Barbara Jordan Remembered

by Nomad

Today, February 21, marks the birthday of Texas Congresswoman Barbara Charline Jordan, arguably one of the most influential black women in American political history.

Representative Jordan from Texas was the first in many categories: the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South. Additionally, in, July 1976, she became the first African American woman to deliver a keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention.

In fact, on an individual level, it's hard to find, in one person of this period who symbolized the breadth of American diversity. She was an African American, she was a woman and, although it was an aspect of her life she preferred to remain undisclosed, she was most likely a lesbian.

On that basis alone, she had a right to speak on behalf of many people. She once said of the first words of the preamble of the Constitution:

It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”:

Bust: How Republicans Lost the War on Drugs 3/5

by Nomad

In past installments in this series on America's war on drugs, we examined Nixon and Ford. Now we turn to the Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Deeply entrenched distrust for the president within the CIA would prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.

Part 3. Where the Rational Met Reality

Carter's Way

The 70s were a time of reformation after the hectic and often frightening social shakeups of the 60s. Watergate and the subsequent Church Senate Committee Investigations had opened up the heart of the political system and most Americans were appalled at the grimy business of running the country and managing the world.

What was needed was a complete overhaul starting at the top. Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, peanut farmer with the down-home Georgian accent seemed to be the style of leadership the country demanded.
And so in 1976, against all expectations, The Waltons moved into the White House.

The white middle class conservative values of "dominant social order" were being re-evaluated, questioned and challenged in a variety of ways.

The extreme conservative opinion, typified by white frustration, tainted with bigotry and, simplistic, backward views of the world,  was being mocked weekly on television shows like All in the Family and other programs. It is no surprise then that the failed drug policy should once again come under greater scrutiny.

In some ways, President Carter did, in fact, pick up where President Ford had left off. And as we mentioned in the previous post, that new direction had already been sabotaged. While marijuana was now being considered harmless and non-addictive, cocaine was added to the same category. (We should take a closer look at the possible reason for this.) In any case, this coupling, for whatever reasons, proved to be a major blunder.

Both, under President Ford's directive, were now to receive far less attention from law enforcement. Meanwhile the focus was concentrated on the heroin trade. 

Progress combating the illegal import of heroin too was hampered. That had much to do with the CIA and its antagonism toward Carter and all he represented. 

It was common knowledge that high level intelligence officials in the agency had no great love for Carter. Perhaps it was to be expected since President Carter had campaigned as an outsider who was coming to Washington to clean the mess that the Church Committee had revealed.

The Key to Happiness and the Death of the American Dream

by Nomad

A recent study on happiness can tell us why Americans are so angry with Washington. It has, the study suggests, been a long time coming.

According to a study highlighted in Psychology Today, researchers from University College London have discovered, after studying more than 18,000 people from all over the world, what really makes people happy. One key factor, they concluded, comes down to what we expect and how strongly we expect it. They were even able to derive an equation to predict the factors that created happiness.

Dr. Robb Rutledge, a cognitive and computational neuroscientist and lead author of the study,

“Life is full of expectations — it would be difficult to make good decisions without knowing, for example, which restaurant you like better. It is often said that you will be happier if your expectations are lower. We find that there is some truth to this: lower expectations make it more likely that an outcome will exceed those expectations and have a positive impact on happiness

But, according to Rutlege, that's only half of the story. Sometimes happiness comes solely from the expectation itself. When some people play the lottery, the expectation of winning and the plans of what they would do with the winnings is more than enough to keep people playing week after week. This is true when those expectations are known to be false or based on fantasy.

Using MRI scans, the researchers were even able to track the place in the brain where our happiness originates. They found that setting expectations and receiving the pay off trigger a release of a the pleasure hormone, dopamine, which excited those areas of the brain.

So, the researchers seem to suggest that having high hopes is one way to achieve short term happiness but having realistic expectations is more important to long term happiness. 

The American Dream and the Happiness of Fantasy

The findings on the surface might seem a little obvious. At least the results of the study fits pretty squarely with conventional wisdom about keeping your expectations low.

However, on a social and political level, there are some interesting implications. 
There are things that Americans have tended to believe to the core. One of those articles of faith is the American Dream. Some have argued that that dream is dead. The expectation that life will forever improve, that social mobility is possible if only one works harder and that you too can rise out of poverty by virtue of your ambition and your intelligence, all that is now forever lost. 

If the American Dream is truly dead, then America is going to be a particularly unhappy place to live. Especially for the middle class. The poor have learned from grim experience to expect less and many have been forced to rely on social programs. The rich tend to have their expectations met and can use the system to guarantee it. However, it is the middle class that will not so easily adjust to the downgrading of our dreams.