a generational call to rebuild

Leave a reply

In January 2024, I wrote a post entitled “calling youth to government service.” I noted that many talented young people would vote to expand government, but few were interested in working in government. I posited both demand- and supply-side explanations. Young people do not know enough about public-sector employment, nor do they sufficiently value it. At the same time, the federal government has been very bad at recruitment and retention.

Now, as someone who advises many talented and idealistic undergraduates, I cannot encourage them to apply for federal jobs.

We don’t know how long “now” will last. Bad-case scenarios envision an extended period of crisis and the kind of kleptocratic authoritarianism that will keep federal (and some state) agencies from functioning appropriately for years.

Nevertheless, it is important to begin envisioning a rebuilding phase, even while we also strive to defend current institutions. The opportunity to rebuild could begin as soon as two years from now. At least, that is when presidential campaigns will launch, and one of their core messages could be rebuilding the government. Meanwhile, today’s college students and recent graduates can be obtaining further education or experience in local government or the private sector with an eye to joining the federal civil service in 2028.

Besides, having a positive vision can change the political situation in the present. Optimism is important for morale. We should be struggling to make change, not just to block threats.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are already educating Americans about the value of the federal government. In the latest CNN poll, substantial majorities of Americans oppose “laying off large numbers of federal government workers,” “shutting down the agency that provides humanitarian aid in low-income countries,” and (by the widest margin) “blocking health agencies from communicating without approval from a Trump appointee.” Since foreign aid generally lacks public support, and the Trump/Musk layoffs have yet to affect many voters directly, I suspect that subsequent cuts will be even more unpopular.

Many of my recent predictions have been wrong. I thought that some of the Biden-era spending would be popular, and I thought that Musk’s layoffs at Twitter would break that platform. Nevertheless, I predict that mass federal layoffs will raise awareness of the value of the federal workforce. Meanwhile, the civil service already needs hundreds of thousands of new workers to replace retiring Baby Boomers, and Trump’s layoffs will create many additional vacancies.

Under these circumstances, how should the federal civil service be rebuilt? I would posit these principles:

1. We need an eloquent generational call. Today’s young people can reconstruct their government to address social and environmental challenges. This is their historical calling. Government service is an essential means to the ends that many of them care about, including saving the earth from climate change.

    2. The paradigm of service should be a full-time, professional career in the government. I am not against social entrepreneurship or temporary community service, but the civil service is much larger and more important. We do not need alternatives to government careers nearly as much as we need more and better positions within the civil service (federal, state, and local).

    3. The goal is not to return to 2024. The federal workforce had well-documented problems before Trump was inaugurated. Although we must tolerate some degree of sclerosis and waste in any large system–and although current federal workers deserve credit for much valuable work under difficult circumstances–there was already a need for change. Young people should be recruited to rejuvenate and reform federal systems, not just work in them.

    4. But any changes should be scrupulously legal. Rule of law is a fundamental value, and nowhere is it more important than in the executive branch, which monopolizes the legitimate use of violence in our society. The federal government can kill, imprison, monitor, or financially ruin people. Its every action must be governed by statutory law. This means that rejuvenating the federal civil service must proceed within the clear statutory authority of the president, unless new legislation passes. (And I am not expert enough on this topic to recommend legislation.)

    5. Federal agencies already do some work that I would label “civic”: collaborating with groups in civil society, convening citizens for important conversations, and educating (not propagandizing) the public. But they also (inevitably) play many roles that are bureaucratic, technocratic, and managerial. A rebuilding effort should emphasize the civic aspects of government, because these are valuable, they can appeal to younger people who are skeptical of bureaucracy, and they can reinforce the public legitimacy of the executive branch. If you want people to trust experts, give them opportunities to work with experts on common problems.

    The overall message should acknowledge the value of the institutions that we have built so far–and the service of our current and past public sector workers–while envisioning new and better ways of governing.

    See also: calling youth to government service and putting the civic back in civil service.

    nostalgia in the face of political crisis

    Leave a reply

    Amid the barrage of bad news about US politics, I frequently find myself nostalgic.

    Sometimes, it’s for the recent past–for last summer, when we were on a family vacation and Kamala Harris seemed to be surging; or the eve of last fall’s election, when I spoke dispassionately about polarization at American and Colgate universities; or even last month, when we thought that Trump might prove more feckless than reckless.

    Other times, my nostalgia reaches further back, to the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, when this white, male, college-educated, fairly moderate American felt that the republic was secure and the public’s values were evolving for the better with each new generation. That underlying optimism was one reason I spent most of the next 20 years focused on promoting youth civic engagement.

    If I wish to return to when I felt better about politics, that means that I want to go back to being naive; and we shouldn’t want that for ourselves. Nor is nostalgia reliable. In the past, not everything was dappled sunlight on a late-afternoon lawn–certainly not for people less fortunate than me.

    Near the beginning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera’s narrator says that everything is bathed in nostalgia in the face of dissolution, even the guillotine. He’s discussing Nietzsche’s trope of the Eternal Return. If we believed that the French Revolutionary Terror would recur cyclically, we would fear it. Because we know that it has passed, we bathe it in nostalgia. Our deepest fear is the passage of time, because events do not recur endlessly for us. They move permanently into the past as our time runs out.

    Nostalgia can be a way of grasping at the self, trying to trap that ghost in a display case. As such, it is better avoided, regardless of its cause. As for political nostalgia, it is a common ground of reactionary politics.

    A related word is “envy.” In his Theses on the Philosophy of History (#2), Walter Benjamin notes that we never envy the future. He says that happiness that makes us envious is connected to our past. We seek redemption by wishing to recover (sometimes from other people) what we already experienced. A worthy redemption, however, requires a change for the better. Political progress brings a better future into the present and thereby imparts a new meaning to what happened in the past. “For every second of time [is] the strait gate through which Messiah might enter.”

    This is a pretentious and roundabout way of saying that what matters is not what used to be but what we do now to improve the world that we are in.

    See also: phenomenology of nostalgia; nostalgia for now; Martin Luther King’s philosophy of time

    the theory of the Biden environmental policy may be proven right

    Leave a reply

    The Washington Post mentions “Skylar Holden, a cattle farmer in eastern Missouri,” who is not receiving $240,000 in federal funding that he was awarded under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program because Trump froze it. The headline is: “Farmers [are] on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds,” In The New York Times, Michael W. Webber describes the broader pattern: “Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rank and file might not let him choke off the money flowing to Republican districts; a majority of federal clean energy investments for wind, solar, batteries and clean tech factories are going to those regions.”

    This was the design; the policy was built to survive political opposition. I believe the authors of the the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act and related bills (provisions in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $280+ billion CHIPS Act) held the mental model shown on the right side of the image that accompanies this post.

    You could read the image by focusing first on the teal loop. By burning carbon, people cause both good and bad outcomes. The net result is bad; probably around $185 of damage per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions (Rennert et al 2022), which I think comes to about $6.8 trillion per year for the world.

    Governmental policies could reduce that social cost. A big carbon tax is an example. However, virtually no governments do enough. The reason is that carbon produces a set of interest groups–some environmental ones, but many stronger groups that are committed to cheap carbon. Not all of these groups are elite. They include working people in carbon-intensive jobs and their elected representatives. The carbon economy also generates public opinion, including concerns about climate change as well as deep support for carbon-intensive jobs and products. The interest groups and public opinion influence governments to adopt the policies that they enact. For the most part, it is a vicious circle.

    To create an alternative loop (shown in light green on the left side of the diagram), Biden and the Democratic Congress basically poured a lot of money into green industry. Their goal was to create new interest groups that would demand continued funding for green technologies as well as other supportive policies. Just as conventional car owners demand cheap gas, electric car owners will demand charging stations. Public opinion would also evolve so that more people would support environmental policies and recognize their economic benefits. Ultimately, once the green loop was bigger than the teal one, there would be political support for pushing carbon emissions down.

    The Biden policy probably lowered carbon emissions substantially. But it had no positive effects on public opinion. As I have discussed before, vast expenditures received startlingly little attention. Proponents were either unwilling or unable to defend the policy. The president of the environmentalist Sierra Club, Ben Jealous, emphasized abortion when he advocated for Harris. Even the names of the Biden bills hid their purpose. For instance, the Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with reducing inflation and may even have raised it somewhat. In short, the pathway to policy through public opinion failed, either because the messengers barely tried or because no one could have persuaded voters about such matters.

    However, the other path shown in green may still work. The Biden bills created hundred of thousands of post-carbon jobs and subsidized many farmers and business owners. Disproportionately–and by design–these people live in Republican states and districts. They are now a powerful interest group.

    Clearly, the president and his team will try to wreck what they call the “Green New Deal.” But if the green loop holds, they will fail.

    Source: Rennert, K., Errickson, F., Prest, B.C. et al. Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO2. Nature 610, 687–692 (2022). See also a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money; tracking the Biden climate investments; a different way in which the 2024 election is a failure for democracy etc.

    did the first resistance work?

    Leave a reply

    Many people are skeptical that the grassroots resistance to Donald Trump in 2017-18 was successful. I have argued that it could have been considerably more potent if the grassroots groups had taken stronger and more durable forms.

    That said, it is not true that resistance failed. As Theda Skocpol argues, grassroots efforts saved the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and began the Blue Wave that returned the House to Democratic control in 2018, thus freezing Trump’s agenda and preventing him from changing federal legislation very much at all.

    I would distinguish between two forms of resistance, although some individuals worked on both.

    One was a set of social movements that aimed to transform the US fairly radically. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was the largest, but there were also significant LGBTQ+, environmentalist, and pro-immigration movements. Of course, these had started before Trump’s election.

    I aligned with most of these efforts, and I discuss BLM as a positive case in my most recent book. None of their struggles are over. However, these movements faced popular backlash and were defeated (for the time being) on most policy fronts. For example, my former student and two colleagues show that BLM protests were associated with increases in police budgets. If these movements contributed to Trump’s reelection, that is a disturbing fact about how the American people received them, but it may still help to explain our situation.

    The other kind of resistance was what Skocpol refers to when she mentions “2,000 to 3,000 grassroots Resistance groups” that defended the ACA and then often helped Democratic candidates in the 2018 election. Their goal was not to change American society but to preserve its current institutions. And they largely succeeded during the first Trump Administration. Theirs could be described as a conservative movement in the sense that they intended to conserve what was most valuable in the status quo.

    I have no interest in sidelining the radical movements. At least some of their goals are urgent, and their participants have the right to participate fully. Successful resistance will depend–in part–on them. But I do want to highlight Trump’s other kind of opponents because success will also depend on these Americans. I have lately been talking about “Alarmed Complete Newbies” (ACNs)–people who are activated by Trump’s outrages and want to hold them off. My current priority is to provide as much guidance and support as I can for the ACNs.

    See also: What our nation needs is a broad-based, pro-democracy civic movement; the current state of resistance, and what to do about it; BLM protests and backlash; strategizing for civil resistance in defense of democracy etc.

    young people’s support for Trump

    Leave a reply

    The success of Trump’s revolution depends on its popularity. As long as he remains reasonably popular, he will retain the support of Republicans and business interests and assertive resistance will fizzle. If his support sinks badly, other politicians will want to abandon him and more people will join the opposition.

    According to the latest CBS News/YouGov poll, somewhat more Americans approve than disapprove of Trump (53% versus 47%). That ratio is poor for a newly inaugurated president but far higher than it should be, and too high–for now–to enable a successful grassroots opposition.

    Young people are especially supportive.* Fifty-five percent of respondents under 30 approve of “the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president.” That is the second-highest level among the age groups, just below ages 45-64 (56%). Young people are also least likely to strongly disapprove of Trump, at 32%–compared to 44% of those 65 and older.

    Young people are the most likely to agree that Trump is “effective” (63%), “focused” (62%), “competent” (58%), “tough” (71%), and “energetic” (65%), although they are also the least likely to agree that he is “compassionate” (35%).

    On policies: young people seem to approve of Trump’s cutting government. They are the most likely to think that Trump is appropriately focused on cutting taxes (45% think he is doing enough on that score and another 37% think he is not yet doing enough) and cutting spending (just 27% think he is cutting too much, the lowest of any age group).

    According to the survey, Americans feel that Trump is not doing enough to combat inflation. But young people are slightly more likely than others to think that Trump is already doing enough on that score (although a majority of youth think he is not).

    Deportations are quite popular in the sample as a whole, but not especially so among young people. And despite their relatively positive answers on most of the specific survey questions, a smaller majority of young people (56%) than other people say that they mostly like what Trump is doing.

    As always, it’s important not to assume that people are seeing the same news that you see and reaching the opposite conclusions. Many Americans see very little political or policy news at all, and what they do see is a small sample of all the possible stories.

    Young people are the least attentive to politics: according to the poll, just 34% are currently paying a lot of attention, in comparison to 64% of those 65 and older. The only “trending” video on TikTok right now that involves Trump shows him and Melania taking a “happy walk” together (and looking a lot younger than they do today). The level of attention to news rises steadily with age in this survey. Therefore, if young people see more news, that will probably lower Trump’s support.

    It is not appropriate for schools and colleges to advocate opinions about Trump. (And this survey undermines the claim that schools have been turning young people “woke.” If any schools were trying to do so, their attempt backfired.) However, it is proper and important for leaders in politics and civil society to persuade youth to care more about democracy and the rule of law, and young advocates can be particularly persuasive. Their success may prove critical to preserving the rule of law.

    [Important update, Feb. 13: YouGov’s latest polling shows a substantial (11-point) decrease in Trump’s support among young people. They are now opposed (57% hold a negative view), and this change is the main cause of a decline in Trump’s overall support. So maybe the critical news is beginning to break through.]

    *Some of these comparisons fall within the margin of error (+/- 2.5% for the whole sample, and larger for subgroups). However, some of the differences exceed the margin, and even the smaller gaps reflect the best available information. We should act accordingly.

    See also the current state of resistance, and what to do about it; where have lower-educated voters moved right? (a look at 102 countries over 35 years); to restore trust in schools and media, engage people in civic life etc.