Conviction or Opportunism?

The last month has seen perhaps two of the most shameless acts of political opportunism that I can remember.

The first culprit was Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor could see that he wasn’t going to win the race to the Republican nomination himself, but he fancied some high office. So first he destroyed Marco Rubio in a debate using his brilliant bullying style. Then he withdrew, and surprised everyone by endorsing Donald Trump.

Now perhaps Christie likes Trump personally. It is hard to see how he could endorse Trump’s policies, since there don’t appear to be any substantial ones. There might be an element of believing that Trump has more chance of beating Clinton than Cruz, and even that Trump would be less disastrous as president as Cruz. But it is hard to escape a conclusion that his motives were more self-serving. He calculated that Trump was going to win, that everyone would reluctantly have to get in line behind him, and that he may as well be the first and put himself in line for VP or some other office or at least lots of publicity.

The second example is Boris Johnson. Boris is an intelligent man, and knows that leaving the EU would be a reckless gamble for Britain. He has spoken many times as a pro-European. But he has declared himself in support of the Brexit campaign in the upcoming referendum.

In this case, it is hard to even find a motive that is not self-serving. Johnson has the ambition to be the next leader of the Conservative party and the next Prime Minister, since David Cameron has announced that he will resign before the next general election and it is hard to see Labour winning that. To become leader, Boris will need some distinctive and popular positions among Conservative MP’s and grassroots activists. What better way to achieve this than by joining the Brexit camp? He is probably hoping that the campaign will end in narrow but glorious failure, but if it succeeds be calculates that he will be Tory leader before Christmas, and if it fails he will still be the next leader, but in 2019. If he had campaigned to stay, his chances would have been diminished in either outcome.

My first reaction to such behaviour is to lose respect for the people. How can I trust someone who places power above all principle? Obviously, not everyone feels the same way, or people like Christie would have very short political careers. I suppose their argument is that they have unusual management skills, and simply having them in power is worth a lot because they will perform better than the rest.

In some ways an extreme version of the same trait is Donald Trump. By his own admission, we should treat much of what he says on the campaign trail with a large grain of salt. He is just saying what it takes to gain votes and power, and we should not expect his choices in power to resemble his campaign claims. He feels we should support him because of his management skills, his marketing skills, and his independence from vested interests.

Actually, for the domestic agenda at least, that is not such a bad prospectus. Independence is valuable, he can tackle issues on merit rather than dogma or simply opposing anything from the other side. Marketing is valuable too, the domestic role of president is largely cheerleader or using the bully pulpit to campaign for carefully selected changes, and Trump would be excellent at that. Management skills are valuable too, but I am not convinced that Trump has those.

For the foreign agenda, where the president has real influence, it is hard to see Trump being anything other than a disaster. Imagine him visiting China and making a joke about penis size. Sadly, the scenario is not out of the question.

The converse of opportunism in politics is conviction. One reason why Trump has succeeded in getting close to the nomination is the lack of any real conviction among his rivals. Cruz has some conviction, but of a negative kind: as a lawyer, he seems to regard finding smart arguments to disparage opponents as a substitute for policy setting. It is also clear that he is in the pocket of donors. Rubio and Bush may have had sound policies, but lacked personal conviction and were clearly puppets for groups of donors who have lost the right of public respect.

Sadly the Democrat race is not much more impressive. Clinton has reduced herself to claiming to be a clone of Obama, but whereas Obama clearly had some conviction allied to a smart dose of pragmatism, Clinton appears to lack the former, and again, is clearly in hock to vested interests. Bernie Sanders is a wonderful conviction politician, so it is no wonder that he has campaigned well despite a platform far removed from the perceived centre of public opinion.

Should we pray to always have strong conviction politicians to choose between? It is not so simple. Chavez, Hitler, Le Pen or Putin are or were not short of conviction, and behaved quite consistently in office. One risk of excessive conviction is similar to excessive opportunism, which is power tends to corrupt, at first in the naïve belief of personal infallibility and later often out of greed or vengeance.

When I Googled conviction politician, most of the articles that came up were about Margaret Thatcher. You usually knew that Maggie was speaking from her heart and she was consistent in following her agenda even when it was not the path of least resistance. Her convictions were far from my own, but I have to admire the way she set out a vision, convinced people to trust her and then implemented without wavering.

If I look at current politicians I admire most, Obama and Merkel for example, they have often been accused of a lack of vision and of bending with the wind. In Germany, a new verb merkeln means to do little and await developments. In both cases, I find the charges rather unfair. Both are rather consistent in their values, and both have been courageous, and ultimately effective leaders.

So conviction may not be necessary, while core values are. Determination and a degree of pragmatism are also important. An eye for the long term seems to be important too, and the humility to look beyond one’s own legacy. Finally, some management skills must be helpful, and it is here that Obama has not always succeeded – remember the launch of Obamacare?

The best cocktail also depends on the context. Mandela was lacking in management skills, but obviously transparent conviction was what was necessary at the time. Love her or hate her, Maggie Thatcher might have had the best cocktail for her time too.

What may be disastrous is the absence of any meaningful conviction politicians. That describes congress and the two parties in the US currently, and it is that which opens the way for blatant opportunism, or indeed for someone of noxious conviction. It does not help that congress has become unrepresentative due to gerrymandering, and has been captured by big money. The far right in Europe may be advancing through a similar vacuum there.

So what should we pray for? The best option for me must be an Obama, with conviction and values in tune with mine and with some hope of getting things done. In the absence of that happy option, cynical though it seems, the best option might be the competent naked opportunist. No wonder then that Johnson and Christie are not driven out of town.   

Happy Choices

Sometimes I read or hear the expression that being happy is a choice.

Well, it is true I suppose. Our feelings and emotions are up to us. We can’t do much about pain if we stub our toe, but we can do a lot about anger, or sadness. Many people manage to remain happy despite considerable hardship.

But often the advice is not very helpful, since it is of the “just get over it” type. I am not sure whether we can judge how others are feeling any more than we can tell just how hard they stubbed that toe. If someone is grieving or depressed or shameful or riddled with guilt, it is often not all that helpful to have others appearing to judge you.

So choosing to be happy in the moment is a valuable skill, but not an easy one to acquire. There are some tricks available. I have changed my driving attitude completely since coming to live in New York. The roads here are dangerous as they are overcrowded, badly signaled, often pot-holed, and populated by some wildly reckless drivers. I decided early on that I would choose never to be in a hurry while driving here, always giving myself the luxury of time. Having time helps my other decision, to choose not to be angry with other drivers. I still lecture them from the safety of my own vehicle and sometimes I even gesture to them, but then I try to laugh, and then move on. I find it usually works, and my driving stress levels have gone down as a result.

But how can we think away more long-lasting anger or sadness? It is not so easy. There was a discussion of this in a recent Guardian Weekly Oliver Burkeman column. Burkeman followed the advice of some colleagues and experimented with avoiding all news for a period. The reasoning is that a lot of news is about humanity at its worst or most stricken, and therefore is likely to make us sad or angry, therefore if we choose to avoid news we can do a lot towards avoiding sadness or anger.

It did not work for Burkeman and I’m sure it would not work for me. I am sure that I would lose mental stimulation, be robbed of some curiosity, and somehow feel less connected to humanity. These emotional losses would outweigh any gain from avoiding any torrent of bad news. Still, it might work for some people.

Further, perhaps there is a level of interest in the news above which it is not depressing. I am careful to read enough to understand some context, and the overwhelming context is one of magnificent human progress punctuated by setbacks. The recent pace of medical breakthroughs is stunning, especially concerning the brain. Trends in crime, literacy, teenage pregnancy or child death are all in a positive direction globally. It may not seem it with the torrent of refugees suffering on Europe’s borders, but war deaths in the last ten years were the lowest in recorded history. The survey of Millennials in The Economist in January was wholly uplifting.

If you just dip into the news instead of really trying to understand it, then maybe it will be depressing and better to give up. In some ways, the US TV networks have tried to make that choice for us, but virtually eliminating meaningful news in favour of celebrity gossip, scandal, stories inducing judgment of other groups, and bumper sticker politics. If that is the diet available, then better to give it up – but better still to look for a more nutritious diet.

The Burkeman column made me wonder about other choices that can influence our happiness. One comes from our social lives, and concerns how deeply we choose to intervene in service to friends in need.

Two things happened to me in the autumn of the year 2000, when I was living in Oslo. The first was that a couple we knew moderately well suddenly revealed extreme marital difficulties. He walked out citing her behaviour, and her behaviour in response became extreme. They both lacked mediators, so I chose to step in and try to help by listening to both of them. My reward was to be abused and threatened myself, but I think I did help the situation towards stability.

The second event was that I suffered a breakdown myself. Work pressures became intolerable and I feel into a vicious cycle of lost sleep and mounting pressure, a cycle that I broke by declaring myself sick and in need of help. This terminated my upward career, but was a good decision and one that I recommend to anyone desperate enough to be considering it.

The strange thing about these two events was that it took me eight years to connect them. But now I am sure they are connected. I am sure the amateur counselling was draining away some of the energy I needed to stay on top of my work.

This leads to a wider category of choice, that of career itself. What about people who counsel for a living? They must be seeing humanity at its most stressed every day of their working lives, and getting blamed and caught in the middle of conflicts. The same will be true of many jobs. The police come to mind, but also carers for those with addiction and other medical fields. The people sitting behind desks at welfare offices face humanity at its most desperate as well.

I think this is something to think about when choosing a career. It is one thing to have a talent for caring, but quite another to subject yourself to the consequences for forty years. Do you have the sort of mental resilience that can withstand that? Perhaps it is like the news, and by being more deeply invested the drain can be balanced by a positive context. I doubt it somehow. None of us should be surprised when people in such professions cope by becoming detached from the situations they face, even at the expense of their ability to empathise and perform.

My daughter has chosen midwifery as a career and I am delighted for her, and the choice so far seems to work for her since she retains a great passion and energy for the field. When she first chose it, I was happy for a series of right-brain practical reasons, such as the sustainability of the profession, its international portability and the flexibility of work patterns offered. But more important than any of this may be that it is one of the few professions that work with humanity at its most positive. Pain and occasional catastrophe notwithstanding, the outcome of her job is usually a source of soaring joy. That is a rare gift in a job.

Life partner is obviously an even bigger category. If we live with someone exuding positive energy that must reflect on our own mental health. Love conquers all, so this truth might be more difficult to act upon.

The overall lesson, for which as so often thanks are due to Burkeman, is to be aware that our circumstances affect our mental health, and that we make choices, large and small, that affect our circumstances. We would be well advised to be aware of this when making the choices, even if we don’t change course as a result.

So there are some things we can do with no downside, such as working to improve our driving mood. Some choices we can make with eyes open because of wider values such as curiosity for humanity, helping friends in need or even following love. But, in the same way as we learn that we can’t solve world hunger or contribute time and money to every single good cause that crosses our path, we must invest within our capacity and make priorities.         

Religion and US Politics

Well, here are a couple of controversial topics. I am not sure visiting aliens would easily understand either of them. Last week we went to see “The Book of Mormon”, a fun evening out, and a show brave enough to make fun of a marginal religion. Actually, I think the writers would be pleased that I saw the show as a bit of a dig at all organised religion. They were smart in choosing Mormons rather than Catholicism or even Judaism; that way they could be thought provoking without being hounded off the stage or into the courts.

A simple insight came to me a couple of years ago and has dogged me ever since. I just don’t understand why all religious people aren’t left leaning. I especially don’t understand how some of the most right leaning politicians in the US use religion to bolster their arguments and appeal, and even appear to be sincere about it.

The thought arose one day while I was watching a local news channel. I think it was during the New York mayoral election, and there was some organised event where candidates were meeting someone like the local cardinal. The presenter stated, in a way that this was an obvious and incontrovertible fact, that the Republican candidates would find this meeting more comfortable than the Democratic ones. Somehow there was a conflation of Catholicism with the core of Republican ideas, that was so deeply accepted as a to be almost axiomatic.

Now, I make little secret of two things. The first is that I have always been somewhat to the left in European politics, have drifted leftwards as I have become older, and the left of European politics lies somewhere off the spectrum of US politics deep into Bernieland and beyond.

The second is that as I’ve grown older I have taken religion and spirituality more seriously. I confess to chronic doubts about most of what I profess in my Sunday morning creed, but I’ve found a way of reconciling that by embracing what religiosity can achieve for others and for me, how it can help to make us, and the world, better in so many ways.

For Christians this comes down to the core message from the Gospels, and my guess is that the core message from most other religions is much the same. In my simplified world I can condense the Gospels into a few keywords offering a guide for how to live.

Love. Peace. Joy from simple blessings. Generosity. Humility. Embracing of difference. Respect for nature and for ignorance. Forgiveness.

Each week the Gospels offer us up this same message. Since the start of lent, we’ve had many examples. The Ash Wednesday message is of prayer (love), fasting (simple joy) and alms giving (generosity), all to be performed without ceremony (humility). Then came the temptations of Christ, invoking their opposites (humility, simple joy, respect of nature). The transfiguration is about respect for ignorance and humility. The woman at the well is about embracing difference and forgiveness. The prodigal son is about love, peace and forgiveness.

The messages are wrapped up in a story about a great example to us, Jesus, who may or may not have been conceived of a virgin or come back from the dead and who may or may not sit in judgment or various other things that might have offered reasonable punch lines for The Book of Mormon. Other religions have their own great examples.

Then I meet other great examples every single day of my life, starting with the one I am blessed to wake up with. Those I see living by the keywords are contented and spread peace and contentment to everyone around them. I never feel better than after being with such people. I strive, and usually fail miserably, to be like them.

Then I tune into the Republican debates, and all I hear is the polar opposite. Somehow, we are supposed to cheer those who want to build walls against immigrants, suspect all minorities, punish mercilessly, bomb foreign lands, torture, be reckless about climate change, condemn gays, support more guns, and promote small government at all times, a code for leaving everyone to fend for themselves. It really is the polar opposite, the diametric polar opposite.

I can’t imagine voting for any of this, but if their polls say that others would vote for such messages, then fair enough if that is what they want to promote. In my opinion the world would be a less tolerant, more dangerous, poorer and less contented place if any of these goons (except Kasich) were to become president, but I am not even a voter so what do I matter? Actually, I don’t find Trump any scarier than the others, at least he is not scripted and appears to possess a brain, albeit one I find noxious. Cruz feels far more dangerous than Trump.

My problem only comes with the constant reference to religion, and I simply don’t understand how this can happen. Have these people ever read the Gospels, or the texts of their own religion? Do they listen to anything when they attend Church? Do any of their supporters? Or is it I, is my own interpretation skewed one hundred and eighty degrees from the intent in the Gospels? I guess it must be me, humility demands that I can’t be right when seemingly everyone else disagrees.

Part of the issue may be the flawed way religious leaders portray their own creeds, as they have ever since Christ, or Abraham, Mohammed or Buddha. I listen to prayers of the faithful every Sunday that make me cringe. I love Pope Francis, but I struggle to defend a lot the doctrine he represents.

The obvious explanation of the bewildering conflation of Catholicism with Republican politics is that one issue has assumed huge prominence in the advocacy of Catholicism in the US, namely abortion. On that, I can see both sides of the argument. But I do suggest that anyone who argues that human life is inviolable even at conception should be campaigning just as fiercely against the death penalty. If I saw that, I would trust their motivation a lot more.

Is it ungenerous of me to suspect that some of this has to do with money? The Vatican seems to have rather more of that than Jesus might have approved of, yet seems to covet more still. Might those prayers of the faithful that I listen to each Sunday be partially pandering to wealthy donors? Oh Francis, Oh Francis, more power and courage to you, your task is monumental!

So I guess I am going to remain confused. Perhaps I’ll understand the Gospels more fully one day, and find that part that makes me yearn to vote for Cruz. Perhaps I’ll even understand why Democrats and others don’t even challenge the dogma of these so-called evangelicals. Wouldn’t it make a nice debate if they started by producing a bible and asking them to sum it up in a few values and then moving on from there? Why doesn’t this happen?

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just have to pray that none of these guys actually win in November. And, even if one of them does, I suppose I can spend still more of my time at the convent and less in front of the TV. At least until Armageddon, anyway.