Brooks Offers Handbook on What to Look For in Our Leaders

(Continued on page 4)

October 19, 2017 Volume 1, Issue 7

Democracy with Dignity

Democracy with Dignity

David Brooks, the conservative New York Times commentator and regular on PBS News Hour, wrote The Road to Character to describe the differences between what he calls “resume” virtues and “eulogy” virtues, especially in the context of a public life. He contrasts the personality traits that lead to material success and fame vs. those that indicate an iron core of values, integrity, altruism, and wisdom. The former get more play in the press but the latter constitute true character … and might be our yardstick for assessing candidates for whom we vote. The book is a lament because Brooks sees our current society as an era of rampant narcissism. (Anyone come to mind?) Previous eras’ leaders were characterized by self-effacement and humility. (Think Lincoln.) WWII had brought the Holocaust and other horrors, and after the war people wanted to escape deprivation and self-restraint. The much lauded Greatest Generation threw off old community-based morality, seeking a new morality based on the ideals of personal gain and success. The Power of Positive Thinking encouraged people to liberate their inner selves, self-actualize and self-accept. Self-esteem became the goal of education, and minority groups and women were urged to stop buying the story of “knowing one’s place.” The new society now wanted you to be confident, self-advertising and achieving. This is the shift from what Brooks calls the Little Me to the Big Me. Brooks explores these ideas by examining the biographies of several historical figures: Frances Perkins (secretary of labor under FDR); Eisenhower (and his mother); Dorothy Day (founder of The Catholic Worker); George Marshall (five-star general and author of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after WWII); Augustine (fourth century Christian theo-logian); and Samuel Johnson (author of the first English dictionary). Using these and others as illustrations, Brooks does not suggest that character is easy to come by, enjoyable to sustain, or even consistently apparent, but his admiration is clear. People of deep character serve their work and tirelessly pursue its perfection. Heroes are not self-aggrandizing indi-viduals who chase glory, but are exemplars of renunciation who mistrust mere idealism. They avoid flights of self-congratulatory compassion through steadiness and balance. For example, Perkins did not see her drive for workers’ (Continued on page 4)

Deborah Holbrook, Editor

Indivisible groups sprang up all over the country last November in reaction to the 2016 presidential election. Indivisible Crossville came into existence in January, largely inspired by a sense of outrage at this reckless president and the in-tense polarization of political dialogue. A group of us volunteered to organize the local Indivisible group, and we have now incorporated as a non-profit with an elected board and officers. Through the last ten months, IC members have made phone calls on many issues, we have marched and demonstrated, and we have educated ourselves about elected officials and candidates in anticipation of the 2018 election.

New Directions for IC

Left to Right: Stan mans the Indivisible Crossville table at the October 6 Friday at the Crossroads; Kristal Knight speaks at September 21 monthly meeting; Deborah works the crowd at Cross-roads event.

Education: Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have filed suit against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over her delay of regulations meant to provide new protections for federal student loan borrowers, particularly those at for-profit colleges. The lawsuit, led by Massachusetts and joined by 18 other Democratic attorneys general, accuses DeVos of illegally delaying the regulations, which were finalized by the Obama administration and had been set to take effect on July 1. The rules made it easier for defrauded student loan borrowers to have their loans forgiven. They also prohib-ited colleges from requiring students to resolve complaints through arbitration rather than in court.” Politico, 7/6/17 Local Public Education: Kids on the Rise (KOTR) is a non-profit organization that provides mentors for at-risk students in Cumberland County. Qualified people seeking to make a positive difference in the lives of children may apply to be-come mentors. For more information on how to become a mentor, contact Donna King, executive director, at 459-2388 or go to www.kidsontherise.org. Nuclear: Hutchison will speak on Sunday, October 29, at 3:00 p.m., in Adshead Hall at Uplands Village, Pleasant Hill. He is the coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA), speaking about nonviolent actions that can lead to a world free of nuclear weapons. Voter Participation: A national Democratic organization is setting up a field office in Tennessee ahead of 2018. Let America Vote, the organization started by former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander after he lost a close race to incumbent U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt last year, announced it will expand field operations to five states to target specific races. Let America Vote will be specifically working towards electing a Democratic governor in Tennessee and targeted legisla-tive races, although which ones have not been announced. The city in which the field office will be located was also not announced. ~http://www.nashvillepost.com/politics/article/20974303/political-roundup-let-america-vote-opening-office DACA: Protecting young undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” from deportation may also help lower the risk of mental health problems for their U.S.-born children, a recent study suggests. Researchers examined data on 5,653 mothers in Oregon born just before and after the cutoff for DACA eligibility. When mothers qualified for DACA, 3.3% of their children had a range of mental illnesses that can be provoked by stress such as intense feelings of sadness or hopelessness, anxiety and depression. But when mothers weren’t eligible for DACA, 7.8% of their kids had these mental illnesses. Researchers focused on mental health disorders that might develop in children afraid of being separated from their parents by deportation. Disorders might include adjustment disorder, which is often triggered by a stressful life event and can result in poor performance in school or work, behavior problems, sleep difficulties, depression, anxiety, sub-stance abuse and suicidal thoughts. Lisa Rapaport; bit.ly/2xbXnTR, Science, 9/8/17 Bill of Rights, Freedom of Press: Trump continues to swipe at the media for doing their job, which included being em-bedded with Coast Guard and other rescue crews saving people during hurricane Harvey. CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell, for example, did a whole report from inside a Coast Guard station. NPR tagged along on a rescue operation, and a CNN reporter Drew Griffin helped drag a man out of a truck in the middle of a broadcast. EPA pushed back on an AP story about Superfund sites that it says were flooded by Harvey. The EPA responded by attacking the reporter personally, accusing the journalist of "reporting from the comfort of Washington." The AP re-sponded by noting that the story was based on on-the-ground reporting from the sites. Some Trump supporters on Twitter shared images of the president comforting Houston victims, dubbing them "pictures the media will never show you." All of the photos were wire photos from the AP. As for that video of CNN correspondent pulling a guy out of a truck? Some conspiracy theory websites accused it of being staged. It was not.

News to Inform Our Mission Statement Issues and Goals

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A transpartisan grassroots organization seeking positive political solutions nationally, locally, and statewide in an atmos-phere of respect, inclusion, and rationality.

Fielding moderate candidates

Educating voters

Making our voices heard to elected officials Request to join our private Facebook page by emailing indivisiblecrossville@gmail.com

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rights as an allocation question: “How can I use my beautiful self to help out those less fortunate than I?”(31) Several of Brooks’ examples have deep religious lives, but Samuel Johnson did not. He moved in a humanistic community, which practiced intellectual honesty and resistance to self-deception fueled by van-ity and pride. Johnson believed that most problems are moral problems (not political ones) and the first step to greatness is to be honest. He was sympathetic and humane, but ruthless with himself in his efforts to achieve clear-eyed realism. In striving to beat back self-indulgence and achieve iron control, often people of character must project a “second self” to the world, an abnegation of the inner self’s struggles which do not serve a purpose in one’s work. Augustine discovered that the goal of inner peace can only be achieved by focusing outward and not allowing emotions to rule one’s life.(211) One cannot control all externals, but one can control emotional reactions which override inner wisdom. Projection of a second self and keeping one’s inner struggle to oneself are the ways to accomplish larger goals. Mar-shall believed in self-discipline, played out in his service to the US Army, its traditions and values. An “institutionalist,” he had deep reverence for rules, details, thoroughness and goals that transcend a single lifetime.(116) Brooks’ ideal Little Me leader is moderate and moderating. While politics can be a competition between legitimate opposing interests, the moderate (effective) leader strives for balance and proportion, forever seeking one solution after another, adjusting, avoiding one-sidedness and adjusting again. The leader of character is constantly steering and tacking and does not believe in ultimate solutions that are right for all times. The leader of character is skeptical of zeal-otry and, as Ike counseled, “makes mistakes slowly.”(73) David Brooks The Road to Character 2015

(continued from first page)

The leader of character is constantly steering and tacking and does not believe in ultimate solutions that are right for all times.

Two civil rights movements: Come Let Us Reason Together vs. There is Evil in the World In Brooks’ book The Road to Character, he references two characterizations of the 1960s civil rights movement. They are useful in helping us to understand some of the current racial conversations and confrontations. “*T+here were really two civil rights movements. The first was northern and highly educated. People in this group tended to have an optimistic view of history and human nature. Without thinking much about it, they perceived the arc of history as a gradual ascent, a steady accumulation of more scientific and psychological knowledge, a steady achieve-ment of greater prosperity, a steady growth of progressive legislation, and a gentle rise from barbarism to decency. They believed that racism was such a clear violation of America’s founding documents that the main job for the civil rights activist was to appeal to reason and the better angels of people’s nature. As education levels increase, as con-sciousness is raised, as prosperity and economic opportunity spread, then more and more people would gradually see that racism was wrong, that segregation was unjust, and they would rise to combat it. Education, prosperity, and social justice would rise together. All good things are compatible and mutually reinforcing. People in this camp tended to believe in conversation over confrontation, consensus over aggression, and civility over political force. There was a second camp that emerged from the biblical prophetic tradition. Its leaders … cited Jeremiah and Job. In this world, they argued, the just suffer while the unjust prosper. Being right does not necessarily lead to being victori-ous. Man is a sinner at the core of his being. He will rationalize the injustices that benefit him. He will not give up his privileges even if you can persuade him they are unjust. Even people on the righteous side of a cause can be corrupted by their own righteousness, can turn a selfless movement into an instrument to serve their own vanity. They can be corrupted by whatever power they attain and corrupted by their own powerlessness. Evil, M.L.King, Jr., declared, is ‘rampant’ in the universe. ‘Only the superficial optimist who refuses to face the realities of life fails to see this patent fact.’ People in this realist camp, who were mostly southern and religious, had contempt for the northern faith in gradual natural progress. ‘This particular sort of optimism has been discredited by the brutal logic of events.’ King continued. ‘Instead of assured progress in wisdom and decency, man faces the ever present possi-bility of swift relapse not merely to animalism, but into such calculated cruelty as no other animal can practice.’”

~ From Brooks’ The Road to Character, quoting David L. Chappell, pp.145-146

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your success or failures.” Elizabeth Gilbert, in The Washington Post

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(continued from first page) Over the months, we have had at least 180 people check us out. That is a base to work from. Some who have spoken to us have said that they are not “go-to-meeting types” but support what we do. They are making the phone calls to Corker, Black and Alexander; they are following our newsletters, minutes and actions. And we say God bless ‘em. Keep it up. But we also need the folks who will look at the Mission Statement below and make a decision about where they will plug in. The Passion Groups themselves are urged to continue work in their chosen areas. We all sincerely hope to hear about and participate in their activities, but the general monthly meetings will now pivot toward education on local issues, candidate information, and training on the other priorities (e.g., civil discourse) listed in the mission statement. We will develop actions and initiatives for which organizers (not just the organizing team) will seek assistance and presence. IC has some energetic people working for it. Some are considering running for office and becoming active in campaigns. One of our members is our liaison to the TN-6 group. They too are evolving. There will now be an overall TN-6 coordinating team with local Indivisibles functioning in the various cities – Crossville, Tullahoma, Cookeville, Gallatin, etc. This will be a more effective structure in terms of dissemination of infor-mation and participation in actions that affect the entire Congressional district vs. local ones. The members of the organizing team are deeply grateful for all participation and support. As one member said, our concern need not be a mile wide in terms of all the issues that we face, but it does need to be a mile deep in terms of commitment to solving the problems we choose to work on.

The Organizing Team

Indivisible Crossville’s Mission Statement Indivisible Crossville’s mission is to encourage citizens to come together around local, state, and national issues in order to create a more just society. Goals:

Surface and encourage appropriate and realistic candidates at all levels of government Identify offices available Crystallize requirements for candidates: smart, likeable, ability to fundraise Disseminate information about ways for voters to support candidates and influence issues (e.g., Resistance

School) Educate voters about issues and candidates (Indivisible cannot endorse candidates but can educate about them);

bridge national and state issues to local situations Educate ourselves about local, state and national issues by inviting neutral, nonpolitical experts speak to IC

(e.g., hospital administrators to discuss effects of Medicare and ACA) Follow-up with publication and distribution of educational materials to voters in county Invite candidates to speak Be a positive, open-minded presence in other organizations (e.g., Democratic party, SOCM, Rotary, Repub-

lican party, Cumberland County Drug Coalition, etc.) Influence elected officials around current issues

Continue to create weekly action items Continue to make phone calls, and write letters and emails, especially to federal and state officials Pay attention to national Indivisible group and include TN-6 action items in IC publicity Participate in large demonstrations in Nashville and Knoxville Issues of importance to Indivisible Crossville: 1. campaign finance reform including Citizens United; 2. ger-

rymandering ; 3. environment, energy and climate change; 4. DACA; 5. healthcare; 6. consumerism and unfettered capitalism; 7. protection of Bill of Rights including separation of church and state; 8. tax re-form; 9. public education

Promote respectful civil discourse and create caring relationships among voters Operate in bi-partisan and nonpartisan ways Encourage diversity in age, economic status, religion, ethnicity, gender Dialogue with others; listen and hear (e.g., provide workshop on active listening) Create deliberate opportunities for conversations with local folks using active listening skills; (e.g., wear TN

-6 t-shirt, safety pins, pussy hats, or other conversation starters) Promote informed voting on Cumberland Plateau with special focus on young people

Seek opportunities to interact in educational settings: community college, Tech, high schools, TCAT, etc. Participate in organizations and go to locations that appeal to younger demographic (e.g., Obed Water-

shed; artist groups; Grinder House; Playhouse)

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Focus on ‘Fake News’ Facebook has signed up PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes.com, the AP and ABC News to patrol news on the platform. Since March, users have been able to report stories that seem untrue and send them to a queue for the checkers. Face-book’s algorithms search for stories that seem bogus, adding them to the queue. If two of the fact-checking groups la-bel a story false, then Facebook marks it “disputed.” Every fact-check that is completed is entered into Facebook’s ma-chine learning model to help its software identify similar stories in the future. A Yale study suggests that its fact-checking efforts are not having much of an impact in how people perceive fake news stories, and in some cases may be making people more likely to believe false stories. The existence of flags on some, but not all, false stories made Trump supporters and young people more likely to believe any story that was not flagged. Further fact-checkers don’t know how stories are affected by being flagged — whether reactions to them change, if sharing goes up or down, or if fact-checks are capable of changing the mind of someone inclined to believe a false story

in the first place. There is also the question of whether a dis-puted tag from the fact-checking groups — all mainstream me-dia — could be a “badge of honor” for a certain strain of story. Other questions: Does the length of time it takes to flag a false story affect its spread. Do certain types of stories require more immediate attention than others? When an article is flagged, how often do copycat versions with altered headlines pop up to replace it? What types of headlines work best to trig-ger or evade a fact-check? As a private company, Facebook is under no obligation to dis-close internal data. Representatives say that doing so could re-veal information about users. Some fact-checkers are growing frustrated, saying lack of information is undermining Face-book’s efforts to combat false news reports. One important way data from Facebook could help is with prioritizing which stories to fact-check. Currently, Facebook only tells the fact-checking groups which stories in their queue are most popular on the platform. “There’s 1,200, 1,500 stories that we could look at today, and we’re going to look at two,” a fact-checker said. A single fact-check can take five hours to complete, he said. That means that choosing the right stories to examine is crucial.

https://mail.google.com/mail//u/0#inbox/15e7576dd3dec5b http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/07/facebook-fake-news-social-media-

242407?lo=ap_c1

Confederate statues: When you hear about flags and statues being taken down, take note of the date they were

put up. Almost all of them went up in one of two periods: The Lee statue at the heart of the protests in Charlottesville, VA, went up in 1924; the Confederate Soldier statue toppled by a crowd in Durham, NC, went up in 1925 not so coinci-dentally, the two peak years of the KKK. These and most other such statues are not really about the Civil War at all; they are about white supremacy and opposition to civil rights. That Confederate battle flag that was taken down from the South Carolina statehouse two years ago? It went up that flagpole in 1962.

~ http://tnwordsmith.blogspot.com/2017/08/confederate-mouments-and-history.html

“Intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” Alexand Solzhentsyn in National Review.com

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Speaker for our November 16th meeting: Robert Safdie has been actively involved in local politics in Cumberland County since 1999. He has been elected to the County Commission two times and elected to the Cumberland County Board of Education three times. He is currently serving his third term on the Cum-berland County Board of Education. He is one of two Board of Education members in the history of Cum-berland County to have earned the National School Board Association's Community Service Award and the Tennessee School Board's Master Boardsmanship Level 5 Award. Mr. Safdie will be presenting a report on Tennessee's State-wide progress on the Drive to 55 Pathways to Post Secondary Education initiative and discuss Cumberland County's progress in achieving State of Tennessee educational milestones. Informa-tion on actions citizens can take to influence their representatives will also be presented.

Democracy with Dignity

Organizing Team for Indivisible Crossville Deborah Holbrook, editor, president Jerry Ziegele, communications Don Dowdey, vice president June Zettlemeyer, co-secretary Mary deWolf, co-secretary Judy Barnett, treasurer Karen Carter, Marvin Albright, Anne Quillen , Laura Haynes, Kay Kratunis, members at large Contact through indivisiblecrossville@gmail.com

Robert Safdie

Here are a few items from Brooks’ Humility Code: Life is a journey that begins with an understanding that

we are flawed. We know less than we think. How-ever, we are both weak and strong, so we have the capacity to struggle, to be conscience driven, and self-sacrificing.

Humility is the greatest virtue, defined as an accurate as-sessment of one’s own weakness. Inner confrontation against one’s own weaknesses is a series of small acts of self-control, sharing service, friendship, and posi-tive enjoyment.

People of character are not infinitely flexible but have permanent attachments to convictions and tasks that cannot be completed in a lifetime.

One cannot fight these battles alone, but needs the sup-port of family, friends, rules, traditions, institutions, exemplars, and often God.

We are not capable of understanding the complex web of what drives events or even our own emotions. We should be skeptical of universal rules, but realize that our ancestors distilled much wisdom that is relevant and useful.

A vocation is not found by looking within and discovering your passion. It is found by looking without and ask-ing what life is asking of us. What problem is ad-dressed by an activity you intrinsically enjoy?

As long as the foundations of an institution are sound, the good leader prefers change that is constant, gradual, and incremental to change that is radical and sudden. [S]he understands that public life is a contest be-tween partial truths and legitimate contesting inter-ests. (261-270) David Brooks The Road to Character 2015

Mark Your Calendars October 29: Ralph Hutchison from OREPA in Oak Ridge, 3:00, Adshead Hall, Uplands Village, Pleasant Hill, pre-sented by ACAT (Association of Christians Against Tor-ture) in association with our Nuclear Passion Group November 6: Cumberland County Drug Coalition, first Monday of month, 4:00, Crossville City Hall November 16: Indivisible Crossville, 6:00 p.m., Good Samaritan’s, speaker: Robbie Safdie, Board of Education November 17: First day to pick up petitions at Board of Elections for May 1, 2018 primary for following county positions: Mayor, Trustee, Sheriff, Circuit Court Clerk, Clerk, Register of Deeds, Road Superintendent. December 1: Friday at the Crossroads, downtown Crossville promotion, 4-8 p.m. December 2: Democratic Party candidates forum, de-tails to follow