Last month Judith Schwartz sent me a copy of her novel Doublethink. I read very little fiction so the book soon got buried in my inbox. Something about Schwartz’s enthusiasm about how a book could change the political imagination and change the direction of the country stuck with me, though. I put Doublethink in my backpack, carried it around with me all over Berkeley, and I when I finally got a chance to relax in a coffee shop for a bit, I pulled it out.

Honestly, it was hard for me to get through the first few pages because the protagonist, Joe Winston, starts out with a political outlook that’s so different than my own. This was Schwartz’s intention: she draws a detailed, and respectful, portrait of how a neocon true believer sees the world. At the start of the novel, Joe has all the comforts and advantages of a politically-crafted elite, though his family troubles suggest cracks in the facade.

When Joe’s cushy job gets outsourced out from under him and a donation to a charity raises a red flag for Homeland Security, Joe discovers how tenuous his life of privilege really is. All the laws he supported in the name of family values and national security start to turn against him, and he finds himself on the outside of the gated communities that had been shielding him from the brutal world he helped create.

While Joe learns the ropes of this new world, he rediscovers the value of human dignity, and his growth as a human being enables him to heal some of the rifts in his family. However, now that Joe is aware of how the agenda of the elite has distorted the lives of everyone else, he finds the courage to take the necessary political action.

Schwartz’s book covers many issues of current political debate and imagines the dystopian outcome. I haven’t read a book like this since Callenbach’s Ecotopia, and a recommend it heartily for people who want to see what all the threads of the daily news would look like once woven into the tapestry of the future.

Last week the U.S. Senate narrowly missed amending the Constitution to prosecute people who protest the government through the symbolic action of burning the flag. While the over-obvious distraction tactic was an insult to the intelligence of the voting public, it’s even more disturbing that the effort was co-sponsored by CA faux-Democrat Diane “National ID” Feinstein.

I’m blogging about this now because I just read a message on a mailing list that put my sentiments into the perfect words. The author, Jean, has kindly given me permission to quote the whole thing:

Political debates are about ideas; but also about the real lives of real people who could be affected. You forgot about them in your listing of things about which I might care.

An important part about PASSING A LAW is that it implies it will be enforced against some unfortunate soul. Like laws against “drugs” and ‘terror” the law is not against the idea of flag burning. It is against the act of a person who might burn or dishonor a flag. When such a law is passed this expands the power of the state to arrest, imprison or otherwise harm someone. You appear to be hoping that the law is pointless, it will alter nothing. Are you sure? That this law would never ever be used?

I was once a foolish young student who might walk right into some such law. I care for those people who still are, or who might yet be. Why do you risk hurting them?

Politics is above all about individuals, if we choose to help or harm ourselves and each other. My core obejction to both this law and the Bush Administration is the consistent investment in the sheer meanness, from the petty to the great.

On a related note, J.E. Schwartz’s recent novel DoubleThink spells out the dystopian consequences of the police state mindset. While it might seem like a good idea to improve your own life circumstances by disciplining your neighbors, the weapons of the police state will inevitably turn on you and your family.

The introduction to my edition of The Tale of Genji describes the author Murasaki Shikibu’s father as a “man who was either unable or unwilling to form and preserve the patronage relationships necessary for bureaucratic advancement…”

This struck a sharp chord for me, because I tend to chose to go with the truth of a situation instead of promoting the personal will of those in a position to guarantee my livelihood. I’ve often pondered why I don’t act according to my economic self-interest. It’s not only anti-Darwinian - it seems to go against the U.S. cultural consensus and the consistent advice of all who care about me. Everyone insists “networking” and “relationships with key people” are the main path to employment and political existence, and all who shirk the social game must be inherently self-destructive or just stupid (or, in business-speak, “needs coaching in social skills“).

During the past few weeks the call for government intervention to preserve net neutrality has once more stirred up my thoughts on what creates pressure to seek patronage. Ever since 9/11 I’ve been worried about the problem of trading freedom for safety - particularly the freedom of speech. However, I’m now even more worried that if we go too far in dismantling government, individual freedom will be all but demolished by corporate interests, mafias, and roving street gangs. Individual freedom isn’t the default: it needs to be actively protected.

The freedom of the individual is being betrayed by the civic culture that now dominates the U.S. Jared Bernstein has described how YOYO economics has maximized the freedom of a few well-placed individuals at the expense of the many. On the cultural side, Robert Fuller has been arguing how rankism places relentless pressure on people to turn to patrons, fueling an epic expansion of indignity. I’ve been arguing that the New Puritans are seeking to block the marginalized from putting their opinions on record, invoking risk to potential patronage relationships. Note the underlying problem of all of this is that people are increasingly turning to the patronage system, while resistance to the patronage system leads to ostracization and homelessness.

Not since the days of corvee labor have average individuals been so powerless in society. Everyone feels dependent on a corrupt employment system. But, moreover, the nation of “nobodies” has no recourse when corporate interests infringe on their most basic civil and human rights. This might be because the powerful forces of our society are not answerable to any institution charged with protecting the rights of each and every individual. The media has become a purveyor of corporate messaging, the legal system is impossible for regular people to cope with even though most can’t afford a lawyer to do the coping for them, and the State can run roughshod over the rights of the individual now that our ostensible “representatives” don’t bother to help constituents unless a good photo op or a bribe is involved. Individual financial viability is being eroded by enormous systems of theft, from health care price gouging to corporate litigation herding into mass settlement centers. While “public interest” groups such as the ACLU seem to be protecting individuals, they actually only help people if it serves their policy agenda.

No wonder everyone feels like they are puppets forced to play out someone else’s lie. And frankly, the current Democratic emphasis on “framing” just reinforces this feeling of being squeezed into a mold of unreality. Even blogging only gives a few people a serious megaphone to stand up for their truth, and this just underscores the plight of those without a megaphone. Why should a megaphone be required? Why do we need to tarry for people in the streets (not to mention fake mobs)?

Big government can be costly and oppressive, especially when the checks and balances fail. However, if we throw out government all together, we will quickly find ourselves in a new feudal age where patronage-seeking and constant indignity are the only possible way of life.

The American lifestyle is all about the yoyo. I’m not just talking about nostalgia toys, rap slang, or trendy cellists. Oprah just trumped Clinton with a $12 million dollar advance for the wisdom she has gained from her lifelong struggle with yoyo dieting. The underlying philosophy of our political leadership is yoyo economics.

What does the American romance with the yoyo mean? Isn’t America supposed to be about Frontiers, Rugged Individualism, Big Dreams, and Apple Pie? How did this turn into compulsive lurching from one extreme to another, reaching one minute and then fleeing the next? What is the thing we’re continuously seeking, but can never find? It seems to me we’re all playing an endless game of Who Moved My Dignity?

Three hundred years ago, a Chinese scholar in exile named Pu Songling said, “Men must put on false, ugly faces to please their superiors - such is the hypocritical way of the world…But a man who dares to reveal his true self in public is almost certain to shock the multitude…” This issue itself seems to be one of the yoyo tricks of history, bopping from the Renaissance courtier to our modern ketman conformity. The organization of society continually spawns hierarchies, and those who obtain decision-making or administrative powers quickly forget we are all equal in our humanity, and that every human being has dignity.

Americans aren’t addicted to the yoyo, they’re tied to the yoyo by social and economic policies that reduce them to a state of perpetual indignity.

The average American worker would have to work 51 centuries to earn what the highest paid U.S. CEOs make in a year. Raiding their sofas for change would probably solve world hunger.

Take action to tie the minimum wage to Congressional pay increases right here.

Perhaps while they are enabling the majority of Americans to earn a basic livelihood, Congress will consider taking a serious look at executive pay. Hopefully the Enron verdict will usher in a new era of corporate accountability for gross inequities in workplace compensation.

In the U.S. Alaa Ahmed Seif Al Islam would be a celebrated public intellectual, and would probably be a highly paid consultant. He’s an award-winning journalist-blogger, open source developer, and a human rights activist. On May 7, 2006, Alaa was beaten and jailed for participating in a protest to support a free, independent judiciary in Egypt.

The blogosphere has been abuzz with the hope that the combined efforts of online activists might be able to free Alaa. Journalactivist Jon Garfunkel has done some excellent in-depth analysis of the various strategies attempted by online activists, including his own foray into purchasing Google AdWords. Garfunkel makes an important observation: while online activists may get swept up in the crowd cause of the moment, their attention span is notoriously short. They don’t follow up on whether their effort actually worked. Alaa is still in jail.

What do you know - occasionally our congressional representatives are good for something.

Rankism, as a feature of hierarchy, saturates so many aspects of daily life that it’s often hard for me to decide what to write about. Here’s a sample of some of the questions and considerations weighing on my thoughtscape today:

1. People are starting to notice that rankism is a useful concept for thinking about inequities in the blogosphere. This idea has also been recently explored here and here.

2. How do you balance protection of weaker individuals (people in marginal positions in a social network) with amelioration of groupthink rankism?

3. While women’s issues have gained prominence the world over, gender-based rankism continues to be expressed through rape. Are efforts to call attention to the issue also serving to increase incidents of mass rape as a weapon of war, since the media is amplifying its power as a symbol?

4. Iran thinks the U.S. is a bully.

5. In speaking of bullying, a Purdue study says we’re not paying enough attention to the plight of the gifted. Personally, I think more attention needs to be paid to how students come to be singled out as gifted, which involves a rankist claim in itself.

6. Do members of the dominant culture waffle about multiculturalism because they are being asked to give up an advantage?

7. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

8. Now that Lawrence Summers is being treated as a victim of mobbing, will the furor of rankism of the crowd outweigh the original furor over his scientistic gender-based rankism? In other words, does the public believe that it’s a terrible thing when Nietschean man is oppressed, but women really are natural subordinates?

9. Pick me, I’m pretty!

10. Women are forming a bridge over the Drina. This is refreshing in light of the resurgence of nationalist posturing and blame-mongering that has followed the death of Milosevic.

More than half of the people who took last week’s Monster opinion poll believe cosmetic surgery could advance their career. Surveys have confirmed that beauty confers a social advantage that translates into unearned income. Workers have started to file lawsuits to protect themselves from appearance-based discrimination, but some economists are arguing that survival of the prettiest is an attribute of a free society. In other words, it’s human to make distinctions and humiliate others in the process of forming hierarchies: if the free citizen wants to redistribute income from skill and experience to the sexually desirable, so be it. Perhaps the economists might reconsider their position when people start killing for plastic surgery money.

Every job seeker is familiar with the the relentless exhortation to network. Your family, your friends, blog comments from random strangers, and the total environment of media messages all telll you that if you don’t have a job yet, you must be a flawed person, deficient in the life skill of networking. Like truth and beauty, the ability to network is now held to emanate from the inside. Networking is a personal trait that can be cultivated and controlled by the virtuous. The perfect professional is the person who transforms their social network into a personal attribute. The ability to tap into a large social network not only matches job seekers with potential employers: the presence of a network has become proof that social aspects of the job seeker’s personality have prevailed over anti-social aspects (independent judgment, inclination to dissent, preference for isolated activities, etc.). Networking is now a moral sign rather than an indicator of location within the social configuration. A large network means you’re a good person: a small network means you’re a bad person (either unattractive or shunned for your behavior) who can only be redeemed if you follow everyone’s advice to start networking.

In defense of all who choose to be a hermit, I usually float the question of whether a person will gain more skills to increase their productivity and quallity of work from secluded study or from hanging out in a bar. Perhaps some people are meant to pursue creative or intellectual achievement, and forcing these people into trivial social interactions against their will might entail depriving society of a cultural achievement or material advance? In this age of trumpeting “people skils”, it’s almost a taboo to call human relationships “trivial” - it’s a heresy against the gospel of networking. A person who admits they would rather go invent a better mousetrap must be arrogant, nerdy, insensitive, irrational, unlikable - and all the other social labels that will cast that person as wrong, outside, and quite possibly mentally deranged.

As an entrenched hermit-heretic, I find some solace in the occasional book that dares to argue that networking is a social asset, not a character trait. For people with few resources for contact-bait, attempts to network may be futile. Pushing these people to network is the same as demanding that they waste their time or exhaust their remaining energies on a treadmill. Maybe the lesson of networking failure is that it’s rational for some people to focus on something other than how to court superficial relationships.

A culture that privileges the people with the best rolodex is a culture that allows for “positional middemen”. Positional middllemen are people who insert themselves into a transaction simply as a gatekeeper to some component of the transaction: they make no labor or material investment to enhance the transaction’s economic value. Positional middlemen are parasites who are being subsidized by the people who are obliged to work for a living. Do we really want to live in that kind of society? This is the message that’s sent every time someone tells an unemployed person to focus on networking instead of, say, mastering their craft. If we truly value a diverse society of independent thinkers, perhaps we should be trying to bring jobs to people with the right skills instead of leveraging control over jobs to dictate personality reforms. When we reward people for prioritizing the acquisition of social assets, we embrace cronyism, feudal dependency, and the compusive groupthink that has spawned so many disasters in our government and our economy. That’s only a short step from reducing other people to units of wealth and mere instruments of network access.