Symbolism, Substance and the Search for Sanity

Symbolism, Substance, and the Search for Sanity


There is nothing earthshaking about politicians doing things for purposes that are more political than practical.   Maybe you call it hot air or something a little more crude.  Its something we all acknowledge, but also something we have no means to quantify in any comparable way.

Immeasurable though it may be, the rational among us can delineate an issue with a more deceptive degree of symbolism than another.  A candidate posing with an infant is less deceptive than phony rhetoric over fiscal policy for political gain which is less deceptive than a made up crisis that puts people in jail which is less deceptive than a made up crisis that kills people.

The broad commonality between the extremes could be called symbolic politics, a concept defined by the late University of Wisconsin Professor Murray Edelman.  Politicians frame a situation as a crisis and imply to varying degrees that they have an ability to solve it.  The real effects of political action, which Edelman refers to as principal value, can be quite different than the symbolic value, politicians would prefer the public accept as truth.  Edelman was a leader in examining this duality.

“According to Edelman, political players subconsciously and based on their own roles produce a make-believe political world for the electorate using political symbols and rituals for and by the mass media; this process is increasingly being superimposed upon the principal value of political actions,” (UNESCO via d@dalos).

Symbolic politics is a concept so broad that it almost lacks boundries.  Everything politicians do has a degree of political gain attached to it.  Not every formula produces the projected outcome, but no politician does anything they feel will be a political loss.

 It might be that the concept is too broad to be useful, but I suggest that it is so prevalent that it is laughable to ignore.  Lacking the means to measure the gap doesn’t reduce its significance.  It might be a leading cause of low political participation rates.  Pew reports that in 2010 73% of non-voters trust Washington to do what is right only sometimes or never.  (Pew)  Perhaps they can see through the symbolism.

The use of symbolic politics is not limited to a specific ideology, party or even system of government.  Depression era fascists, developed Democracies, and the Russian Federation, have applied the same formula to stockpile legitimacy through symbolism.

Politicians and activists create meaning using inflammatory rhetoric and action.  The fear that is manufactured is met with similarly produced, equally erroneous solutions.  If the narrative is accepted by the electorate the reward is political legitimacy.

 Sane people of all political persuasions understand that taxes are a necessary cost of living in any civilized place.  This hasn’t stopped many politicians from demonizing the very idea of taxes.  Consider Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, that binds signers not to raise taxes under any circumstance.

It is true that the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against taxes.  The event is also correctly considered a defining moment when colonists became Americans.  Modern Tea Partiers and their anti-tax friends fail to realize that the story didn’t end in Boston Harbor.  The party became a revolution, the revolution became a nation, and the nation became one that realized that it needed revenue to function.

 Land sales negated the need for any substantial taxes, but once all the land was sold the need for revenue didn’t disappear.  Taxes replaced land sales as the primary source of federal revenue.  So unless the Tea Party has a continent’s worth of land to sell, they should accept the burden of paying taxes.

“In short, no matter how one slices the data, the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are, whether referring to total taxes as a share of GDP or in terms of the taxes paid by a typical family...Tea Partyers also seem to have a very distorted view of the direction of federal taxes.  No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies,” (Bartlett).

Bartlett is mostly correct, although he omits that Obama raised taxes on poor people by raising the federal cigarette tax by 60 cents per pack, as well as some increases in airline fees.  For the average smoker who is disproportionately poor this amounts to about a annual $220 tax increase, albeit one that is likely offset by tax cuts.   He points out that 40% of Obama’s stimulus paid for tax cuts and that 90% of taxpayers received tax cuts in 2009.  

 “Whatever the future of the Tea Party movement in American politics, it's a bad idea for so many participants to operate on the basis of false notions about the burden of federal taxation. It only takes a little bit of time to look at one's tax return to see what one is actually paying the Treasury, calculate the percentage of one's income that goes to taxes, and compare it with what was paid last year and the year before. People may then discover that their anger is misplaced and channel it into areas where it is more likely to bring about positive change,” (Bartlett).

Yet the Tea Party continues to cling to symbolism over substance as they stand up to the tax and spend liberalism that President Obama has so clearly displayed by spending large sums on tax cuts.

The anti-tax movement really took off in 1978 in California in the form of proposition 13.  Proposition 13 was a ballot measure that restricted revenue streams by freezing property taxes.  Many economists have concluded that proposition 13 is responsible for California having America’s lowest credit rating and highest debt.

“The measure, approved in 1978, was the inspiration for an anti tax movement that has taken hold of the public discourse in Washington and in state legislatures throughout the country. It caps real estate levies at 1 percent of a property’s most-recent sale price. Before it passed, local governments could raise revenue as they saw fit.

In July, anti tax fervor fed by the Tea Party movement led Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to dig in against any increase in the nation’s debt ceiling that included raising taxes. The compromise that resulted threatens automatic spending cuts across the government if a congressional super committee can’t agree on ways to cut the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion.,” (Palmeri).

It is not unreasonable to assume that if rhetoric about a debt ceiling produces automatic spending cuts without precision, the country could experience the unintended consequences of tax limits on a scale that dwarfs the Golden State.  There are hints of compromise coming out of Washington on fiscal policy as politicians from both sides agree in principal on the counterproductive economic effects of a high U.S. corporate tax rate relative to the rest of the developed world.  Any agreement could be hindered by the transparency that could be required to analyze the current system against any changes.

The symbolic debate is whether or not there should be taxes.  The substantive outcome is whether or not specific budget items get funding, like the military, infrastructure, schools, health care, and entitlements.  No politician wants to cut any of these but they may not have a choice.  The books are not balancing themselves and nobody wants to talk about it in any kind of constructive way.

Symbolic rhetoric about fiscal policy is not limited to the conservatives.  The Democrats would have you believe that seniors are under attack.  Frightening seniors into thinking that they will lose their entitlements has been a proven formula for success in turning out elderly Democratic voters.  The strategy works so well in a highly participatory demographic that Republicans say that Democrats attack seniors on other fronts.  Politifact.com’s 2011 lie of the year was Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad that claimed, “Republican’s voted to end medicare,”  (Adair, Drobnic Holan).

 A wise old politician once told 90 % of 90 year olds vote, 80% of 80 year olds vote, 70% percent of 70 year olds vote, 60% of 60 year olds vote and so on.  There is not an office holding politician in the country that would fathom removing even a speck of gristle from the platter of political pork that American seniors depend on unless it was positively unavoidable.  Even the leader of the supposed Republican attack, Congressman Paul Ryan, understands this, which is why his plan for medicare doesn’t touch benefits for people over 55.

Mr. Ryan almost felt compelled to talk frankly with Barney Frank about another symbolic sore thumb, U.S. marijuana policy during an ABC News This Week Great American Debates segment.  (This Week) Fortunately for Paul, time ran out before he could be pressed to explain the sanity of the policy.

The symbolic value of marijuana prohibition and drug prohibition as a whole is laughable to rational people when compared to its principle value.  Maybe that’s what Mr. Ryan was smirking about in the debate.  Symbolically criminalizing drug use represents a patriotic defense against threats to the community while substantively prohibition drives up the costs and profits of the drugs, creates costly bureaucracies, jails otherwise law abiding citizens, and nurtures a booming black market.

Conservative estimates of the U.S. black market economy are around 1 trillion or roughly 9% of G.D.P. (McTague) This is merely the amount of money spent on purchasing things on the black market, it does not include the costs of attempting to stop them or the opportunity costs of criminally prosecuted users. At a time when we are wondering how to pay for our entitlements, we are committed to an iron triangle of politicians who gain from anti-drug rhetoric, misallocated law enforcement resources, and cartels who become wealthier and more murderous.

Demand for illicit drugs are what they are.  Pharmaceutical companies and even less desirable entities use all the science they can muster to fill the minor void in supply that illegality causes in the illicit drug market.  If you doubt this, do a little investigating into how much time the U.S. military spends combating synthetic drugs.  “A ban was placed on five synthetic cannabis compounds commonly found in the designer drug Spice, but also sold under different names, just one year ago March 1,”  (Howard).

The synthetic drug market an attempt to fill an economic void called deadweight loss, the loss to society created by market inefficiencies.  Prohibition creates market inefficiencies in the supply of drugs that get more than filled by prescription and synthetic drugs.  Drug laws protect pharmaceutical profits and provide a means for racial and socioeconomic intimidation by elites.

“It is not easy to see much intrinsic difference between drugs that are legally approved and their strictly prohibited chemical cousins.  One therapy drug such as Prozac becomes a vast commercial success, while another, nicknamed Ecstasy, is laden with sanctions just as severe as those surrounding heroin, though there is little evidence that Ecstasy is any more or less harmful than Prozac.  One drug is banned because it is associated with some stigmatized ethnic or racial group, while another is tolerated, either because it is used and accepted by a social elite or because it becomes a profitable commodity for mainstream business.  One is proscribed, while its near chemical relation is prescribed, and quite lavishly.  The boundary between legal and illegal drugs, between medicine and dope, is shifting and arbitrary,”  (Jenkins 3).

“The idea that drugs can reduce users to primitive savagery is inextricably bound up with the racial fears that have always been so critical an element of America’s drug scares,”  (Jenkins 11).

Every now and then the misguided substance produced by the symbolism of politicians hits them a little too close to home.  Their children get in trouble using drugs and the politicians find themselves pleading for mercy from the laws they callously trumpeted.

“The son of Duke "Death Penalty for Drug Kingpins" Cunningham (R-CA) was convicted for possession of 400 pounds of marijuana. In court, the congressman cried and pleaded for mercy, explaining that his son "has a good heart. He works hard. He's expressed to me he wants to go back to school." While out on bail, the hard working son tested positive for cocaine three times; when an officer tried to apprehend him following the third positive test, Randy hurled himself out a window and broke his leg. Still, the congressman--who has denounced Clinton's "soft-on-crime liberal judges" and railed against "reduced mandatory-minimum sentences for drug trafficking"--won for his son the mercy denied so many others. Randy got 30 months--half the federal "mandatory" minimum sentence,”  (NORML).

Just as in the case of drugs the symbolic rhetoric and actions concerning prostitution suggests that some solution is possible through criminal prosecutions.  Substantively the negative effects of prostitution on public health are likely magnified by its illegality.  Prostitution laws have historically been used as a way of criminalizing foreigners, particularly women of Chinese descent.  

The Global Sex Survey estimates that 100 million intercourses occur every day. Many of these union’s occur in the US, but most do not.  The AIDS epidemic is under more control than it was a decade ago.  American tax dollars played a large role in this, with the Bush administration committing large sums to fighting AIDS in Africa.

The generosity didn’t come without a strong dose of symbolism designed more for religious conservatives in the U.S. than solve a global health problem.  Condom distribution, the most cost effective and realistic AIDS prevention method, was heavily curtailed during the Bush years.

“[T]he White House's AIDS prevention mantra -- which prescribes abstinence and marital fidelity, with condoms only for "high risk" groups like prostitutes and truck drivers -- is a sick joke,”  (Goldberg).

So let me be bold enough to conclude that the one of the oldest professions in the world isn’t going away anytime soon.  Risky sexual behaviors will continue along with illicit drug use.  The manner in which the U.S. approaches the issues as a threat to public health have unnecessary damaging consequences when symbolism overshadows substance.

Just under 3,000 people were killed on September 11, 2001.  This was an act heinous enough to for the Americans to declare perpetual war against a noun.  In the first 9 months of 2011, just under 13,000 people were killed in Mexico in a civil war. (Planas)

 The civil war is being fought because one faction, drug cartels which service the enormous U.S. black market, are fighting the Mexican Army that seeks to appease the U.S. government by cracking down on the cartels.  The fact that these deaths are caused by symbolic U.S. drug laws is embarrassing for the government to admit, so we will continue to deal with the substantive consequences like economic inefficiencies and too many people dead or in jail.

When they aren’t plainly handing over weapons as they did in the fast and furious program, the U.S. government further assists the cartels by failing to adopt a sensible immigration policy.  Spending large sums increasing border security the increases demand for cartel assistance in illegal border crossing.  The cases where symbolism starts to kill people gets uncomfortable to talk about.  Perhaps we can take some reassurance that the problem is not limited to the U.S.

The crown jewel of the Russian navy, the aircraft-carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, remains in the Syrian port of Tartus  since arriving there in January.  The Russian aircraft carrier is nothing but a symbol of Russian strength that lacks any substantive military value.  It is one of 20 seaworthy Russian warships according to the Economist.

It has some political value as a physical symbol of Russian veto power at the UN.  Russian veto power on the UN Security Council is one of the remnants of Soviet power that the Kremlin clings to.  The vessel intends to symbolize Russian insistence on the protection of the sovereignty of states.

In reality the aircraft carrier is better viewed as one of the last pieces of scrap metal left from the iron curtain. Ironically a piece of military machinery that was made to instill fear in Russia's enemies is more a symbol of the Kremlin fear of losing its remaining legitimacy.

“Russia has its own problems with Islamists in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and it fears rebellions similar to Syria’s breaking out in such areas as Dagestan, Abkhazia, Ingushetia or Chechnya. By supporting its ally in Syria, the Kremlin is sending a strong message to dissident groups that might want to fight unpopular governments within the Russian federation,”  (Beinglass and Brode).

Protecting a tyrant like Assad does not advance Russia’s national interest.  The resulting international isolation and mistrust is more damaging than the practical application of the port of Tartus for the Russian fleet is beneficial.  They have 20 ships.

“Not only is Russia denying the desires of its own people by suppressing protests and real democracy, it is now leading the opposition to the wave of popular revolutions that the world witnessed over the past year, said the Georgian president, who fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008. The latest and greatest example, he said, is Russia’s support for the brutal Syrian regime led by President Bashar al-Assad.

‘Syria stands as a symbol,’ Saakashvili said. ‘[The Russians] fully identify themselves with Libya but they thought that in Libya they were a fooled into action.  And now with Syria they think that if Syria falls, it's the last bastion before Moscow. And this is exactly the kind of attitude that will bring problems closer home to Moscow. It's not going to help Syria in any way, but it's certainly damaging Russia a lot,’  (Rogin).

In developing countries like Russia, the government can control media outlets and web access more easily than in developed ones.  This can cause symbolic politics to be more effective in less transparent societies, The stranglehold might not last forever because the Russian Federation still has some substantive implements of democracy like their connectedness and some structural, like elections.  Putin will likely return to the Kremlin, but the world will continue to notice when voices of opposition are prematurely silenced.

“The Arab spring has shown us that nobody can hold back the power of modern technology to inform and to mobilise. Technology has empowered the people,”

“[W]atch with interest the results of this year's election. In France and the US, the presidential vote is about choosing between differing political visions and outcomes. In my country the electoral calculus is a little simpler: choose Putin in the first round or in the second round. But do not be fooled! "President" Putin's return to the Kremlin, after either manipulating the first round or being forced into a second round, without doubt puts the world on notice that real political change in Russia is unavoidable. It will be welcomed,”  (Khodorkovsky).

The Russians have manufactured an imaginary threat of foreign domination in domestic affairs, and offer an equally implausible solution of military protection of the Assad regime.  The international community generally respects sovereignty until the rulers start killing the ruled, and even then their are serious impediments to coordinated action as we are witnessing in Syria.

Symbolic impediments like the Russian navy are secondary to substantive impediments. Any move towards humanitarian action in Syria is countered by a lack of willingness by global military powers to venture into and pay for a conflict that has the probability of being at least as messy as the Iraq war.  So Mortar shells will continue to fall on civilians, dentists will try and act as surgeons, and the world will continue to watch the blood flow as symbolism continues to shield politicians from making any substantive commitments.

 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) certainly has a better scope on the issue from a global perspective than myself, and they suggest that symbolic politics are on the rise.  If this is true I would suggest that this is a short term trend, the autocrats last gasp.

 In the long term as global interconnectedness becomes less new and more ordinary it will be more difficult for politicians to use symbolic politics in the extreme degrees that they have been able to in the past.  Government’s across the world are broke, and some introspection as to why is in order.

Interconnectedness has brought with it unprecedented transparency.  Egregiously symbolic acts will be more widely seen for what they are, symbols without substance whose continuance borders on the insane.  With their impact reduced so to might their frequency.  We can at least hope.  






References -

ABCNews. This Week.  Great American Debate.  Part III.  12/18/11.  Retrieved from:  http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/great-debate-part-iii-15183113;

Adair, Bill.  Drobnic Holan, Angie.  Lie of the Year 2011: Republicans voted to end Medicare.  12/20/11.  The Tampa Bay Times.  Retrieved from:  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/20/lie-year-democrats-claims-republicans-voted-end-me/;

Bartlett, Bruce.  The Misinformed Tea Party Movement. 3/19/10.  Forbes.com.  Retrieved from:  http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/18/tea-party-ignorant-taxes-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett_2.html;

Beinglass and Brode,  Russia's Syrian Power Play,  1/30/12.  The New York Times.  Retrieved from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/russias-syrian-power-play.html;

The Economist.  Wait and Sea.  1/14/12.  Retrieved from:  http://www.economist.com/node/21542793;

Goldberg, Michelle.  How Bush’s AIDS Program is Failing Africans.  7/10/07.  The American Prospect.  Retrieved from:  http://prospect.org/article/how-bushs-aids-program-failing-africans;

Howard, Latunya.  Navy Maintains Crackdown on Synthetic Chemical Compound Use.  2/23/12.  Military.com.  Retrieved from:  http://www.military.com/news/article/navy-news/navy-maintains-crackdown-on-synthetic-chemical-compound-use.html;

Jenkins, Phillip.  Synthetic panics: The Symbolic Politics of Designer Drugs.  NYU Press.  1999.  New York.

Khodorkovsky, Mikhail.  Real political change in Russia is unavoidable.  2/26/12.  The Guardian.  Retrieved from:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/26/political-change-russia-unavoidable-putin;

McTague, Jim.  Going Underground: America's Shadow Economy.  1/6/05.  Baron’s.  Retrieved from:  http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=10024;

NORML.  Politicians' Children's Encounters with Marijuana Prohibition.  NORML.  Retrieved from:  http://norml.org/pdf_files/NORML_politicians_childrens_arrests.pdf;

Palmeri, Christopher.  California Diminished by Tax Revolt of 1978 Shows How U.S. Invites Decline.  10/16/11.  Bloomberg News.  Retrieved from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-17/california-diminished-by-1978-tax-revolt-shows-u-s-in-decline.html;

Pew Research Center.  The Party of Non-Voters.  10/29/10.  Retrieved from: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1786/who-are-nonvoters-less-republican-educated-younger;

Planas, Roque.  A Murder Every Half Hour in Mexico's Drug War.  1/13/11.  New York Daily News.  Retrieved from:  http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-01-13/news/30621243_1_drug-cartels-fight-drug-war-alejandro-poire;

Rogin, Josh. Saakashvili: The Arab Spring will topple the Russian government. 2/2/12.  Foreign Policy.  Retrieved from: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/02/saakashvili_the_arab_spring_will_topple_the_russian_government;

UNESCO via d@dalos.  What is understood under the term "symbolic politics"?  Retrieved from:  http://www.dadalos.org/int/parteien/grundkurs5/symbolische_politik.htm;