IMPORTANT READS

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA-California teachers, you should be showing your students more movies. And not for babysitting purposes or to fill holes in your lesson plan. As our state considers new frameworks for the history and social science taught in each grade, now is the time to incorporate that signature California art – film -- into classes at every grade level. And the most important movies should be placed at the center of our efforts to teach history -- especially the history of California.

Have a problem with that? Well, I suppose I could quote a former mayor of Carmel and state parks commissioner and suggest that you “Go ahead, make my day.” Or I could utter a single word: “Rosebud.” 

You’d be surprised how many people have no idea where those references come from. As someone whose life revolves around dealing with young Californians -- as father, coach, occasional teacher, and journalistic colleague of millennials with fancy college degrees -- I’m struck by how little they know of films, and thus of California’s history, cultural and otherwise. The film critic and historian Neal Gabler has warned that movies that once united the generations now divide us, “leaving us with an endless stream of the very latest with no regard for what came before. Old movies are now like dinosaurs, and like dinosaurs, they are threatened with extinction.” 

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. (Cool Hand Luke.) And this is not a trivial matter; it is the loss of the essence of our state’s history. The California we know -- in reality and image -- was made and remade by the motion picture. Hollywood remains a signature industry (one supported by state taxpayers at that.) And our greatest films are California monuments. To be ignorant of them is akin to being Chinese without knowing of Confucius, or to being German without having read Goethe. 

So let the education begin now. “Rosebud” is the signature word of the 1941 film Citizen Kane, ranked No. 1 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest films of all time. 

Any Californian who does not know the film intimately simply does not know their state. Citizen Kane is a fictionalization of the life of a towering figure of American and California history: the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. His story remains relevant today, in a state of new media titans with outsized appetites. The Hearst Corporation now owns the San Francisco Chronicle, and his mansion, the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, is a public landmark that every California child should visit.

But when you look through the state standards for class content -- what all California children are supposed to learn -- you won’t find one word about Hearst or Citizen Kane. Indeed, in the 68 pages of standards for history and social science classes, there is exactly one sentence that mentions the entertainment industry. 

The good news is that there is now an opportunity to fix the problem. In the midst of creating new instructional frameworks, California now has a draft of the new history and social science framework -- long outlines of what California student should be taught in each grade and subject -- available for public comment through February 29. 

The bad news is that the draft on California history says nothing about film, movies, or Hollywood. (There are the briefest of mentions of film in the U.S. and world history drafts -- but only in reference to the Cold War-era black list, ’60s counterculture, and globalization). And the draft framework on California history focuses far too much on the era before statehood and the diverse racial and ethnic origins of the people who came to California in different eras -- to the detriment of focusing on what the children and grandchildren of those migrants did once they came here, and the culture that bound them together. 

To this inexcusable omission of film from California history, my reaction is the memorable line from Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (This line has been a staple of California political discourse, from Prop 13 through the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis, and might be heard during the tax fights on the ballot this November.) 

Any California content guidelines worth a damn, my dear (Gone With the Wind), must include films that shaped America’s very conception of itself, from Casablanca to The Searchers. (They also should require California history in high school, not just elementary school, so more mature themes can be taught.)

And no one should get a degree from a California high school without seeing the classics that are signatures of our state’s history. These should start with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo -- the essential film of Northern California -- and Chinatown -- which still explains, better than any other document, Southern California’s dark view of itself. Other California movies that should be in the canon, along with Shakespeare and great works of literature, include Sunset Boulevard, The Graduate, Some Like It Hot (shot at the Hotel del Coronado), The Grapes of Wrath, The Maltese Falcon, Annie Hall (to understand why New Yorkers are so dismissive of us), and Blade Runner. I’d also add, for cultural relevance, California movies like El Norte, Stand and Deliver, Pulp Fiction, and The Joy Luck Club. 

Incorporating film into class is not a new idea. My own quick search found electives in film -- taught in both art and history departments -- in dozens of California high schools. Websites for teachers are full of lesson plans built around movies from High Noon to 12 Years a Slave, with advice on how to present movies (with the class lights on, so no one goofs off or nods off.) Films illuminate historian Kevin Starr’s juxtaposition of “the California of fact and the California of imagination.” For example, you could teach California’s essential water history by comparing the fictions of Chinatown with the very different facts from any number of books. 

“Schoolchildren should be taught how to ‘read’ films just as they are taught to read literature,” writes Ronald Bergan, author of the compendium The Film Book, in arguing for teaching film so young people can decipher the visual propaganda that deluges us today. “They should learn how films systemize time and space and communicate ideas and emotions; how the patterns and structures of film genres allow us to engage specific historical and social rituals.” 

Of course, basing California history in films will require overcoming the prejudice that movies are entertainment, not educational tools. I’d point out that, if you look for places showing classic films, you’ll find yourself near our finest institutions of higher education. I was glad to see Laura, the 1944 film noir, and The Philadelphia Story, the 1940 romantic comedy, playing at the Stanford on University Avenue in Palo Alto last weekend. 

Let’s also keep in mind the words of Audrey Hepburn: “Everything I learned I learned from the movies.” And if you’ve never heard of her, get yourself to the next classic movie night at the Vine Cinema in Livermore. They’ll be showing Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It [UC Press, 2010]. This column was posted first at Zocalo Public Square.)  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW-With the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia last Saturday, two Californians were speculated to be on the short list of President Obama’s potential nominees: State Attorney General Kamala Harris and Jacqueline Nyguen, an Obama-appointed United States Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit. 

At a San Jose campaign event Tuesday, however, Ms. Harris told reporters that she had no intention of putting in her name up for consideration and will remain focused on her responsibilities as Attorney General, as well as her Senate campaign to succeed Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Ngyuen was appointed by Gov. Gray Davis to the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, where she stayed until her May 2012 confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit. Prior to serving on the Superior Court, she was Assistant District Attorney in the Central District of California. Ms. Ngyuen is a graduate of Occidental College and UCLA School of Law.

The sudden SCOTUS vacancy has added another battle to what is already a contentious election year. President Obama’s plan to nominate a successor “in due time” has met resistance from Republicans who are counting on winning the White House and keeping control of the House and Senate.

“The American people should have a vote in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” commented Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

The GOP presidential candidates back up McConnell’s estimation. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Marco Rubio said, “There comes a point in the last year of the president, especially in their second term, where you stop nominating” both the Supreme Court justices and Court of Appeals judges.

Rubio overstated on both counts. A SCOTUS vacancy during the last year of a presidency is rare. In fact, since 1900, it’s only happened once to a lame duck president and twice to presidents who lost re-election bids and on all three occasions, the president made nominations. Presidents Wilson, FDR, and Eisenhower all made Supreme Court nominations at the end of their terms, just prior to re-election. Late-term lower court appointments are pretty common, though. George W. Bush forwarded nominees to the Court of Appeals during his last months in office.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid isn’t too pleased with the Republicans’ vow to raise the gloves. “The President can and should send the Senate a nominee right away. With so many important issues pending before the Supreme Court, the Senate has a responsibility to fill vacancies as soon as possible. It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat. Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”

Should the Republicans stall the appointment, the Supreme Court will be effectively impotent. Cases will end up “undecided” with a 4 to 4 vote, or they will be delayed until there is an appointment, or, they will result in liberal rulings. The past several decades have seen a rise in decidedly conservative rulings on issues like voting rights (Shelby County v. Holder), campaign finance reform (Citizens United v. FEC; McCutcheon v. FEC), and environmental regulation (Michigan v. EPA.)

Should the White House go to the Democrats, the previously mentioned cases will probably be reversed and a host of controversial issues like the death penalty, abortion, the power of unions, affirmative action and issues of equality will go before the Court, ending in more liberal rulings.

The timing of the vacancy left by Scalia’s death raises the stakes for the 2016 presidential and senate elections. Will the country continue on the trajectory launched by the Tea Party Takeover of the House and Senate? Will SCOTUS continue issuing conservative-leaning rulings?

The Senate has a constitutional obligation not to create a roadblock for matters that are scheduled to be brought before the Supreme Court. By vowing to block any Obama nominee, the Republicans are playing dirty ball, a move that may backfire with the voters.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles-based writer and writes for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

POLITICS--Donald Trump is arguably the biggest feminist running for president. Yes, you heard me right, and I’ve never had a lobotomy or been run over by a Mack truck. In fact, I am an avid supporter of women’s rights. My work is primarily known within the field of cyber harassment, revenge porn and online sexism. 

ENCRYPTION DEBATE-Tuesday afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to its customer base, addressing the FBI’s request that Apple build a “backdoor” to the iPhone following the San Bernardino terrorist attack and Apple’s commitment to safeguard data through encryption. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY-Neither Trump nor Sanders started the nation’s current class war -- the biggest fight over class since the New Deal -- but both candidates, as different as they are, have benefited. Class is back. Arguably, for the first time since the New Deal, class is the dominant political issue. Virtually every candidate has tried appealing to class concerns, particularly those in the stressed middle and lower income groups. But the clear beneficiaries have been Trump on the right and Sanders on the left. 

PRESERVING LA--Who decides what LA’s 114 diverse neighborhoods should be like? Those who call the communities home? Or real estate developers? In Los Angeles, “density” deals among developers, elected leaders and planners are destroying the character of beloved and livable neighborhoods, and steamrolling communities. 

GUEST WORDS--In the wake of Antonin Scalia's timely death, officials announce he will lie in repose at the Supreme Court, Republicans scramble once again to obstruct the rule of law and conspiracy wingnuts declaim the need for another Warren Commission because obviously the "razor-thin savior of the traditional ways of America" was murdered by the "forces of Green gangsterism in the White House." 

EDITOR’S PICK--Across the world, more and more people are asking: Why is marijuana banned? Why are people still sent to prison for using or selling it?

PERSPECTIVE--The death of Justice Antonin Scalia ends, at least for now, the 40-year conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.  That majority began with justices chosen by President Nixon, and his picks ended a liberal majority that also went back four decades to President Roosevelt.  So Scalia’s death has a profound impact on the court, and on several cases that directly affect California.

EDITOR’S PICK-President Obama designated three new national monuments in the fragile California desert today, Sand to Snow National Monument, Mojave Trails National Monument, The move protects 30 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, desert grasslands, and a wide range of recreational and cultural activities in 1.8 million acres of Mojave and Sonoran Desert landscapes, between Los Angeles and the Nevada border. 

EDITOR’S PICKS--Martin Luther King Jr. and others march in Washington, DC in August 1963 demanding economic reforms, including full employment and better wages. (Photo: CWA/Local 7076)

Corporate mainstream media have sanitized and distorted the life and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., putting him in the category of a “civil rights leader” who focused narrowly on racial discrimination; end of story. 

Missing from the story is that Dr. King was also a tough-minded critic of our capitalist economic structure, much like Bernie Sanders is today.

The reality is that King himself supported democratic socialism – and that civil rights activists and socialists have walked arm-in-arm for more than a century.

The same news outlets that omit such facts keep telling us that the mass of African American voters in South Carolina and elsewhere are diehard devotees of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton – implying that blacks are somehow wary of Bernie Sanders and his “democratic socialism.”

Here are some key historical facts and quotes that get almost no attention in mainstream media:

1909:  Many socialists – both blacks and whites – were involved in forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), our country’s oldest civil rights group.  Among them was renowned black intellectual W.E.B. Dubois.

1925:  Prominent African American socialist A. Philip Randolph became the first president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union that played a major role in activism for civil and economic rights (including the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”).

1952:  In a fascinating letter to Coretta Scott, the woman he would marry a year later, Martin King wrote: “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. . . . Today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.” 

1965:  King wrote an essay in Pageant magazine, “The Bravest Man I Ever Knew,” extolling Norman Thomas as “America’s foremost socialist” and favorably quoting a black activist who said of Thomas: “He was for us before any other white folks were.”

1965:  After passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, King became even more vocal about economic rights: “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”

1965-66:  King supported President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” but urged more – calling for a “gigantic Marshall Plan” for our naton’s poor of all races.

1966:  In remarks to staffers at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King said:

“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. . . . It really means that we are saying something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

March 1967:  King commented to SCLC’s board that “the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”

April 1967:  In his speech denouncing the U.S. war in Vietnam at New York’s Riverside Church, King extended his economic critique abroad, complaining about “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”

May 1967:  In a report to SCLC’s staff, King said:

“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power . . . this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together . . . you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others . . . the whole structure of American life must be changed.”

August 1967:  In his final speech to SCLC, King declared:

“One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?’” 

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he and SCLC were mobilizing a multiracial army of the poor to descend nonviolently on Washington D.C. demanding a “Poor Peoples Bill of Rights.” He told a New York Times reporter that “you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.”

A year before he was murdered, King said the following to journalist David Halberstam: “For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.”

Unlike what Hillary Clinton professes today, Dr. King came to reject the idea of slow, incremental change.  He thought big.  He proposed solutions that could really solve social problems.

Unlike corporate-dominated U.S. media, King was not at all afraid of democratic socialism.  Other eminent African American leaders have been unafraid. Perhaps it’s historically fitting that former NAACP president Ben Jealous has recently campaigned for Bernie Sanders in South Carolina.

If mainstream journalists did more reporting on the candidates’ actual records, instead of crystal-ball gazing about the alleged hold that the Clintons have over African American voters, news consumers would know about the deplorable record of racially-biased incarceration and economic hardship brought on by Clinton administration policies. (See Michelle Alexander’s “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”) 

With income inequality even greater now than during Martin Luther King’s final years, is there much doubt that King would be supporting the progressive domestic agenda of Bernie Sanders?

Before Bernie was making these kinds of big economic reform proposals, King was making them – but mainstream media didn’t want to hear them at the time . . . or now.

(Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. Posted most recently at Common Dreams.) 

-cw

GUEST COMMENTARY-Celebrities, by the very nature of the attention they attract, have built-in bully pulpits. They most often use them to shed light on honorable causes encompassing everything from disease and world hunger to animal rights and anti-bullying campaigns. 

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW-The California Public Utilities Commission has seen better days. Between San Onofre, the San Bruno pipeline explosion and the Aliso Canyon Leak, the commission’s responses are being scrutinized and with good reason. State and federal authorities have been investigating the agency for its alleged friendly relationship with the very same private utilities the agency is charged with overseeing.

POLITICS--So just when is it "acceptable" to start criticizing the current President's deeds and ways of doing business without being called a bigot and a traitor?  I know it's rightfully been open season on George W. Bush for years, but when--nearing the end of his term--President Obama comes home and calls for an "improved tone in U.S. politics" isn't it time to just flat out declare him a terrible hypocrite?  And isn't it time to declare a new term in our political lexicon (similar to the "-gate" suffix that occurs with each scandal and which started with Watergate? 

GELFAND’S WORLD--If nothing else, the New Hampshire primary demonstrates that the American people haven't lost their sense of humor. Approaching the week of the election, Marco Rubio was being presented as a candidate of destiny. Instead, he froze up during a debate and gave nearly robotic answers to mundane questions. He then found himself being pursued in public by a strange man wearing a robot costume. Then he finished in fifth place. It was politics done as Abbot and Costello. 

GUEST WORDS-California’s non-partisan Legislative Analyst recently released a report suggesting the Legislature cut the connection requiring cap and trade to be spent strictly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Taking this suggestion would be a mistake on many levels. 

ISENBERG: A THEORY ON EVERYTHING-Tuning in to the NBC Nightly News the other night I was confronted by stark images of starving Syrian civilian children and adults. Although starving himself, one of them had managed to upload video through the Internet to an NBC reporter using a solar powered camera. Seeing these and other images taken by Russian drones of decimated Syrian cities and humanity, I could not help but remember nearly identical images that emerged over 70 years ago, when, at the end of World War II, allies liberating concentration camps found equally emaciated surviving Jews. Doesn't our species ever learn? 

As NBC anchor Lester Holt cut to commercial and the next mundane story, I thought about what seems to be a recurring historical theme featuring a pervasive human tribal mentality that results in perceiving “the other” with a lack of empathy...or at least not enough empathy to prompt action.

Maybe it’s due to a misguided self-protective mechanism, but most of us think we will remain safe as long as we stay aloof from the plight and terror of others. Sadly, this indifference is what could assure the next human holocaust. 

It occurred to me that this time there might just be a way of changing what seems to be such detached indifference to human suffering in the world. 

So I called the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. and talked to someone in the press department. I pointed out that the very existence of the State of Israel as a militarily strong and self-sufficient state -- that receives a disproportionate amount of aid from the Americans – depends on the foundational Zionist idea that “never again” would Jews be allowed to be slaughtered in silence while nobody did anything to stop it. 

Was I alone in my outrage or could Israelis in 2016 retain enough historical consciousness to see that present-day Syrians desperately need their own equivalent of Zionism? Or has Israel so "evolved" that they too can now avoid the issue, viewing the Syrians as modern-day untermenschen,    completely unrelated to their own not so distant past? 

I pointed out to the Israeli on the other end of the phone, that, even if he wasn't convinced by my argument, given its 68 year history of living in a constant state of war, Israel might be curious as to how the Arab world would respond if Israeli planes would drop relief supplies of food and medicine to help the innocent civilian populations caught between warring factions in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Middle East. How could such an unequivocal act of caring be explained away? 

If the desire for peace, as expressed by the Arabic salaam or the Hebrew shalom, was to be anything more than empty rhetoric, perhaps Israel could discover a “third way” to take action, one in which all human life is valued. This could give pause to even Israel’s most virulent enemies. 

Given the relatively small cost of implementing such a relief program, it should be tried by Israel and any other parties seeking to end the senseless carnage. But will it work? I don't know, but as my Jewish grandmother used to say, "It couldn't hurt." 

By the way, the number of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. is: (202) 364-5500.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at Lenny@perdaily.com) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Is California being governed by apocalyptic French philosophy?

Oui. But it’s not the end of the world.

Indeed, apocalyptic French philosophy may finally provide clarity for those of us long puzzled by that great California mystery: What is the meaning of Jerry Brown?

In recent years, our governor’s statements have taken an end-of-days turn, Jerry channeling Jeremiah. The governor has warned of nuclear holocaust, wildfires consuming the entire state, the demise of Silicon Valley if his water plans aren’t adopted, and the apocalypse if we don’t curb carbon emissions. Last month, the governor went to Palo Alto for the latest of unveiling of the Doomsday Clock, a timekeeper for the annihilation of mankind. (It’s just three minutes to midnight, humans.)

Where is he getting all this angst? Here’s one answer: Brown is a longtime friend of the French techno-philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who practices what is called “enlightened doomsaying” from academic perches at Stanford and Paris’ École Polytechnique.

Dupuy’s long-running conversations with Brown have become more high-profile lately, with Dupuy joining him at events in Paris during December’s climate change talks.

I am neither French nor a philosopher. And I’m no fan of Brown, whose governorship I’ve criticized as too small and cautious, given the size of California’s challenges. But before Christmas, I started reading everything I could find that Dupuy has published in English. And I’m very glad I did.

Dupuy’s work not only provides reassurance that there is a coherent philosophy behind our governor’s ramblings. The work itself is irresistibly thought-provoking, connecting history, science, religion, economics, and art in an open (and sometimes bitterly funny) spirit little seen in scholarship. I’d go so far as to recommend that Californians—as citizens of a global hub for both apocalyptic and utopian thinking—read his most accessible book, The Mark of the Sacred. It should be required for anyone who works in or around state government.

Here is my best attempt to summarize Dupuy’s argument: Humanity is doomed to destroy itself because we have lost our sense of the sacred. We no longer recognize the way our sacred origins—not just faith and religion, but other rituals and traditions that remind us how many things are beyond human control—shape us and all our modes of thought, even reason and science.

This hubris creates two problems. First, we no longer understand our own limits, and recklessly reshape the world without anticipating the consequences of our own inventions. Second, without sufficient respect for the sacred, we can’t convert our knowledge about the threats to our existence—from nuclear weapons to climate change—into the visceral belief necessary to galvanize humanity to save itself.

“It is my profound belief that humanity is on a suicidal course, headed straight for catastrophe,” Dupuy writes. “I speak of catastrophe in the singular, not to designate a single event, but a whole system of disruptions, discontinuities, and basic structural changes that are the consequence of exceeding critical thresholds.”

Dupuy’s solution: a new metaphysics called “enlightened doomsaying.” We must try to imagine ourselves in the unthinkable future, to peer into the black hole of nonexistence so that we might understand our limits and sacred origins. “To believe in fate is to prevent it from happening,” he writes.

That may sound awfully French, but he grounds his philosophy in a classic California story: Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo, a tale of humans falling all over Northern California, from the Golden Gate Bridge to Mission San Juan Bautista. Dupuy calls the film “the womb from which I am issued,” and sees humanity’s rush into Armageddon in the fictions within that movie’s fictions, particularly Jimmy Stewart’s attempts to impose a false reality on Kim Novak’s character.

So now—at the risk of repeating Jimmy Stewart’s mistake—I am compelled to read Dupuy onto Governor Brown.

Brown’s famous skepticism of great plans and new programs makes sense if you believe, as Dupuy argues, that man has become blind to the consequences of his own belief in progress. Brown’s focus on avoiding catastrophes—the strategy linking his budget rainy day fund to his prioritization of climate change—reflects Dupuy’s “prophet-of-doom” calls to focus on postponing the apocalypse.

Brown, like Dupuy, holds deep respect for the sacred—he quotes from various religious traditions and invokes his time in Jesuit seminary, without embracing any particular religion. And just as Dupuy mourns the “loss of difference between levels that characterize hierarchy,” Brown has sought to reestablish hierarchy, removing himself from many daily debates, relying on powerful elder wise men to pursue policies from water to high-speed rail, while keeping an unusually small staff.

Some of Brown’s most puzzling statements—his criticism of “desire” and consumerism—echo Dupuy. The French philosopher argues that as we lose our sense of the sacred, we fill the void with our own desires—and that creates envy that leads to conflict. Here’s Brown, speaking at the Doomsday Clock: “California is so full of low-priority needs. In fact, I have to tell you something about needs, because needs are the whole issue. What I have found is, and I have developed a hierarchy: First we get a desire; and then the desire is transmogrified into a need; and then we get a law; and then we get a right; and then we get a lawsuit.”

Of course, Dupuy, as philosopher, poses questions you’ll never hear on the stump in Stockton: Has Christianity preserved the sacred—or obliterated it by replacing so many traditional religions and rituals? What are the virtues of scapegoating? And which would be worse: the annihilation of the human race, or the eco-totalitarianism that might be instituted to prevent said annihilation?

There are obvious objections to Brown, and to Dupuy. There is a dissonance between the care with which governor and philosopher advise respect for the unknown and the certainty with which they predict Armageddon. I find it unsettling to be governed by someone so focused on the apocalypse. (Of course, my anxiety may be the reaction doomsayers want.) Reading Dupuy, I felt relief that Brown, for all his virtues, will never be president and have access to the nuclear launch codes.

But we also should be comforted that our governor’s aphorisms and warnings lean so heavily on such deep thinking. Dupuy suggests in his writings that we think in the “future perfect” tense—as in, by tomorrow, the apocalypse will have happened. From there, we work backward, as if the end of our existence were already fated, to find the limits that might save us.

To govern is to choose, and to prepare for the future. And while there are certainly happier ways to confront the dangers ahead, there may not be a smarter one.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It [UC Press, 2010]. This column was posted first at Zocalo Public Square)

-cw

EDITOR’S PICK--The biggest story this election season is not Donald Trump or the fortunes of the two winners in Iowa, the unattractive tag team of Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. For all their attempts to seem current and contemporary, these candidates – and Trump as well – represent older, more established elements in American life, such as evangelicals, nativists and, in Hillary’s case, the ranks of middle-age women, seniors and public-sector unions.

The biggest and most important development has been the massive support among the new generation of voters for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his open embrace of socialism. In Iowa’s Democratic caucuses, which ended with Clinton and Sanders in a virtual tie, young people opted for Sanders at an almost inconceivable rate of 84-14. In 2008, Barack Obama won this segment, claiming only a 57 percent majority.

So we are seeing the embrace of an openly socialist septuagenarian by a generation that, within a decade, will dominate our electorate and outnumber baby boomers as soon as 2020. That should put more conventional politicians, and business, on notice. Whether you are a Republican, a free-marketer or, even a Democratic-leaning crony capitalist, be afraid – be very afraid.

Timing right?

For the first time since labor leader and presidential candidate Eugene Debs in the early 20th century, Americans are flocking in big numbers to a politician who rejects the efficacy of capitalism and seeks to create a new, notionally fairer, system. Now, as then, the reason to support socialist ideas – some of which were implemented during the New Deal – lies with the palpable failures of capitalism. Polls of millennials show consistently that economic issues, such as jobs and college debt, are their dominant concerns.

The new generation’s lurch toward socialism would have been unimaginable at any previous moment in the past half century. A recent yougov.com poll found some 36 percent of people ages 18-29 favor socialism compared with barely 39 percent support for capitalism. Support for socialism drops precipitously, to 26 percent, among people ages 30-44, tumbles to 24 percent support among those ages 45 to 64 and hits 15 percent among those over 65.

Another poll, this one from Pew, finds that 43 percent of millennials have positive connotations about the word “socialism,” compared with less than half that level among people over 50.

Perhaps one reason for this divergence lies in memory, or lack of it. Few millennials remember the collapse of the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” which occurred when the oldest of them were barely out of diapers. In contrast to older generations, who reacted against Soviet-style politics, millennials seem to make little distinction between liberal progressivism and socialism.

Conservative academics, a small but sometimes hardy band, place blame on a lack of teaching about the realities of socialism by generally left-leaning instructors at universities or high schools. Certainly from what I see, at least, few students seem to know about Stalinist and Maoist purges, famines and thought control.

Yet it’s not just ignorance at work here. Millennials are coming up in a very tough economy where opportunity is limited, even for college graduates, with diminishing returns accompanying soaring tuition. Millennials are finding everything harder than their parents did – leaving a record number living at home into their late 20s and earlier 30s, or sheltering with their friends in apartments. Record levels of student debt, twice the average two decades ago, are slowing economic progress. Relieving this indebtedness is one element of Sanders’ appeal.

At the same time, relatively few young people are starting businesses. Being in debt and asset-free does not augur well for the prospect of nurturing appreciation for the creative power of capitalism in the next generation.

A party divided

The rise of support for socialism among millennials is having an immediate impact on the Democratic Party. Many left-leaning Democrats rightfully detest the kind of modulated crony capitalism epitomized by Hillary Clinton. This could precipitate a civil war among major Democratic donors – notably in Silicon Valley – who may embrace progressive views on cultural and environmental issues, but have little interest in having their massive wealth threatened by regulations or hypertaxation.

“They don’t like [Bernie] Sanders at all,” notes San Francisco-based researcher Greg Ferenstein, who has been polling Internet company founders for an upcoming book. Sanders’ emphasis on income redistribution and protecting union privileges and pensions violates the favorite notions of the tech elite. “He’s an egalitarian liberal,” Ferenstein explains, “these people are tech liberals. Equality is a nonissue in Silicon Valley.”

Although maybe not an issue among the tech oligarchs, class and inequality are not “nonissues” for many progressives of all ages. In blue bastions like San Francisco, grass-roots progressives regard tech billionaires, and their employees, with about the same regard evangelicals have for abortionists. To many old-line Bay Area liberals, the tech moguls – with their tax breaks, special employee buses and expensive tastes – are transforming their once-diverse city into an unconscionably expensive, class-ridden enclave. In many ways, as the Who sang, “the new boss” turns out to be as remarkably oppressive as the “old boss.”

This division will become clearer as the Clinton machine, and its media apparatus, go after Sanders. The Vermont senator was better treated before he posed a serious threat. Now that he is challenging the gentry liberal consensus, the mainstream media, increasingly under the sway of tech oligarchs, are mounting increasingly strident attacks on Sanders. These attacks have been led by the Washington Post, owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, whose fortune and sometimes brutal business practices would fare far better under Clinton than Sanders.

Indeed, the defense of crony capitalism is implicit in the Clinton appeal. After all, she is running with funds collected from financial, technology and other crony industries. Some of these same people have also been quite generous toward the Clinton Foundation, Bill and Hillary’s ethically challenged holding company.

Future of capitalism

Some conservatives – particularly given the chaos of the Republican race – might be tempted to revel in the new Democratic lurch to the left, which conceivably could drive the party too far from the mainstream, at least for older generations. But millennials are the future, and, if the GOP retains its reactionary ideas on key social issues – notably the mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants, legalizing marijuana and gay marriage – its chances of reaching millennial voters may be minimal.

Ultimately, the future of capitalism depends on making the system work for the majority of people, including millennials. The current system, frankly, is producing few benefits for the vast majority of Americans, giving the free market a bad name and turning off millennials. Fully half of them, notes a recent Harvard study, already believe the “American Dream” is dead. More than 10 million millennials are outside the system, neither employed nor in education or training, a population that seems ripe for leftist agitation.

Simply put, to change millennial views, capitalism also needs to change from its current trajectory. The predominant system of crony capitalism, most ensconced in blue states like California, clearly favors the already affluent. At the same time, nonsocialists need to do a better job of explaining the past failures of state control; most millennials, as the Reason Foundation has pointed out, do not even associate socialism with a state-centered economy, which most of them say they would strongly oppose.

And, to be sure, there are elements of millennial attitudes that push back against socialist practices. Millennials, for example, tend to distrust all institutions, including government, according to Pew, and half consider themselves independents, far more than in any other generation. They may be alienated from large financial and corporate institutions but may not remain permanently in the tank for ever more intrusive government.

Ultimately, reality, not knowledge, changes attitudes. Until capitalists focus more on jobs and upward mobility, and less on asset inflation, young people have little reason to change their minds. Unless capitalism or its crony offshoots can create a credible future for the young, there’s little reason to expect that this generation will abandon their determination to change the system that, for all its faults, has created more prosperity over time for more people than any other.

(Joel Kotkin is R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University. He is executive editor of www.newgeography.com … where this piece originated and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.)

-cw

WHY WE MUST TRY--Instead of “Yes we can,” many Democrats have adopted a new slogan this election year: “We shouldn’t even try.”

We shouldn’t try for single-payer system, they say. We’ll be lucky if we prevent Republicans from repealing Obamacare.

We shouldn’t try for a $15 an hour minimum wage. The best we can do is $12 an hour.

We shouldn’t try to restore the Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment and commercial banking, or bust up the biggest banks. We’ll be lucky to stop Republicans from repealing Dodd-Frank.

We shouldn’t try for free public higher education. As it is, Republicans are out to cut all federal education spending.

We shouldn’t try to tax carbon or speculative trades on Wall Street, or raise taxes on the wealthy. We’ll be fortunate to just maintain the taxes already in place.

Most of all, we shouldn’t even try to get big money out of politics. We’ll be lucky to round up enough wealthy people to back Democratic candidates.  

“We-shouldn’t-even-try” Democrats think it’s foolish to aim for fundamental change – pie-in-the-sky, impractical, silly, naïve, quixotic. Not in the cards. No way we can.

I understand their defeatism. After eight years of Republican intransigence and six years of congressional gridlock, many Democrats are desperate just to hold on to what we have.

And ever since the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision opened the political floodgates to big corporations, Wall Street, and right-wing billionaires, many Democrats have concluded that bold ideas are unachievable.

In addition, some establishment Democrats – Washington lobbyists, editorial writers, inside-the-beltway operatives, party leaders, and big contributors – have grown comfortable with the way things are. They’d rather not rock the boat they’re safely in.

I get it, but here’s the problem. There’s no way to reform the system without rocking the boat. There’s no way to get to where America should be without aiming high.

Progressive change has never happened without bold ideas championed by bold idealists.

Some thought it was quixotic to try for civil rights and voting rights. Some viewed it as naïve to think we could end the Vietnam War. Some said it was unrealistic to push for the Environmental Protection Act.

But time and again we’ve learned that important public goals can be achieved – if the public is mobilized behind them. And time and again such mobilization has depended on the energies and enthusiasm of young people combined with the determination and tenacity of the rest. 

If we don’t aim high we have no chance of hitting the target, and no hope of mobilizing that enthusiasm and determination. 

The situation we’re in now demands such mobilization. Wealth and income are more concentrated at the top than in over a century. And that wealth has translated into political power.

The result is an economy rigged in favor of those at the top – which further compounds wealth and power at the top, in a vicious cycle that will only get worse unless reversed.

Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of any other advanced nation, for example. We also pay more for Internet service. And far more for health care.

We pay high prices for airline tickets even though fuel costs have tumbled. And high prices for food even though crop prices have declined.

That’s because giant companies have accumulated vast market power. Yet the nation’s antitrust laws are barely enforced.  

Meanwhile, the biggest Wall Street banks have more of the nation’s banking assets than they did in 2008, when they were judged too big to fail.

Hedge-fund partners get tax loopholes, oil companies get tax subsidies, and big agriculture gets paid off.

Bankruptcy laws protect the fortunes of billionaires like Donald Trump but not the homes of underwater homeowners or the savings of graduates burdened with student loans.

A low minimum wage enhances the profits of big-box retailers like Walmart, but requires the rest of us provide its employees and their families with food stamps and Medicaid in order to avoid poverty – an indirect subsidy of Walmart. 

Trade treaties protect the assets and intellectual property of big corporations but not the jobs and wages of ordinary workers.

At the same time, countervailing power is disappearing. Labor union membership has plummeted from a third of all private-sector workers in the 1950s to fewer than 7 percent today. Small banks have been absorbed into global financial behemoths. Small retailers don’t stand a chance against Walmart and Amazon.

And the pay of top corporate executives continues to skyrocket, even as most peoples’ real wages drop and their job security vanishes.

This system is not sustainable.

We must get big money out of our democracy, end crony capitalism, and make our economy and democracy work for the many, not just the few.

But change on this scale requires political mobilization.

It won’t be easy. It has never been easy. As before, it will require the energies and commitments of large numbers of Americans.

Which is why you shouldn’t listen to the “we-must-not-try” brigade. They’ve lost faith in the rest of us.

We must try.  We have no choice.

EDITOR’S PICK--The New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual fundraising dinner and rally goes on steroids in presidential years. Invariably scheduled for the weekend before the presidential primary, the dinner is held in a far larger venue than is customary: The national (and global) press corps swarms in, and, above all, the Democratic presidential candidates and their supporters turn out in force. 

On Friday night, February 5, the party repaired to the Verizon Wireless Center in the heart of Manchester. The ice hockey arena featured the standard shell-out-the-bucks tables of ten festooning the floor where the ice normally sits. The presidential partisans and party faithful filled the thousands of low-dollar spectator seats: Hillary supporters on one side of the arena and the Bernie backers on the other. 

The evening held potential, then, for an ugly clash. In essence, two separate candidate rallies would be held in a venue filled with supporters of both candidates. Clinton partisans plainly feared that the Sanders kids might boo, heckle, and Lord knows what else, when Clinton spoke. Introducing her, New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen adjured the crowd, saying, “I hope everyone here will be respectful of whatever choice we make” in this election. 

Then Clinton came out to give her speech and -- everything was fine. No heckling. No booing. The kids were alright. 

More than that, the event demonstrated that the divisions that have appeared in the party this year aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. More precisely, in a year when the Democrats are said to be divided by an ideological chasm, the evening showed that that chasm isn’t nearly as wide as it may appear from afar. 

Indeed, the evening’s program presented a kind of real-time, visual poll that revealed more consensus than discord. It was easy enough to see what the Bernie brigade supported: They came armed with “thundersticks,” orange plastic cylinders that they hoisted and banged together to great noise-making effect. Likewise, on the opposite side of the arena, the Hillary hordes brandished thundersticks of their own, with glowing lights at the tip, like some kind of Jedi lightsaber which they, too, raised and waved around when sufficiently thrilled by a speaker’s comment. 

The response to Sanders’s speech was a revelation. Even as the Bernie kids erupted in a thunderstick-banging cacophony while Sanders emphatically delivered one progressive pledge after another, so, too, did the Hillary backers raise theirs and wave them about as Bernie unveiled his platform. Raise the minimum wage to $15, Sanders said. Up went the lightsabers (though Clinton’s preferred level is $12.) Lift the cap on the payroll tax to increase Social Security benefits, he bellowed. Lightsabers up! Health coverage is a right not a privilege -- lightsabers galore! Voted against the Iraq War resolution: lightsaber madness! 

To be sure, Sanders has modified his stump speech to make clear he’s not the all-or-nothing guy depicted by the Clinton campaign. “The Affordable Care Act has done extraordinarily good things,” he said, before vowing to go beyond the ACA with Medicare for all. Speaking before a crowd that included the entire state Democratic establishment, he was clearly not at his most confrontational. Nonetheless, when he spelled out positions that were at odds with Clinton’s -- not pointing out they were at odds, but before a crowd that knew they were -- the Clinton backers responded rapturously to most of them. 

One prominent former party leader (who asked his name not be used because he’s a sitting judge) explained the enthusiasm to me this way on his way into the arena: “Bernie says all the right things. His program appeals to me very much, appeals to most of us. But I’m voting for Hillary. If Bernie wins [the nomination], he’ll get clobbered in November.” 

The judge’s response is not a surprising, but helps illuminate what the entire evening made clear: While there are real divisions among Democrats this year, they are not chiefly ideological or programmatic. Taken by themselves, Sanders’s positions, even those that are not Hillary’s -- the $15 wage, free tuition, lifting the cap to increase Social Security payments -- are widely popular across Democratic ranks. 

To the extent that there is a division on ideology, it probably comes when Sanders’s proposals are considered in aggregate, which means that the total amount of taxing and spending that his program would entail is indeed a likely point of division. To that extent, some of his Democratic opponents fit the description that political scientists have given the American people more generally: Philosophically conservative (or in this case, centrist), programmatically liberal. 

There was one other kind of division on display in the arena on Friday night: The Sanderistas are not, or not yet, party people. This distinction began at the top: While both candidates opened their remarks by acknowledging their institutional supporters (unions, progressive groups, and so on), Hillary also went on to give shout-outs to various New Hampshire Democratic leaders and party activists. Sanders did none of that. 

That’s partly because the overwhelming majority of New Hampshire party leaders and activists are backing Clinton, and because the Clintons have deep relationships in New Hampshire dating back to 1992. But it’s also because Sanders has not been a party guy at the state level, though he is functionally that in Congress.   

As with the candidates, so with their supporters: Some of the older Bernie backers have certainly been party people, and cheered when notable state party workers and local elected officials were acknowledged (which is a required rite at any state party’s annual do). Most of Bernie’s backers, however, had no idea who those people were, and the kids who’d come from out of state to precinct walk for the final weekend were thoroughly and understandably uninterested. 

(They reminded me of an 18-year-old staffer on Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 insurgent presidential campaign – me -- who sat through such events in several states with an equivalent lack of interest in the roll call of local notables.) 

But in talking with a group of students from Hartwick College, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, who’d crossed the Adirondacks to walk for Bernie and who’d been among the loudest noise-makers during Sanders’s talk that night (and who sat respectfully, if not enthusiastically through Clinton’s), I got the clear impression that, like the kids who’d once volunteered for McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, and George McGovern, they’d stick around, reshape, and take over the Democratic Party in years to come. 

The three students -- all political science majors -- understood that the Sanders “revolution” was many years in the making, not the product of just of one campaign, and that with or without Bernie in years to come, as one said, “we’ll be inspired to carry on his ideals.” “This is a learning experience,” said another. “We’re learning how the system works.” 

American socialists, as the great sociologist Daniel Bell once observed, failed to understand that with power came the necessity of compromise; they were, in his famous phrase, “in but not of the world.” Bernie’s kids are in but not of the party, in but not of the system -- which, in American politics, means they’re on track to somewhat alter and eventually take over both the party and the system, too. 

(Harold Meyerson is the executive editor of The American Prospect ... where this piece originated.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.