Lawless Politics

“Curiouser and curioser,” cried Alice.

And further down the rabbit hole we go.

I’ve eaten a piece of cake every single day for the past week, and I’m spending way too much fucking time on social media. So, let’s update the coronavirus timeline.

November 17, 2019: a review of government data being used to map the early transmission of the virus suggests the first case of coronavirus disease is traced back to a 55 year old Hubei resident who contracted the virus on November 17th. This resident had no contact with the Wuhan market where the original pandemic-causing outbreak is attributed.

Late November 2019: American intelligence supposedly becomes aware of a health issue in China, begins paying attention to shit like they’re supposed to do. Whether they really had an inkling of the true nature of this emerging pathogen at this early point is unproven speculation. Given the CDC medical team in China that is supposed to help identify and stop the outbreak and spread of contagious disease was cut by 2/3 by President Trump, and the US Dept of Agriculture transferred the manager of a program that monitored animal diseases out of the country in 2018, it is likely intelligence agencies did not have access to reliable and timely information to which they would otherwise have been able to utilize.

December 16, 2019: Wei Guixan, one of the earliest noted Covid-19 patients, a 57 year old Wuhan resident (who fell ill on December 10 and likely contracted the virus in early December) is admitted to the hospital with infections in both lungs. Wei Guixan worked at a seafood market in Wuhan, at a “wet market,” in what is believed to be the original Covid-19 epicenter: the place where the infection was transmitted to its perfect breeding grounds, wherein human beings congregate in large, bustling numbers. Wei Guixan recovered from the Covid-19 disease in February of 2020 and left the hospital: two months of required hospitalization for recovery from the illness.

For clarification, a wet market sells fresh fish and slaughtered animals wherein they pour water over the meat produce to keep it fresh. Kind of like how the grocery store mists the fruit and vegetable produce to keep it from wilting; only at the grocery store, we have refrigeration and FDA rules and regulations for reducing the risks of spreading diseases. This is the point where we should probably recognize the need to have an honest discussion about zoonotic diseases and the normative benefits of regulation for health and safety reasons

In December of 2019, while American intelligence agencies begin to raise normative alarms about a potential health crisis in China, Dr. Li, a Chinese ophthalmologist, is encountering infections that appear similar to a coronavirus that led to the SARS epidemic in 2003. He shares information about it with other doctors on Weibo and WeChat. On December 30th, Dr. Li notified authorities of his findings.

Chinese authorities basically tell Dr. Li to shut the fuck up. For whatever failings, they did not listen and respond to the real-time medical dialogue occurring during the month of December about a new respiratory infection. Keep in mind there will be a lot of failings along this timeline from various organizations, world leaders, and collective individuals. China is not excused from the role they played in these failings, just as none of the other actors are excused in their failings during this pandemic either.

On December 31, 2019, China confirmed cases of a new virus infecting its citizens in the city of Wuhan.

On January 1, 2020, the WHO set up an Incident Management Support Team (IMST), an emergency preparedness measure for handling a potential health crisis based on the infection information that came out of China the day prior.

By January 2, 2020, early transmission data reports compiled and peer reviewed in the scientific medical journal The Lancet revealed that 41 patients had been admitted to the hospital in Wuhan and identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019 novel coronavirus infection. 27 of the 41 patients had been exposed to the Wuhan seafood market. One family cluster was found. All 41 patients had pneumonia with abnormal findings on chest CT; complications included acute respiratory distress syndrome, acute cardiac injury and secondary infection. 13 patients were admitted to an ICU and six died.

The infection likely started outside of the market and made its way there, where it was then able to spread much more readily among a greater population in close proximity. I have arrived at all sort of potential theories (both conspiratorial and mundane) to explain how the infection realistically arrived at the crowded social space in this market and made its epic debut onto the world stage from there. It’s worthy to note that none of the theories include the manufacture of this virus in a lab, but do include the very real possibilities conceived by repetitive human response errors.

The early timeline continues to be imprecise and possibly inaccurate in some respects. The review of early transmission data analyzed by scientists in China reportedly indicated infectious contact in mid-November 2019 in Hubei province, but publishing research has currently been curtailed by various means. Dr. Li died of the very disease for which he raised alarm, and there were a number of other medical professionals involved in the dialogue about this new virus, some of whom were reportedly censored or arrested. It is still reasonable to consider the early timeline relatively accurate for the purpose of this exercise until more data becomes readily available. While there is other international research taking place spanning the possibility of finding a patient zero anytime between mid-September and early December, none of the other research I’ve found to this date has been peer-reviewed to substantiate additional timeline claims.

On January 8, 2020, the CDC issues its first warning to clinicians to watch for patients showing respiratory symptoms who had a travel history to Wuhan.

On January 9, 2020, China announces it has mapped the cononavirus genome, and on January 10th, the first patient with the infection dies. Also on January 10th, the WHO has assembled their first technical package of information on how to detect, test for, and manage potential cases of the novel coronavirus based primarily on their experience with SARS and MERS respiratory infections.

From January 11 – 17th, the Wuhan health commission insists there are no new cases of the disease, which we know must have been a cartload of horseshit. Based on this information – as it’s the only information the organization can rely on at this juncture – the WHO remains unsure about human-to-human transmission rates as Chinese authorities report that there is no clear evidence of sustainable human to human transmission of the virus. At the same time, U.S. intelligence agencies are ringing much louder and bigger alarms concerning the serious nature of this impending health crisis.

By January 20th, the day the WHO makes its first brief visit to Wuhan, the virus has spread to Thailand, South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

On January 23, 2020, the WHO determines there is evidence for human to human transmission, but states they are unable to determine the full extent of transmission without further investigation. On the same day, China quarantines Wuhan and three other cities in Hubei province with a total population of 36 million. Five million people leave the cities anyway without being screened for the infection. By this point, 17 people have died from the virus.

On January 24, China begins building a new hospital in Wuhan at lightening speed: in just ten days, using prefabricated units, they put up a 645,000 square foot, 2 floor make-shift hospital with 1000 beds, several isolation wards, and 30 intensive care units. The act of building this hospital reliably indicates China knew that what was happening was serious, they knew they were going to need another hospital because of it, so the rest of us should have known it was serious as well.

On January 24th, the president of the United States tweets praise for the Chinese government’s efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, even though it’s already too fucking late to contain the spread from the Wuhan epicenter; five million people literally left the quarantined area without being screened, several hundred thousand of whom traveled outside of Hubei province, and three days earlier, the virus had already made its way to four other countries, including the United States. China deserves recognition for being able to lock down a province of 36 million people to contain infection and then build a new hospital at lightening speed. It does not deserve positive recognition for wasting nearly a month to implement these containment methods when it would have actually made a difference had they done so sooner.

Nobody has initiated travel restrictions around the globe at this point yet, nobody is recommending it, and nobody is doing it.

From January 24-30, China celebrates the lunar new year, and hundreds of millions of people travel around the country, despite the fact that Chinese authorities are beginning to implement restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus. Also, over a month too late on that containment thing.

On January 28th, Chinese government officials agree with the WHO to bring in a team of international scientists to see if they can get a handle on the virus.

On January 29th, Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s HEP, said “The whole world needs to be on alert now. The whole world needs to take action and be ready for any cases that come from the epicenter or other epicenter that becomes established.” Read it again.

On January 30th, the World Health Organization declares a global health emergency. The same day, the president of the United States, while attending a campaign rally in Iowa instead of managing what would become a national health emergency, prevaricates, “We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great. They have somewhat of a problem, but hopefully, it’s all going to be great. But we’re working with China, just so you know, and other countries very, very closely. So it doesn’t get out of hand.”

On January 31st, Donald Trump restricts travel from China, which is too fucking late, since the first case from China had already arrived fifteen days earlier (and another 40,000 people have actually traveled from China to the United States since then, almost 3 months ago). By this point, over 200 people have died and almost 10,000 people are infected with the novel coronavirus.

On February 10th, the WHO is finally able to send an international team of scientists into China to begin assessing the situation of the new virus on the ground in Wuhan.

On February 11th, the WHO named the new infection Covid-19, an acronym for coronavirus disease 2019.

On February 13th, there are almost 15,000 new infections in Hubei Province.

February 14th thru February 28th: during this 2 week period, the virus spreads all around the fucking world.

And the stock markets begin their fall.

On February 28th, Donald Trump holds a rally in South Carolina (he’s held 9 political rallies since January 9th, the day China announced it had mapped the novel coronavirus genome), and downplays the virus once again, stating the Democrats are politicizing the virus and making it the new Democratic hoax.

On the following day, February 29th, the United States records its first coronavirus death (since then, it has been revealed that at least two people died undiagnosed with Covid-19 several weeks earlier after autopsies have been performed). The president responds by telling people not to travel to areas hardest hit by the virus in Italy and South Korea, and forbids travel to and from Iran. The Twat-Waffle-in-Chief continues to behave as if the virus isn’t already here in the States and that the shit isn’t going to hit the proverbial fan.

On March 3, the CDC lifts federal restrictions on coronavirus testing after their own attempt to create a diagnostic test kit failed.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic, the stock markets continue to drop like a lead balloon, and the president restricts all travel from Europe. Again, too fucking late, as the U.S. is its own hotbed of viral infection and the president is in abject and negligent denial of reality.

On Friday, the 13th of March, 2020, a full two months after the first infected patient arrived in the United States, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, finally declares a national emergency.

Two weeks later, on Friday, March 27th, South Korea has effectively flattened its curve (in two month’s time) by utilizing fast intervention techniques, testing early & often, contact tracing & isolation, practical and timely dissemination of information, and effectively enlisting the public’s help with a high level of social trust.

China announced it has no new local infections at end of March and will be easing quarantine restrictions in Hubei province, and possibly easing the quarantine in Wuhan as well in a couple of weeks, a full 76 days after the heavily populated areas were quarantined, three months after one of the earliest patients was hospitalized with complications from the disease, and four months after the first infection.

No one really believes that China has no new local infections. China reported a revised total number of infections in Wuhan as 50,333 and a total deaths as 3869, with a total infection rate for the whole country at 83,850 people and 4636 deaths. I don’t believe those numbers, and neither should you.

On April 1, 2020, the United States has surpassed everyone else to have the highest number of reported infections and deaths in the world (if we continue to ignore that China’s numbers are a fabrication, of course).

On April 7, 2020, after two months of bungling the country’s response to managing the containment and treatment of Covid-19, the president of the United States criticizes the WHO for mishandling the pandemic.

On April 14, 2020, in the middle of a global health crisis, the president of the United States threatens to halt funding to the World Health Organization.

On April 19, 2020, the United States has 765,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and has suffered almost 41,000 deaths. The death toll has doubled in the past week, yet we have idiots protesting outside their state house buildings to be allowed to do shit they likely don’t need to be doing right now.

For the month of April, we have watched as the country continues to engage the battle of coronavirus state-by-state instead of as a nation coming together to fight the pandemic. Some state governments refuse to enact appropriate social and physical distancing policies because they have not collectively been directed to do so by a competent leader. Some are beginning to loosen restrictions in public spaces before we have adequate testing and tracing of infections, and many of them haven’t even come close to seeing their peak rate of infections.

We’ve also watched as certain actors in the federal government interfere with the appropriation of necessary medical supplies by the states that they’ve told will have to take care of those needs themselves.

The president continues to make ignorant, uninformed, and plainly stupid comments while refusing to face the problems of an infectious epidemic like the competent leader we truly need because he doesn’t know how to lead. He encourages protestors in states with Democratic governors to engage in civil unrest as if they are somehow liberating their states instead of being an actual minority of the population supported and manipulated by right-wing activist groups funded by wealthy donors such as the DeVos, Koch, and Coors (yes, the beer) families to defy public health initiatives that have shut down non-essential portions of the country’s economy.

On April 20, 2020, the price of American Oil turned negative for the first time in history as demand dries up, and the stock market followed suit by dropping once again. Two days later, prices rallied a bit after the president of the United States tweeted that he has instructed the Navy to shoot down and destroy Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf.

Because war would be just fucking great for the economy and the people during a global pandemic.

Meanwhile, China is noting a surge of new cases of the virus in the country’s northeast province, but at the same time is planning to reopen thousands of tourist sites in preparation for travel and tourism celebrating its five day Labour Day holiday, expecting record numbers of tourists visiting areas of cultural sites around the country, where Beijing (population 22 million), Shanghai (population 25 million), and Guangzhou (population 13 million) are considered the top three destinations for the holiday.

As some states begin to reopen businesses before they’ve reached their peak infection rates and death tolls, the CDC warns that reopening states too soon could lead to a second wave of the coronavirus that would be much worse as it would coincide with the flu season in America, which will be more difficult than the experience we’ve had in the past two months.

Meanwhile, information about the state of Georgia reopening some businesses before their current stay at home order is actually supposed to end on April 30 and before they meet the middling recommendations recently put out by the White House, the state has come under scrutiny for economic considerations: it appears that Georgia has cut their social welfare safety net to the point where they cannot afford to pay unemployment benefits to even the low-wage workers in their state, and would prefer to put people back to work in unsafe conditions rather than pay the benefits they need to get through this health crisis.

And while Florida and South Carolina open beaches and people swarm to them in order to become human petri dishes for infectious disease, Tennessee joins the melee on May 1st to also reopen some of the most problematic businesses such as restaurants, tattoo parlors, gyms, and hair salons, so that their residents can become statistics for how not to operate your state during a global pandemic, all while the Lt Govenor of Texas thinks that it’s ok for people to die for the economy, that somehow living isn’t really as important as lining someone’s pockets with the greenbacks they make off your labor power.

None of these states have implemented the sort of public health policies that might actually allow them to reopen businesses. They aren’t engaged in significant testing, contact tracing, building more hospitals for the sick, isolating the infected, and requiring the protective measures we need to eventually get back to a somewhat normal life like they’ve done in South Korea and New Zealand, such as requiring everyone to cover their damned faces. Nope. Let’s just open this shit-show back up and let the rubes enjoy it while it lasts.

Public health recommendations that would allow us to actually return to some sort of normalcy have not been implemented (we would need to test literally millions of people every week, for starters), nor has a single additional federal pandemic agency been set up to assist with this health crisis on the various levels for which it needs to be effectively monitored and managed (Jared Kushner and Mike Pence are NOT a replacement for an actual pandemic response team).

Many of us will be anxiously watching in the next two weeks after these premature openings of non-essential businesses for another spike in rates of both infection and deaths to our collective dismay.

“We’re all mad here…” – the Hatter.

“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.” – Maya Angelou

Let’s talk about the coronavirus timeline.

November 17, 2019: (As reported by the South China Morning Post in March 2020) a review of government data being used to map the early transmission of the virus suggests the first case of coronavirus disease is traced back to a 55 year old Hubei resident who contracted the virus on November 17th.

December 16, 2019: one of the earliest noted Covid-19 patients, a 57 year old Wuhan resident (who fell ill on December 10 and likely contracted the virus in early December) is admitted to the hospital with infections in both lungs.

In late December of 2019, Dr. Li, a Chinese ophthalmologist, noticed infections that appeared similar to a coronavirus that led to the SARS epidemic in 2003. He shares information about it with other doctors on Weibo and WeChat. On December 30th, he notified authorities of his findings.

On December 31, 2019, China confirmed cases of a new virus infecting its citizens in the city of Wuhan.

The timeline so far is somewhat imprecise and may be inaccurate in some respects. The Wall Street Journal identifies Wei Guixan (noted above as one of the first patients hospitalized for Covid-19 in Wuhan on December 16) as “patient zero,” but the review of early transmission data being analyzed by scientists in China reportedly indicates infectious contact several weeks earlier. Dr. Li has been termed the “whistleblower” (who was told to stop making false statements about the virus by authorities and later died of the very disease for which he raised alarm), but there were actually a number of other medical professionals involved in the dialogue about this new virus making an ugly appearance. It is reasonable to consider the timeline relatively accurate for the purpose of this exercise until more data becomes readily available.

On January 9, 2020, China announces it has mapped the cononavirus genome, and on January 10th, the first patient with the infection dies.

From January 11-17th, Wuhan health commission insists there are no new cases of the disease. Yet by January 20th, the virus has spread to Thailand, South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

On January 23, 2020, China quarantines Wuhan and three other cities in Hubei province with a total population of 36 million. 5 million people leave the cities anyway without being screened for the infection. By this point, 17 people have died from the virus.

On January 24, China begins building a new hospital in Wuhan at lightening speed: in just ten days, using prefabricated units, they put up a 645,000 square foot, 2 floor make-shift hospital with 1000 beds, several isolation wards, and 30 intensive care units.

The Chinese government is likely good at this given all the practice they’ve had at building “retraining camps” in remote locations of their country…

From January 24-30, China celebrates the lunar new year, and hundreds of millions of people travel around the country, despite the fact that Chinese authorities are beginning to implement restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus.  Also, over a month too late on that containment thing.

On January 30th, the World Health Organization declares a global health emergency.

On January 31st, Donald Trump restricts travel from China, which is too fucking late, since the first case from China had already arrived fifteen days earlier, thereby sharing the infectious disease. By this point, over 200 people have died and almost 10,000 people are infected with the novel coronavirus.

“Novel coronavirus,” just means it’s new: this is the first time this particular coronavirus has infected people. Coronaviridae are widespread among mammals: over 60 different subtypes have been identified in bats alone with many species having their very own unique subtype, which may indicate a history of co-evolution. Seven types have been  identified in humans, and up until SARS made an appearance in 2003, Coronaviridae was considered a minor pathogen in humans.

On February 11th, the WHO named the new infection Covid-19, an acronym for coronavirus disease 2019.

On February 13th, there are almost 15,000 new infections in Hubei Province.

February 14th thru February 28th: during this 2 week period, the virus spreads all around the fucking world: a cruise ship has been quarantined off the coast of Japan, France has its first death, Italy has a major surge of cases and the country begins to quarantine, Iran becomes another focal-point of the virus with infections spreading from there all across the Middle East and even into Canada, a secretive church congregation in South Korea causes the infection to spread, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America report their first cases, and the number of infections in Europe spikes.

And the stock markets begin their fall.

On February 29th, the United States records its first coronavirus death. The president responds by telling people not to travel to areas hardest hit by the virus in Italy and South Korea, and forbids travel to and from Iran. The Twat-Waffle-in-Chief continues to behave as if the virus isn’t already here in the States and that the shit isn’t going to hit the proverbial fan.

On March 3, the CDC lifts federal restrictions on coronavirus testing after their own attempt to create a diagnostic test kit failed.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic, the stock markets continue to drop like a lead balloon, and the president restricts all travel from Europe (although initially excluding the U.K. from this travel ban). Again, too fucking late, as the U.S. is its own hotbed of viral infection and the president is in abject and negligent denial of reality.

On March 13, 2020, a full two months after the first infected patient arrived in the United States, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, finally declares a national emergency.

That was just over two weeks ago. Friday the 13th of March, 2020.

Two weeks later, on Friday, March 27th, South Korea has effectively flattened its curve (in two month’s time) by utilizing fast intervention techniques, testing early & often, contact tracing & isolation, practical and timely dissemination of information, and effectively enlisting the public’s help with a high level of social trust.

China announced it has no new local infections and will be easing quarantine restrictions in Hubei province, and possibly easing the quarantine in Wuhan as well in a couple of weeks, a full 76 days after the heavily populated areas were quarantined, three months after one of the earliest patients was hospitalized with complications from the disease, and four months after the first infection.

At the same time, the United States has surpassed everyone else to have the highest number of reported infections in the world. The president continues to make ignorant, uninformed, and plainly stupid commentary while refusing to face the problems of an infectious epidemic like the competent leader we truly need because he doesn’t know how to lead: he literally has no fucking clue on how to handle the pandemic, how to assure the populace that we will get through this together, or how to enact policies to actively combat the spread of the virus. We could really use some effective leadership for our country to stop the spread of misinformation and coordinate efforts to control the spread and treat the infected. Instead, we have these piece-meal local engagements with our societal needs, some better equipped than others, and with some communities refusing to engage in safer social practices to curb the spread of the disease, we have a nightmare at the intersection of ignorance, cognitive dissonance, and arrogant self-interest.

Since we don’t have the authoritarian infrastructure necessary to completely quarantine large segments of the population like China, nor do we have the sort of medically insightful social cohesivity that permits quick and effective intervention as seen in South Korea, I suspect that we’re in for a bit of a bumpy ride, America.

We exist at an extraordinary historical moment. Plague and pestilence is not a new crisis experience for homo sapiens, but this global infectious incident in all of its consequence is a new experience for those of us alive today. We have much to learn from the entirety of this pandemic: about ourselves, individually and collectively, as well as the manner in which we engage the world around us. When the dust finally settles, we cannot simply go back to the way we were, the way we lived, without consequence: we must find a way to advance our ways of thinking and behaving in this world, to cultivate a more reliable sense of responsibility, to nurture an awareness of our mutual significance, to derive an evolved sense of our humanity, and embrace an astute sensibility that enables the courage to act on our own collective behalf.

Let’s see how many of you fuckers are truly up to the challenge…

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

“My view was, and is, that we need to think about power broadly rather than narrowly – in three dimensions rather than one or two – and that we need to attend to those aspects of power that are least accessible to observation: that, indeed, power is at its most effective when least observable.”

– Steven Lukes, Power: a Radical View, Second Edition, Introduction to the new edition, 2005: p 1.

I’ve had a difficult couple of weeks reading the world news: watching the President of the United States refuse to concede the election he most assuredly lost; reading the uncivilized and unintelligible bullshit people post on social media; watching the world burn with fever, the worst of it in my own country; viewing an angry, desperate, and wounded world defile itself; and wondering what it will take for people to understand how terribly harmful our subjugation to dysfunctional and abusive power structures really is for our survival.

Based on the increasingly hostile, absurd, and irrational social and political discourse, real and virtual, it’s time to impress upon the imagined virtual space a round of philosophical critical dialogue. Consider it civic engagement, if you will, and should you find it necessary to participate, make an effort to engage the text.

We have many cultural mythologies and social ideologies that buttress systems of inequality and power in America: permitting, enabling, and preserving its immutability. To have an honest and informed discussion about inequality and power would require at least a middling appreciation of the science necessary for reliably understanding the social sphere in structuring our existence.

While I believe this unlikely with a pedestrian conversation in an imagined space such as social media, let’s give it a try anyway.

This is an exercise of power: my rhetorical engagement on social media is a monologue, a singular voice. Despite your ability to “comment” on the post and engage the text (and each other), the text stands as the functioning structure of power enabling the entire social engagement. What the reader does with the narrative is open to ideas about “choice” but in the end, the monologue set the social into action, and the person initiating the virtual monologue has the power to simply erase it in its entirety without consequence. Be philosophical and consider the implications of that position as we explore concepts of power.

When I read the digital discourse of social media, the righteously stated and immobile opinions of the benighted populace, I’m always a bit perplexed by the arrogant sense of entitlement to boldly ignorant dialogue posited by the average person sitting behind a keyboard somewhere in America. I’m further flummoxed by the opinions and assertions from society’s non-elite that place them in social, political, and economic arenas with oppressive material consequences effectively subjugating their actual needs to judgmental ideologies: Judgmental ideologies that are so often created by someone else for your tasty little consumption.

This sort of social cognitive dissonance may be related to competing and broad sweeping social theories of power. Let’s examine some of those sociological theories.

Functionalism is a theoretical perspective that essentializes social stratification: it believes people are inherently different and unequal based on their functional value to society, that inequality is inevitable, beneficent, and plays an important role in structuring society. It is a perspective that assumes social stratification is a natural sorting of people by the value of their social functions, and the people at the top belong where they are, as do the people at the bottom.  It’s often referred to as the “meritocracy” approach to theories of social stratification, embedded within ideologies concerning upward mobility, work ethic, and deservingness.

This theoretical approach reveals more about a pathological human effort to validate the hegemony of rapacious psychosocial tendencies rather than a critical examination of how and why power structures function and for whose benefit. Functionalism is an indifferent approach to inequality and power because it effectively legitimizes dominance and subjugation by presuming it is simply meant to be that way: it refuses to peak under the dirty blanket of power while assuming social stratification is somehow fair and rational. The circular rationale presented by functionalism begs the question: the premise assumes a truth rather than supporting it. Functionalism doesn’t ask any questions about whose system we’re using to arrive at value judgments or why that system should be considered legitimate.

Asking the right questions is the only way to arrive at reliable truths.

Despite its obvious critical shortcomings, the functional perspective is utilized by a lot of average folks who don’t particularly benefit from the perspective, and I have to wonder why.

Conflict theory is a critical perspective that questions and excoriates social stratification: it believes social stratification is dysfunctional and harmful to society, inequality is maintained through a system that is fixed to benefit the rich and powerful by design, which results in an ongoing unequal distribution of power and resources. It is a perspective that assumes power structures are constructed by human design rather than determined by nature. Conflict theory asks questions about what existing power structures are meant to accomplish and for whom in order to arrive at an understanding of how power structures function sociologically and thereby arrives at value judgments based on the critically examined consequences of stratified social systems.

Functionalist theory requires that you believe the current (stratified) social systems are the only natural way that humans can exist, and then views every behavior through a lens of individual responsibility for determining success in a system that requires social stratification by its very design.

Conflict theory requires that you engage with material reality and examine the purposes, intents, and outcomes of stratified social systems, thereby evaluating the consequences of social stratification on the whole of society, and based on the premise that the social conflict created by social stratification is both constructed by and detrimental to society.

I’m of the belief that we can deconstruct every social creation to figure out how it works. Essentialism creates epistemological issues for me.

Steven Luke’s critical examination and radical view of power gives you three dimensions. The first is how we all typically imagine power: decision-making. This is your poli-sci view of power: naïve, like libertarianism.

Sure, we all make decisions every day. As consumers and workers and citizens and (insert identity here). The first dimension of power recognizes that power is an executed act of decision-making.

For instance: you want Cocoa Puffs? You go ahead and buy yourself some Cocoa Puffs, you decider, you.

The second dimensional view of power examines how people and institutions in positions of power are enabled to make decisions for us about the choices we are permitted.

This isn’t just that you hand over your power in being governed; running a society is a difficult task and we aren’t all cut out for the administrative and legislative work, so we agree you have to pick someone who can reliably make certain decisions for the good of us all.

The second dimension of power is this sort of quiet, behind the scenes dimension of power. It’s the people and institutions who make the decisions about your choices before you get to know about and participate in the choices: the people who exclude, conceal, and disallow items and issues to be on the agenda in which you are permitted a voice. It is the idea that the choices you are given are just that: given to you, hence decisions are restricted and controlled by others. You get to be the decider, but only from the choices you’ve been given by this other Decider.

For example, when you attend a city council meeting, you are permitted a voice in addressing aspects of the agenda open to public input. But you didn’t get to decide which items were going to be on the agenda.

And the third dimensional view of power is the one that made Luke’s view radical: that despite all your rage, you are still just a rat in a cage.

There is a tendency to weave off into fictional conspiracies better left to literary and film productions with Luke’s third dimension, but it is also a fascinating and persuasive critical tool for examining material reality. Decidedly suspicious, the third dimension of power skips over subjective behavioralist beliefs about power and goes right to the idea that people will adapt to whatever reality they are required to inhabit, and they will create, along with their oppressors, the ideologies, beliefs, and experiences that require them to accept their place in that world.

Lukes writes, “[I]s it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances shaping their perceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial?”

We can apply these theoretical approaches to the socio-economic power relationships in America: and they do require thoughtful consideration for determining how it’s all packaged for our acceptance, compliance, and participation in the performance. It means problematizing our motives and intents: asking where they come from, what needs they fulfill, who they benefited and deprived. Attempting to deconstruct the variables only to arrive at absolute meanings about the world to support opinions that validate a current sense of human agency rather than conscientious awareness and insight about the world around us is normatively discordant; we have to wonder why and how a sense of solecism is preferable to an authentic relationship with materiality.

We should responsibly consider how altering power structures might arrive at more reasonable and effective methods of managing our social world. It means we should deconstruct power structures for the purpose of ensuring we make reliable decisions rather than decisions predicated on rescuing a series of beliefs based on a contrived cognitive dissonance and the unmediated emotional shit erupting from your limbic system. It’s time to unlearn how we “believe” and learn how to understand the world around us, even when it threatens the particularities of a current identity. In order to let go of the unproductive and ignorant bullshit, it helps to understand how power is constructed as well as the identities we actually have to choose from within our current socio-economic power structures.

Sometimes, when we understand how we are manipulated into belief, that our choices are manufactured as the only ones we have but they are still somehow our own, we get angry enough to let some of those unproductive beliefs go and strive for genuine awareness.

Virtual public social discourse concerning how our society should function often relies on historically constructed mythologies about American identity. To say that contemporary public opinions based in these mythologies concerning how society should be constructed is bereft of an historical perspective would be an understatement. Not understanding history also means misunderstanding the significance of those cultural mythologies within the historical moment for constructing a cultural narrative: what did those narratives represent about American life at that moment, what story did it tell about American identity, whose story did it tell, and what did it reveal about manifestations of power?

One of my favorite narratives, often used to shame the poor and create definitions of “deserving” and “undeserving,” is that “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” bullshit: rugged individualism. You can do it if you really want to, don’t be weak or lazy, ignore the man behind the curtain, it’s all about YOU. We repeat rigid expectations embedded in the mythologies of a cultural narrative that constantly circumvent reality at every turn; a common one I read repeatedly on social media is this variation: get a better job; can’t find one? don’t have the best skills? then get an education to get a better job (what? You racked up student loan debt equal to a first mortgage? Well what the fuck did you think would happen when you made that choice?).

It’s an unending circle of conflict, despair, disappointment, moving the goal posts, and then discordant blame. The mythologies of the past haunt our ideologies in the present. It’s like the religious fruit-loops in the Middle Ages who wore hair shirts and whipped themselves. Or those weird pious pole-sitters. We keep repeating the same self-flagellating methods of social control like insane little homo sapiens in need of a group therapy session.

In the period of early American expansion, Manifest Destiny, migration of “American citizens” into geographical areas “purchased” or “won” from European nations, and early constructions of the American Dream, you had to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Or you wouldn’t survive. If you were migrating across this big land mass, looking for a place to make a new home, needing to build that home when you got there, grow food and raise livestock, deal with the people you were displacing in the process and the conflict that will arise from that displacement, well, you’re going to need to believe in and encompass the qualities espoused as truly able-bodied and unflagging American identity to survive.

And if you examined the power structures that validated and enabled the outward settlement of what would become an increasing America, you would see how it benefited those power structures to encourage average Americans to become that American identity: to make a new life for themselves with a new homestead in unexplored country holding the riches of nature, to do the work of acquisition and settlement of their new world, to fight the good and moral fight to tame the land and its savages; and then you might also desire to understand who benefits and how. You might question what is accomplished in providing the mythology of rugged individualism as integral part of the American identity, and why we insist on holding onto that mythology in a very different world today.

While that is only one story of “America” working to create cultural identity, it reveals so much about how power functions, how unprincipled socially stratified power structures maintain an insidious sort of narrative power, weaving a cultural yarn that somehow warrants subjugation. Underlying the narrative of rugged individualism lurks a persistent American mythological ideology enabling a hierarchical socio-economic reality: that there is a top, that you can make it to the top if you work hard enough, that you should actually be trying to do so, and if you don’t make it, it is your own fault: a surreptitious approach to making people accept their lot in life, and to compel the judgment of others who should also accept their lot as well.

A hierarchical socio-economic system requires social stratification by its very design. Repeat it until you get it. For the populous to go along with a system that by its very nature will subjugate and oppress the vast majority of them, you must either compel or convince them to do so. In America, where we believe we are free to secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity, our cultural narrative requires that we believe that we need not be subjugated and oppressed within the system, that if we work hard enough, if we behave the right way, if we consume the proper commodities, then we won’t be, we can’t be, and if we are anyway, it is a personal failing, certainly not that of a system that requires there be actual failures.

We deconstruct the historical narrative to ask questions about the current moment: how do we define what it means to be American, what values and expectations are espoused by that definition, why and how do we manage modern cultural identities that have been appropriated from another time and place in American history, how do we police the boundaries of American identity in the present, and who benefits from the work of our cultural narratives?

Our compliance with economic and social inequality allows us to ignore injustice, to refuse to acknowledge inequality, to turn a blind eye to struggle or suffering, and to attribute all of those things to personal failing, ineptitude, and a careless lack of responsibility rather than to the systems that not only enable but require disparity and inadequacy.

The manner in which society is constructed for and by its people – its governmental infrastructures, economic opportunities, social services, public and private attitudes toward its occupants, expectations for (and the reality of) the health and welfare of its citizens, including notable levels of discord and upheaval –  reveals both the distribution of power and the temperament of the narrative we have chosen to perform in order to support those systems.

Dissecting the narrative, deconstructing the performance, and examining the ramifications of our attitudes and actions that are all too often manufactured to meet the needs of the power structures pulling the strings is necessary; thoughtful, honest, and insightful scrutiny are all crucial to arriving at a reliable understanding of how and why we participate in and perpetuate inequality. We must arrive at an honest and reliable understanding because the world is a fucked up place for modern homo sapiens. Our social relationship with reality is delusional and toxic, we’re hurting ourselves, and we’re doing so to advantage the few at the top who really don’t give two short shits about the rest of us.

“We study history, it has been said, to rid ourselves of it, and the history of the power elite is a clear case for which this maxim is correct.” – C. Wright Mills

Hillary Clinton received several million more votes than Donald Trump when all the ballots were counted in the 2016 election, yet she was not elected president. With Joe Biden’s win of several million votes more than Donald Trump in the 2020 election, along with securing enough electoral votes to win, the social media commentary concerning what the Electoral College could possibly do (but never has), and what the “Founding Fathers” intended for it to do (as some desperate cultural tale of last-minute bureaucratic heroism), has been an interesting (albeit naïve) distraction from the substantive pain of having a capricious, incompetent, and sectarian bigot in the White House for the past four years. The dialogue likewise reveals how very little Americans know about their own country’s history, both social and political. We have many cultural mythologies about the past meant to provide meanings that we consume in the present to both validate and soothe the consequences of having an average of only sixty percent of the voting public engaging their civic duty, particularly when they often do so with very little understanding of what that duty actually entails.

Let’s burst a bubble here: The “Founding Fathers” didn’t intend for the electoral system to correct the kind of “mistakes” experienced with the results of the 2016 presidential election wherein the Electors, freed from the chains of political tyranny, choose the candidate for which the majority of people cast their vote in order to avoid some sort of cultural Armageddon. This country’s founders meant for the state electors to correct “popular” mistakes by the unkempt and barely educated rural populace in voting for someone they didn’t actually approve to be president (and let’s be honest: like so many Americans today, the “Founding Fathers” also would not have approved of a woman winning that office). So, Donald Trump isn’t the mistake of the electorate: that vote went to Hillary. No, Donald Trump was the mistake of the Electors, and you can thank men wearing wigs and breeches two hundred forty-five years ago for enabling that tragedy.

The founding political elite created this process to ensure that the popular vote does not, in fact, elect the president of the United States of America. Granted, they lived in another time and place so remotely different from our own time as to be meaningless without the corresponding historical myths we create in order for those actions and experiences to be meaningful today. Hell, they even had their own mythologies for themselves in their own time, little stories they used to create political and social identities, like how they didn’t believe in political parties (yet, somehow ended up creating them anyway) and did believe that “gentlemen” shouldn’t campaign for public office but come to it sort of through a natural inclination to participate and lead (which also worked to validate the idea that any free citizen with voting rights couldn’t possibly know enough about politics and politicians to choose the president, as they wouldn’t and couldn’t possibly know him). But one thing is decidedly clear if you read the varied literature written by the people who created the United States of America: the “Founding Fathers” did not want the average person electing the president: in part (and perhaps most valorized) because they feared a tyrant coming to power by manipulating the average person; and in part because they feared the average person was a selfish and uninformed country bumpkin incapable of making appropriate decisions that considered the entire nation’s needs and welfare without screwing everything up.

I made up the last part, but it sounds reasonable, especially if you understand what Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:

“It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder… But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief.”

Hamilton believed that the educated and social elite possessed the intellectual complexity and thoughtfulness necessary for determining who could properly govern; the guileless majority, at best, could only be trusted to choose Electors from their local masses; this limitation was meant to safeguard against the “tumult and disorder” that would clearly be a consequence of permitting the average person to directly elect the president of the United States in late eighteenth century America. The framers of our Constitution were also a bit afraid of Democracy and the uncivilized animal it could become. Oh, and when Hamilton wrote “men,” he meant men.

You must also understand that the United States of America consisted of 13 states with approximately 2.5 million people stretched along the Atlantic coast of a big, wild country, each nascent state jealous of its own rights and powers, and suspicious of whatever the other states, and any type of central government, might want to wield over them. Sure, everyone learns “there were 13 original colonies” but do nearly as many people understand what that actually means? No, not really.

We play with these pretensions toward understanding history, and while some people dedicate their lives to researching and studying historical data and experiences in an effort to comprehend the lives and social realities of those who lived in past moments through a study of language and culture, archaeology and literature, architecture and cultural landscapes, it’s hard to take most folks seriously when they construct opinions using American cultural mythologies spoon fed to the masses who have rarely paid close attention or thought critically enough about contemporary social issues to truly even understand what is happening in our lived realities of today, let alone that of yesterday. If sent back in time, the average 21st century U.S. citizen would feel transported to a foreign land, where their pretense to knowledge, entitled arrogance, and enfranchised assumptions would be frankly useless.

As it often is today as well.

Let’s go over some basic civics: Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution reads, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

So, each state gets the same number of Electors as they have Congressional members, but Electors cannot be Congressional members or holding any other office, and these Electors will actually cast the votes for president. But wait, there’s more…

Southern states didn’t have as many “free people” as the Northern states for determining their number of electors. Southern delegates to the Philadelphia Convention thereby feared their states would be dominated by a new federal government: Northern states were smaller, but with denser populations, the Northern states basically had more free people, hence more voters. So they compromised: dividing power based on counting the “whole number of free persons” in the states as well as “three-fifths of all other persons.” Southern states were thereby given more power and seats in the House of Representatives than they had voting population and more “Electors” for representation and selecting the president.

Because of slavery.

And also because of the conflicting ideologies embedded within the fabric of our union’s original power constructions. If you truly grasp anything fundamental about America, then you understand that we have an Electoral College and Electors because we do not have a “Democracy,” but rather a Constitutional Republic. We are still a “democracy” (small “d”), which is a government by the people. We have representative federal governing bodies whose powers and existence are based on the laws of our Constitution rather than direct democracy, as the tension created between majority rule and individual rights meant direct democracy could be problematic. Is the process democratic in practice? Sure, one can argue that theoretically, in terms of contemporary equality of suffrage, there is a democratic process. There’s voting and majority wins the whole pot at the state level, but there’s no direct Democracy in our democratic process: we vote for the politicians who will “represent” us in Congress, and we vote for Electors who will choose the president, and an “elected” president who will appoint the candidates for our judicial system. All three branches of federal government are either construed to represent us or are chosen by our representatives: nowhere in there are we, the People, making any direct decisions about anything.

Should we decide change is necessary given the historical distance from the original founders lived realities and worries not representing the lived realities and worries of today’s historical moment, in order to change the Electoral College, we must first have a dialogue about whether or not undermining the basic premise of representational government is a can of worms we are willing to open. I believe that discussion is worth peeling back the tin top, particularly if it means revisiting this codified vestige of slavery and subjugation enabling the pointed disregard of the will of the people who actually bother to get out and vote for the candidates who will govern for us. It’s also an important discussion to have because this type of change actually requires collective national social action: we must either amend our Constitution, something we haven’t done since 1971 (well, 1992 if you include the 27th amendment that was somehow introduced for ratification in 1789, and was then actually ratified almost 203 years later; yet we couldn’t extend the ratification period for the ERA until three more states ratified that amendment – go figure); or we can change the manner in which the Electoral College works without abolishing it at all if the states themselves change their laws determining how they will apportion their Electoral votes.

You see, the states actually make the laws governing their election processes, including their electoral vote apportionment, so if enough states (those totaling at least 270 Electoral votes) form an interstate compact to ensure that their state laws permit their collective Electoral votes to represent the winner of the national popular vote instead of that of their individual states, then the states actually have the power to change the way in which Electoral votes elect a president of the United States of America.

Wouldn’t that be something? Deciding to give the state’s Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in order to ensure we elect the candidate who actually receives the most votes without having to amend the Constitution and upset the apple cart of our Republic? It is a pretty selfless and cooperative thing to do though, and states are still a bit jealous of their power and suspicious of a central government’s intentions, so I’m unsure if we’re actually ready for the adult conversation that must precede such a development. And with America beginning to once again fully realize its asshole potential with the most recent election and the refusal of the current occupant of the White House to accept his loss, I’m not seeing a lot of selfless social behaviors working toward progressive social change in our near future…