Does Your Political Orientation Affect Your Risk Management Philosophy?

This whole worldwide Pandemic and Social Media thing has created a wonderful social science experiment.  Since I have no real need to publish research papers, I’ve kind of

watched it all unfold and have listened as my lovely wife has interjected her opinions.  I think of myself as a kind of a center of the road person.  I certainly tend toward conservative in my beliefs, but see the value of social programs.  The older I’ve become the more I distrust the government to be magnanimous and see politicians as more self-serving than selfless servants.  I would love for a progressive to explain to me how they would implement universal health care so we as a nation can afford it without going deeper in debt, but that seems to be a lost cause.  All anyone wants to do is create a bigger and more expensive government, and therein lies my frustration.  But let’s put all that aside and get back to this grand social experiment playing out before our eyes.

Beginning at the end of last year or the first of this year the Chinese coronavirus, now known as COVID-19 began its spread from Wuhan to take over the world. It hit first in China (obviously) and then spread to Europe, the USA, South America, and beyond.  As of today, 20 July 2020, there are 14,766,464 cases and 611,750 dead from this virus.  I suppose we could get into the who’s and how’s of the virus, but that seems kind of pointless.  What I would like to talk about is how various people, and to some extent, various governments have managed the risk of contamination and treatment, and how various messaging is played out on social media.

As we saw the spread and the lethality of this virus rapidly strike Italy and then Spain, and its first indications here in the U.S. there was a sense of panic and a variety of actions taken by the governments.  Of course, here in the U.S., the Congress was more interested in Impeachment than any little old Pandemic, but as soon as that was behind them, they found time to make the whole issue of management a big political furball.  Trump could do no right, and the Democratic party could do no wrong.  The media played this over and over again on the nightly news, even when the statistics seemed to fail their claims.  

What that political battle did accomplish was to leave each of us individuals trying to sort out who to believe, what the actual risk to us and our loved ones was, and what should each of us do to protect ourselves and our families.  We had medical experts, research experts, statisticians, and politicians all offering us opinions on what was or wasn’t right at any instant in time. 

For example, the World Health Organization went from human to human transmission is unlikely, to yes it was.  All the talking heads told us masks don’t work, then to yes, they do.  Social distancing was our best defense, to masks and social distancing was important.  Groups of 10 could meet, but 11 was too many.  Restaurants must close, but take out was okay.  Churches must close but protests were okay.  The list goes on and on.

So, as I watch the meme wars and all the social media posts we are now at a point where we are “discussing” the return to school options.  Of course, there are almost as many opinions on what we should or should not do as people are willing to offer those opinions.

As this all plays out what I find most interesting is how our fear seems to be manifest by our political orientations.  The DNC has, as their principal argument against Trump and the GOP argued that this virus is so deadly, we must remain locked down until it a) disappears, or b) we have a vaccine capable of preventing it.  Both options conveniently come after the election of November 2020.  The President and the GOP are arguing the economy can’t survive until then and we must reopen and resume a somewhat normal life.  Both positions come from science, unfortunately, it is not medical science but political science.

We see experts claim Democratic states (which are responsible for about 70% of all deaths) are doing a bang-up job.  Those who follow that position are in absolute fear of resuming their lives.  We see irrational arguments of how risk is multiplied beyond what is reasonable based not on science but on impression.

How do we ever develop a reasonable approach when your political orientation defines your ability to understand risk?

The Foundations of Society

Philosophers have written on society since the beginnings of philosophical thought.  I am not in any of their leagues. My philosophy class in college made my head hurt and the instructor learned pretty quickly not to expect great insight into Plato, Socrates, or even Thomas Paine coming from me. Since those years of study, I’ve grown some but my opinions are based more on practical observation than on a deep understanding of the theoretical.

This paper will address my feelings of our society and the underpinnings of that society. To a large extent, the form of government is far less important to that discussion than the pillars upon which that government rests. There are all kinds of governments available to mankind, and history teaches us about them. We learn of their successes and the failures that ultimately brought them and the society they led to oblivion.

We’ve grown from small family groups into tribes and then larger collections.  We’ve established nations based on the belief the ruler was actually a god, and we’ve established nations based on the belief the ruler was appointed by God. We’ve developed systems of government where a religious scholar tells us what God wants us to do, and we’ve created societies where the rejection of God is central and a collective of powerful will rule.

As I’ve traveled, I come away with the belief all successful societies are kind of like a simple stool. The number of legs holding up the stool will decide how stable the stool is. It is, in my opinion, the same with society. It is a simple analogy but for my simple mind a good one. A one-legged stool cannot stand by itself, if balance is just right it may remain upright for a brief time, but it will ultimately tumble over. The two-legged stool is similarly handicapped. For a stool to be balanced and stable there must be at least three legs. The social structure of society makes up those three legs upon which a government sits. If those legs become unequal then society and the government both become unbalanced. It that problem continues the society and government ultimately topple and the people must find a new relationship that will bring those pillars into balance.

I believe the first leg of society traces itself back to the origins of mankind. It is what has allowed us to become the Alpha predator on the planet. The family is all-important. It is the structure that creates the next generation, it is the structure that nourishes the young, protects them from harm, teaches them their role in the family, and in turn their role in a larger society. Without family to care for, and teach the young human is left to its own devices to find its way in the world.  It will develop its own moral code, center its needs on the individual rather than the greater needs of the family, and become an unpredictable element. I might well be wrong but what I see in our society with the advent of the nuclear family (in the post-World War years) is a series of destructive impacts, each one seemingly minor, but taken in their totality hugely detrimental to the family unit as a stabilizing pillar of the larger society. There are almost as many causes for this phenomenon and everyone will have their own opinion as to the legitimacy of those causes. I’ll leave it to you to determine if you a) agree the family unit is dissolving and b) what are the causes.  My intent here is not to debate the reasons for the changes in the historical family structure only to point out it has happened and the evolution of that construct has serious implications for the stability of society and the government that sits on top of that society.

The next pillar is one of faith. There must be a shared sense of faith for society to flourish and remain stable. We in the US have had a shared sense of faith in the rightness of the Judeo-Christian God, but that is not really the faith I am talking about here. The Egyptian society lasted for over 10,000 years and they did not believe in Yahweh or the Trinity. The families of society must place their faith is a shared and common system of beliefs that may include but is not limited to a common faith in a higher being. It must include a faith that those who govern do so for the good of society. We see that in the foundational belief we are “all equal under the law.”  It also must include a faith that tomorrow offers a promise of being better than today. When that belief is destroyed the supporting leg of faith begins to crack and the stability of that society is put at risk.

The final “essential” leg is that of purpose. Without a shared sense of purpose, society is left adrift. That sense of purpose focuses the efforts of the people, hopefully towards a common good. Without purpose the other two legs are meaningless. Perhaps the visionaries of our founding generation realized this better than others as they defined our purpose to establish a government unlike any which had gone before, and then created our “manifest destiny” which drove our westward expansion.  John F. Kennedy understood this when he challenged us to reach the moon before the end of the decade and in so doing beat the Soviet Union.

Well, for what it’s worth those are my opinions. I think it will be interesting to see if our grand experiment lasts as we adjust the legs of the society that underpins it.

Living in a Time of Change.

It feels like we are at a pivotal time in our history.  Perhaps, that is always true, but we are not prepared to understand that, nor wise enough to appreciate the implications.  For example, we all recognize that 1776 was a pivotal time for our founders, but exactly how many of their contemporaries understood it?

When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence surely, he knew he was setting us on a path fraught with risk and danger.  When John Adams and Ben Franklin offered their critique, they too must have realized it put their futures at risk.  Finally, the other 53 representatives of Congress must have understood it as well as we set out on an uncharted and uncertain future.  In those weeks leading up that first July 4th, those men established an ideal we still strive to achieve.  “… that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”[1]

After we achieved independence for the 13 colonies; and people returned to the lives they had, when did the politicians decide a confederation of states was unworkable?  Think about those men who gathered, many of them the same who put their lives, and the lives of so many, at risk 13 years earlier coming back together to shape a government unlike any which had gone before.  In the end, the document they created was a brilliant compromise between those who thought a strong central government was necessary, and those who feared too strong a central government would destroy their culture.  “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”[2]

The early 19th Century must have seemed a pivotal time when we, as a young nation, had to stand up and defend ourselves from the British who thought it was okay to impress our seaman to fill their needs in the Navy.  It went so far as to have to deal with their invasion as they attempted to prove we weren’t really a nation and they could do as they wanted.  They burned our new Capital, but at the end of the day, we prevailed and remained the United States.  “And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more?  Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.  No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”[3]

How about in the middle of that century when we fought a great civil war to preserve the nation, and in the course of it end the evil of slavery.  The South, led by those who wished to preserve the rights of the state, keep their social construct and continue the belief that one person was less equal than another attempted to abandon the Constitution and server themselves from the central government.  The newly elected President was confronted with a pivotal choice.  Do those who want to leave have the right to do so?  Of course, it is never as black and white as that simple question suggests.  The emerging industrialists of the North needed a market for their goods, and the raw materials the South provided.  Those who strove to end the evil of slavery sought to prevent its continuation.  Those who saw the nation’s future in the West wondered how that vast land and the fortunes it contained would be divided.  We hear little of those issues, for in the end, the North went to war to prevent the South from leaving.  The union was maintained but at such a cost we suffered for the rest of the century.  Lincoln sought to heal those wounds but was taken before he could finish his work.  “… But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”[4]

Examples of pivotal moments seem to pop up every few years, unfortunately, they are often associated with some kind of war or economic collapse (e.g. Panic of 1907, World War I, Pandemic of 1918, Depression of 1920-21, Great Depression 1932-40, World War II, etc.)  It seems each of these events foretells the expanding role of government to save us from the problems that led to those monumental and pivotal events.  We have been reassured by our politicians that it is never as bad as we imagine and historically the press has helped carry those messages.

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself”[5]

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”[6]

“Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.”[7]

In the past, we would come together as a nation to face the challenges of the day.  Remember 9/11 where we stood as one to face the terror brought to us by the Arabian terrorist Osama bin Laden? But lately, we’ve seen a shift in that relationship as the press and those whose hatred of the President is so deep, they will use any opportunity to condemn his actions and the actions of those who might support him. We are faced with a new pandemic, and half the nation is afraid for themselves and those they love, and half the nation wishes to carry on with their lives despite the risk.  They look to the nation’s political leaders for answers and guidance and receive what can best be described as worthless opinions on what is right and what is wrong.

How much longer can this polarization go on and is there a way we can find an end to it?  Some say everything would be fine if we just get rid of President Trump, but if you look at who they offer as a replacement you can only wonder if that is true.  Is it possible our government has grown too big and too removed from the needs of the people that it is a time for a change? Or is it our people have become so dependent on the government it needs to replace all the historical social structures we’ve depended on like the family, local community, and faith organizations like the church?

What the founders knew, perhaps well better than we understand today is the Constitution was to be a living document.  Not in the sense, modern revisionists would have you believe, where the words are to be altered to fit one person’s interpretation, but one that during the growth of the nation be modified by the society of the day.  Even before its ratification the citizens and representatives of several states demanded safeguards to protect the individual from government abuse.  Those first ten amendments were adopted with the Constitution.  Between 1794 and 1992 we added an additional 17 so that today, there have been 27 Amendments to the document.  If you look at them in their scope, they fall into two broad categories.  Those that protect the rights of the individual and those that expand the power of the government.  The last amendment, the 27^th was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992.  Before that, the last amendment was approved in 1971, pretty much in response to the Vietnam War. 

Today, I don’t hear any serious movement to amend the Constitution, for there are far louder voices calling for its abandonment.  Unfortunately, what I don’t hear in those calls is a coherent discussion of what would replace it.  Right now the young are happy to destroy what they have not built, it will be interesting to see if they are willing to grow to appreciate what they are losing? It feels kind of like we’ve decided we don’t need to talk among ourselves anymore.  We just yell at each other, like we are trying to talk to someone who doesn’t understand our native language.  If we talk louder it is clearer, right?

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[1] Declaration of Independence

[2] Preamble of the United States Constitution

[3] National Anthem (3^rd Verse)

[4] Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

[5] Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

^[6] John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

[7] Ronald Reagan, Moscow State University, May 31, 1988