Revisiting Alexis de Toqueville's prescient prediction

There are some rather obvious, if not blatant, displays of new money popping up across the United States, that seem to signal an underlying national motivation and culture. Success is measured, in the American context, in numbers of dollars amassed, whether or not that amassing stretches the limits of ethics and law. The popular culture elevates those who achieve great wealth legitimately to the highest pedestal inside national boundaries. Those whose lives transgress legal limits, from a historical perspective, find their elevation in the entertainment world of television and/or movies and generate even more loot for writers, actors and producers as anti-heroes. American children grow up knowing, without having to be told, that financial success is revered by all, even churches espouse a “prosperity gospel’ (think Joel Olsteen).

By and large it seems the people have forgotten, or never integrated, such cautions as Henry Ford’s, a business that is concerned only with making money is not a good business, and the presidents of both Harvard and Yale who wrote to then Ford President Iacocca when he asked them both back in 1986 why he could not attract the best graduates into the auto sector. All the top students were stampeding to Wall street to amass their personal fortunes in the financial sector. The university presidents replied separately, “We have been teaching the wrong things to our students.”

Forbes perpetually publishes lists of the nation’s top billionaires, after decades of focusing on mere millionaires. Universities, rather than expand their liberal arts curricular offerings, have succumbed to becoming the “technical training” institutes that the business sector demands. Under the operating principle that the more forehead “brandings” from elite universities they have in their talent stable, the more likely they will be to attract the most affluent clients, both as individuals and as corporations, businesses offer signing bonuses to their best prospects in the same manner that professional sports teams offer contracts to their best prospects. Just this week, James Harden of the Houston Rockets NBA team signed a contract extension of four years for a reported $170 million. The Toronto Raptors’ Kyle Lowry also recently signed a three-year contract for $100 million.

People like Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, two of the wealthiest among American people are considered social and cultural thought leaders, especially following their agreement to donate a minimum of 50% of their estates to “worthy causes”. And it is also true that wealthy American people are among the most philanthropic individuals in the world. David Rubenstein, for example, spends much of his wealth purchasing and then displaying original documents from history for people to witness first hand, in the reasonable conviction that a personal experience with those documents, like the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution, will stimulate greater interest and further investigation of those documents and the people who created them.

Performance, in the American landscape, even in churches, is measured by the number of dollars of growth in the operating budget and in the gross numbers in the investment account. The concept of “ministry” (here defined as spiritual growth, retreats, relationship and community building, restorative justice, reconciliation and social activism) is relegated to a much lower rung on the corporate “values” ladder than the collection of money, presumably in the belief and conviction that effective programs, products  and services will automatically lead to significantly enhanced cash flow. To state the obvious, the for-profit corporation is the cornerstone of the American economy, including the start-ups, all of which envision becoming “big” and successful just like the many models they emulate.

Individual human “freedom” is intimately linked to the “opportunity” for every American to “make it big” through the achievement of success and the wealth that accompanies the recognition of success in the arts, athletics, science and business. Every thing, and every human person has a “stock price” and is available to the right buyer for the right price. Horses, bulls, calves, sheep, rocks with minerals, water, fossil fuels, and every single working function (and the function takes precedence over the person)… they are all regarded as “raw material” in the pursuit of profit. From the circus-barking Barnum and Bailey, to the professional boxing promoters like Don King, to the theatrical archetypes like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” selling techniques, salesmanship, promotion, self-promotion….these are the common national traits and skills that support all for-profit (and not-for-profit) ventures. And stories abound that demonstrate the collaboration of wealth with original art, without which money, many artists and their work would have died in obscurity. The endorsement of those with money, as if their money qualified them as legitimate critics of their favoured artists, elevates both the art and the artist to public consciousness, in the same way that an agent for an athlete or actor negotiates the most lucrative contract for his/her client.

In 2013, Amazon owner/operator Steve Bezos purchased, for $250 million the Washington Post, one of the most influential dailies in the country. Far-sighted, excessively entrepreneurial, and willing to risk everything on the originally envisioned internet supported radical shift in consumer behaviour, through on-line retail, Bezos has  through Amazon, amassed such wealth that for a while he held the levers of power and authority of the capital’s most read newspaper. Fortunately, for the writers and editors of the paper, he has kept Amazon and his personal “hands” off the newspaper, mostly letting it continue in the tradition established by the previous owner, Don Graham. It is now owned by Nash Holdings.

Former president George W. Bush, a member of another wealthy family, once had an ownership stake in the Houston Astros baseball team. Wealth gravitates to new agents either to make more money or to find tax havens to save on taxes.

Not so long ago, the Supreme Court decided that there would be no limits on campaign spending, unleashing a torrent of hard cash from the most wealthy quarters, both individual and corporate, into the political arena. After all, they argued, money is “free speech” in the political arena, just as time is money in the corporate world. This blog space has been crammed with protests against that move, on the strength of the argument that unlimited cash distorts the playing field against ordinary people in favour of those who write the cheques. So, people like the Koch brothers, who adamantly oppose environmental regulations, are effectively permitted to block any and all attempts at such regulations (except those permitted by executive order under Obama, most of which have now been erased by the current president). These wealthy people are also able and willing to fund the campaigns of candidates who agree to represent their respective interests in the Congress, or less obviously in state legislatures and in governors’ mansions.

Given the “natural” equation of “wealth with meaning, purpose and the highest ideals of the nation, endorsed by none other than the Supreme Court, how could anyone really object to the cultural trajectory outlined above. Certainly, those without enough money to counter the corporate influence that has effectively taken over both national political parties and their representatives (with the possible exception of a very few independents like Senator Bernie Sanders) can only rely on mass street protests, town halls, letters to the editors of local and national papers, to make their “public interest” agenda heard.

Even then, the voices, while garnering television cameras and news reports of their size, rarely have an impact on legislation. In fact, today with only 12% of American people supporting the Republican health care bill that will strip some 22 million people of their health insurance, the bill is still being pursued vigorously by Majority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, apparently deaf to the public opinion and public interest. Public money is bribing voters into believing that this bill is indeed a health care bill when, in reality, everyone knows it is a tax bill cutting the taxes of the rich with the $800 million cuts to Medicare.

Effectively, McConnell and his cohorts are bribing the American public with their own money, given the inescapable fact that it is American money that pays their salaries, their staff and all of their many expense accounts. George W. Bush did the same thing, bribing the American people with their own money, when he waged the 2003 war on Iraq, without a foundational cause of truth and imminent threat to the nation, to support the action. Proposing a $54 billion increase in the Pentagon budget, the White House is also attempting to bribe the American people, while simultaneously gutting  foreign aid, and selling billions of dollars of arms to “friends” like Saudi Arabia and Poland, as “job creation” projects for American workers.

It is time to evoke a treasured American visitor from France whose insight might put pause to some of the blatant and unabashed bribery that has become “de rigour” in the American political system.

The American republic will endure until the Congress finds it can bribe the public with the public’s money. (Alexis de Toqueville)

It would seem that time has come.

Sometimes saying "NO" is the most reasonable attitude

There are times when “leaning left,” as this space tends to do, defies good judgement. Identity politics, especially around the issue of gender and sex, merits much scepticism, cynicism and certainly suspicion. And there are emerging situations in which the only reasonable response is a defiant “NO!”

In British Columbia, for example, one set of parents has required the provincial government to insert the letter “U” (undetermined, undecided) on official documents registering their newborn, because to place an “M” (male) or an “F” (female) there “would be an infringement on the baby’s rights.” Call me dumbfounded! Even call me stupid, out of touch and perhaps even aadvarkian!

If this practice, parental pressure, or delusion (you choose!) continues, we will witness and experience another assault on what was previously considered “normal” and “truthful” and “biological” and “indisputable”. Leaving open, at birth, the question of a newborn’s gender seems at least a default of parents’ normal responsibility to provide a platform of understanding for the child as s/he begins to interact with the world. Stability, security, a sense of “who I am” in the ever-enlarging world of my parents, siblings, extended family and eventually wider world of daycare, nursery school and eventually school is a very important foundation on which to grow.

Expecting all those who will need to interact with the baby, including nurses, doctors, family members, and the general public to retain a “neutral” or detached or even a non-quizzical attitude to the personhood of the baby is a step too far. Developmental issues, for starters, are well documented to be different between male and female children. Psychological differences, too, abound. Parenting, even quite early, that is appropriate for a young boy is quite separate from what is appropriate for a young girl, even though androgyny is rightly regarded as optimum whenever possible. There is clearly nothing wrong with boys wanting to play with dolls or girls enjoying LEGO; in fact, for the culture to move gradually and incrementally, deliberately and consciously in that direction would help to mitigate against the extreme stereotypes. Repressing boys’ tears, because “Boys don’t cry” is just one of the more heinous of social expectations that needs trashing.

That “U” however, is not a step forward, but rather is more than one step backwards. It will ruffle the feathers, if not also the anger and venom, of red necks everywhere, to the significant social debilitation of the new child.

Should the child, upon reaching an age of “majority” at which time a reasonable, independent, medically and psychologically supported decision to reverse gender, make such a decision, then, and only then, is such a decision permissible. In the crib, the play-pen, the nursery school and the elementary and perhaps even the secondary classroom, birth-arranged gender is the only appropriate platform on which to construct a health personhood.

And the governments that accede to parents’ wishes, as the government of British Columbia appears to have done, need to take a “time-out” to reconsider the implications of their concurrence. Governments are elected, not to genuflect at the first sign of public pressure, especially when the implications of such genuflection are so monumental, and so detrimental to the prospective “health” of the child. As a parent, and as a former teacher, I can assure these parents that their child would be treated either as a boy or a girl, depending on the traits most prominent whenever I were to come into contact with their child. And I would be speaking with my own children, if they were to encounter this “U” child, to continue to treat him/her with whatever learned habits of respect and deference they have already acquired for each gender, from their previous experience. We do not, after all, exist in a bubble, even if that bubble is formed out of pure and honourable motives of attempting to “restrict stereotypes” and “protect human rights”.

A similar argument can be made, and is being made, in support of Professor Johnson at University of Toronto, for refusing to use a specific pronoun chosen by a transgender individual, whenever he encounters such a person. All the politically correct impulses notwithstanding, we are not about to overturn our language or our concept of social deference to meet such a requirement. In fact, the good professor has experienced an overwhelming public reaction, monthly funding reaching into the 6-figures on the internet. And with this support, he is reportedly about to initiate an on-line liberal arts program, leading to university graduation equivalency. Critical thought, at the core of a liberal arts education, is a capacity (not merely a skill) desperately needed in this post-truth world, simply in order to be able to discern fact from fiction, ethical principle from dodging and denying, integrity from mere sham. Ambiguity, too, is not dissembling; it is rather a forthright acknowledgement of intellectual honesty, not a blatant attempt at escaping responsibility. One would hope that the current occupant of the Oval Office would take time from his twitter-fixation to enrol in Professor Johnson’s program.

And there is another ugly spectre raising its head in Ottawa in a bill already having passed through second reading. Some of us will do whatever we can to raise public consciousness and needed opposition to its final passing. It too is a result of a balance being thwarted in favour of political correctness that, some criminal lawyers say removes “habeas corpus,” the right of an accused to innocence, unless and until proven guilty by the Crown. Here is how the bill is reported by Barbara Kay in the National Post:

Bill C-51 expands the rape shield protections for sexual assault complainants by restricting the ability of the accused to use communications by a complainant or witness that are of a “sexual nature” of for a sexual purpose” as part of his defence, particularly to establish he defence of “mistaken belief of consent.” An accused will b prohibited from introducing sexually explicit texts or emails a evidence in court unless a judge first rules them to be admissable, after conducting a closed hearing with the Crown prosecutor, which the complainant may attend, accompanied by her own lawyer if she chooses.*

As expected, criminal lawyers are upset about the potential impact of this new piece of legislation, given the dramatic tilt of its intent in favour of the complainant, in most cases a woman. Those texts and emails that demonstrated a degree of interest (“I love your hands!”) from one of the complainants in the Jian Gomeshi trial, would clearly be subjected to the decision of the presiding judge, and their exclusion would inflict a serious blow to the ‘context’ of the relationship, no matter its nature.

There is an energy about the land these days that purports to lend a hand to women in the statistical culture that says they are too often the victims in sexual assault cases. However, there ought to be a reasonable limit on the stretch of that elastic legal band, so that habeus corpus, a law for which fights and debates have been waged for centuries, is not sidelined, or rendered inoperable. The full context of any relationship including evidence from social media, friends and acquaintances who have first-hand knowledge of the two people, should be part of the court hearing. He-said, she-said, is not adequate to provide a judge or judge and jury to reach an appropriate verdict.

A “rape shield law” is a law that limits a defendant’s ability to introduce evidence or cross-examine rape complainants about their past sexual behaviour. The term also refers to a law that prohibits the publication of the identity of an alleged rape victim. Of course, if I indicate that I concur with this “shield” for complainants, as I do, critics will pounce and push back that my objection to the provisions in Bill C-51 is merely a resistance to change.

Not so! A complainant’s previous sexual behaviour outside the relationship over when the complaint has been filed, no matter whether it involved one or a hundred and one sexual partners, ought not to be a consideration in a rape trial. However, if the behaviour of the complainant is such that the defendant could reasonably be convinced that her will indicated concurrence, then that evidence merits consideration by the court.

Let’s look at this a little further. For many years, if not decades, men, ordinary citizens who are male, and those especially who are charged with organizational leadership, have bent nearly flat to the ground in order to “respect” the female gender, no matter the situation, and no matter the encouragement of the woman in any current or potential sexual relationship. Fear of reprisal, fear of revenge, fear of being labled sexist, and fear of being emasculated by women who did not receive such genuflecting may have been part of their reason.  And yet, if women area to be treated “fairly” and respectfully, with equal rights, (and not rights that subvert the rights of men) is it not reasonable to suggest that deferring more than half-way in a gender dispute is little more than patronizing, pandering and abdication of an way of investigating that pursues the full truth.

Only through such a deliberate, objective and not pre-ordained process (like the process that directs a majority of children in divorce settlements to the mother) will women and men begin to receive equal treatment both by social convention and by the law.

Bill C-51 needs some radical surgery, administered by the Senate, in order to remove the provisions that so stretch the rape shield provision to the breaking point. Women are at least 50% of every relationship and the sooner our culture and our laws acknowledge that reality, the sooner men and women will move to a more easily accessible and more readily perceived equality.

There is no excuse for men who “take advantage of their female partners, just as there is no excuse for women who lead their partners on, and then turn the tables. I have spoken to too many men in prison who have been caught in this snare-like trap. Women are not blameless, nor are they so fragile that they cannot “own” the full truth of their participation in a sexual relationship. And that truth must not be excluded from the evidence pertaining to the trial.

Emasculated men are actually more of a threat to their female partners, than fully autonomous and interdependent self-respecting male partners. And men have permitted and participated in their individual and collective emasculation for too long.

*Barbara Kay: Canada’s new sexual assault law is a ‘catastrophic attack on the rights of the accused', National Post, July 6, 2017

Reflections on Canadian/American media coverage

It is going to sound smug and pompous.

But it has to be said.

As a Canadian who has spent hundreds of hours swimming in the words, images, opinions and gestalt of the Canadian media, I am beginning to become annoyed, frustrated and even a touch contemptuous of the American media. Let’s look first at the apparent differences, before we start to unearth some potential root causes.

We can all agree that full and complete objectivity is neither possible nor demanded from any source of information, including the information we “provide” through observation and interpretation, to ourselves. Nevertheless, we all know the difference between prose that takes a wide birth around objectivity and into ad hominum argument (attacking the person and not the merit of the argument) and prose that attempts to set out the basic information of a situation. And our conscious awareness of that difference does not depend on having spent four-plus years in Journalism school. This scribe even subscribes to the Kierkegarde notion that there really is only one truth and that truth is subjectivity.

Nevertheless, journalism is not the locus for that argument. It belongs more appropriately in theology or philosophy.

Canadian journalists are schooled in assertive digging for details, almost akin to the archeologist’s “dig,” starting from the premise that whatever piece of ‘hard’ evidence, the kind that is fundamentally beyond dispute, that appears in the dust on the screen (of their perception) still needs corroboration to validate its being included in a ‘report’. If a Canadian “newsmaker” is going to get mentioned in the news, it is almost exclusively through the recorded reporting of his/her own words. There is inevitably more than enough affect in most utterances worthy of being quoted to eliminate any need of the reporter to add to the affect. Pierre Trudeau’s, “Just watch me!” when asked how far he would go to counter the FLQ (terror cell in the Quebec Revolution) is a case in point. Nearly half a century later, that quote is still extant in Canadian consciousness and culture. Similarly, C.D. Howe’s, “What’s a million?” back in the 1940’s still echoes through the halls of our Parliament. Justin Trudeau’s aphorism, when asked to explain why his first Cabinet contained 50% female members, “Because it’s 2015!” has been repeated so often by the feminist chorus that it is gathering “legs” for the length of its newsworthy life. General Charles de Gaulle’s, “Vive le Quebec libre!” in 1967, Canada’s Centennial year, also continues to echo in our history. He was sent back to Paris by then Prime Minister Lester Pearson for his national insult.

Yet, even though such statements bear reporting, and later more repeating, the “person” uttering the words is never disgraced, through additional editorial comments in the original reporting. Of course editorials are later written about all political statements considered significant by those in the editorial rooms, yet again, without the character assassination that we have come to associate with the coverage of politics, aided and abetted by some candidates, from our American news outlets.

Another feature of Canadian reporting is that it always includes a considerable component of international news, often with Canadian correspondents on site. (The number of such reporters has, unfortunately, been cut with the many cost-saving moves by the boardrooms of our networks and daily newspapers.) Not only are we a mid-sized country, we also have an appetite for what is going on in the world, without the accretions of editorial content in our first exposure to any issue. Respect for the whole truth is not only an essential ingredient of our courts but also of our national, and to a large extent our provincial and urban and regional dailies and weeklies. The topics covered in the respective outlets naturally differs given both the perspectives of the reporters and their usually local editors who too often do not wish to alienate any of their local advertisers.

Sometimes, in the interest of cash flow, editors and radio and television station mangers are compelled (although their arguments need to be resisted at every opportunity) to delete or to “soften” the coverage their permit into print or onto the air. And it is in this “rub” where the story does not portray some public figure in a positive light, (and not necessarily because of his private life but also because he might oppose a specific land development) that the news and the advertising dollars are in direct conflict.

 I recall having taken a negative editorial view on an upcoming shopping development on the periphery of the city, as compared with a central core option, both of which were vying for council’s approval. The city could obviously not afford both. The station manager had been approached by the local representative of the peripheral development and told that the advertising dollars from that sizeable bank account would be withdrawn from his radio station if I were to continue to advocate for the downtown development. I had no pecuniary interest in either development company, and my position was based exclusively on the merits of rejuvenating the downtown core, as opposed to sucking that section dry of activity, taxes and additional development. The peripheral development would, I argued, leave a devastated Main Street and bring no more and no fewer shopping opportunities than the peripheral development to an anticipated retail-draw area of some additional 100,000 shoppers from as far away as 100 kms. So, after a walk out behind the radio station, I was told, in unequivocal terms, “You have to stop doing editorials on our radio stations; there is too much revenue that we will lose if you continue to broadcast in favour of the downtown development!”

And that was that. As a freelance journalist, with no worker protections, no permanent job and no supports, at least from my perspective at that time, I quietly walked. I learned later that the peripheral developers underwrote the political campaigns of candidates who supported their development, sometimes even without the knowledge of the specific candidates. And, with a majority of the new council supporting the peripheral development, it passed easily. The downtown project was instantly euthanized, without the benefit of appeal.

However, back to the question of how American news differs from Canadian. There are no specifically “ideological” television networks, although all Canadians know that CBC as a pubic broadcaster, leans left, while Global and CTV tend to the moderate right. And national dailies, too, demonstrate leanings without being brash, offensive or ugly either in the stories they choose to cover, or in the manner in which they tell those stories. The Toronto Star leans left, the National Post leans right and the Globe and Mail also leans right. Both the Globe and the Post also have considerable business coverage, the Star less so.

The Toronto Sun, and its various sister papers in other cities, come closest to the tabloid variety, clearly also leaning right, on the political spectrum. Postmedia, too, with its smaller dailies, tend to lean right while daughter papers, both dailies and weeklies of the Toronto Star, lean left.

As for coverage of individual political leaders, the national media carefully and comprehensively cover all three national party leaders, and Members of Parliament appear on daily and weekly political talk shows, where the rhetoric might become a little heated, without any ad hominums being considered, offered or permitted. Occasionally, a host will utter these words: “If you are not going to answer the question, at least let’s agree that that is what you are doing?” That anecdote has made the rounds in various outlets, as proof of the strength and the character of the host, without focusing on the delinquent politician, whose reputation was sullied by the exchange.

If we do have a political person who rates extremely negative coverage, a recent example would be the former, now deceased Mayor of Toronto, who was reported to have used crack cocaine, and who garnered as much media in the U.S. mostly from the late-night comedians, as he did in Canada. That type of story is relatively rare in Canadian news coverage, whether there is a written or an unwritten code of ‘separation’ from the more juicy details or not. Personal lives, generally do not make it to the headlines in Canada, unless or until someone is facing some legal trouble. At that time, the bare details of the story are published, and the fine print waits for the examination in the court room. And while there certainly are cases in which the public is extremely divided, we rarely have gunshots fired over ideological or political differences.

Underneath this issue lies a fundamental difference between Canada and the U.S. over “freedom of speech” notions. In the U.S. money and guns represent “free speech” in the political debate. From the outside, it appears that there really is no such thing as “hate speech.” In Canada, however, we know there is a limit to freedom of speech and that limit is carefully observed, modelled and expected both from public figures and from those charged with reporting public events. We will be proudly ridiculed by red-neck Americans for being “too nice” and for “always apologizing” even when there is no apparent need for such deference. That does not make us “spine-less” or wimps.

 Our courts are not filled with frivolous law suits, although we do have some. Our police and law enforcement are more delinquent in their investigation of cases involving murdered and missing aboriginal women, for example, than they are in overtly taking the lives of minorities. We do, however, also have an inordinate and disproportionate percentage of minorities incarcerated, as well as epidemics of suicide in both indigenous communities and in cities like Vancouver and Toronto, where fentanyl has gained a foothold.

On the last issue, our is less sensational in the reporting of individual incidents when compared with the American coverage of white police officers shooting and killing black young men. Almost as a potential pubic denial, we have only come to full disclosure after the numbers topped 1000, in the case of missing and murdered aboriginal women, and only much later initiated an investigating commission to dig more deeply into the causes.

Concurrent with the North American fixation on sexual abuse, in the military and in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where the numbers of cases of abuse gather front-page coverage in Canada, as they would in similar organizations in the United States, the two countries most likely closely resemble each other in their coverage of these stories.

Also underlying any discussion of media has to include the nature of the consumer. In Canada, we are a much more easy-going consumer of all product and services, not easily aroused by errors, or even by missed headlines, and we demonstrate an apparently higher degree of confidence, and less cynicism, of our authority figures, including our news outlets. Of course, we are not bombarded by outlets like Breitbart, nor do we have a deep well of racist organizations like the KKK.

The colours on our national canvas depicting what appears on the surface to be our innate civility are more tempered, almost water-colour-like, as compared with the brassy, bold deep red and black and yellow oils on the American canvas. We have no Rush Limbaugh’s on our public or private airwaves, inciting supporters to hate whatever or whomever might happen to be in the sights of their rhetorical rifles, and receiving truck-loads of cash in advertising dollars to keep such BS afloat. We  have no Bill O’Reilly’s, Sean Hannity’s,  Ann Coulter’s or Laura Ingraham’s. And we certainly have no Sarah Palin’s, although in the recent Conservative leadership contest, one candidate, Kelly Leitch, attempted, in abysmal failure, to introduce a “Canadian values” test for all immigrants and refugees, as an apparent imitation of the trump ban. On the other hand (and on the other side of the political divide), we also have no Chris Matthews’s or Rachel Maddow’s, or Keith Olbermann’s.

As an Australian exchange student responded when asked about the differences she had observed between the U.S. and Canada, "Oh that's easy!" she replied instantly. "In America, racism is right on top of the table, in Canada racism is underneath the table!"

If there is a scent of pride, even smugness in this piece, I am guilty. Having consumed hundred of hours of media coverage in both countries, (and will continue, on a diet from both sides of the 49^th), it is to the Canadian side of the television dial that I return for some calm, less agitating and less anxiety-generating news consumption. It may be, and is, much less dramatic, entertaining and probably less magnetic in generating viewer dollars and emotional enthusiasm. We are a more retrained, polite and even self-effacing people. In some ways, that “mask” covers deep and profound emotions, especially among Canadian men. And yet, we are not only capable, but also willing to exhibit strong feelings, even in our professional and private lives.

Two brief anecdotes from a brief “walter mitty” journalistic sojourn:

I once wrote and recorded for radio broadcast an editorial in which I berated a national reporter for “wanting to be the story” and for not simply “reporting the story”. Immediately following the broadcast at 8:10 a.m. the News Director marched into the Station Manager’s office demanding I be fired for such heresy and apostasy to the news fraternity. Thirty years later, history has unfolded in demonstrative proof of my original contention.

On another city council report, I opened with “Council will continue to debate this year’s tax increase” in subsequent meetings. The news director of the television station angrily criticized my “lead” and replaced it with: “City tax payers face a 2.5% tax hike unless the number can be lowered in subsequent meetings.”

Rather than joint M.B.A. programs between Canadian and American universities, it would be a worthwhile project for at least two Canadian and U.S. Journalism schools to integrate an international curriculum and provide undergraduate and graduate students the benefits of both cultures within the discipline of a broadened journalist perspective. 

Questioning pyramidal, top-down, hierarchical organizational structures...

Let’s shine some light on the darkness of “the military model” in its creeping into all corners of our way of life, not as a positive but as a decidedly negative force.

For starters, the military model is based on a fundamental definition of masculinity. Hard power, whether it comes in the form of missiles, bullets, or pyramidal hierarchy is still “hard power” too often without recourse to appeals. Generals on the battlefield, as surgeons in the Operating Room, operate within very narrow parameters, limits that do not permit either debate or the opportunity to question decisions made by the person in charge. Following whatever decisions are made, both in the strategy and tactical fields, only then is it entirely possible to assess the impact of those decisions, to learn from them and to develop protocols that might shed new light on “best practices”.

Another feature of hard power is that there are immediate consequences of its use. A bullet maims or kills; a missile explodes on target, off target or somewhere in between, with “collateral damage” always a real and pressing danger. Similarly, in the OR, a slipped scalpel can result in death, serious injury or perhaps permanent  damage. And, whether the person in charge is a man or woman, these strict and hard and fast parameters apply. And while there are normally some measures to qualify the decisions, prior to their implementation in such situations as strategic planning sessions, medical ‘rounds’ or tumor boards, there is nevertheless a seriously heightened degree of pressure on all participants in the execution of whatever decisions were taken.

Fire fights and operating rooms, often even emergency rooms have surrounding their “culture” and expectations a proscribed time frame, a limited number of options, a limited number of instruments that might be needed, (include in that list all of the sponges, drugs, sterilized instruments of various shapes and sizes, or all of the military personnel and arsenal, ground, air and possibly sea, to complete the mission). The safety, professional security and professional reputations of all actors rests on the performance of all of the actors, individually and collectively. And in order even to secure permission to participant, one willingly and openly surrenders all initiating autonomy to the “chief” or the officer in charge, without feeling emasculated.

It is, however, unique to those highly charged circumstances, that the pyramidal, top-down hierarchy applies. However, to transfer such a decision-making model to many, perhaps any, other situations is a gross misapplication of the model. We all know, both from our experience and from a mountain of social science research that optimum performance by workers, including all ranks in any organization occurs if and when decision-making processes are spread as widely as is feasible. And that means and includes a complete re-think of how our major organizations are structured, how they operate and how they make decisions. Business executives, especially, take the shortest route, through the smallest number of people, to arrive a decisions, obviously in the interest of “cost saving”. Middle management, over the last three or four decades, has been effectively gutted, as emergency surgery was ‘sold’ by mammoth consulting companies like Anderson, to cut costs and to effectively shift power to the few remaining at the top, leaving those at the bottom even more disenfranchised, alienated and out of the loop.

There is a “kind” of thinking that accompanies the top-down hierarchical structure, that reduces all complexities to basic simple facts, eliminating all ambiguities, uncertainties, ironies, a serious regard for the evidence that can be harvested from previous initiatives within the organization and from research that bears on the management, not only the marketing research, to which all companies have tragically become addicted. Eliminating all potential confusion also includes the shortening of the time-frames of most organizational decision, including how long it takes to make the decision, how long it takes to design and then to implement. After all, as the cliché goes, time is money, and the more we “waste” the more it costs…..and like Pavlov’s dogs, all leaders, at all levels, in contemporary organizations salivate at the chance of getting noticed through cost cutting steps they introduce. Often bonuses are intimately tied to such “progressive” recommendations.

Hardly progressive, except for the bean-counters, and those who subscribe to the mean-lean approach to “leading” human beings at work!

There is another aspect to the simplification, time efficiency dogma, that teaches and models a kind of political/social ideology that is reduced to a few slogans, without, again, the nuanced consideration of the impact of those bumper-sticker slogans. Gangs, and power-driven individuals, like Proud Boys, ultra-nationalists, racists, homophobes, and ISIS can adopt the model, and like instant microwaved popcorn, serve up a menu of violence, hatred and bigotry, without having thought through the implications of their actions…..because for them, ACTION is the only thing that gives them POWER.

There are so many applications of the “power” in a top-down, non-reflective, non-responsive, non-inclusive, and, if those engaged in such a process were willing to admit, their lives, their leadership and their ‘administrations’ are agents of epic self-sabotage.

Not only is the top-down, hierarchical, ACTION-DRIVEN, modus operandi short-sighted, dependent on short memory especially of its operative underlings, and also of its constituents, eager to reinforce its own vainglory, but it is built on quicksand of self-deception and the prospect of deceiving all with whom it comes in contact.

There are, however, many more circumstances in organizational leadership and management that neither require nor are adequately served by a pyramidal, top-down organizational structure. Circles, concensus, even awarding a veto to upper management individuals operating in circles, all of which flatten the power and authority, spread it around and integrate as many participants in the decision-making process as is both feasible and stretched a far as possible across organizational levels. Of course, there are examples of “teams” for some functions like product development, marketing, and “staff” functions. This piece purports to recommend a significant shift in the thinking that goes into the formal “line” functions, where authority is supposed to reside.

As far back as the mid-eighties, major organizations were using an “open-door” approach that permitted and even encouraged all workers to take any decision made by their supervisor one or two levels higher, without being considered defiant, or disloyal. And those managers all knew that their decisions could and would be challenged, appealed and potentially overturned. In order to begin really to transform how large organizations work, one of the primary shifts has to start with the concept of the human being, the worker, all of whom have much more to contribute than their specific skill set. They have experiences, insights, criticisms and observations about how power is, has and could operate. And those insights, even as “low” as the mail room, deserve a place of honour, respect and  serious consideration by those responsible for leadership. In fact, strong, self-possessed and confident leaders  would not merely welcome rotating positions of responsibility, but also a process that brings each person into a direct and meaningful and purposeful place in which s/he can and does know that whatever complaints, criticisms, recommendations and even “visions” they have are sought, welcomed in a deliberate process of consideration, including costing, comparisons with other options and serious challenges in order to sift the “wheat from the chaff”.

Of course, many will argue that such a process will be cumbersome, complicated, unwieldy and far too costly both in time and in human resources. And that is precisely the point: we have sacrificed the human component for far too long, in the short-term interests of cutting costs, and growing profits and dividends and BONUSES….We have sacrificed loyalty, diligence, integrity and authenticity on the altar of sheer greed and short-term power. And we are, and will for a very long time, pay a very high price, not only within such organizations but outside, where everyone knows that most if not all “corporate” decisions sacrifice the human component of the equation to the reputation and career advancement of the people at the top.

Even those organizations, like the military establishment and the ecclesial establishment that have been around for centuries, and have barely recognized and certainly not changed their structure nor the principles underlying that hierarchy, are engaged in an inevitable and persistent erosion of their power and influence. Justifying such an inordinate degree of power and influence at the top, in order to be better able to “police” their “charges” only serves to demonstrate that the model is based on the fear and insecurity of those in top posts.

The very fact that they pursued those top posts, along with other motivations, demonstrates their need to be in control, and their need to be dominant, to have status, and to have the perks that attend such positions. And unless they openly admit to themselves and to their closest colleagues and family that their “power needs” have to be constantly curbed, in respectful care and guidance, through authentic expressions of “truth to power”….something that the weakest among such leaders is almost incapable of doing, they risk crashing themselves and taking their organizations with them into the stone wall of reality.

It is the reality of contempt of ordinary people for the abuse of power that continues to offer the kind of human balance of power needed in all human organizations. And it is the courage of the ordinary people to refuse to obey unjust laws, and unjust commands, and unjust and abusive administrations, not matter how massive or how small, how large is the profit or dividend of the corporation, no matter which office or which office holder is abusing the power of that office that continues to offer hope to all people no matter how desperate their struggle.

Not a constitution, not a legal system, not a structure of balancing powers in laws, nor a library of laws..none of these, when compared with the power of the ordinary people acting in concert, in truth and in conviction against the abuse of power, can or will compare favourably with the power of ordinary people, It is the whistle-blowers, and the voiceless, the homeless, and the destitute, the outsiders and the alienated who, having lost all of their “pretense” and their “social status” and their “respectability” who are most likely to “tell it like it is” and consequently, it is those very people who are least listened to by those in power. In this space, I have written in advocacy of the “democracy of the indigents”. Here I take that point even further.

If and when those in power come to the conscious realization that they are, and have been for centuries, rejecting one of, if not the most, powerful of human resources, the voices of their outcasts, than and only then will democracy come to the place where it can authentically claim to be government “OF, FOR and BY” the people.

Until then, it will continue, in spite of the all the rhetoric and media coverage, to be more of a sham and a pretense to its full capacity, and will continue to incarnate a model of failed and failing integrity to all, especially the young. It is their energy, their optimism and their hope on which these changes depend, and not on the grab of power of the insidious opportunists who need other desperate and insecure people to keep them afloat.

Democrats: whither goest thou?

There is a flood of commentary pointing the finger at the Democratic Party, exhorting the party to “find its identity” and craft a message to win back angry white voters, the primary target of the trump campaign. And while those recommendations have merit, there are a few other constituencies needing to be recovered, if the party is to regain one, two or all three government elected offices, House, Senate and White House.

Contempt for trump, while also warranted, has proven to be a failed strategy for winning elections. If you doubt that, just ask Ms Clinton. There are a few ironies to the current flat-lining in the polls of the US Democratic Party.

One is the fact that former president Bill Clinton gave a speech in Atlanta in 2015, long before the 2016 presidential campaign, urging the party to address its attention to the white working class who feel abandoned by the global economy. Compounding this irony is the well-known and recognized fact that his wife is a policy wonk who has a prescription for whatever issue she glimpses wherever it is situated. As self-appointed uber-parent for all the ills of the contemporary political culture in the United States (just open any of her books and the prescriptions fall out like moths from an attic trunk), Ms Clinton has spent her life developing proposals, as if she fully believed that a storage warehouse of policy prescriptions would serve her over-weening ambition. Another irony, however, is that such a compendium of proposals mean nothing if the author/candidate cannot gain adequate “likeability” ratings in the polls.

In fact, so ironic, and also probably so tragic, is the obvious truism that, likeability will take a higher priority over policy, in a popular vote, regardless of whether that vote is for grade nine class rep., student council president, mayor, premier or president. Somehow, there appears to be a Siamese-twinning of likeability of a candidate for political office and ‘trust’. Most people seem to have trouble trusting someone whom they dislike, and the higher the dislike numbers, the higher the numbers on lack of trust-worthiness. (Recall then candidate Obama’s comment in 2008, “You’re likeable enough Hillary!”) So, was Ms Clinton’s obvious contempt for her presidential opponent one of, or the most significant factor, in pushing her likeability (and trust-worthiness) down the scale on the public opinion polls?

Another obvious irony, however, contributing to Ms Clinton’s electoral failure in November 2016 is that her target voters do (did) not approve of character assassination from their prospective president, while the trump voters in general demonstrated their preference for his brutal character assassination of her. This is not only a divide over policy between “Republicans and Democrats; it is a deep divide over what has consistently been an American reputation for honourable “character” attitudes and behaviour toward political opponents especially at the presidential level. Based not only on diplomatic protocol, the tradition treating an opponent with professional, if detached, respect, was a path to winning respect in turn from the voters. The tradition has long roots in the courtroom as well as in the negotiating room where treaties and accords are hammered out. How Obama or John Kerry felt, personally, about the many leaders with whom they interacted never tarnished the public reports of the negotiations.

So, while trump takes not only the language and the contempt for history and tradition over the cliff, the Democrats are left with a hollow, long-term public image and persona that leaves blacks, white working class, and youth legitimately wanting, expecting and deserving more from the Democratic Party leadership.

There is likely some sociological theory (and evidence) for the notion that anyone following immediately after such a likeable president as Obama would have had shoes of likeability too large to fill. Nevertheless, Hillary, although reputedly brilliant, was never able to relax enough to convey a warmth of human contact in a campaign riddled with verbal grenades. Perhaps she feared appearing too soft and thereby falling into the outdated stereotype of female. Her opponent made much of her physical weariness, especially after she fainted in public.

Michael Moore, speaking on “The Last Word” with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC last night, reminded his audience that eight million voters who voted for Obama voted for trump. Moore is targeting those voters in a variety of venues, including a one-man Broadway show, “Terms of my Surrender”, a scripted and still adaptable satire, ridiculing and attempting to bring down the president. A policy and practice of back-room business deals, as the solution to the American industrial and economic hollowing, as “promised” by trump, ought to be a target so “swiss-cheese-like” that the Democrats ought to be able to offer more, better and more deliverable solutions.

And, fighting over whether or not to keep Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader in the House of Representatives is not part of the flight-plan back to respectability and political power. Also, the total numbers of dollars amassed as election fodder is not going to lead the Democrats out of the wilderness. These are both distractions, as was the triumphing of identity politics, part of which strategy has led to a rabbit-hole fight between radical feminists and the LGBTQ community.*

Recovering a legitimate and deep consciousness of the current zeitgeist, through active listening and disciplined intellectual analysis, not knee-jerk opportunistic reactionary decisions, (for example, “not to go to Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio”  when the polls screamed that command, near the end of the campaign) is a minimum requirement for a party seeking to regain the public’s respect and confidence.

Blacks, the primary victims of a ‘white’ law enforcement apparatus, are more than tired of being the 72-point headlines in city dailies, because they have been shot for “threatening” a police officer with a can of soda or a bag of skittles. They are also suffering from the legitimate desperation and loss of hope in the face of voter restriction laws from Republican-controlled state legislatures and governors, with little prospect of reversal from the current Supreme Court. (And if one or two more current justices retire any time soon, trump will have the opportunity to load the court with right-wing ideologues for decades.)

Democrats have to acknowledge the clear and obvious weaknesses in the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and propose reasonable options, from the highest spires with the loudest megaphones. (Of course, based on a half-century of the Canadian Health Act, we would urge a single-payer plan!) Democrats also have to start to extricate themselves, as individual politicians funded by Wall Street if they ever hope to earn the legitimate authority to pummel the Republicans over their corporate funding, unleashed by the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court. For this purpose, public financing of elections seems so obvious an answer that, perhaps it is too close to the nose of Democratic lawmakers to get their attention. (Paradoxically, at least some Republican Senators even support the idea, think McCain!)

And then there is immigration, and a path to citizenship for those who have earned that right through their historic record of honourable activity, including paying taxes, educating their children and filling holes where U.S. workers refuse to participate. Amnesty, a dirty word to some mean-spirited Republicans, seems worthy of serious consideration.

Worthy of serious consideration too is eliminating retroactively all interest payments on student debt, if not providing another amnesty of half of those debts. That investment would go far to unleashing millions of young people from their debt, permit them to start new businesses, start their families and move out of their parents’ homes. Bernie Sanders’ proposal of free college tuition for all whose academic record merits it, at state universities would help to generate interest, if not passion, among the young. Increases like $54 billion to the Pentagon Budget, coming from the White House provide a glowing and platinum opportunity to counter such nonsense with both education and health care funding of substantial amounts. The American people have had enough of Republican wars. (I know Obama extricated the nation from Iraq and then funnelled thousands more military personnel into Afghanistan, an idea with which we did not agree.)

And then, for Democrats, there is the still-hanging question of a candidate who can communicate with people, through gravitas, likeability and integrity. I am starting to appreciate people like Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota more and more, every time she speaks. Of course, Elizabeth Warren has “fire in her belly” and would lend a unique voice to the Democratic campaign for the White House. Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will likely give the prospect serious thought. California Governor Pat Brown, although a little long in the tooth, would stir the political pot, just as he is doing in confronting the White House on issues like the environment, sanctuary cities, and a firm and positive attitude, based on knowing where he wants to lead his state.

While there seems to be a fairly substantial “bench” from which to draw, each candidate will have to face the mountainous task of bringing the party together on a policy platform that speaks to the broadest range of voter. In order to do that, the segmented identity politics will have to recede into the background, and the quality of the presentation will have to rise to the level of the Obama oratory as he displayed it at the 2004 Party Convention. So, perhaps, just maybe, there is another “sleeper” out there polishing both the skills and the bridge-building necessary to take what will be the largest and most risky “plunge” from the highest diving board into a pool infested with political sharks.

But then, who ever said that the Oval Office belonged to the faint of heart or the faint of integrity, until November 2016?

*There is a need for some reasonable compromises about which bathrooms transgender individuals use; however, if the evidence that is being touted by some, that transgender  individuals, originally male, now female, are permitted into women’s bathrooms endanger women in those rooms is based on evidence, it would seem that the transgender community has to recognize their part in developing policy and practices that keep everyone safe. We are unlikely to redesign public facilities for a third or a fourth category of people.

Power...the mercurial 'drug' under the microscope in The Atlantic

Two pieces in the most recent edition of The Atlantic caught our eyes this week. Both were detailing research on different kinds of POWER.

The first, Power Causes Brain Damage, by Jerry Useem, details newly discovered evidence that people under the influence of power, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—“becoming more impulsive, less  risk aware and crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.”* Useem drew such evidence from Dacher Keltner, psychology professor at UC Berkeley.

From Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist who studies brains at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Useem learned, that when he “put the heads of the powerful and the no-so-powerful under a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine, he found that power…impairs a specifc neural process, ‘mirroring,’ that may be the cornerstone of empathy. Which gives the neurological basis to what Keltner has termed the ‘power paradox’: Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.” (Ibid.)

Useem writes, “Power, the research says, primes our brain to screen out peripheral information. In most situations, this provides a helpful efficiency boost. In social ones, it has the unfortunate side effect of making us more obtuse…As Susan Fiske, a Princeton psychology professor, has persuasively argued, power lessens the need for a nuanced read of power, since it give us command or resources we once had to cajole from others…Less able to make out people’s individuating traits, they rely more heavily on stereotype. And the less they’re able to see, other research suggests, they rely on a personal ‘vision’ for navigation. (CEO of Wells Fargo) John Stumpf saw a Wells Fargo where every customer had eight separate accounts,” as justification for what he calls ‘Cross-selling, as short-hand for deepening relationships’.” (Ibid, p.25)

Drawing from Lord David Owen, Useem notes Owen’s book, In Sickness and in Power, in which Owen documents the various illnesses of British and American leaders. Owen, with co-author Jonathan Davidson, wrote an article published in Brain, in which they defined the “hubris syndrome”…

·      A disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraints on the leader.”

Useem lists some of the the 14 clinical features of Hubris Syndrome:

1.    Manifest contempt for others

2.    Loss of contact with reality

3.    Restless or reckless actions

4.    Displays of incompetence (Ibid, p.26)

To combat the hubris syndrome, Owen tells Useem a few strategies:

·      Thinking back on hubris-dispelling episodes from the past

·      Watching documentaries about ordinary people

·      Making a habit of reading constituents’ letters

What really upset both Useem and Owen, and should upset most of us, is that businesses have shown no appetite for research on hubris and business schools were not much better.

The second piece in The Atlantic, “The Smartphone Psychiatrist, written by David Dobbs, details the story of one American psychiatrist, Tom Insel, who wants psychiatry to better and more quickly diagnose and more quickly treat mental illness through the apps currently available and yet-to-be-researched for smartphones.

The debate in psychiatry has vacillated between the very difficult to measure, talk therapy that focused heavily on the environmental forces behind mental illness and the biocentric, pharmaceutical interventions that emerge from  biologically based research.

 While that debate continues to rumble underneath the emerging developments in digital technology, Insel has most recently joined a new “two-pizza” firm small enough in his view to change and adapt, to improvise and to satisfy his impatience, called Mindstrong.

Persisting for much of his earlier career in “brain” studies of rodents called voles, Insel now wants to mine and develop software based on an “objective textured picture of people’s lives collected continuously, not merely in weekly visits to the psychiatrist.” 

Dobbs writes:

With inputs like these, a phone could sense the beginning of a crisis and trigger an appropriate response. Because the response could come earlier, it could be more measured, less jarring, and less medication-heavy. ‘The earlier you intervene, the better the outcomes,’ Insel says. ‘Instead of detect and treat, it’s predict and pre-empt.’**

When asked how his new Mindstrong company might work, Insel points to a couple of already operating examples. A new company called 7-Cups “provides text-based peer-counselling and support for people with depression or anxiety or a long list of other conditions….7Cups gives everyone who register the change to take a standardized screening test for depression, anxiety and stress called DASS-21. A second model is an app called PRIME (Personalized Real-time Intervention for Motivation Enhancement) inspired by research showing that social connection and peer support can reduce the severity of depression and schizophrenia. The mobile app connects members to both a circle of peers and professional clinicians who can assist as needed…..The app has three real functions:

·      One is connecting people so they can turn to one another for help, perspective and affirmation

·      Another is providing a set of motivational essays, talks, and interactive modules that help with decisions and dilemmas common among the membership

·      The third is quickly spotting emerging crises and responding ith peer, social-service and clinician support.**

Clearly, Insel is probably guessing correctly that there is no way in the near or medium-future to be able to reach all people who suffer from mild and/or serious mental illness and debilitation with individual appointments with a psychiatrist. And we applaud the mounting research toward alleviating such a social and cultural dilemma.

Simultaneously, we also applaud the discovery of a hubris syndrome among leaders, with some minimal yet effective approaches to alleviating its damage.

Some other observations emerge from the collision of these two pieces. One is that most, if not all, people who serve in leadership are unlikely to welcome any attempt to mollify a hubris syndrome or even to acknowledge its existence. Pointing it out, and bringing it into the public discourse, as The Atlantic has done, is a commendable public service. Let’s watch and listen to see how long it takes the respective deans of the many business schools to open their minds and then their departments to acknowledge their perhaps unconscious aiding and abetting the  hubris syndrome. We know that departments of political science will take even longer to move in that same direction.

It is with the second piece, the digitizing of conventional human behaviour, forming like-“minded” groups around a cluster of mental illnesses, to satisfy what is really a personal ambition of several professional clinicians to “provide” service and support, for what is undoubtedly an interminable repeating fee that throws red flags up. These flags are not the kind that celebrate a sesquicentennial birthday of a nation. They are, rather, the kind that, while purporting to replace pharma-therapy with “app” therapy could gobble so much human private information, provide it to a group of “leaders” in their respective field without the appropriate and necessary oversight that must protect the “consumer/patient” in this equation.

Both talk therapy, and environmentally-focused analysis of mental illness, while currently out of vogue, continue to have a respected and needed place in the quiver of arrows available to all of us, whether or not we have been diagnosed with a specific mental illness. In fact, the opportunity to sit with, in the presence of a human being, face-to-face, in a situation in which body language, voice inflection and atmospheric dynamics of both melody and rhythm all can, and frequently do, lead to the establishment of trust and the possibility of being heard, maybe for the first time in one’s life has much to commend it.

Instant “analysis” of the kind that attends sport network broadcasting, without the benefit of that “private” period between weekly or monthly appointments, could reasonably be expected to replace what up to now is essentially the patients’ deep and profound reflections on his/her situation, in light of the most recent conversation.

We have to be especially careful, cautious and circumspect in both our private lives and in the evaluation of our leaders, in public institutions and in private for-profit corporations. Individual choice and decision-making, without the conscious awareness of human insight, intuition and “how-it-feels” to be in a room with another sentient human, caring, compassionate, yet truthful professional can easily fall off the rails.

One of the prime expectations of the Hippocratic Oath is “do no harm” and there is no way to guestimate that these new “approaches” to mental illness will observe that dictum.

*Jerry Useem, Power Causes Bain Damage, The Atlantic, July/August 2017, p. 24

**David Dobbs, The Smartphone Psychiatrist, The Atlantic, July/August 217, p.85