World Systems May Ultimately Depend on those Horrible Politicians
Many of us focus our lives and education on forces of nature: physics, chemistry, biology, even astronomy. And all these things are true sources of wonder, gratitude and faith. I don’t mean to knock any of them. But some of us can’t escape the frustrating reality that the natural world cannot escape the influence of other humans! Humans rule and are ruled by each other. When the rulers and the ruled cooperate (or compete), systems develop, just as in nature, and those systems ultimately determine how the world works.
At least, that’s how my world works – and I’ve been living in it for 79 years. There are some things I can control, other things I can influence (attempting control?), and many things that I’ve decided are beyond my meager powers to control. The overarching system into which we humans are born, develop, and die involves other people — it is called politics. Politics encompasses both cooperation and competition, submission and struggle. It follows all the rules we’ve invented to interact with our fellow humans. It involves both risk and exploitation; gambling for dominance. The archetype politician may be “pal” or “teacher,” “winner” or “wannabe.”
And what is the measure of success for politicians, anyway? History’s judgement may differ from our personal memories. Democracies are not the only vehicle for exerting political control; we know they don’t necessarily last forever — 250 years may be about it. But longevity is as good a measure as any for a successful regime. Some politicians understand this and seek only to maintain the system — even if only on life support. Others try building something new, raising capital for the future; still others look for quick grabs for themselves. History tends to judge the politician whose motives are purely selfish as failures, as tyrants, even if temporarily successful. The most magnanimous always score the highest ratings. Selfishness is never rewarded by historians. Corruption is inferior to “vision.”
Somehow, my own world awareness became overtly political when I was about nine years old. Although my memory of the event may be apocryphal, I trace my introduction to the world of politics to a Republican fundraising dinner for the 1956 re-election campaign of Ike and Richard Nixon. My dad (a mandatory General Motors Republican donor in those days) took me with him to a $100-a-plate dinner at the Durant Hotel in Flint, Michigan featuring speaker V.P. Nixon. I, being only nine, expected to be treated like a child, patted on the head, or whatever, but Dick Nixon SHOOK MY HAND, in a rather grown-up manner! This made me feel good. In discussing the exciting event with my father afterwards, I learned that Dad in fact despised Nixon (even in 1956). Everybody liked Ike, I learned, but opinions on his Vice-President were always mixed, to say the least. Yet, that decidedly weak public acceptance, combined with his protective umbrella of a popular President, somehow impressed me … still does. Politicians don’t need to be loved to be successful in re-election. It seems to depend far more on circumstances and contingencies. For a nine-year-old, this was a profound lesson in the true nature of politics. As I grew up (high school and college), Dad abandoned the GOP entirely (he retired from GM), and became a strident anti-Vietnam War Dem. This transition taught me something important about political posturing. I, too, could change colors in a similar fashion. We all can, throughout our lives. It is not ideology that determines political posturing, it is the exigency of the moment. Yet, ideology did creep into my world awareness as I moved through adolescence into adulthood. High school was responsible.
I was blessed with a rather cosmopolitan peer group. We were all white males, but the greatest dynamism came from a few New York Jewish transplants to Flint – offspring of holocaust survivors. This group vied for my attention with another, solidly working-class, gang from my Flint neighborhood and the larger high school environment. Flint was growing fast but still tied to the auto industry at its roots. It would never become a metropolis. The typical factory worker was not an immigrant, but a transplant from more rural parts of the Midwest and South. My own political ecosystem was diverse – especially regarding class. Ideology tended to dominate, tied closely to history (one of my favorite subjects) as well as to literature. To make matters worse, my high school Latin teacher, Dale Kildee, left the teaching profession when I graduated … to pursue politics. He ultimately served in Congress representing mid-Michigan for 35 years. His was a long career, not necessarily long on ideology (he was a Democrat), but it connected me, along with a few others, to the larger world of politics – as they existed in the early-to-mid sixties. (The Roman Republic was a source of endless fascination for him, and to his acolytes.) On the more conservative end of the spectrum was my 10th grade social studies teacher (they called it “Foreign Relations” in Flint Community Schools then), John Greenleaf Howe – openly Republican to all his students, but teaching a real eye-opener class about colonialism and emerging nationalism – he sponsored an after-school club meeting in students’ homes, called the “Reliques Society.”
Next, I chose a private liberal arts college (Kalamazoo College) and majored in history. I couldn’t help but be influenced by the political turmoil swirling around regarding civil rights, the Vietnam War, and anarchist threats to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. It was all so cool! Not to mention the music and the “enhanced perception” from illegal psychedelics. After graduation from college (Woodstock summer, 1969), I zeroed out my potential teaching career in Bartow, Florida, finding myself in a decidedly hostile political environment. At the Tampa/Hillsborough County Public Library System (libraries, a haven for washed-up teachers), on the main reference desk I encountered all manner of inquiries from across the political mainstream – and not so mainstream – in a large and growing metropolitan area. My professional direction was set there.
But the best was yet to come. The University of Maryland in College Park brought me to Washington in 1971-72 – Nixon in charge, revolution in the air! I learned in graduate school about McCarthyism, racism, and Marxism. All while exploring the future of civilization via Information Technology (in libraries). It was a heady experience. But by 1973 I had become a federal employee at the Library of Congress – Hatch Act for me. I could not openly advocate for political, much less ideological, views for 42 years. Also, during the 1970s, I became a devotee of tabletop military simulation games. They taught me something about politics as well. Especially geopolitics — war.
Only upon retirement from the Library of Congress did I feel free to follow the deep emotional draw of political ideology – incidentally coinciding with Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. He was one of my guys! Indeed, he had an even longer track record on the left (going back to his mayoralty of Burlington, VT, and earlier) than me. While I had emotional, empathic ties to early-60s left-anarchist organizing efforts in Michigan (the Port Huron Statement founding the SDS in 1962, and at least two communist families I remembered from high school in Flint), Bernie was as a bona fide political actor, not just a bystander like me. I supported his campaign with money and effort. I loved listening to “Brunch with Bernie” on Thom Hartmann’s Air America radio show during my commutes home from work in the aughts. I perceived my roots to include the famous sit-down strike in Flint years before I was born. I clearly identified as a leftie. I was worker, not boss. It was my dad who had been boss.
The catch to my self-image was that it also became clear as I got older that I came from an unusually privileged, and ultimately rather unique background. Also, I never considered a career in politics for myself. In that sense, I was always apolitical. I was always a bystander.
But I could see all around me that politics was everywhere. There was geopolitical reality of foreign relations and war. There was a persuasion index in election campaigns. There was a lot of networking in politics, but networking is really nothing more than exploiting interdependence of varying interests. You “work the room” when running for office. You and your organization also build something – or, perhaps, simply maintain the system others have built. It’s an engineering project at its core. And it only functions with people as its foundation. Those politicians you despise are both engineers and artists, however. They build, maintain, and imagine. Their ability to communicate that imagination to followers is the most reliable measure of their effectiveness. Their systems must be real to them – in a democracy, the system cannot be hidden from voters. We will find out, sooner or later. One election may be a fluke, another one a signal, but they are all part of one connecting political filament. The successful politician may be more messenger than actor. And the measure of success is, indeed, longevity of the system. That is the message.
World systems are driven by people. People are driven by politics. Politics is the art and science of applying power to people. Politicians are the practitioners.
— William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 