An un-regulated militia ?: Looking back at NRA's 100-year history in favor of gun control

Let's start with some historical facts about NRA and gun control in the United States:

In the 1920s, the National Revolver Association, the arm of the NRA responsible for handgun training, proposed regulations later adopted by nine states, requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, five years additional prison time if the gun was used in a crime, a ban on gun sales to non-citizens, a one day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, and that records of gun sales be made available to police

Coleman, A. (2016) "When NRA Supported Gun Control" , TIME Magazine 

A decade later,  NRA led the enactment of further gun control legislation:

In 1929, Al Capone’s St. Valentine’s Day massacre saw men disguised as Chicago police kill 7 rivals with machine guns. Bonnie and Clyde’s crime-and-gun spree from 1932-34 was a national sensation. John Dillinger robbed 10 banks in 1933 and fired a machine gun as he sped away. 

A new president in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made fighting crime and gun control part of his ‘New Deal.’ The NRA helped him draft the first federal gun controls: 1934’s National Firearms Act and 1938’s Gun Control Act.

The NRA President at the time, Karl T. Frederick, a 1920 Olympic gold-medal winner for marksmanship who became a lawyer, praised the new state gun controls in Congress. “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons,” he testified before the 1938 law was passed. “I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

Rosenfeldt, A. (2013) The NRA Once Supported Gun Control. Salon

The current position of the National Rifle Association (NRA) against any kind of gun control is historically speaking a red herring and, arguably, an infringement of the Second Amendment -the one that states that:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." .

 Consistent with that first sentence of the Second Amendment -usually invoked to protect the individual right to bear arms- states and federal government are charged with keeping "well regulated" militias. That is a clear mandate for strictly controlling with regulations the purchase, carrying and use of arms of any kind.

In fact, creating and keeping "a well-regulated militia" could (and perhaps should) include charging states and communities (the levels of independent government Second Amendment was meant to preserve to prevent federal tyranny) with organizing armed citizens to protect their schools, churches and neighborhoods helping and complementing the police. That would channel their enthusiasm for and expertise in guns towards positive, measurable social impact. Such as lowering mass-shootings at schools and churches near zero.

Rampant crime waves like those in the days of Capone and Luciano were addressed by the NRA by promoting successful gun control laws, such as the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, that imposed licensing and controls to sell and buy arms and was replaced by the Gun Control Act of 1968, .    In both cases, NRA supported the gun control laws. At the time of its passage in 1968, NRA executive vice president Franklin Orth wrote in American Rifleman that "the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with".

It was only in 1977 when a group with extreme anti-regulation positions seized control of NRA
and turned into political lobbying by targeting lawmakers "scoring" their votes and targeting
those who didn't agree with the new NRA positions pouring billions against them in campaigns.

Along the entire US history, Black Americans found themselves often as targets of guns and racist violence.

Then they also turned frequently pro-gun and created their own armed militias -the Black Panthers- during the same period the NRA adopted its anti-gun control and White-supremacy extremist stance. During the violent and riotous 1970s, pro-gun Black Panthers claimed the Second Amendment and gun-control Republican Party Ronald Reagan passed the Mulford Act banning public arm carrying (open or concealed).

The latest attempt to "regulate the militia" was the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, that banned precisely the AR-15 and other war weaponry for a limited period (1994-1996) . The law passed Congress under the proviso of verifying its impact in a short 3-year period. The National Institute of Justice was charged with conducting the research in states that previously had and those that hadn't gun control.

The report, published in 1996, was inconclusive, even for the short period covered,.  stating that:

It appears that the assault weapons ban had clear short-term effects on the gun market, some of which were unintended consequences: production of the banned weapons increased before the law took effect and prices fell afterward. These effects suggest that the weapons became more available generally, but they must have become less accessible to criminals because there was at least a short-term decrease in criminal use of the banned weapons. Evidently, the excess stock of grandfathered assault weapons manufactured prior to the ban is, at least for now, largely in the hands of dealers and collectors. The ban’s short-term impact on gun violence has been uncertain, due perhaps to the continuing availability of grandfathered assault weapons, close substitute guns and large capacity magazines, and the relative rarity with which the banned weapons were used in gun violence even before the ban.

Based on those tentative early findings, COTUS didn't renew the ban, which to this day makes AR-15 and other assault weapons available to private citizens.

The continuing wave of mass killings in schools and universities might force immediate measures such as protecting schools with armed guards and check up points as airports and banks currently are. 

These kind of measures, long overdue, might not suffice to protect adequately students and teachers without an equally intensive reinforcement of background checks and banning online sales of arms that make now particularly easy for the mentally deranged and terrorists (domestic or otherwise) to have access to them.

In any case, it is paradoxical that the NRA, originally chartered to prepare a "well-regulated" militia of armed citizens and promote civil and lawful use of guns have degenerated into a major obstacle to the full application of the Second Amendment.

A careful inspection of how NRA officers get "elected" for such long terms -decades- and why individuals that would hardly get elected for a school district gained control of it shows that only 7 percent of NRA membership currently votes :

To their perpetual shame, the vast majority of NRA members eligible to vote simply don’t bother.  While the NRA has the reputation of being able to deliver huge numbers of votes for, or against, politicians in state and federal elections, the members take little interest in the internal political matters of their own organization.  While every NRA member eligible to vote receives a ballot in their regular NRA magazine, fewer than 7% bother to return them.  That’s a pretty poor showing for the oldest and most powerful civil rights organization in the country.

Knox, J. ( 2011) NRA Board Elections continued. The Firearms Coalition

Perhaps it's due time to take back the NRA replacing their current leadership with other more interested in upholding the Second Amendment in full.

NRA board elections should get at least the same public and press coverage than any district with 5 million+ electors.

Meanwhile, un-regulated militias (and loonies making "armies of one") will continue to grow with the uncivil discourse on both sides of the issue and all sides of an increasingly fragmented society.

Un-regulated white supremacists or anti-government militias that operate in fact as "boot camps" for potential mass shooters:

Un-regulated gun-carrying black Americans citizens and communities caught in the middle of drug wars and living in arms-infested drug ghettos, exposed to "black on black" violence (90 % + of black victims of homicide):

Un-civil militians might eventually force governments to enact gun protection and control and gun owners to take back the NRA (and out of extremist politics) and enact the gun control  and other measures at state and community level-.

The best hope for our schools and students is that states and communities can do it sooner rather than later to cut the spread of copycat mass killings in schools and unprotected public places.

Un-regulated militias armed and kept un-regulated by the current co-opted NRA show the wisdom of the Second Amendment -if we care for read it from the beginngs.

Geopolitics of Emotions - Dominique Moisi

Emotions are not just individual feelings , but also collective  spirits  that define the ways different cultures and countries respond to the future based on its past experiences, explains Dominique Moisi, professor of Harvard and Sorbonne in his thought-provoking book "Geopolitics of Emotions: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are Reshaping the World".

Analyzing the pushback against globalization after the Great Recession of 2008 in different countries, Moisi made a significant observation:

"If democracies are losing faith in democratic models, and if autocratic regimes are supported in their antidemocratic practices by their combination of high economic growth and political stability, it is the Western world that suffers most from this evolution. the primary reason that today’s globalizing world is the ideal fertile ground for the blossoming or even the explosion of emotions is that globalization causes insecurity and raises the question of identity. Identity is strongly linked with confidence, and in turn confidence, or the lack thereof, is expressed in emotions—in particular, those of fear, hope, and humiliation."

Social emotions  condition the ways different cultures and regions react to events, see the future and interpret their past. Cunning populist politicians ride on social emotions to advance their own careers by responding to the swings of social moods.

Moisi describes three main kinds of social emotions: fear, hope and humiliation : 

•  Fear is the absence of confidence. If your life is dominated by fear, you are apprehensive about the present and expect the future to become ever more dangerous.

•  Hope, by contrast, is an expression of confidence; it is based on the conviction that today is better than yesterday and that tomorrow will be better than today.

• Humiliation is the injured confidence of those who have lost hope in the future; your lack of hope is the fault of others, who have treated you badly in the past. When the contrast between your idealized and glorious "

If we draw a map of the world, we can easily see how emerging Asia -China, India, Southeast- have a hopeful view and attitude towards the future. All the energy of their societies are focused in moving ahead and they are confident that they can improve their lot with effort and using their talent. They view globalization as an opportunity.

Developed countries such as those in Western Europe and the United States' politics are dominated by fear. They want to part ways (Brexit, Cataxit) , build walls (US) or cut immigration. They see globalization as a menace to their standard of living, wages and culture.

The Middle East is dominated by humiliation, a feeling that they have lost their cultural dignity and independence, that their better days are in the remote past of the times of the Prophet and the Califate. Humiliation breeds hatred as people see foreigners and even those embracing change and moving upwards as exploiters and feel victims excluded from the benefits. Latin Americans felt humiliated by the debt crash of the 1990s and turned similarly to angry rhetoric and populist solutions -from Chavez "bolivarian socialism" to Argentina's "kirchnerism".

Social emotions, explains Moisi, can also mix and coexist, creating conflicts inside each society: prosperous and military powerful Israel sits in the middle of poorly governed, low income, backward-moving neighbors. Arabs' anger and humiliation after their successive military defeats and their poor economic performance is corresponded with reactions of understandable fear by prosperous and otherwise hopeful Israelis.

US' Appalachia and rust belt regions voted for Trump -a successful millionaire with a populist platform and angry rhetorics- on the promise of bringing back the jobs and "make America great again". Those living in out-of-London Britain voted for a populist Brexit to stop immigration that they feel as a double menace to their jobs and their security.

Populist politicians pander to humiliation with a promise to "bring back" a glorious past (Califate, coal mining jobs, a more homogeneous community) and pointing to "enemies of the people": elites, "cosmopolitans", "bureaucrats" , promising to "drain the swamp" and kill the evil hydra of the "deep state". Or destroy Israel. Or re-establish El-Andaluz and the 7th century Caliphate. 

Emotions can be created by economic crises and also provoke them, by adopting self-defeating policies such as rising tariffs or leaving the EU. Or a multi-cultural country -as in the case of Spain or Iraq-

Self-fulfilling prophecies are particularly hard to avoid, especially for those living inside strong swings of social emotions. For those dominated by fear or humiliation, wars and decay might be also the path of least resistance. For those cultures dominated by hope, success is more likely and failure easier to overcome. 

Steering societies away from self-damaging populist "temper tantrums" in times of social fear of humiliation requires not just leadership, but statesmanship.

It took an FDR or a Churchill to instill hope in countries humiliated by economic Depression and fearing the military machine of Fascist and Communist invaders. Or a Nelson Mandela or a Mahatma Gandhi to overpower humiliation and bring together deeply divided societies.

The current leadership clearly doesn't make that cut.

US Debt Bomb III: "Is this time different" ?

As it is  often the case with populism -and Sebastian Edwards explains in his conference about the long and dramatic experience of Latin American countries with it - , US might be entering a debt-default crisis stage. That might be what is behind the sustained hike in the 10-year bonds and interest rates on US debt.

Unlike what happens with populism in the developing world, in US there are not one but two populist parties: the Democrats practice "Left" wing populism inflating entitlements to get minorities' votes and Republicans do the "Right" wing version subsidizing Wall Street and the military-industrial complex with tax cuts. Both policies -deeply ingrained in the parties' platforms- are predicated in increasing spending.

The arguments -or excuses- for either side are that public spending creates jobs and fuels demand (a distorted version of Keynes' -who warned  against debt and justified public spending only for short periods of time-) (the Left wing argument) or that low taxes attract investment and create jobs. Notice that "jobs" is the key populist word here.

The invariable result of the swings between tax cuts and spending is the growth of the national debt, now reaching 20 trillion dollars, a level that goes over the 100 % of US GDP  (104 % to be precise)

and would put any other country in imminent risk of default, as economist Kenneth Roggoff and  Carmen Reinhardt explain in their study of 500 years of debt, "This Time is Different"

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles produced a detailed and uncontested diagnostic of the debt problem created with these two-sided seesaw that both parties are using to chop down our shared economic tree. They recommended both spending cuts (in defense and social entitlements) and tax hikes to return the runaway deficit to sustainable levels. 

Simpson used his gift for the vernacular to describe the reception they got as"the one that you get when you fart at a garden wedding". Both Obama and the Republicans promise to act on it and they did. They both stop talking about Simpson-Bowles.

Populists politicians might brag when the stock market goes up -much as a rooster bragging about bringing sunrise- only to fall silent when the inevitable "correction" comes back and erases paper gains.

Now, the "correction" menaces to erase more than previous gains with record falls that bring stock values below what they were 2 years ago, making all Americans feel the pinch in their savings -which in turn can aggravate the crisis by depressing consumption-.

The real bad news is that the cause of this continued fall and two serious symptoms: higher 10-year rates (which baloon the existing 20 trillion debt) and inflation (which hits cost of living for millions). That combination costed Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford their presidencies, and took a disciplined Fed years of high rates and dreaded "austerity".

If the current trend continues to unfold, the first openly populist president since Jackson will face the challenge of managing an era of austerity. Looking at how other populist leaders did it in Latin America - Maduro, Kirchner, Rousseff- it might not be easy

State of the Union: Ronald Reagan's 1982 address

In 1982 Ronald Reagan gave his first State of the Union (SOU) speech to the Congress. It was a good summary of the policies for a sustained economic recovery and the kind of approach that has historically worked well for the United States.

Reagan defined four key principles to guide his government:

1. Control federal spending
2. Cut taxes 
3. Reduce regulation
4. Keep a strong dollar and the good credit of the United States

Point 2 and 3 have been tried by successive orthodox Republican governments, and also by the current president.

Point 1 has been neglected by both parties, paying with additional debt increased government spending in partisan priorities -social programs or defense- 

Point 4 is particularly important at the present. The dollar and trust on the good faith and credit of US are key to avoid a damaging rise in the interest we pay on our debt and the ability to control inflation, and the Secretary of the Treasure has made imprudent and ill-informed comments on the benefits of a weak dollar. President Trump's own comments during his campaign dallying with defaulting US debt as a last resort have never been clearly recanted.

This SOU might be a good time to do it.

For those who are interested in Reagan's program, here's a link to the entire document.

European Populism: Ideological Spectrum and Scorecard

Populism has taken over several former communist countries, like Poland. 

There are rising Right-wing populist parties in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands and Poland and Left-wing populists in Spain and Greece.

There are Right-wing populist governments in Greece (Left Syriza) Austria, Hungary and Poland.

WSJ has published a very interesting article on Poland's Right-wing government defacement of anti-Communist union leader and first post-Communist Lech Walesa. 

Populist governments put a great emphasis in re-writing history (in Argentina the populist Kirchners created a "Historical Revisionism Institute" for that purpose) , renaming streets, moving away statues and donning their leaders' name to all things public. Territorial marking, we can call it, a step further of gerrymandering (and much simpler).

But the authors of the article, Drew Hinshaw and Marcus Walker, add a key graph describing the commonalities and nuances of Left and Right-wing European populism:

Each column shows one ingredient of the Populists' electoral playbook:

1. Hostility to Muslim immigration
2. For a looser EU (against multi-state unions)
3. For higher welfare spending
4. For a weaker US military presence in Europe

The horizontal axis goes from the Far Left (Syriza and Podemos) to the Far Rigth (Poland and Netherlands)

This confluence between former Communist (Podemos, Syriza) and Fascist (National Front, Poland) parties is not new. Benito Mussolini explained it back in 1921:

"Tomorrow, Fascists and communists, both persecuted by the police, may arrive at an agreement, sinking their differences until the time comes to share the spoils. I realize that though there are no political affinities between us, there are plenty of intellectual affinities. Like them, we believe in the necessity for acentralized and unitary state, imposing an iron discipline on everyone, but with the difference that they reach this conclusion through the idea of class, we through the idea of the nation." 

As quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 494, Mussolini's declaration near the end of 1921.

The most interesting twist on European populism is that of Poland. Instead of opposing the European Union, the populist Polish leaders want to turn it into "European First Europe", launching a war against "non-European" immigration.

Hinshaw and Walter explain this new turn of the populist movements:

"Populism has grown where living standards have fallen, such as in Greece and Italy, but also where they haven’t. In Poland, which hasn’t had a recession for a quarter-century, even the successes of convergence with Europe have fed a potent nationalism.

Poland’s turn is unnerving European elites more than Brexit, because few Poles want to leave the EU. Instead, Poland’s populist rulers want to fight a culture war over the character of the EU and what it means to be European.

Some political scientists -like Harvard's Dominique Moisi- have developed a more ellaborated model to explain the motives for the rise of populism in prosperous countries.

For Americans looking at the tug-of-war on DACA and immigration reform, this is an interesting look at the mutations of the reactionary movements in the developed world.

US Debt Bomb II : Who remembers Simpson-Bowles ?

I took very seriously the Simpson-Bowles report and its proposals when they first appeared.

They were the first bipartisan -or even non-partisan- serious study and proposal I have read so far on the matter of long-term (50 years) financial management of our country.

Unfortunately, after more than 15 years of being issued, presented and discarded, Simpson-Bowles remains the only serious and comprehensive proposal for fiscal reform. In the intervening years, the 2001 deficit has ballooned from the 5.4 trillion legacy that George W Bush received to the 19 trillion that welcomed Donald J Trump in 2016. 

Moreover, measured as a percentage of GDP -as experts Kenneth Roggoff and Carmen Reinhardt found the 90 % debt/GDP as the tipping point at which debt becomes unpayable- is represents a jump from under 60 % to over 100 %, a level that in any other country would put US interest payments in the double-digit ballpark.

Rogoff seems to be more optimistic about the short-term levels of growth that Trump's economy can achieve.

Having said that, the Harvard economist cautions about the challenges ahead if for some of several reasons, trust on the dollar strenght -and the toying with defaulting our sovereign debt (something explicitly banned in our Constitution) instead of doing a harder adjustment on government spending.

Trump -a businessman who called himself "the king of debt"- has flirted with the idea of indirectly defaulting the 19 trillion debt he inherited by repurchasing bonds at a lower price -thereby stiffing bondholders- if necessary.

Trump has not come back to such suggestions, but his seems to be a "supply-side" approach to debt that can leave a serious bubble burst like the one that exploded in 2007-2008.

The fact that dealing with such levels of mounting debt was ignored for such long period of time without any cry for action is just another example of the dangerous disregard for unpopular facts that characterizes populism and partisan thinking.

An over 100 % debt/GDP ratio (still growing) should raise a red flag for anybody holding US dollars or T bonds and Simpson-Bowles should be revisited. But that is, of course, assuming that hard choices are something that partisans want to discuss in an "election year" (code word for "ever", since all years are election years). 

Although Alan Simpson remains one of the most straight-talking, knowledgeable and respected speakers today, his candor, bipartisanship and expertise is not enough to recapture the attention of the majority of voters distracted by 24/7 multimedia partisan networks, droning surrogate talking heads and tweeter name-calling wars. They remain unaware about the growing quicksand where their finances and those of their children and grandchildren are gradually sinking.

A national debt over 100 % of our GDP is the real "swamp" in Washington, a bipartisan 19 trillion dollar-black hole punched by each new administration.

Given the precipitous growth of fiscal deficits (through either spending or tax cuts) Bowles-Simpson should be a starting point to propose an equally fact-based and professionally elaborated long term proposal.

Here is the access to the full Simpson-Bowles report.

US Debt Bomb I: Populism Fuels Partisan Spending out of control

When Senator Daniel P. Moinyhan famously said that "everybody is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts" nobody imagined that 40 years later someone will come back with "alternative facts".

I plan to post regularly facts that may or may not please those on one or another partisan position -there are many parties to each set of facts- but I hope will help keep discussions honest and conclusions closer to reality.

It's a tall order for a time in which we as a society live in almost parallel universes divided by invisible gerrymandered lines, that keep voters homogeneous and congresspeople glued to their seats. That old practice has been refined and compounded since the inception of cable TV newscasts and later, partisan websites, which create "echo chambers" that repeat party lines at a set of 3 or 4 daily "news cycles" brainwashing, rinsing and repeating willing viewers with the partisan talking points decided by partisan campaign managers and their press agents. All of this, financed by billions of dollars of media moguls turned into kingmakers.

Such activity requires as well a constant dissing of expertise as "elitism" and replace facts with conspiracy theories and urban legends. 

Partisanship has infected all areas of public life to an almost comic level: universities create "safe zones" to protect college students from the "microagressions" of unacceptable opinions and facts.

Both "Left" and "Right" partisans pick or drop friends, family, clubs, associations, careers, colleges and even jobs based increasingly on partisan politics.

The 2016 election and its aftermath -the first year of Trump's unexpected and dysfunctional presidency- brought the war on facts to a new level of virulence.

First fact-check: "Obama grew the national debt more than all previous presidents together"

Well, although Math can be used creatively, this is too much even for that. Thanks to the useless "debt ceilings" we have a long time-series of national debt from 1981 to 2014:

As we can see, it's awful and dangerous -we are in the 19 trillion level with a new round of tax cuts- and ignores the Bowles-Simpson bipartisan commission recommendations almost to detail -as senator Simpson forecasted-

Obama received a 11 trillion debt from George W Bush in 2008 (together with the Great Recession 2008-2011) and left a 19 trillion -a 68 percent increase) to Donald Trump.

Obama didn't increase the debt more than all his predecessors together, but did increase the debt in dollar terms more than his immediate predecessor: 7. 9 trillion against 5.8 trillion generated by George W Bush -who had the title of "biggest spender" in dollar terms before him. (more details)

In relative terms, however, George W Bush rose the remaining debt he received from Clinton (who made a surplus in his last years) more than 100 % against 68 % for Obama. 

Second Fact-check: Clinton left a surplus to Bush and he turned into debt

Here the facts also resolve the dispute. CBO's chart shows how the surplus generated  during Clinton's second term thanks to the bipartisan welfare reform and the new economy boom turned into debt later:

Clinton's surplus expected for 2001 never materialized because they were mostly used to finance new spending -tax cuts and wars-. 

There was a huge overestimation of the surplus (estimates of the surplus 27 % were over what it turned to be) but what came in went out in those two ways almost immediately:

Wars and tax cuts combined with Fanny and Freddie real estate debt amounted to almost 70 percent of new public debt by 2019.

So, that second fact is correct, but omits the real estate bubble (Fannie, Freddie and TARP) that remains a bipartisan responsibility.  

Peter Pan Politics

While the country experiences once again the closing of its own government because its two parties play "chicken" withholding funds to pay for the functions they were entrusted to oversee, it's hard not to see government institutions operating as high-school playgrounds.

With a President that communicates by tweets and brags about himself as an old adolescent and public officers and CEOs turning their offices in frat houses and having public temper tantrums, it is not illogical to think that power turns Americans into versions of Peter Pan -that eternal child invested with magic powers that refused to grow-. 

Or perhaps it's the other way around, and Americans vote for Peter Pans that promise to take them away from hard choices in magic trips to Neverland: MAGA, the Great Society, and so on.

In the meantime, back into reality, things don't change. They only get worse.

Government shutdowns are a perfect example of what happens when bad behavior isn't punished. 

There are no punishments for this obvious dereliction of duty. Nobody gets fired, sued or  goes to jail. Government is allowed to stop working without penalties but the governed keep being fined or even serve jail sentences for not paying the taxes. And our soldiers can face court martial for not showing up, even if their paycheck is retained.

Sooner or later, of course, the consequences of not keeping the basic services will come back to affect us and then, adult behavior will return briefly to clean the mess left behind. Moreover, it will be adult behavior what will keep basic services running on the backs of unpaid public servants.

Psychologist Erik Erikson defined adulthood as the sixth and seventh of eight stages in the life cycle. Unlike children, adults' focus is on providing care to others, taking responsibility for those who can't provide for themselves -the too young and the too old-.

Psychoanalist Eric Berne added an interesting explanation: adult behavior is defined as negotiating between our "wants" or impulses and our duties dealing with the constraints of reality.

We would love to double our spending, but we can't do it unless we increase our income before. We cannot hold a debt that exceeds our possibilities of repaying and making a living at the same time. We can't stop eating for too long, and our creditors can't keep loaning additional money to us  indefinitely.

We know we cannot lose our control with our neighbors in ways that will generate retaliation and turn our daily life in constant confrontation and stress.

As adults, we know all that, but as partisan voters we seem to prefer Peter Pan and pipe dreams such as self-paying tax cuts or entitlements. Even more:both parties in the United States now support both options at once: tax cuts AND increased spending.

All of course, will be solved by issuing IOUs  and passing them to the next government  each four years arguing that "growth" or "well-being" fairies will take care of reducing it.

What we did as a society with our last budget surplus speaks volumes. Paying up the debt? Well, not. Neither what Milton Friedman recommended at the time (2000). Friedman considered debt relief politically unfeasible (he knew Americans better) but economically correct, but thought that individual Americans would know better how to allocate the surplus than the Peter Pan government. 

Friedman was half-right and half-wrong. American voters decided for giving themselves a "tax cut" but authorized their government  -POTUS and COTUS- to balloon the spending with a 2 trillion dollar debt war of choice in Iraq for the following 8 years. 

The newly added debt established the foundations for the current 19-trillion-dollar debt.

Winston Churchill's comment on American's behavior seems to describe also that of a Peter Pan:

Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

Partisan voters are played by their faction leaders into Peter Pan politics merry-go-rounds.

The last time adults were asked to take the floor was, arguably, when the Bowles-Simpson Debt Commission issued its report (2001). 

With Peter Pan politics and politicians in full swing, it's good and sobering giving them the last word to remind reader that reality hasn't changed but in size -quite like tall adolescents-:

House of Jerks: The Debasement of Public Speech

 Definition of jerk (Merriam-webster)

     a : an annoyingly stupid or foolish person     ·         was acting like a jerk       b : an unlikable person; especially : one who is cruel, rude, or small-                       minded  ·         a selfish jerk

"He speaks like one of us" is often heard as a justification for using vulgarities and profanities in public. Curiously, most of those who tolerate or even celebrate fool language in celebrities or populist politicians would smack their kids or fire their pastor for using those same words in public. 

                            

Foul, insulting language makes politics personal. Perhaps too personal. Trying to justify it with the  tired "politics is a contact sport" invites to double down on fighting words. Using the "s" and the "f" words in public speech is the verbal equivalent of a kick in the groin or a rabbit punch. We ban athletes from professional sports for doing such kind of things. Soccer players get fired and fined for cursing during a game (ask Messi). And using the "f" word to ask for punishment for  players who kneel in protest only adds insult to injury. Which is all what debased speech and name-calling is all about.

Adding irrationality to insult. vulgar speech self-defeats its aggressive purpose. It might please the "base", but it turns the attacked in victim to the eyes of the politically undecided and reinforces the animosity between the parties. 

That might explain why Donald Trump's personal approval rating has never risen over 40 percent after his first year in office in spite of presiding over an otherwise successful economy. By relying only on a faithful "base" of followers, Trump's tweeting and name-calling is cultivating larger wave of new "anti-Trump" voters. Quite like Nixon in 1968, Trump seems to bet on the secret approval of a "silent majority" tired of "political correctness".

Trump's public taunting of women and bragging about sexual harassment as part of the perks of "executive privilege" is already energizing women's rallies and widening the gender gap against him. 

Thanks to Trump, Fox News and Hollywood's meltdowns, "male" is becoming a code word for "jerk" and "power abuser".

Which is the uncivil default behavior not only tolerated but promoted by our political and business leaders. Voters' tolerance of Clinton's Oral Office and Trump's Planet Hollywood are to blame without any doubt. They willingly condoned and voted for well-known sexual predators and tolerated their continuation while in office. Just look at the recent "Stormy" Daniels payments affair.

Politically correct lies -such as "alternative facts" or the juggling to justify Clinton's stay in office- and abusive, personal tweets are in fact debasement of public speech. 

The "trickle-down" effect is visible in plain sight from the deadly clashes in Charlottesville to the mobbing of invited speakers in campuses. And although there has been some swift public punishment at Hollywood, Wall Street and even COTUS, there doesn't seem to be any fix or care for the broken damn at the White House that keeps growing in incontinence.

Not too long ago -in the pre-Tweet, YouTube era- behaving as a gentleman was still considered a default code of public conduct among political or business executives.  The fact that tweets and smart phones have erased dangerously the gray zone between public and private spheres only turns more embarrassing the lack of self-control (still a pre-requisite for keeping a top job, at least for once omnipotent and tenured Travis Kalanick, Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Al Franken, Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly). We even saw an actor who played a corrupt fictional president fired for his actual acting job for personal corruption in his job.

How it should be? Let's look at some simple examples.

Writer and literary critic George Plimpton is a good example of what manly and civil behavior looked like on those days when they were the standard to bear for everyone. 

Plimpton was the typical "ladies man" and also a gentleman. Those interested in gentlemanship can take a look at the video or read "George Being George", his posthumous biography made by friends, with abundant anecdotes and pictures of his famous Paris Review parties.

Plimpton and others created a civil atmosphere where political enemies such as Henry Kissinger and Gore Vidal socialized between bouts of political yet civic debate. There was Washington Post's Kate Graham whose newspaper was eviscerating the Nixon Administration sharing cocktails with Nixon's Secretary of State and confident.

(A Paris Review party circa 1960: Plimpton, left, Truman Capote, center, Ted Sorensen , Katherine Graham next and Henry Kissinger second standing)

Peggy Noonan wrote in WSJ  an excelent description of a gentleman, which, in my opinion describes all what is lacking in a jerk:

The dictionary says a gentleman is a chivalrous, courteous, honorable man. That’s a good, plain definition. The Urban Dictionary says: “The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will . . . whose self control is equal to all emergencies, who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity.” That’s good, too.

A website called Gentleman’s Journal offers a list of 20 traits that make a man a gentleman. I liked “A gentleman always walks a woman home.” He doesn’t pack her off alone to an Uber downstairs, in the back of which she weeps as she sends her friends horrified texts, which is what happened with the Hollywood star and the girl. I liked, “A gentleman ruins his lover’s lipstick, not her mascara.” And “If a woman comes with baggage, a gentleman helps her unpack it.” 

A gentleman is good to women because he has his own dignity and sees theirs. He takes opportunities to show them respect. He is not pushy, manipulative, belittling. He stands with them not because they are weak but because they deserve friendship. Once at a gathering of women in media, I spoke of a columnist who years before had given me helpful critiques of my work and urged me on. “A gentleman is an encourager of women.”

And  she completes her description with these significant points about what is behind true manly behavior:

"It goes deeper than memorizing and repeating certain behaviors, such as standing when a woman or an older person enters the room. That is a physical expression of inner regard. Being a gentleman involves not only manners but morals. The 19th-century theologian John Henry Newman —an Anglican priest who became a Catholic cardinal—said a gentleman tries not to inflict pain. He tries to remove the obstacles “which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him.” He is “tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absurd. . . . He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage.”

David Gandy, a fashion model, wrote a few years ago in London’s Telegraph that his work had taught him “being a gentleman isn’t about what you do or what you wear, it’s about how you behave and who you are.” A gentleman “holds chivalry and politeness in great regard. He holds the door for people; he gives up his seat; he takes off his coat to a lady on a cold evening.” These are old-fashioned actions, but a gentleman still holds to them “even though the world has changed.”

Being a gentleman is an ambiguous term, which can be confused with social standing or upbringing.  Social standing and power only empower a jerk. The current kind of behavior in government and business was adequately lampooned several decades ago by Mel Brooks in his sketch "It's Good to Be a King" :

"Right" wing CEOs turned into politicians bragged about its perks  off camera quite much like Mel Brooks' portrait of a French King:

"Left" wing politicians like Anthony Wiener or Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick bragged no less about theirs turning their jobs and institutions into playhouses and fraternities:

For those of us who don't see teenagers or frat houses as role models of masculinity , nor Fire and Fury's White House as the idea of how to run a government or a business, civility is not about being "politically correct" but playing by rules of mutual respect and decorum - in other worlds, behaving like adults-.

Civility in public and private behavior is -again- the last defense line for our national union and our constitutional institutions. Civility is much easier to destroy than to build, and continuing down the current path might come with a price tag our country can't afford.

Civility, however, will not come back until we practice and enforce it on elected and un-elected officers and business leaders.