A pandemic is not a deliberative moment

As I shift my teaching this semester from face-to-face to online (thanks Zoom!), I'm thinking about the learning opportunity that comes when you're teaching about dialogue and deliberation theory. Foundational to deliberative democracy is the idea of citizen participation and engagement with a wicked problem that requires people to wrestle with the tensions and trade-offs on a particular policy decision.

While there are many reasons engage people in decision-making processes that inform an appropriate response to this crisis as it relates to the distribution of resources, COVID-19 is not a deliberative problem. Instead, it is a classic example of a technical problem. It's helpful to remember that "technical" is not "simple." This pandemic is an urgent and technical one. So when we're thinking about something like public health, it's important to defer to expertise within the particular domain. It can also highlight how technocratic approaches can be very helpful in such challenging times. The example from Iceland is something many other countries could benefit from.

In short, there are times when deliberative processes are essential and necessary. And, as is the case with our current pandemic experience, advocacy for informed public health strategies based on expertise rather deliberation is the way to go right now on this particular issue.

Finally, make sure to wash your hands and don't touch your face!

from Coronavirus GIFs via Gfycat

Speech by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu on monuments to Confederate leaders

Seeing beyond categories #OpenYourWorld

It's an ad. They want to sell you beer. But it also speaks to the importance of engaging with others as people. We have differences. Sometimes rather significantly. But it helps to be able to recognize and respect the other as much as possible so we can work through those differences.

Half time, looking back and forward

If you're like the estimated 100 million Americans who watched Sunday's Super Bowl, you presumably experienced numerous commercials (many with gratuitous demonstrations of the female body). Yet the one commercial I continue to think about came from the quintessential American--Clint Eastwood. If you didn't get to watch it, you can check it out right here.

Listen to what he says. He speaks about Americans working together, pulling together to save our economy and ourselves from despair. People are hurting and scared. Eastwood asks, "How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And how do we win?" Detroit and American auto manufacturing (and US manufacturing more broadly) was saved by the federal government. 

It was a few years ago so we've presumably forgotten all about that. It was a big deal. People called it the breaking point for American democracy (they were unaware that corporations would soon be citizens, although that didn't seem to bother those most vocal about the "bailout"). The Trouble Asset Relief Program was a big deal. It wasn't just the auto companies. But the biggest banks would much prefer for us to forget about their reception of copious amounts of money. 

Without going on about this, I want to simply call attention to the leading candidate for the Republican Party in this year's presidential election. Mitt Romney wrote an important piece that stands in sharp contrast to the words of Eastwood and the belief that many Americans now have about the role of the federal government with respect to the auto industry. Bailouts weren't and continue to be unpopular. But they served a purpose. In a time when money wasn't to be had, the government stepped up. It played an important role in helping to save and restructure an industry very important to this country. A recent Washington Post story highlights this point. 

Both Chrysler's video and the WP story point us back to Romney's op-ed in The New York Times. You can read that here. America is about more than free markets. It's about people and a way of life that is worthy of support from the government when necessary. Capitalism is very good and important. But we must acknowledge that we stand to lose a great deal when we only look at the numbers; when it's only about winners and losers in the world of competition. Behind the closures of factories are entire communities decimated and broken. People hurt and scared. And while unemployment is now down to 8.3%, we're not there yet. We need to continue to invest and improve this country. What scares me greatly right now as we look forward to the 2012 election is that we stand to shift course dramatically if Obama loses to the Republican candidate (presumably Romney). Being reminded of the differences between these two is important. Don't lose sight of how they view the world and the role of government.

When do we care?

Last night during the Republican debate, a question was asked about a hypothetical situation.

If a man who is 30, healthy, and free to make the decision to decline having health coverage suddenly needs intensive health care for an extended period, who is supposed to pay for it? I think we have a number of responses to this including something along the lines of "well, you should have insurance" or "it's your choice."

The CNN/Tea Party sponsored debate's audience would presumably take a position that was opposed to the idea that government might have a role to play in health care. To be very honest, I'm disgusted by the way we think of health care in the United States first as a market and only secondly as a way to ensure the health of our society. I think health care is a fundamental human right and making it something that is outside the role of the government is uncivil. But the response to this hypothetical question left me feeling even more aghast at what we're embracing as normal.

A number of individuals in the audience yelled very energetically that our hypothetic citizen of the United State should die. Is this what happens when we disconnect "freedom" from a shared sense of identity and citizenship? So many people today, especially those who identify as part of the Tea Party, claim they are returning to our founding principles. But what is glaringly absent from that partial reclamation is the commonwealth. Where is our concern for the other? Ron Paul mentioned that the "churches" should step up to take care of this man. This statement received applause. I would agree that civil society has a role to play in the health of a democracy and there is something about a religiously-affiliated hospital caring for those without because that is part of their mission and identity. But to lay that expectation on these types of institutions doesn't show me freedom of choice. What it shows me is that "freedom" often masks an ardent individualism that trumps care for the other. It's not about personal responsibility, it's about selfishness.

Sadly, such honest language won't appear during any of these debates nor will people admit that is what's behind their beliefs. We have a number of responsibilities to one another and health care is one of the most fundamental of those responsibilities. Sadly this hypothetical question is very real. And as we continue to see the poverty rate increase and businesses responding to this new disparity with novel approaches to marketing rather than appealing to the (now increasingly shrinking) middle class, maybe that otherwise healthy 30 year-old citizen has difficult choices about what's worth the investment of a smaller pool of wealth.

Citizens or Consumers?

Writing about health care reform, Paul Krugman poses a very important question: "How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as 'consumers'?" It's a good question. Taking the time to read Krugman's article is well worth the few minutes in order to better understand some of the changes being suggested by Republicans. Medicare is at the heart of the matter and it has a profound way of shaping our next (current?) election cycle. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly put together a video stressing the impact of such a move away from Medicare as we know it to a voucher system that will somehow work with private insurance.



But stepping back from some of the political positioning of the Democrats and Republicans, how does language of the market shape our democracy? Lizabeth Cohen studied 20th Century America and classified it as a "Consumers' Republic." When did we shift our thinking to apply the consumer model to everything?

 

The book that really made me think about the use of language and how we think about citizens was Creating Citizen-Consumers: Changing Publics and Changing Public Services. It made concrete what I was thinking at the time. I felt--and feel--strongly that we're transforming the role and relationship of government with citizens. But more than that, we're changing the ways that citizens think of themselves, how they act and engage in the world. If we wholehearted adopt market language, what changes occur? Are we more than we buy? One of the challenges we face in the United States is the dramatic shift away from active citizenship to a model that makes us more like Amazon. I love the ease and ability of order books or (nearly) anything else on their website, but when we make government replicate that model we radically alter institutions.

But rather than talk about abstract "government," we can see how a consumer model changes many other institutions as well. Cooperative Extension is everywhere. But in recent decades and years, there has been a strong push to replicate the Amazon (or insert some other amazing one-click shopping type of website here). Where are the relationships between Extension educators and community members? Norman Rockwell's depiction of the County Agent has been replaced by a digitized button.

This..

...or this?

Fundamentally, we must ask: What kind of people do we want to be? The challenge is that we must also ask what kind of people we want to be, together. Market language and thinking gives each individual a "vote" but only to the degree that their decision-making based on purchases turns citizens into an aggregate that does little to recognize the human person and his or her ability to be a relational being. But if we embrace this notion that we're simply consumers, we are little more than data. I don't want to be data. I am a citizen.

By Some Miracle

It's easy to think we're all individuals doing our own things and making our own decisions. It's as if the interconnectedness we have one with one doesn't truly exist. This video for Philip Selway's new song (of Radiohead fame) makes me think of the impact(s) that our decisions have on others, either knowingly or not.