Wayne LaPierre and the Good Guy with a Gun

On Thursday, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, NRA leader Wayne LaPierre gave a combative speech in opposition to new proposed gun control measures. After a recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida that left 17 dead, the surviving students took it upon themselves to become advocates. The resulting debate has been unusually fierce even for our highly charged political climate.

LaPierre made the argument that is familiar to all of us by now. The only thing that stops a malicious shooter is a well intentioned one. He holds that any significant restriction on the ownership of firearms undermines a freedom fundamental to the defense of other rights and interests. How is one to resist force, after all, if not with equal force? If mass shootings are to continue, then the real way to fight them is by providing armed guards.

What can be made of the argument that an armed citizenry is the best defense against an oppressive government? The specter raised in LaPierre's speech is one of an all-powerful, distant elite ruling a terrorized populace. It is also exactly as real as every other ghost story ever told. Oppressive governments everywhere are able to oppress because they have the support of a subset of the population sufficiently wealthy and well connected to enforce control.

From a government control perspective there is little difference between a population that is disarmed and one that is uniformly armed, as the underlying structure of power is largely unchanged. In fact, if we take LaPierre's argument about resisting oppression seriously, the only way to operationalize it logically is by disarming the powerful and arming the powerless.

The question at the heart of the gun issue is often framed in terms of individual rights, but I don't think that is the clearest way to state it. The basic question, as I see it, is whether we feel that the ability of individuals to project force against one another is above social regulation. How we decide that question may not in general change the ability of a government to repress, but it will have a significant bearing on the kind of society we live in.

If we do believe that society cannot regulate the capacity of individuals to inflict harm on one another - rather than simply punishing such harm as it occurs - then there will never be very much between me and anyone who decides, for any reason at all, that I'm the person they want to kill. In a society where mass shootings have become horrifyingly commonplace, every individual is well aware of the danger.

Humanity as a whole is extremely vulnerable to the trap of the quick fix. When we are made significantly uncomfortable - in particular when we are afraid - we are likely to pick the fastest possible way to remove the discomfort without regard to its source. Such decisions may not be well discussed in the public forum before they are made, but that does not prevent them from having far reaching consequences.

If we react to our continuing fear about mass shootings by demanding armed guards wherever there is a risk, there will eventually be armed guards in more or less every public space. Yet armed individuals can only defend against an ongoing act, because their existence does not address the underlying social, cultural, and policy factors that cause mass shootings. The best that can possibly be expected from them is reduced casualties.

The most probable result of seeing more people with more guns in more places is an increasing paranoia about the dangers of everyday life. A generation that grows up in an environment where mass shootings are a regularity and armed guards are present on a daily basis could hardly keep itself from seeing the world as a hostile place from which it needs to be protected. People who feel that way support authoritarian regimes and oppress feared minority groups. The only thing that is ultimately secured by a frightened people asking for protection is the power of the ruling class.

There can and should be a robust debate about the best way to achieve two objectives; address the conditions that lead to mass shooters, and make it harder for would-be mass shooters to get the necessary equipment. Arming more people, be it at home or in public, does neither of those things. It therefore cannot prevent mass shootings. It is genuinely that simple.

We  do need to put work into remedying the social and cultural conditions that turn individuals into mass shooters. We do need to provide better resources for disturbed people before they decide to act, and also for those who see someone they know at risk. But we also need to realize that these events require both intent and opportunity. Saying that gun control is not a significant part of the solution is equivalent to saying that opportunity plays no role in mass shootings, and it is equally absurd.

Why Did the Russians Interfere?

On Friday, special counsel Robert Mueller handed down the first indictments of foreign nationals from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Thirteen individuals were targeted in all. The indictment describes a sophisticated operation designed to use social media to promote their favored candidates (Trump in the Republican Party, Bernie Sanders in the Democratic), discredit candidates they opposed (Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz), and encourage partisan division as well as social unrest.

This moment, when the specifics of the Russian operation are being officially discussed for the first time, seems like a good one to take stock of what Russian interference means and what it does not mean, as well as evaluate how we've been talking about Russia for the last two years.

The reporting on the Russia investigation has frequently bordered on the hysterical. Such respected figures as Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe have referred to Russian campaign actitivities as an act of warfare. Repeated, unironic references to Trump or his associates as Russian agents, or to the president as taking marching orders from Putin appear across left-leaning media. This is important, because while there is an abundance of evidence that Russia attempted to influence the election and succeeded in at least some degree, there is no evidence at all that this was a masterminded plot by Putin to install a compromised puppet in the Presidency of the United States.

That distinction matters. Understanding precisely what Russia did and didn't do - and why they did what they did - matters. One could read eighteen months' worth of media coverage on this issue and emerge with no more sophisticated idea of Putin's motivations than a notion that he is an evil genius who spends his days and nights dreaming of world domination and how to destroy democracy. The reader may be unsurprised to learn that I, writing from the midwest, do not have privileged access to Vladimir Putin's internal monologue. That being said, it's not terribly difficult to imagine what calculations he is making.

During negotiations with the Soviet Union over a reunified Germany's membership in NATO in 1990, the NATO countries - led by the United States - made it clear that in return for the Soviets' cooperation on Germany they would renounce any intention of expanding NATO into eastern Europe. NATO, which began as a political association and became an explicitly anti-Soviet military alliance in the course of the Cold War, was reasonably regarded by the Soviets as a hostile organization. NATO expansion into eastern Europe began only a few years later and has continued to the present.

Moreover, Russia's brief experiment in liberal democracy during the 1990s was not successful, to put it mildly. Mismanagement, corruption, and economic collapse are what most Russians associate with that decade. Putin may be a natural autocrat, but the Russian people generally agree with him that the influence of the United States in Russia after the Cold War was the cause of a great deal of misery. His popularity is by no means as universal as he would like us to think, but it is nonetheless genuine. The vehement hostility of the US toward Putin personally only serves to reinforce his image.

So, when Russian operatives attempt to use social media to exacerbate social tensions, it is because Putin's experience of socially tense democracy leads him to believe that doing so will keep the US from projecting significant power in what he regards as the Russian sphere. When Russian operatives lend support to the Sanders and Trump campaigns, it is because those two candidates were the only ones in either of the major parties in 2016 who openly supported calming tensions with Russia.

None of which, of course, is to say that the Russian campaign was justified. Far from it. I would say that in general this kind of blatant manipulation of any country's political process by another government is indefensible. It is morally wrong. What I mean to emphasize is that while we may be justifiably outraged at the act and want to bring those responsible to account, we should also realize that the structural problems with our relationship with Russia are not going away. A serious conversation to address them is long overdue.

The Mueller investigation has already exposed that the Trump campaign was aware of and enthusiastic about Russian efforts on their behalf. That is deeply disturbing, although not illegal. Whether there was a formal or tacit connection between them has not yet been revealed, but if convincing evidence of it exists I have yet to see it. Donald Trump has and will continue to provide us with frequent occasion to note the negative effects he has on the country, but the overwhelming likelihood is that he is no more a puppet than Vladimir Putin is a Bond villain.

The Democrats, for their part, have encouraged the Trump-As-Russian-Puppet narrative because it provides an explanation for their 2016 loss that does not require them to critically examine their own performance. Admittedly, it is a fine line to walk in their case between legitimate outrage at what did occur and politically motivated grandstanding about what may not have. Yet not only does their singular focus on Russia risk an overreach if the investigation finds no evidence of illegality, it also validates the fearful, xenophobic, America-against-the-world mentality that Trump embodies. They would do better to stick to what is known and use this moment to develop a sensible and coherent policy toward Russia.

The Budget Issue We Aren't Talking About

Yesterday the Trump administration released its second annual budget proposal. It contained a number of eyebrow-raising provisions designed to significantly weaken the social safety net, headlined by a plan to morph half of what is recieved by SNAP recipients into cheap, delivered food baskets. Presidential budget proposals in general are regarded by Congress with the kind of amused condescension usually reserved for children, and it is difficult to say how many of the most absurd ideas have a chance of becoming policy - though some of them, in some form, certainly will.

There is a deeper structural problem with the direction of recent budgets that I would like to point out, because I think the risk it poses to the economy at large has been not just underestimated but ignored entirely in the political discussion. I am speaking about the national debt and deficit. The total national debt is currently at about 105% of our Gross Domestic Product, which is to say that the total dollar value of our debt is slightly larger than the value of what our economy produced last year.

The 100% mark has a powerful hold on the minds of investors in government debt. Because what an economy produces in a year determines the rate at which it can repay outstanding debt, purchasers of government debt will be reluctant to continue buying if the government in question is putting out so much debt that their ability to repay is called into question. While 100% is not by any means a crisis threshold, it is widely considered a point where questions of repayment start to become more relevant.

While deficits* were large under the Obama administration, the debt was prevented from coming a critical issue by two circumstances. The first was that the Federal Reserve, in a desperate attempt to keep lending from stopping entirely after the crash of 2007-8, kept interest rates very near zero. While the government was adding significant new debt, the fact that it carried essentially no interest meant that it would be relatively easy to service for the foreseeable future.

The second was that spending caps in place from President Obama's conflicts with the Congress kept the government's expenditures from increasing while a recovering economy slowly began to increase the tax income it could collect. As a result, the deficit fell by roughly half from the third year of the Obama administration to its last.

On the premise that new debt is still relatively easy to service, the Republican Party collectively shrugged when economic analyses universally declared that its tax cut law would increase annual deficits back above the one trillion mark - previously only reached in the worst years of the recession - on a regular basis.

Yet the beginning of the crash was fully ten years ago and the Fed now acknowledges the need to raise interest rates back to more historically normal levels, to prevent lending from getting out of control. That means that the enormous continued increases in debt will no longer have the cover of low interest rates to keep them from getting out of hand.

Furthermore, the economy has been expanding now for nearly ten years since rock bottom in 2009. It would be foolish to assume that this expansion will continue indefinitely, or even for another five years. Recessions, even relatively mild ones, put pressure on government budgets for the reasons already discussed. Lower tax receipts and higher necessary spending on unemployment benefits and safety net programs tend together to increase government deficits in hard times.

When - not if, when - there is another recession for whatever reason, if government debt continues on its long term trajectory there will begin to be serious questions about the ability or willingness of the US government to commit to paying it all. At that point, the largest economy in the world could plausibly find itself in a precarious position similar to those faced in recent times by Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Whatever one makes of the policy those countries took out of the crises, there is no way out of that situation that does not involve substantial economic pain inflicted on the populace. If the government tries to repudiate the debt, interest rate spikes and an inability to find new creditors could quickly paralyze government operations for sheer lack of funds. If the Fed were tempted for economic or political reasons to simply increase the money supply to cover the cost of the debt, it would risk a sizable inflation that would raise the cost of basic necessities and erode savings.

Finally, if like the countries mentioned the government were to try to use the leverage it has over its creditors (the sheer size of its debt) to bargain them down, a solution would still involve an economically painful combination of higher tax rates and expenditure cuts. My experience of the political system in this country does not make me hopeful that those cuts would spare the worst off among us. Regardless, the wanton mismanagement of the government budget will eventually have profound consequences for the country at large if it is not addressed very soon.

In the last twenty years we have repeatedly squeezed money from the regulatory infrastructure and the social safety net to finance growing military expenditures and wholly unnecessary tax cuts. We have also failed to address the systemic issues in our medical system that drive the excessively growing costs of Medicare and Medicaid. Without an aggressive reevaluation the direction of the federal budget it will have social and economic effects that, once set into motion, will be difficult to control.

*For those who may not be aware, the deficit is the yearly increase in new government debt, or equivalently the amount by which government expenditures outstrip its income

The Memo

The news this week has been consumed by the release of a controversial memo, written by the Republicans of the House Intelligence Committee. That memo, which was released over the objections of House Democrats and the FBI director, detailed alleged abuses of surveillance law by the FBI which, in the view of Chairman Devin Nunes called into question the political motives of the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election.

The memo is without doubt a genuinely partisan document, designed to undermine the investigation that has gone on now for two years. Whether it has any real factual basis or - as the Democrats and FBI claim - suffers from purposeful omissions of context is currently unknowable, because the supporting documents haven't  been released by anyone.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of the merits of the memo I'm disgusted with everyone involved. The Republican Party has finally been subsumed entirely by the president, as symbolized by its officially taking sides with him against the FBI. The Democrats, who those with memories will recall were castigating the FBI for its handling of the Clinton email investigation just a year ago, have found that they don't appreciate political attacks on federal law enforcement after all.

Meanwhile, the FBI has been engaging in abuses of power ranging from questionable to horrifying from its founding nearly a century ago. Even mong the vast, only-vaguely accountable federal agencies that handle law enforcement, intelligence, and surveillance it has a particularly checkered history.

It is in spite of my profound skepticism of the FBI as an institution - maybe in a sense because of it - that it is so surreal and disturbing to find that it is increasingly becoming a political football tossed back and forth between the parties.

Law enforcement is always a delicate issue. It is the place where the frequently high-flown ideals and inspiring phrases behind the composition of policy meet the unpleasant reality that the existence of law implies the threat of force. Because it is impossible to investigate and prosecute every crime the application of the law must be in some sense subjective. There must be some set of conscious or unconscious criteria by which we determine what is a crime and prioritize the punishment of certain crimes or crimes committed by certain individuals.

It is very dangerous to allow strictly partisan politics to become a part of those criteria. Law enforcement must always in some sense be political, but when it is no longer off limits to purely partisan activity it immediately becomes more susceptible to abuse. The fact that the FBI has largely maintained its political credibility with the very poor record on civil liberties it already has makes me uneasy about the record it would have if it were stripped of its nonpartisan veneer. That the President seems to have no issues at all encouraging that process - he recently asked the director of the FBI whose "side" the Director is on and is reportedly considering using the memo as an excuse to fire the FBI official overseeing the special counsel investigation - is proof, as if more were needed, of his complete lack of scruples when it comes to protecting himself and his own influence.

Bizarrely, their reflexive antagonism to Trump has led a number of prominent Democratic and #Resistance figures to heap praise on a security establishment of which they ought to be skeptical on principle. They are making heroes of people like former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who famously lied to Congress about warrantless surveillance of American citizens before it was exposed by the Snowden leaks, all because he criticized Trump's political pressure on the FBI. This sort of behavior seems to be a part of a broader attempt by the Democratic Party to capture a political center which they still haven't recognized no longer exists.

In short, almost everything surrounding the political debates about the FBI is a sham. The selective, almost pathologically inconsistent application of principled arguments for partisan advantage on the part of both parties is nauseating. For the Republicans, that is compounded by their apparent willingness to compromise federal law enforcement in the defense of a president most of them privately despise but are too cowardly to challenge without the comfort of anonymity.

And so the sordid power struggle continues apace. Caught in the middle as ever are the common people of this country, who are seeing their relative living standards continue to materially worsen while the two parties - both increasingly funded by the super rich - do battle for who gets to sit in the biggest chairs. The FBI may be only the newest battleground in the contest, but it is particularly treacherous ground on which to fight. The parties, and the president, would both do better to reevaluate their priorities. I doubt I am alone in my pessimism that they will do so.