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Linguistic Empire

8/30/2024

There’s hard (coercive, force-based) power and soft (cultural, cajoling) power. Most empires over time have deployed both. The Brits and the French were quite good at both (the French haven’t quite given up yet). The Russians gave it quite a run (Putin hasn’t given up yet either). The US extended its reach beyond its shores starting at the end of the 19C, picking up the torch from the British across the 20C. Now, we’re fading as well on most fronts as the Chinese seek to pick up from where they dropped the ball six hundred years ago. But this essay isn’t about the number of aircraft carriers or economic clout, it’s about language.

I guess we’ll have to call it the “English Empire” to distinguish it from the formal/political versions run by His/Her Majesty’s Government from London (British) or the one steered from Washington and New York (American). It is, in a sense, a combination and continuation of both. If you’ve ever tried to pick up a few words in Mandarin, you’ll know our Mother Tongue gives us a big leg up (sorry for the somatic metaphor mixing!) in the inter-imperial competition of the 21C.

There’s evidence for it everywhere, but you have to look for it.

My favorite type of streaming video is foreign detective shows. My wife loves it when she walks by my room to hear fast-paced dialogue (when there are subtitles, I usually run the show at 1.5x normal speed) from wherever. They’re a great window into other cultures—French, German, Italian, Belgian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Turkish, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Australian, etc.—and one thing they show is how much the English language permeates these other cultures.

These are not “Made for Netflix” shows; they are made for their local market. So, they depict not only (more-or-less) accurate foreign attitudes towards the US (characterizing us as crude, simplistic, materialistic, geopolitically domineering), but also how US culture and the English language appear in these various cultures around the world.

It’s quite remarkable how many people speak English; and I’m talking ordinary folks: cops, merchants, kids; not just academics and elites. This is not a big surprise for NW Europe for multiple reasons, but it shows up everywhere. Multiple characters are depicted as having some working knowledge of English. Sometimes they have to interact with a foreigner, but more often they use English slang. Both the users and the jargon skew a bit to the younger side, but hardly exclusively. The implication is that they learn it in school as well as from being sucked up into the (mostly-English-speaking) internet-driven global pop culture.

Next, there are the signs and documents. Street signs, subway signs, advertisements, etc. Some portion of that signage reflects a desire to help visiting Americans/Brits, but there aren’t that many of us. Rather, it’s s signal that globally, a relatively high proportion of travelers speak English, even if it’s not their native language. Beyond that, there’s the semi-ubiquitous presence of US multinational companies, particularly those focused on food, fashion, and culture. Again, it’s not just companies and organizations that are based in English-speaking countries, but those that use English as their baseline language for reaching the largest number of global consumers.

Another aspect was illustrated by a piece in the NYT this summer about the increasing distribution of English-language novels and other books across Europe and elsewhere. It’s partly based on culture (social media shows the English version of books and movies), partly the commonality of English speakers in other countries, and partly the leveraging of scale economies (since translations into globally less popular languages can get relatively expensive).

From a geopolitical competition perspective, this is a good thing for the Anglo-capitalist side. Chinese is the only real competitor and it’s hard to learn, not used much outside direct interactions with Chinese people and organizations, and not nearly as popular from a global cultural perspective (we have Disney, Harry Potter, and LeBron James on our side!). The Chinese know this and they’re pushing, but we have a big head start.

Beyond the matter of direct competition, this globalizing cultural infiltration can’t have but important long-term effects. It’s not just that the world will pay more attention to us, but that they will subtly and ineluctably start to think more like us. There’s an essential linkage between language and psychology. Words, of course, have different meanings and flavorings, they’re used in different frequencies and contexts, and shade how we think about food, family, business and life. I have spoken often of the historical differences of mentalité, but the same applies across contemporary cultures. The average Italian or Yiddish or Arabic-speaker sees the world differently than the average English or Chinese-speaker. Whether the world will hang around long enough for these differences to manifest, we’ll just have to see.

Similarly, we will just have to see how much of the reverse osmosis is going on. Globalization always runs both ways. The Brits have curry shops everywhere thanks to their invasion of India. We have bodegas in most major cities and everyone speaks a few works at least of food-focused foreign language, even here in the most linguistically provincial country on the planet.

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Why Fight?

8/24/2024

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After I made a comment recently (061424) about the paucity of ideologically-based wars prior to the three-part knock-out rounds between capitalism/liberalism, fascism, and soviet communism that dominated the 20C, I got to thinking about how accurately I characterized the earlier period. Since I don’t claim to be conversant with the history of non-Western cultures, I recognize that my discussion is duly limited.

One can’t separate these topics from the concept of “the political” as it created in the 18C: i.e., viewing power as distributed across a “public” (i.e., a product of the rise of democratic theory and participation), the disparate rates of democratic emergence which placed conflicts between countries athwart this differential, and the coalescing of this “political” sensibility in ethno-national groupings (i.e., the nation-state). In terms of assessing the ideological component of wars, we have to be clear about the term “ideology,” by which I mean the set of ideas around the proper organization of society and human purpose. There is a lot of overlap with the idea of epistemology here; i.e., how a group of people understand the world should be consistent with and, in fact, determine how they organize the society over which they have power. In other words, there’s a good argument that there wasn’t anything quite like “ideology” before the modern era. While there were “beliefs,” especially religious ones, the resulting worldviews were different than how we think now. At least nominally, they were about the relative power of which ever God was being fought for.

The historical development noted above thus suggests two implications; one backward looking and the other more contemporary in manifestation. First, prior to the Reformation (16-18C), at least in Europe, there is little sense that wars were fought for anything other than power. Going back, even to the earliest civilizations in the Middle East, while wars may have been nominally characterized as “our God vs. your God,” I suspect there were few substantive differences in outlook; i.e., religious differentiation was a rationalization for a power struggle actually animated by ego (“glory”) or economics (spoils, conquest, or tribute). The Crusades might be an exception here.

The wars (both “civil” and “international”) that crashed across Europe for a few hundred years in the 16-18C fused this “God vs. God” trope with contemporary power politics. Theological articulation on both sides, however, provided a broader intellectual rationale to these differences. Accusations of heresy and apostasy on both sides amplified the animosity, but, more importantly reflected the differences in world view/ethics deployed by both Protestants and Catholics. In other words, the “ideologies” of that age were aligned by religious beliefs rather than how/whether to disrupt the (effectively) universal monarchical power structures of each participant.

Along those religious lines, the results were inconclusive: both Protestant and Catholic regimes remained. It didn’t take long for the former dividing point became, in many circumstances, secondary to power politics (e.g., Protestant England and Holland allied with Catholic Austria against Catholic France in the late 17C, Catholic France supporting Protestant (incipient) USA against Protestant Britain during the American Revolution).

Second, the American and French Revolutions of the late 18C marked a shift in the nature of ideology from the religious to the political. While neither produced an immediate and sustainable democracy, the idea that the “people” should be in charge rather than a monarchy (the “Ancien Regime”) was a central motivation in each case. In the US, actual steps towards democracy were limited and elites remained firmly in control for (at least) decades (a century-and-a-half?). In France, revolutionary instability meant that democratic ideas were bounced around like ping-pong balls for a decade until Napoleon asserted a new monarchy/empire which only lasted until the Ancien Regime Bourbons resumed the throne in 1815.

In terms of wars, there is little to say on the American front in the first half of the 19C. The foolish fight of 1812 had no deep motivation and the Mexican War of the 1840s was a land-grab. France, on the other hand, actively sought to export its Revolution across Europe for a decade. Even after Napoleon donned his Emperor’s mantle, the disruptive nature of his wars meant at least a shift from the deeply-embedded power structures. So, we have—certainly for 1791-98 and somewhat thereafter—ideological wars in Europe.

The post-Napoleonic restoration of monarchical authority pretty much put paid to such activities for the rest of the 19C in Europe. Imperial wars were about power, as were the occasional outbursts of international war which punctuated the period on the Continent.

Curiously, one could make a plausible argument that the US Civil War was ideological. To be sure, there are plenty of economic/power rationales for the North to continue and the South to oppose preservation of the Union and fighting for or against that preservation itself doesn’t say much about ideology in the absence of underlying motivation. However, to the extent the War can be characterized as being “about” slavery, it would then be about “the political” i.e., the proper nature and structure of society. Still, this interpretation of the War’s genesis and rationale remains hotly contested among historians, so I’m reticent to put it definitively in the “ideological” camp.

Taking another angle, but sticking with the pre-WWI era, one could look at the various revolutionary efforts and conflicts about independence (e.g., various nationalist/liberal uprisings in Europe across the 19C, India in 1857, early 20C in Mexico, China, and Persia). None were successful, none had much international oomph, and few lasted long. From my (admittedly limited) reading, they were more about which oligarchy (local vs.. foreign) was going to run the show (echoing the American Revolution) even if some were clothed in more democratic slogans. Perhaps the best case can be made for the Russian Revolution of 1905. While it, too, was unsuccessful, domestic and short-lived, it did have a stronger democratic flavor than the others (and led to the Great October Revolution of 1917 with its ideological thunder).

Overall, there’s a case to be made that wars are just about power and that they’re rationalized in terms of the language of the day—ego, greed, God, honor—merely to justify all the death and destruction they cause.

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Money, Babies, and the Flag

8/16/2024

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Aficionados of international finance are familiar with the so-called “trilemma” which states that a country cannot simultaneously fix its currency exchange rates, have an internationally open financial system, and maintain an independent monetary policy. I’m not going to go into the details here; but it’s an example of the conflict among conflicting policy goals that is increasingly prevalent (or at least our awareness of these conflicts is growing) in the 21C.

I think there’s parallel trilemma out there, one that will loom larger in the public imagination than the obscurities of econometric analysis. It has to do with long-term demographic trends, economic growth, and national control of borders/immigration. It’s a particular problem for those who claim the mantle of “populists,” (a label of dubious and varied meaning), with adherents not only here in the US, but also India, Russia, and most other countries in Europe. (I’m deliberately not using the traditional “left/right” framework to talk political alignments since they’re increasingly meaningless (see also “Beyond Left and Right” 092322).

“Populists” tend to be nationalist, with a strong aversion to immigration. At the far end of the group there are those who talk openly about national blood lines and racial purity. This is tribalism writ large, trying to cope with a globalized world with way too much change/complexity happening. They also seem to share concerns about economic growth and inequality, since they are disproportionately strong among those of the “working class” and the lower economic strata of the “middle class.” They’re unhappy about taxes and inflation and job security, they resent their country’s elites and are tired of being ignored/pushed aside. To the extent that they hold a set of coherent policy prescriptions, therefore, they want: 1) minimal immigration (especially of racially and religiously different folks (aka “others”); 2) a stronger economic situation for those with middling education and working skills; and 3) a growth in the US population.

Here's the problem with their desires: “Home team” birth rates (especially white/Christian) are dropping; often for sensible reasons and this threatens all three of the aforementioned policy goals.

I’ve talked about long-term demographic trends previously. Lower birth rates in better off countries will put pressure on the ability and willingness of those societies to financially support the increasing percentage of older folks who are expecting the state to support them. Transitions from traditional workforce configurations, increasingly under pressure from globalization and automation/AI, will stress both social and economic fabrics in those countries. Relatively higher birth rates in the “Global South” (especially Africa), combined with climate crises will continue to incent those populations to seek better lives in the “Global North.”

Lower domestic birth rates in the “Global North” without immigration will lead to lower domestic economic strength and exacerbate the financial precariousness of many whose longer-term job outlooks are not encouraging. Allowing immigration will exacerbate the psychological precariousness of those for whom national identity is existential.

Raising domestic birth rates, especially among those who are part of the “home team” and who face a raft of economic challenges already is problematic, both historically and in terms of the availability of government funds for various subsidies/benefits. Governments have tried this, pretty much without success, since the 19C. Patriotism (babies for the fatherland) peters out as a motivator after a brief spurt. The progress in women’s self-awareness and power over the past 200 years will make it hard to reinstate a rigid and draconian patriarchy of reproduction. The deterrents facing young families—the cost of housing, long-term job insecurity, the cost of child rearing (not to mention longer-term existential angst over the climate crisis)—are daunting and not solvable even if governments were awash in cash. In the face of these economics, even a comprehensive ban on abortion wouldn’t move the needle much in terms of population levels.

These “populist” groups—MAGAites, LePen’s National Rally in France, Farage’s Reform Party in the UK, AfD in Germany, Modi’s BJP in India, Putin, and dozens of others)—don’t know what to do. Stoking unhappiness is one thing, making policy sense (even in the short/medium term) is another. It’s always easier to criticize than construct. I imagine we will continue to see hand-wringing, more “blame game” politics (particularly aimed at immigrants), and some (small and ineffective) money thrown at the problem. However, there’s no coherent vision of a solution on offer.

Indeed, while “populists” are pretty much inherently anti-elite, perhaps a better descriptor (at least for the current batch) is “short-term’ers” or “presentists.” It is difficult to understand how they think things are going to work out if their immediate policy and style goals are met. Shall we return to the autarkic world of the pre-modern world or the spasm of “beggar-thy-neighbor” that contributed to and was accelerated by the Great Depression? Trade wars and disruption of global supply chains will lead to increased costs, fewer products, fewer jobs, and lower employment. Getting rid of the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department isn’t going to bring happiness once the scalps have dried out.

The lack of policy coherence or plausible social vision is matched by the refusal to look at history (the other reason I think that they are overly “present-ist”). I’m more than aware of the limited applicability of historical precedent, at the same time, I can see that the absence of any historical precedent for the proposals being effective and the aggressive dismissal of countervailing historical examples shows that MAGA-its’ efforts to revive AMERICAN GREATNESS is based on myth (edging into fantasy). In 1950 the US bestrode the world even though we only had 6 % of global population (and 28% of global GDP). Now we have about 4% of global population (and 13% of global GDP). Even if everything else broke “our” way (and leaving all moral, equity, and climate issues to the side), it would take a long time to get back to the heyday of AMERICAN GREATNESS. Don’t wait up.

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Deck Chairs

8/9/2024

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What is it about committees? I’ve participated in and led scads of groups charged with resolving, managing, coordinating, etc. etc. Otherwise (usually) reasonable people get together and start blathering and repeating each other, talking past each other, getting picky and personal, and losing sight of why they’re there. Often, there is (as I have regularly remarked) “violent agreement” about the issue at hand, but since a majority feel the need to (vigorously) express their (concurring) views, we waste a lot of time.

Fourteen years in the AT&T/Bell System gave me more than enough of inter- and intra-company sessions. In terms of bureaucracy, it was, on average, worse than being in the government. Probably the smartest thing AT&T did strategically when it agreed to be broken up in the early 1980s was to split the provision of local telephone service into seven different companies (the “Baby Bells”) who were then forced to work together—by committee. I worked for Pacific Telesis and spent hours every week in sessions with my counterparts trying to coordinate our positions and plans. It was painful and expensive and distracting from what we needed to do. In terms of strategy and public policy (the areas in which I was most involved), AT&T was able to move much more effectively.

That work environment was not my first exposure to the joys of committees, however. In college, I had the dubious distinction of being elected as the undergraduate representative to the Brandeis University Political Science Department. OMG, talk about pro forma and performative politics! I quickly came to understand something of group dynamics in an academic setting. I formulated
“Harris’ Law” (adapted from the gas laws of elementary physics): “The intensity of the politics is inversely proportional to the significance of the issue being discussed.” I have since found this principle to be widely applicable, both in public and corporate settings; but it has its true home in academe (with a fine showing on the part of small non-profit boards of directors).

One of the (few) benefits of not having professorial tenure is that I haven’t been required to perform academic “service” (i.e. participation in the multi-level, minimal functionality of University governance). This is evidenced by the presence of some hair remaining on my head. Given the many challenges faced by Universities and by History Departments generally, one might think that the dire situation would bring focus and attention to developing solutions and adaptations. Rather, to the contrary, despite the formidable brain power present in such sessions, an appalling portion of these meetings are devoted to what I can only call “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

By-laws and organizational structures are a favorite topic guaranteed to engender argument among verbally-sophisticated professors. I have seen groups where far more time is spent in such “word-smithing” than on, e.g., how to teach better, what to do about AI, or how to promote History as a field of study. Debating the number and type of assignments required of students in particular types of courses, faculty committee structures, and whether the faculty offices (which are usually occupied less than five hours per week) are sufficiently spacious all seem a more satisfying way of spending group time than wrestling with the core issues facing the institution or the discipline of History. Now, I get that small groups can’t solve universal problems. Neither a department or a University is going to change the nature of 21C US society and the nature of “kids” today. Still, there are things to be done within the remit and capability of such groups; there’s still an opportunity to “fight the good fight” on our own turf, even if we can’t do it all.

Non-profits, too, fall into this trap. Strategy and mission are taken for granted, issues of funding are flailed about, leaving such groups to a “hand-to-mouth” existence until they fade into irrelevance or insolvency. Repeated rumbling around on large and small issues without resolution or even direction is neither satisfying nor effective. Good intentions are no substitute for clear thinking.

(Of course, this problem is not limited to small-bore groups. At a societal level, the looming ice bergs also seem easy to ignore and legislative/regulatory processes are strewn with examples of parochial concerns sucking up all the oxygen to the detriment of broader, more fundamental concerns.)

My sense is that this pattern of group behavior reflects a combination of an inability to contemplate the scale of change necessary to address such existential threats plus the small, but real, satisfaction that comes with accomplishing something, even if trivial. When combined with the common human traits of presentism, assuming the continuation of the status quo, and forgetting the general precariousness of life, it’s a recipe for self-congratulatory inaction.

The principal remedy for all this is organizational leadership. Someone with some vision and charisma has to wrest the steering wheel and persuade the group members of the need to look beyond their parochial briefs. Sometimes that means scaring them, with the dire prospects of running into the icebergs nearby. Sometimes that means portraying the “sunlit uplands” of the group’s aspirations. Sometimes it even means (gasp!) bringing in a consultant (with all due caveats on that score). In most cases it calls for a recognition on the part of the group members that despite their combination of noble intent, brain power, and commitment, they are not necessarily well equipped to take the larger view and steer their particular ship. Stated starkly, deck chairs should be the province of stewards and furniture designers. The rest of us need to get on with dealing with more important things.

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Courting Trouble

8/2/2024

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The President’s recent proposal to alter the Supreme Court is remarkable for several reasons. While I share many of the substantive sentiments motivating this initiative, and it would be nice if it sparked a dialogue across the country on both the substantive issues (women’s rights, presidential immunity, gun control, etc.) that led to it, as well as the nature and role of the judiciary (ethics, separation of powers). However, I have significant problems with both legal and political aspects of his approach. I’ll also have a few comments on the particulars.

The first thing to be said is that this feels much more like a performative political project than a serious constitutional initiative. No one reasonably expects either the current Congress or the one to be elected in the fall (regardless of who becomes President) to take up these ideas and move them forward either through statute or a proposed Constitutional Amendment. After all, Congress has turned into a place where the most minute and ordinary legislative matters become highly politicized. In a place where a motion to say “God Bless You” after the Speaker sneezed would be referred to committee and debated on MSNBC/Fox, we can hardly expect that an issue with real and long-term implications would get anywhere.

In this same vein, it’s curious that Biden continued to be the nominal author of the package now that he’s a lame duck. It would be politically more useful (both in terms of the upcoming election as well as the longer-term prospects for such proposals) if (K.) Harris were to carry the ball.

As to the underlying substantive issues that have led to the current unhappiness with the Court, I am no fan of the current jurisprudence; although there are more points to be said for the “conservative” perspective on most of them than the popular press would allow. Indeed, leaving the constitutional issues to the side for a moment, an awful lot of what gets stirred up in the public debate on many recent controversial court decisions has to do with statutory interpretation. Here, the issue really comes down to whether Congress is doing its job and whether the Court is appropriately calling them on their laziness and sloppy drafting. In a “normal” political environment, telling Congress that they weren’t sufficiently clear on various aspects of administrative delegation or the scope of their regulatory powers seems spot on. The fact that Congress hasn’t done a good job legislating is a problem we should all be concerned with (again, leaving the current dysfunctionality aside).

As to the Constitutional interpretations, I read the Court’s decisions as saying to the country that “If you folks want to have a new rule on abortion, gun control, etc. you need to clearly articulate, through the political process what you want.” The fact that our electoral process and underlying philosophic divide among the voters prevents the views of a majority from being enacted is not up to the Court to solve. For example, my problem with Roe is not the line drawn there, but rather the way the Court enabled the political branches (and the broader political culture) to not deal with the issues, enabling uncertainty and political disengagement. The Presidential immunity decision is a different matter entirely. It’s a remarkable piece of judicial intervention from a Court nominally opposed to “judicial activism.” There’s precedent (the 11th Amendment from 1794) for a quick amendment to reverse a bad Court decision.

Biden’s specific judicial proposals: term limits and a code of ethics are all entirely sensible on their own and neither is new. My critique is that they are reactive patches rather than comprehensive solutions to broader concerns. Term limits should apply to all judges (indeed, to members of Congress as well); ethical standards should be articulated (and enforced) for all senior elected and appointed officials and judges.

When looking across both levels of substantive issues and combining them with the questions of the Court’s practices and jurisdiction, what emerges is the need for broad constitutional reform, for reasons which I have articulated elsewhere. Chipping away at the fringes of the document invites pastiche and incoherence. Worse, solving a few of the constitutional problems we face (even assuming a handful of Amendments were approved) takes down the pressure and reduces the coalition necessary for the kind of broad change that is really needed.

It's pretty rare for a President to engage in Constitutional politics. Biden’s proposals have invited all sorts of comparisons with Roosevelt’s famous Court-packing proposals of the 1930s. I’m sure Joe likes to see himself as carrying on FDR’s legacy in many ways and this one seems to fit. However, it’s not clear to me that there is a broad consensus in the country for what Biden has proposed comparable to the popular and electoral energy behind the New Deal. Each House of Congress in 1937 was more than 70% Democratic. The People had spoken—clearly and repeatedly. Nowadays, the margins in each House are razor thin and are likely to remain so next year, too. Serious public debate followed FDR’s proposals in both Congress and in public forums. And, yes, there were both partisan and ideological spins; but our poisoned atmosphere leaves little space for substance.

Biden’s proposals are “politics as usual.” They will waste political capital, increase public weariness and cynicism. In the end, their political lameness only makes it easier for the broader political culture to brush aside the need for broader and more fundamental (often constitutional) change.

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Linguistic Empire

Why Fight?

Money, Babies, and the Flag

Deck Chairs

Courting Trouble

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Linguistic Empire

Why Fight?

Money, Babies, and the Flag

Deck Chairs

Courting Trouble

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.