It’s been a big week for cynicism in the news. Involved as I was with the book party for Reinventing Political Culture and teaching preparation, I didn’t realize that this would be the case until an A.P. reporter called on Tuesday morning. I get such calls every two years or so about some cynical development in the news as a part of the election cycle, as the author of The Cynical Society, This time the journalist focused upon two headlines: the “etch a sketch” remark by a Romney campaign aide and President Obama’s open mic remark in his conversation with President Medvedev.

I perversely enjoy these periodic interviews. Because I wrote a book with cynicism in the title, I am asked to provide rapid responses to questions about latest cynical manifestations. This provides some kind of public confirmation that my academic writing has some continuing relevance beyond academic circles. Yet, I must admit, there is cynicism in the asking and the answering.

Sometimes the journalist and I have a robust interesting conversation. At other times, I am at a loss for words, because I am busy with other things, hadn’t really given much thought to the issue, or know that what I have to say will not serve the journalist’s needs. But even when I am not sure what to say, the journalist presses and I usually comply. She needs a quote to build up her piece, to get “expert opinion” because journalistic convention stipulates that she should not express her own judgment explicitly, and I recognize the convention and willingly comply, concerned primarily that my name is spelled correctly and my institutional affiliation is properly identified, hoping that the sentence or two that the journalist draws from our conversation resembles what I actually think. Cynically speaking, I do this because I know that to appear in public is good for my and The New School’s reputations, and there is always a chance that what I say may matter a little.

I have talked with Nancy Benac, the reporter who called Tuesday, previously and have generally been satisfied with what she writes about our conversations, as was the case this week, even though what she reported could have been said by any minimally articulate person. Romney’s aide’s remarks confirmed what people already think about Romney, for better and for worse.

But other things cynical were happening last week that I believe are more important with longer lasting consequences than what Benac and I discussed. I even think that there is a new form to the cynicism now as opposed to the cynicism I studied in the late 80s and early 90s. Primary pieces of evidence of this were the speeches and actions at and around the Supreme Court and surrounding the outrage of the murder of Trayvon Martin. Both are deadly serious cases and in need of deliberate response, but both have been cynically debated in ways that seriously challenge our democratic politics and culture, American political culture. A bizarre opinion piece in the Washington Times summarizes the problem.

In the judgment of Charles Hurt, President Obama had the worst week of his Presidency, “one of the worst weeks in history for a sitting president.”

[I]n one week, Mr. Obama got caught whispering promises to our enemy, incited a race war, raised serious questions about his understanding of the Constitution, and then got smacked down over his proposed budget that was so wildly reckless that even Democrats in Congress could not support it.

This is cynicism from beginning to end. Obama didn’t whisper promises to our enemy. There were no promises, and the idea of Russia as an enemy is a deeply problematic notion, more than twenty years out of date. The Obama budget failed because of a combination of political and legislative maneuvering, not because it was wildly reckless. There are real political disagreements about pressing national and international issues and they can’t be reduced to simple formula as Hurt does (Obama — bad, which explains our politics from beginning to end).

And we have serious problems in our political culture, none of which is more persistent or troubling than those surrounding the issue of race.

The President comments on the Trayvon Martin were measured. As a self-identified African American, he had to answer a question about the case carefully. He couldn’t deny the obvious, but he couldn’t interfere with the ongoing investigation of the case. George Zimmerman suspicions were apparently based on no other reason other than that Martin was black, walking while wearing a hoody. That Zimmerman has not yet been charged is outrageous. Probable cause is there. Yet Obama’s response to the question posed was understated. If he had a son, he would have looked like Martin, suggesting that he would have raised the same suspicions. Race still matters in America. Subtly pointing this out is the least the President could do. Indeed, given the charged polarized nature of our political community, what the President said was exactly what he had to say, no more, no less.

There is sincere pain in this incidence, facing a mocking cynical response. As we listen to the discussions coming out of the African American community arising from the controversy, those of us from outside the community were reminded of, or learned about, the talk all young African American men must hear to warn them about the dangers they face. The President fulfilled his responsibility by not denying the obvious, not pretending that racism still doesn’t affect the daily lives of blacks in America. Those who pretend that it doesn’t are part of the very problem that they all too often cynically deny. In 1991, I worried about an enervating cynicism. Now there is a cynicism of open aggression.

This was most clearly revealed by Newt Gingrich:

What the president said, in a sense, is disgraceful. It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background.

Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him.

That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot.

It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian American or if he’d been a Native American.

At some point, we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.

And also equal rights for whites, and religious freedom for Christians are, no doubt, pressing issues for the former not so honorable speaker and the talking heads on Fox News.

In my next post, I will critically appraise the new cynicism more fully, starting with race and focusing on the discussions surrounding the recent spectacles in and around the Supreme Court.

On September 21, 2011, two American men, both in their early 40s, were put to death by order of their state government. One death provoked much discussion; the second was widely ignored. However, it is that second death that matters should we as a nation – or as a collection of states – decide to eliminate the death penalty for good and for all.

Outside of Georgia’s Jackson Prison, opponents of the death penalty gathered to hope, pray, and pay witness to the long death of Troy Davis. Mr. Davis was convicted of killing a police officer, Mark McPhail, in 1989. Whoever the killer was did a dastardly deed. And Mr. Davis was, according to the courts, that man. Over the years there came to be real doubts as to whether he was, in fact, guilty. The case depended largely on eyewitness testimony, and since the trial most of those eyewitnesses changed their stories. Perhaps Mr. Davis was not guilty of this crime.

No one, whatever stance they take on the legality of the death penalty, wishes for the state to kill innocent men, letting the real killer go free. Still, Mr. Davis had twenty years of appeals, and he never found a judge or parole board that was persuaded of his innocence. Shortly before his death, the Supreme Court, without dissent, refused to stay his execution. And it was done. Perhaps we must establish a more robust level of proof and be more modest in our certainty. Without doubt Mr. Davis came to be an impressive advocate for his own innocence. He wanted to live. However, shortly after 11:00 on the night of September 21^st, he was put to death by lethal injection. CNN’s Anderson Cooper covered the death watch with inspiring intensity, raising issues of Mr. Davis innocence and also the justice of the death penalty.

Eight-hundred miles west of Jackson, in Huntsville, Texas, another death occurred, quietly and without network klieg lights. Whereas Mr. Davis’s death came with complications over his possible innocence, for most observers the Texas death lacked much in the way of factual doubts. That same Wednesday evening, the state of Texas, also using a lethal injection, put to death Lawrence Russell Brewer. If the death penalty is to be eliminated, the American people must determine that the lives of people like Lawrence Brewer – no, not people like Mr. Brewer, but he himself – must be spared.

Perhaps Mr. Brewer had his fifteen minutes of fame at the time of the murder for which he – as one of three – were convicted, but those minutes had long passed. Lawrence Brewer was found guilty of involvement in the ghastly murder of James Byrd. Back on June 7, 1998, Mr. Byrd, walking along a local road in East Texas, was grabbed, beaten, chained, and then dragged for two miles behind a pickup. In the process he was beheaded. Brewer remains an unrepentant white supremacist and admits some involvement in the events of the night, but he denies being the killer, although he also claims that he would do it again. However, his involvement is certain and his politics – if such is the proper term – is dark and fraught. There was no vigil for Mr. Brewer. He died unmourned. He was no figurehead of unjust justice. Yet, if the death penalty is to be abolished, it is not only the articulate Davises that will live their full years, but the angry Brewers.

In stark contrast to Troy Davis, Lawrence Brewer, in spite of his claims of innocence for the murder, supports the death penalty. The question is, should we? It is hard to deny that over the decades, the death penalty has put some innocent men to death. While we now have instituted an elaborate system of checks as to legal procedure, we often don’t include the possibility of exculpating facts. And that is wrong. Further, many murders are fairly routine, as was that of the police officer whom Davis was accused of killing: they dismay, but do not outrage.

But there are some acts, and the death of James Byrd is a case in point, that call for a collective performance of disgust. The death penalty is not about the killer, but about the society that firmly announces that this must not stand. In our resolve we must not act “as animals,” lusting for blood or applauding the killing, but as a community that announces that some do not to remain in our midst. These deaths stand as a recognition of the possibility of evil.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton said of abortion, “It should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare.” I apply his model to state-sponsored death. The death penalty should be humane, it should be possible, and, most of all, it should be rare. The dramatic differences in the justice of the deaths of Troy Davis and Lawrence Brewer underline that only in extraordinary cases, horrific and unambiguous, death is not a blow at humanity, but a basis of that very humanity.

Sometimes the solution to theoretical problems become apparent not through careful research or close reading of important texts, but in the course of thinking about everyday life, in the course of leading a reflective life.  You have an everyday encounter. You give it thought, and a major intellectual problem is solved.

I had such an experience and revelation at a lunch in Berlin in November of 1994.  I remember the discussion.  I remember the setting, an Italian restaurant in the leafy outskirts of the city.  But I have only a vague recollection of my lunch partner, a female German scholar.

I was in Berlin in 1994 on a leg of a United States Information Agency sponsored lecture tour in Europe.  The main event was in Poland, where I helped inaugurate a short lived American Cultural Center there.  Following my stop in Warsaw, I flew to Berlin to speak in the well established American Cultural Center there about my book The Cynical Society, but also gave a talk at the Free University about my other relatively recent books, Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall.  The first Berlin talk was about my work on American political culture, the second on my work in Central and Eastern Europe.  After the second talk, I had a lunch with my hostess.  We engaged in the normal small talk.  No doubt, we discussed the presentation I gave and the reaction of the audience.  The details escape me except for one exchange.  It went something like this:

Jeff – “I think that it is not at all clear that Hitler’s crimes were qualitatively different than those of Stalin.”

Hostess –  “No!  Hitler was unique.  The intentional project of modern industrial genocide was unprecedented, uniquely evil, something that must not be forgotten.”

We went on and discussed this, I, as an expert on the Soviet bloc and its democratic opposition, she as a German scholar.   The conversation was warm, not at all heated, though the subject matter was tough.  I emphasized the immensity of Stalin’s crimes, of the gulag, of the mass starvation in Ukraine, the brutal treatment of those who dissent and of inconvenient national minorities.  She countered with recollections of the Holocaust.

At some point, I don’t remember when, I realized a paradox.  The meaning of this exchange would be precisely reverse, if I argued the position she presented, and she argued the position that I presented.  The embodiment of the argument determined the meaning of the exchange.

If I, as an American Jewish scholar, argued the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and she, as a German scholar, argued that Nazism was no worse than Soviet Communism, we would have been emphasizing the differences between us, revealing suspiciousness of the other, moving in the direction of nationalism.  As it was, we recognized each other as open people, as colleagues.  The meeting that we had was one of mutual respect and understanding.  The meeting of the imagined encounter would have been antagonistic.  Discussion could continue in the actual encounter, it would end in the hypothetical one.  Learning would accrue in the real one, probably wouldn’t in the imagined one.

As the author of The Cynical Society, I am quite critical of reductive reasoning, reasoning that reduces the meaning of an utterance to the qualities of the speaker, particularly related to positions and motives of wealth and power.   I emphasize that text should not be reduced to context.  On the other hand, as a sociologist, I know that context matters.  At the Berlin lunch, I think I saw how the criticism of sociological reduction and the insight of sociological knowledge can both stand.  Text and context are related in important ways, but context doesn’t determine text.  It culturally informs it.

This has many practical applications.  The cultural context of American racism, thus, informs how blacks and whites can speak to each other effectively.  This is why being race blind is funny when Stephen Colbert asserts it. It is why when whites complain that there is a need to struggle for equal rights for whites; they actually intend the opposite of what their words on the surface apparently say.  Indeed it is why when the Supreme Court rules that the law must be color blind, it is on very dubious grounds.

Andrew Arato is an expert in constitutions, a pressing topic in Turkey right now.

I read the news about the Turkish referendum on constitutional reforms with great interest. Turkey is a bridge between East and West.  Europe meets Asia in modern booming Istanbul. It’s a place where the commitment to democracy and to an open Islam is the official policy of the governing Justice and Development Party.  It’s a place of great hope and promise, where instead of the clash of civilizations, there is dialogue and reinvention. But it is also a place where people committed to secularism worry about the prospects for their modern way of life.  I tried to follow the news reports about what happened, but they were unclear.  I understood that a sweeping package of constitutional reforms were approved, that the referendum purported to bring the Turkish constitution up to European standards, but also that the opposition was claiming that the package was a systematic power grab.  Is this a sign of democratic progress as the ruling party spokesman declared, or is it, as the opposition declared, a significant regression?  I called my friend and New School colleague, Andrew Arato, a distinguished expert on constitutions, who has been working with a group of young scholars on constitutional issues in Turkey.  He agreed to answer my questions. I opened by asking him whether the referendum results were good or bad news?

I think bad. The successful Turkish referendum of September 12 was ultimately about court packing. Not only is the manner of choosing judges for the Court now altered, but six new judges presumably friendly to the government will be added to the Court within 30 days.

This is a point missed by almost all Western commentary on the event. Court packing is always bad business. The way is now almost open for the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, the ruling Party with leaders who have an Islamist, but are committed to membership in the European Union) to remake the country’s secular constitution entirely on its own.

I understand that it is never a good idea to have a political party, let alone a political leader, even one that we passionately support, to have the power to remake a constitution at will. FDR was one of the greatest Presidents in our history, but when he was having a hard time getting his New Deal reforms through the court and tried to pack it with his supporters, it was in retrospect a good thing that the American public and their representatives turned on him.  So the general concern I get.  But do you have particular reasons to be concerned?

It was indeed wrong for Roosevelt to try control judicial outcomes by Court packing.  But the meaning of this device is especially troublesome in potentially more authoritarian settings, for example, the introduction of formal apartheid in South Africa, and during Mrs. Gandhi’s emergency in India. In South Africa, the parliament was about to deprive the colored (mixed race) voters of their franchise, and the Appeals Court resisted. This was overcome by packing  both the court and the Senate. As to Mrs. Gandhi, at issue were both her so-called corrupt practices in an election, as well as the Court’s ability to defend rights against the easy amendment possibilities of the constitution. In the end the Court won, but only after a destructive emergency when the democracy was almost lost.  The packing of the court in Turkey is reminiscent of these two dangerous cases.

Further, it is not obvious that the Turkish electorate would have voted for this type of scheme had it been honestly presented. It was not. The Court packing and changing provisions were only two articles of a highly attractive twenty  six article package that the voters could approve or reject only as a whole. The people had to choose between all or nothing.  This tragically repeats the approach of the military dictator, General Evren, in 1982.  Then: vote for military’s constitution if you want one good thing (namely the end of the junta’s rule) or continue the military dictatorship.  Now: the population had to confirm an immense increase in the power of the ruling party if it wanted any of the many goodies in the package…

The AKP has operated as a moderate Islamic one (they say conservative) so far. But, there is no guarantee that it would continue to do so when it has the power to change the constitution of the country at their will.  The project to combine the secular traditions and institutions in Turkey with the religious commitments of the vast majority of the Turkish population is now apparently going to go unchecked by any political or social force other than the ruling party.

Why just apparently unchecked?

I qualify my judgment for three hopeful reasons. First, because even a packed Court may still act like a Court. The eternity clauses of Turkey’s present constitution concerning secularism and republicanism, plus the preamble involving the separation of powers (incorporated in an eternity clause) still gives the Constitutional Court a foothold to control constitution making, if it wishes to. While the apartheid regime did control its newly named  judges, Mrs. Gandhi in the end did not.

It’s possible that just as in the United States there is no guarantee that the appointed judges will act in the way their patrons want.  They may actually take their constitutional responsibilities seriously using their own judgment.

And there are the relevant European institutions, which until now seem to have been fooled by the package. But, once its real meaning becomes clear, I think they will not be fooled and the response could be devastating.

And further there is the matter of the Turkish electorate itself, it has means to respond and defend the constitutional order.

Nonetheless the key problem remains – the referendum permits Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul of the ruling party to pack the court.  The editors of  The New York Times naively call on them to “not pack the court with political loyalists and religious extremists.” I fear that was the very point of the exercise.

In Kagan’s hearings significant changes were revealed in how the parties approach justice.  It was the Democrats who were concerned about legislation from the bench, concerned as they were by the threat the Court poses to the Democratic political agenda, from regulating oil drilling, to delivering healthcare reform, to controlling the use of guns in this very violent country of ours.  The Republicans, on the other hand, while making gestures against judicial activism, were cheering it as it served their political ends, equating campaign contributions as speech, granting corporations the right of free speech, selecting a President.

For many, on the Republican extreme, indeed, the Constitution has come to be identified with their anti-government agenda, their agenda for keeping the Reagan revolution alive. At the Kagan confirmation hearings this political confrontation was perfectly clear.
I do worry about the balance and direction of the court, given my political commitments. I wish the balance of the court would change, just as those who are happy with the character of Roberts’ Court would like to see it sustained.  I observed the hearings with an understanding of the two sides, and I knew which side I was on, which team I was rooting for.  I think that the confirmation hearings were a great success demonstration of the political issues involved.  In this sense they were a great success.

But I have a special concern, a sociological one that is not strictly speaking political.  It concerns the issue of free speech and free public life more generally.  I fear that a political cultural ideal is being compromised, by one side, the other side of the great political debate.  I know that a free public life depends upon keeping intellectual traditions alive.  This I learned from my learned and principled conservative teacher Edward Shils when I sat in his seminar on traditions, which later became a highly influential book.   I also learned and know that markets and states, money and political power can both support and undermine such traditions.

I worked on this issue in my book On Cultural Freedom: The Exploration of Public Life in Poland and America.  My major finding: markets don’t guarantee cultural or political freedom, nor do states; both markets and states support and undermine cultural freedom, specifically free speech.  A key issue is whether individuals and groups can take part in public life.  Can they have a free discussion with their contemporaries and respond to their predecessors, and in the process support the development of cultural traditions?

When money is more readily available to one party, its opposition and its supporters, may not manage to be visible to or persuade the public.  Creating a system that advantages some, in this case the wealthy, does give them voice, but it also silences others, those who don’t have money.  Some seem to be more equal than others in this emerging configuration.  This needs to be critically examined, not because one or another party would be favored, but a key democratic ideal is at issue.

This is a principled issue that should move beyond politics.  The confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan showed that it hasn’t.

Thoughts on Sotomayor:

A significant portion of the population in the United States is not comfortable with an African American President.  This very seriously has shaped official public debate, clearly in the confirmation hearings of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  The New York Times reported about Sotomayor’s leading critic in the Senate before the confirmation hearings:
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the highest-ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the fairness issue was “the core of the American system” and was central to Republicans’ qualms.

“Every judge must be committed every day to not let their personal politics, their ethnic background, their biases, sympathies influence the nature of their decision-making process,” Mr. Sessions said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

Mr. Sessions pointed to what he called Judge Sotomayor’s advocacy positions and to her widely publicized remark that a “wise Latina woman” would make better judicial decisions than a white man.

“I am really flabbergasted by the depth and consistency of her philosophical critique of the ideal of impartial justice,” Mr. Sessions said. “I think that’s a real expression of hers.” (link)

The underlying theme of the Republican questioning of Sotomayor was revealed in Sessions’ statement.  There was the proposition that because she thought that the special insights and experiences of people with different identities could improve the quality of justice, she somehow was less committed to the ideals of impartial justice.  Over and over, the Republican Senators returned to one quotation from her public speeches, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” (link)

The principle reason given for opposing Sotomayor was that she didn’t believe in equal justice.  Could it be that this was serious?  What she meant is really not complicated.  Bringing in new perspectives improves the pursuit of justice.  People who have been excluded add something important, and they can be proud of it.  Of course, if one wants to be suspicious one could read more sinister meaning into her words.  If one is uncomfortable with the changing attitudes towards diversity, in which it is understood as a societal strength most clearly represented in the words, deeds and person of President Barack Obama, a Supreme Court Justice who works with this strength is indeed most threatening. Sessions understanding of Sotomayor is more a consequence of his suspicion and fear than of her words.  It fuels conservative politics, has little to do with impartial justice, which is indeed a fundamental ideal.