partisan clothes, but in a polarized world they seem to now.
The death of ethics is also about political ethics.  This was the year that the final vestiges of the post-Watergate reforms died.  Campaign finance reform and the efforts to limit the impact of money in politics are gone.  Obama helped kill it off in 2008 when he opted out of the presidential public financing system and this year neither Clinton nor Trump participated.  It was also about the power lack of candor if not sometimes lying by presidential candidates this year where it became clear we have entered a post-truth, post-fact, political world dominated by fake news and by a mainstream news so anxious to survive in a for-profit journalist world that it was willing to cover anything so long as it made a dollar.  Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal seem shrill in both their editorials and political coverage.
Yes there is a structural component to the collapse of political ethics in terms of how money biases the political system, but it is individualistic too.  Trump displays barely a modicum of respect for political ethics. His conflicts of interest test the limits of American politics.  For the Democrats, the collusion of Deborah Wasserman-Schultz, the DNC, the state parties, and the Clinton campaign raise questions about fairness.  Donna Brazile, working for CNN, leaked debate questions to Clinton, and displayed no remorse for her actions.  And in Minnesota, members of the Sports Facilities Authority and their partisan friends and guests were clueless regarding how the allocation of tickets  to the new Vikings stadium was wrong.  I
If fact, no one seems to want to say that the  bad behavior in 2016 was bad behavior.   For those who still believe in truth, goodness, and beauty, that facts matter, and that ethics are important, 2016 was an awful year.   Ethics seemed as if it were located long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
One can only hope we learn something from a horrible year and that 2017 is better.

Trump, Brexit, and the Failure of Mainstream Politics and Economics

The Brexit vote and the rise of Donald Trump have stunned the world.  Neither should.  They

are both the product of the failures of mainstream politics and economics, especially the overselling of both in terms of how they would benefit the world and more specifically, the middle and working class in the UK, the US, and perhaps around the world.
The roots of the Brexit and Trump begin in what some call the Neo-liberal restructuring of the world that begin in the late 70s and 80s with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan.  Faced with severe economic slowdowns in the UK and the US, the criticism was that the economically liberal policies of the welfare state had created high inflation and unemployment–stagflation.  The solution was to cut taxes, economic regulation, and weaken labor unions.  The theory–part of the supply side economics mantra–was that we needed to free up corporations to invest, to give them more flexibility to innovate, and to remove barriers to invest.
The Conservatives in the UK under Thatcher and then  Major and the US under Reagan and George H.W. Bush cut taxes, government regulations, waged war on the unions, and embraced international policies that took Neo-liberalism globally.  The result was GATT, NAFTA, the WTO, and other international free trade agreements that opened up the borders to capital and to some extent, labor mobility.  Yet Labor under Tony Blair and the Democrats under Bill Clinton similarly  embraced such policies, as did Cameron, George Bush, and even Obama.  All of them accepted as legitimate globalization as we know it, along with policies that embraced tax cuts and deregulation.
Even Obama–whom many Americans think as so liberal–really fell into this trap.  Upon taking office in 2009 he continued the economic policies of his predecessor that bailed out the banks but not the home owners after the 2008 economic crash, he endorsed TPP as a trade agreement, and otherwise  at best only made marginal changes in the Neo-liberal economic agenda.  Even the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank were no more than market-orientated approaches to addressing social-economic problems.  Yes, the Republicans in the US obstructed Obama, but he never did really oppose even in his first two years in office with large Democratic majorities the core trajectory of Neo-liberalism.
This Neo-liberalism was politically solid by politicians and the major parties in Europe and the US as economically a win-win for all.  It was described as producing the greatest economic good for all.  Mainstream economists–sitting from the luxury of their tenured chairs or luxurious offices a top Wall Street, described free trade, globalization, and economic restructuring as economically efficient–both in a Kaldor-Hicks way (the greatest good for the great number) and Pareto (producing the winners without any or significant losers).  The few jobs lost in manufacturing would more than be made of by the benefits of free trade.  Together, orthodox economics and the mainstream parties sold the world, or at least voters in the US and UK, a story of economic prosperity.
Yet it never happened.  Somewhere along the line the economic benefits did not trickle down.  Wages have stagnated over the last 40 years, the gap between the rich and poor exploded, and the loss of manufacturing and other jobs has totaled in the tens of millions. The working class has disproportionally taken the hit, with the costs of Neo-liberalism falling on them while few of the benefits reaching them.
Now combine that with another political failure–the Bush War on Terrorism, He and Blair  launched politically disruptive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have destabilized the Middle East, creating the forces that have nurtured ISIS and the crisis in Syria that has now thrown millions of refugees across Europe. In the US, NAFTA helped destabilize the Mexican economy, creating the impetus for immigrants there to flee to the US for jobs.
The result is economic insecurity for many white working class, major parties largely blind to their fate, and a ready scapegoat of immigrants to blame.  Enter Brexit and Trump.
The Brexit vote is a statement that the status quo is not working.  The vote in the UK to exit was mostly in working class England.  In the US, the core of the Trump support was originally among white working class without college educations.  The same who supported Brexit, those who have lost out in the last generation or two  who perceive it is the immigrants who are taking their jobs.    The British Independence Party, Donald Trump, and others such as LaPen in France are appealing to economic insecurities, fear of immigrants, nationalism, and simply racism and religion.  And their appeals are effective.  Brexit gives credence to claims that trump has tapped into a phenomena that might put him in the White House.  Hillary Clinton, while enjoying many political advantages, seems largely clueless to the Neo-liberal paradigm of which she is a part.
Yes, all of this is disgusting, but given the failures of mainstream politics and economics to address or recognize the world it has created, the reaction here should not be a surprise.