Community Issue

Sisyphus has produced two stories about the Fourteenth Amendment. The first focused on corporate influence on the courts and political system, the ruling of corporations as “persons,” the notion of birthright citizenship, and the nature of equality. The second examined the implications of the amendment on women in American society. Both of those essays are relevant to revisit in 2021, because some of the legislation based on the Fourteenth Amendment created the climate for the events we have watched play out during the pandemic. Since the Fourteenth Amendment has again become important in relation to the Impeachment (the sequel), we address how America reached the need to enact Section 3. The Fourteenth Amendment is reprinted for convenience at the end of the essay.

Democracy on the Brink

As of this writing, Joseph R. Biden has been president for ten days. As is repeated everywhere, the optics of the new presidency are quite different. Jen Psaki is holding truthful press conferences and not calling anyone names. Dr. Fauci is allowed to answer scientific questions and offer projections.

But some things don’t change. Conservative talk shows are Biden-bashing with greater vigor. As a seasoned politician, Biden knows he must demonstrate integrity through the optics of keeping his campaign promises. He has demonstrated his ethics by insisting his appointments treat each other with dignity and respect or he will, “fire [them] on the spot.” He has demonstrated his empathy by focusing on defeating the pandemic. I don’t know that it has been as articulated to the public as clearly that Biden’s economic recovery package is something he intends as bipartisan legislation.

As a leader Biden accepts that he is responsible for anything that happens on his watch and the crisis of a divided nation has not abated. The crisis of racial equity is increasingly appearing to be demarcated along partisan lines. In a piece on Peacock, Mehdi Hasan postulated that our homegrown terrorists, who have been emboldened by a “win” and are underground, are far more dangerous to Americans than Al-Qaeda (even though losing 3000 Americans in one morning is still an unimaginable tragedy) for the following reasons:

1. Al-Qaeda didn’t have news channels broadcasting their worldview 24/7.
2. Al-Qaeda didn’t get cover from the US President: “We love you. You’re special…”
3. Al-Qaeda wasn’t part of the base of a major political party.
4. Al-Qaeda hadn’t infiltrated U.S. law enforcement and the military.
5. Al-Qaeda wasn’t white (with all the privilege that implies).

American Democracy (with a big “d”) is in a very dangerous place. The Joe Bidens and Mitt Romneys almost seem to be the politicians of yesteryear, before the impersonality of the internet appeared to unmuzzle the American id. As party ideologies trend toward extremes, so too, it seems, does decorum and decency and all the ideals we respect in ourselves: loyalty, honesty, bravery. People feel emboldened – entitled by real or perceived oppression even – to denigrate, threaten, beat, and even murder the “other.” We have watched the violence on TV and we are righteously appalled. The question is what fear is so great that the “other” poses a threat? And is it real?

“In all the work I’ve done on the Civil War and public memory,” says David Blight in Politico, “the central thing I’ve learned is that you can’t have healing without some balance with justice.”

Even though it appears the Senate trial for the Second Impeachment may go the way of the partisan divide of the first, you don’t get a free shot at overturning democracy. The Supreme Court just threw out two emoluments cases, one with 38 subpoenas, on the basis that the past president is now a private citizen. That fact does not negate that the former president potentially benefitted from foreign investment while in office.  If the Senate fails to convict in the impeachment, as seems likely, it encourages disreputable actions because there are no consequences. The precedent would be set for a president to be effectively above the law. As George Conway pointed out, we don’t have a precedent for convicting an impeached president when he has been voted out of office because we have not elected that many criminals to the job, especially one that incited insurrection against the democracy. If we determine that it is more important that your party wins no matter what, then the American democratic experiment is effectively over.

It is vitally important that there are guardrails on future administrations to protect the system of checks and balances, one that does not begin with legal maneuvers to invalidate charges on technicalities but holds both citizens and elected officials accountable. The botched COVID response has illuminated quite clearly how, if we don’t cooperate, we lose control of our lives.

In cooperative government, the collective can muster great resources to accomplish great deeds. Without it, we will fragment into tribes that disagree. We need to trust that our election standards are fair, work hard to keep them that way, and work to improve them if necessary. Many of us were successful participants in the largest election of representative democracy in our history. It was a contest. Trump received less votes and was voted out. As Joe Biden has noted, it may be necessary for some of us to get together and pull the rest of us into the future for the enterprise of self-governance and democracy, and so there will be future elections.

“Many centuries ago, Saint Augustine, a saint of my church,” President Biden said, “wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love. What are the common objects we love that define us as Americans? I think I know. Opportunity. Security. Liberty. Dignity. Respect. Honor. And, yes, the truth.”

It is also no longer enough to “reach across the aisle” in politics, but also to consider the influence of money in our elections and address the influence of media on our own decency and discourse.

“We really have arrived at, it appears, two irreconcilable Americas with their own information systems, their own ‘facts’ [beliefs], their own story, their own narrative…. We’re drawn back to the Civil War because its great issues… are still with us: the nature of federalism; the relationship between the states and the federal government; what government means in people’s lives; how centralized government should be; how energetic, how interventionist government should be; and race and racism,” says Blight.

We need unflinching honesty, commitment to the rule of law, and a willingness to compromise. If we mean to move forward as one democracy, one community, we need to agree on our shared American history.

Two Americas

The victimhood and racial resentment that has characterized the last Administration and half the country didn’t begin with racist epithets on a golden escalator and didn’t end with Rudy Giuliani pontificating at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The MAGA rhetoric is absolutely not original, but it is specific. “America First,” the theme of Citizen Trump’s Inaugural speech implying nationalist and anti-interventionist positions, is hardly benign. A slogan utilized by Woodrow Wilson, William Randolph Hearst, Warren Harding, Charles Lindbergh, Pat Buchanan, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, it is also a white supremacist dog whistle and has strong World War II associations with nativism and antisemitism. The permit for the Save America Rally at the Ellipse was procured by Women for America First. The Trump Campaign paid Women for America First more than $2.7M in 2020 alone, bookending his political rise with a specific brand of racism.

But there are other reasons that Trumpism flourished in rural areas that are particularly homogeneous. According to Jack Goldstone on a recent episode of Making Sense, inequality creates revolution historically and is the driver of societal collapse. At first, I was assuming he was referring to income inequality, but there are more tangible inequities in American society: access to opportunity and social mobility, access to middle class amenities: good public schools, medical care, the ability to have a varied diet.

Income inequality matters more, Gladstone opines, when the wealthy get control of government and steer that benefit towards themselves. Americans see the rich benefitting from lower taxation and government programs while denigrating social systems intended to assist those with the greatest need. Our current trajectory of inequality spans about 30 years, says Gladstone, beginning with the rise of financial and information markets that have smaller opportunities in general and in particular for those without advanced (and expensive) degrees. Piled onto that problem is the decline of domestic manufacturing.  

Since 2015 American lifespans have declined, primarily due to diseases of despair. Those numbers are most prevalent in counties that heavily went for Trump. While the segment of society left opportunistically behind rallied around a “Washington outsider” to feel represented, Citizen Trump consistently pointed to the stock market as evidence of economic gains under his watch, evidence implying the administration did very little to understand, much less ameliorate, the concerns of his underserved base.

One man from a small oil producing town left a message on a CNN call center phone recently, expressing his fear for his town and livelihood under a climate-conscious Biden administration, simply venting and not expecting a return call. When CNN then followed up with an expose of the town, despite a positive spin of the story and the upbeat attitude of the interviewees, the undercurrent of fear about the future was palpable, heartbreaking, and clearly exacerbated by Fox News talking points.

Uncivil War

Thirty years is a long time to feel disenfranchised, but it’s not the generations of injustice that sparked the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. “The 14th Amendment is felt by all of us, every day. If it did not invent freedom, it transformed and strengthened it, codifying a universal definition of individual rights and national identity that has been an example to the world. But the failings of those who wrote it linger on. Many of us still have not internalized the idea that an American can look like anyone in the world,” says T.J. Stiles.

The background hum of Civil War is no coincidence. It’s a subliminal current of grievance that has been marinating for 160 years. Tapping into the passionate beliefs that have lingered since Reconstruction is cynical but has proven an effective campaign tool for the modern Republican Party. And it is inevitably followed by an equally passionate counterrevolution. Enflaming passions, especially with misinformation, is incredibly dangerous for democracy because it undermines faith in government and systems people should be able to believe in and understand.  Fanning the flames of disenfranchisement serves as a misdirection from monied interests.

“A federal suit filed in Ohio [in 2016], for instance, accused Roger Stone’s ‘Stop the Steal’ project of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by ‘conspiring to intimidate, threaten, harass, or coerce voters on Election Day,’” says CNN. Ironically, the federal suits that Stone and Stop the Steal are accused of violating are based on the provisions in Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment, intended to establish voting rights.

The largest problem seems to be that we don’t know where we are going as a nation because we can’t agree on where we have been. That disagreement has enormous political value to unscrupulous actors. At some point, today’s political parties have shifted from differences of ideological governance into motivating their constituencies through identity politics.  I don’t think desire for free market capitalism can incite voters to instigate riots to overturn election results or murder police officers.

This country has weathered these conflicting ideologies since the Civil War. The party of Marjorie Taylor Greene is also the party of Joe McCarthy. Historian John Meacham pointed out that presidents had to confront and overcome severe divisions in the past. Lincoln had to accomplish providing freedom over slavery. FDR had to navigate capital and labor. Joe Biden will have to overcome fantasy with reality by producing real results for the populace, reaching out to those who are reachable though reason.

There are many conservatives that embrace the same values. But if you check the GOP website today, there are no platforms there anymore at all.

Manipulating Media Ecosystems

Conservative opinion, whether in the media or the Capitol is a narrative of “minority” victimhood. Rep. Boebart wore a “censored” mask while speaking into a mic on the House floor and being broadcast worldwide. Modern American lawmakers increasingly justify behavior using tactics of “whataboutism” instead of facts and civil debate. Conservative pundits seemingly unironically decry “cancel culture” for being removed from private corporation’s platforms because of violations against corporate rules about dishonesty and inciting violence (my kindergarten teacher also gave time outs).  

“Political opinions expressed on [conservative] talk radio are approaching the level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a totalitarian society. There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic about it,” says Edward Monks, a lawyer from Eugene, Oregon, who studied the commercial talk stations in his town.  Even before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, conservative voices dominated the airwaves, not the other way around.

American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations, for publicity is the most powerful weapon that can be wielded in a republic. And when such a weapon is placed in the hands of one person, or a single selfish group is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership or dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare to differ with them. It will be impossible to compete with them in reaching the ears of the American people.— Rep. Luther Johnson (D.-Texas), in the debate that preceded the Radio Act of 1927.

If lawmakers in the 1920’s needed to debate the “weapon of publicity” when discussing radio broadcasts, indeed, social media platforms share an immense responsibility. ”All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society,” says William Bernbach. “We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.”

This is the responsibility of traditional media. But we now have a larger environment through social media. These platforms are manipulating Americans unwilling or unable to discern fact from opinion to maximize screen time and advertising profits.

“We should not look away from the bigger picture and a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theory juiced by algorithms,” says Apple’s Tim Cook in a recent Inc. article. “It is long past time to stop pretending that this approach doesn’t come with a cause, a polarization of lost trust, and, yes, of violence.”

This is the media environment in which the insurrection was fomented by a businessman adept at media manipulation. We see ourselves as righteous, but the media machine has technologically invaded our spaces and created virtual town squares where the loudest voices are the most highly funded. Amongst this cacophony of opinion is the most disturbing part of American society, the tendency of an extreme portion of the population to engage in conspiracy theories. The most recent is QAnon, who adapts to and explains the changing narrative.

Game designer Reed Berkowitz claims QAnon utilizes a methodology of “guided apophenia”:  game runners are using the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things to guide the users to come to the intended misunderstanding through gaming mechanisms and rewards.

“There is no reality here. No actual solution in the real world,” says Berkowitz. “Instead, this is a breadcrumb trail AWAY from reality. Away from actual solutions and towards a dangerous psychological rush. It works very well because when you ‘figure it out yourself’ you own it. You experience the thrill of discovery [and subsequent dopamine rush], the excitement of the rabbit hole, the acceptance of a community that loves and respects you. Because you were convinced to ‘connect the dots yourself’ you can see the absolute logic of it. This is the conclusion you arrived at. Everyone on the board agrees with you because it’s highly likely they were the ones that pointed it out to you just for that purpose.”

While the Fairness Doctrine may have been flawed, at least there was a discussion about how to balance the reporting of differing opinions. At this point in history, we have to take several steps backward and acknowledge that opinions – no matter how oft repeated – are not facts.  We have the opportunity to reach out to our communities and embrace reality over fantasy and encourage our fellow citizens to observe what our lawmakers do, not what they say.

The Corridors of Power

The 2020 elections were the most expensive campaigns in American history and it’s an intentional trajectory. Business elite have been gaming the system essentially since the government was founded, arguing the Fourteenth Amendment to declare rights for corporations. But special interest lobbies and campaign finance have skewed the idea of representative government.

“Take, for instance, the Koch brothers’ long-running efforts to fight campaign finance reform. They not only benefited spectacularly from 2010’s Citizens United ruling—which gave them the necessary leeway to fund various dark money groups—but have also poured vast sums of money into fighting campaign finance reform itself, including contributing to a number of legal battles to open the political system to undisclosed donors and unlimited campaign spending. In other words, they’ve worked rapaciously to mold the political system to suit their aims,” says J.C. Pan in The New Republic.

 “I would not consider this a grassroots movement by any means,” said Ben Decker, the CEO and founder of Memetica, a digital investigations consultancy. “Stop the Steal is a highly coordinated partisan political operation intent on bringing together conspiracy theorists, militias, hate groups and Trump supporters to attack the integrity of our election.” It sounds nefarious, but this “partisan political operation” was carried out right in the open on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. It was funded by traditional campaign finance, corporate super PACs, and the RNC.  Cable and social media were flooded with ads and bots. There was also a subliminal, coordinated propaganda campaign.

 Before Amazon Web Services suspended hosting services from Parler, conservative users were flocking to the platform, whose cofounder is Rebekah Mercer. Mercer said in a statement to CNN that Parler was founded in 2018 in part because “[t]he ever-increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone leads the fight against data mining,” a remarkably ironic statement from someone whose father, billionaire Robert Mercer, cofounded Cambridge Analytica with the recently pardoned Steve Bannon.

One of the stories to emerge after the Insurrection was about companies pulling their political donations from the politicians that did not denounce said seditious act, that they were revisiting their political donation policies with their boards. The stunning but not surprising news was the sheer number of corporations who consider political donation integral to operations, because only the ones that committed to rescinding donations were published.  

Part of the reason that money is flowing into misinformation campaigns is because of the astronomical success that money influencing politics and public perception has produced for its investors. The deregulation that used to be favored by the Republican party facilitated massive financial gains in 2020 for a select few. According to Forbes, as of January 18, 2021, America’s 660 billionaires enjoyed a combined gain of 38.6% of their collective wealth since mid-March 2020, over $1.1 trillion.

Misinformation

Misinformation is nothing new in American politics. Part of the downfall of the Whig Party in the 1800s was the rise of the American Party (the Know Nothings), who started as a secret society based on inti-immigration sentiment and a conspiracy theory that a Romanist cabal was going to infiltrate America. We have always been a nation of secrets and conspiracies. The invention of the internet facilitated and increased the speed of the spread of misinformation.

In 2019, the FTC filed an administrative complaint against political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica for misuse of mined data, despite the British company filing for insolvency in 2018. The company was implicated in secret misinformation campaigns in Kenya, Malta, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to Bloomberg, Mercer’s Parler domain is now registered with the far-right website services company Epik, Inc., and is relying on web services by the Russian DDoS-Guard, who also provides internet services to the Russian Intelligence Agency and the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Parler isn’t alone in distorting the narrative. “Now-that-the-violence-has-happened-we-are-going-to-do-everything-we-can-to-stop-the-violence” philosophy emerged after Twitter finally enforced their rules. The Verge reported that Facebook in January 2021 shut down, “790 groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads with links to QAnon. It’s also blocked over 300 hashtags across Facebook and Instagram and restricted 1,950 groups and 440 pages on Facebook and over 10,000 accounts on Instagram.”

“800 groups? An ARG [Alternate Reality Game] with an endorsement from the President? An ARG with physical demonstrations organized for multiple countries and over 200 physical locations? These are not ‘organic,’” says Berkowitz. “There is even a full-length movie out, paid for ‘out of pocket’ that is being distributed FOR FREE to spread the word. Hundreds of publications for sale on Amazon. This is a lot of work. … This isn’t how anything but media/advertising/propaganda campaigns work. QAnon needs this kind of media saturation BECAUSE it is not a natural movement.”

“The more people try to shut [QAnon] down (Google, FB, Reddit, Instagram, service providers, TikTok, etc.) the more the Q runners double down, getting ever bigger endorsements from the top politicians in the world,” warns Berkowitz. Alternative sites like Signal, Gab, Rumble, Telegram, and MeWe are filling the void. Newsmax and OAN are nabbing Fox News refugees. Who is funding the operations in your information bubble and why?

A Shining City on a Hill

The Insurrection of the Capital has been on our screens and in our minds. There is a great deal intelligence and judicial communities are still learning about the events leading up to January 6, 2021, but the remedy in Section 3 for elected officials is quite clear. There is little to debate because millions witnessed the incitement and insurrection on live television. Although the rhetoric swirling in the hallowed halls of the Capitol is about moving on and not exacerbating division, you can’t start a fight and then tell everyone else to calm down. The process of healing begins with acknowledging and holding accountable the responsible parties.

While Citizen Trump never learned the intricacies of governance (such as the Constitution), his lifetime of navigating loopholes attracted allies more ambitious than ethical. Although there were enough honest and decent career civil servants to thwart an attempted coup d’etat, the sheer number of lawmakers who failed to renounce the attack on democracy – whether through fear of Trump’s base or personal ambition – is truly alarming.  If we are going to have a commitment to justice, we have to have accountability. We don’t just need clear and understandable laws, we also need to enforce them. And if the Fourteenth Amendment has codified the definition of equality, we need to abide by that Constitutionality and enforce the laws equally. George Floyd deserved the same consideration and justice system as Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Citizen Trump.  

If there is one thing the conservative movement has accomplished astoundingly well is establish a widespread distrust of government and a disdain of social spending. But there are successful programs like Social Security and the Postal Service that are beloved institutions.

Goldstone suggests that restoring faith in government is foremost, emphasizing building a system people can believe in that represents all Americans. Wealthy Americans have access to private parks, private schools, concierge medicine.  When the perception is the wealthy avoid taxation through laws that favor offshore accounts or fleeing to states with lax tax codes while most of the rest of the country are stagnating despite productivity and work ethic, the perception of fairness falters. Fair taxation funds social programs like public schools, police and fire, food security, and the arts.

The Biden Administration is in a unique position to develop a government of empathy. Biden will need a couple of wins like clear and demonstrable success with the vaccine rollout to remind people that government can be trusted. To reiterate, in cooperative government, the collective can muster great resources to accomplish great deeds.

“[Citizen Trump] is like the COVID of politics,” says Trevor Noah. “America is going to be experiencing side effects long after he is out of the system. Unfortunately, we will probably see mutated strains as well. But with him out of power, I do hope that we can be more honest with each other and more nuanced about how we talk about what divides us.”

AMENDMENT XIV

SECTION 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

SECTION 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

SECTION 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

SECTION 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

SECTION 5

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.