What J.D. Vance Believes

June 17, 2024 | 1,982 words | Politics, Philosophy

You may recognize this as the title of a recent interview Ross Douthat published on June 13 in The New York Times, conducted with the first-term Senator from Ohio and best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy. Then again, you may not.

I always try to read whatever Mr. Douthat writes, even if some of his in-depth analyses is occasionally above my pay grade. And I was taken with Hillbilly Elegy when it came out in 2016 but have not paid attention to Mr. Vance’s journey since then, other than to wonder from afar about his dramatic change of heart, going from calling Donald Trump “America’s Hitler” to his recent championing of that boisterous and unhinged politician.

Douthat and Vance are roughly the same age and have known each other since before Mr. Vance made that big splash in 2016. In fact, I just saw the two described as “old friends.” I think that level of comfort and familiarity shows in the exchange that has been recorded and published.

You can find the interview at www.rossdouthat.com. Just to whet your appetite I will quote from the introduction:

“The Vance of eight years ago was read with appreciation and gratitude by Trump opponents looking for a window into populism. The Vance of today is despised and feared by many of the same kind of people. His transformation is one of the most striking political stories of the Trump era, and one that’s likely to influence Republican politics even after Trump is gone.”

Reading this longish piece left me with a favorable impression of J.D. Vance. Not because I agree with everything he had to say on a wide range of subjects, because I do not. But he strikes me as a young man of integrity who has the common good as his motivating principle. In other words, after reading this interview Mr. Vance appears to be more than just another blowhard politician shooting his mouth off trying to rile up the base in a blind grab for power.

But judging by the reaction this interview generated, not everyone agrees with me. The very next day (June 14) Jonathan Chait writing for New York magazine started his comments off with this:

Few political phenomena are more overdetermined than J.D. Vance’s endorsement of Donald Trump’s coup attempt. Vance has carried off a cynical but highly successful mid-career switch from venture capitalist to professional pseudo-populist that requires catering to the beliefs of his constituency; he has fallen in with far-right authoritarian intellectuals who long for the destruction of the republic; and he is angling for a spot on Trump’s ticket.”

But was Vance “endorsing” the coup attempt in the interview? Douthat describes Mr. Vance’s remarks on this subject as a “combative (and to my mind, fundamentally unsupported and unpersuasive) defense of Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election.”

Andrew Sullivan on his The Weekly Dish blog focuses on this same aspect of the interview – the Jan 6 coup attempt – saying:

“Excusing political violence, supporting a deranged fantasist, and delegitimizing free and fair elections is the price he (Vance) is prepared to pay for power.”

I agree with Ross Douthat that J.D. Vance is not persuasive in his defense of Donald Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election. But unlike Jonathan Chait and Andrew Sullivan, I do not think Vance is being cynical or calculated about it.

It is worth noting the “2020 election and Jan 6” was the fourth of four interview topics that Mr. Douthat queried Mr. Vance on. There was a whole lot of back-and-forth before the two got to that particular fork in the road.

Indeed, even Andrew Sillivan begins his June 14 response to the interview by acknowledging:

“In Ross Douthat’s engrossing sit-down with his old friend and now Senator J.D. Vance, there is, to begin with, a nuanced discussion of how Trump has upended American politics toward the populist right, which Vance supports for a variety of decent (and, to my mind, largely persuasive) reasons.”

Allow me to quote from this beginning part of the longish interview…

One: After ‘Hillbilly Elegy’

Douthat: So I thought it would be interesting for you to imagine yourself talking to a big “Hillbilly Elegy” fan from 2016, and talk him through how your perspective has changed.

Vance: Let me give you one story: In 2018, I was invited to an event hosted by the Business Roundtable, an organization of C.E.O.s. I was seated next to the C.E.O. of one of the largest hotel chains in the world at dinner. He was almost a caricature of a business executive, complaining about how he was forced to pay his workers higher wages.

He said: “The labor market is super tight. What Trump has done at the border has completely forced me to change the way I interact with my employees.” And then he pivoted to me: “Well, you understand this as well as anybody. These people just need to get off their asses, come to work and do their job. And now, because we can’t hire immigrants, or as many immigrants, we’ve got to hire these people at higher wages.”

The fact that this guy saw me as sympathetic to his problem, and not the problem of the workers, made me realize that I’m on a train that has its own momentum and I have to get off this train, or I’m going to wake up in 10 years and really hate everything that I’ve become. And so I decided to get off that train, and I felt like the only way that I could do that was, in some ways, alienating and offending people who liked my book.

Douthat: Did your perspective on, let’s say, elite liberals change more in that time, or did your perspective on anti-Trump, business-class Republicans change more?

Vance: Oh, both. I think it’s very hard to say which group of people I felt more strongly about. I literally grew up in a family where my grandmother was negotiating with the Meals on Wheels person to give her more food so that both of us could have something to eat. And I was (then finding myself) going to the Sun Valley billionaires boot camp. My life had completely transformed.

The people on the left, I would say, whose politics I am open to – it’s the Bernie Bros. But generally, center-left liberals who are doing very well, and center-right conservatives who are doing very well, have an incredible blind spot about how much their success is built on a system that is not serving people who they should be serving.

Douthat: So you reach a point where you feel like you don’t want to be on the same side as, let’s says, the non-Sanders voting fans of you book. How do you go from there to being actively pro-Trump?

Vance: I was confronted with the reality that part of the reason the anti-Trump conservatives hated Trump was that he represented a threat to a way of doing things in this country that has been very good for them.

Douthat: Is there anything you’ve said that you regret, in the course (of the last 8 years)?

Vance: There are a ton of things I can point to where I can say, “I wish I struck this balance (between offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration, while also being sensitive and socially aware) a little bit differently.”

Two: Can Economic Populism Work?

Douthat: Do you think, generally, that there is a comprehensive populist economic agenda?

Vance: Well, I have one. The main thrust of the post-war American order of globalization has involved relying more on more on cheaper labor. The trade issue and the immigration issue are two sides of the same coin: The trade issue is cheaper labor overseas; the immigration issue is cheaper labor at home, which applies upward pressure on a whole host of services, from hospital services to housing and so forth.

The populist vision, at least as it exists in my head, is an inversion of that: applying as much upward pressure on wages and as much downward pressure on the services that people use as possible. We’ve had far too little innovation over the last 40 years, and far too much labor substitution. This is why I think the economics profession is fundamentally wrong about both immigration and about tariffs. Yes, tariffs can apply upward pricing pressure on various things though I think it’s massively overstated – but when you are forced to do more with your domestic labor force, you have all of these positive dynamic effects.

It’s a classic formulation: You raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, and you will sometimes hear libertarians say this a is a bad thing. “Well, isn’t McDonald’s just going to replace some of the workers with kiosks?” That’s a good thing, because then the workers who are still there are going to make higher wages; the kiosks will perform useful function; and that’s the kind of rising tide that actually lifts all boats. What is not good is you replace the McDonald’s worker from Middletown, Ohio, who makes $17 and hour with an immigrant who makes $15 an hour. And that is, I think, the main thrust of elite liberalism, whether people acknowledge it or not.

*

There is much more to this exchange between Douthat and Vance, and I encourage you to find it and read it in its entirety. Having done so myself, I cannot understand how Jonathan Chait of New York magazine can possibly justify describing J.D. Vance as a “pseudo-populist” who “has carried off a cynical but highly successful career switch from being a venture capitalist” who now merely “caters to the beliefs of his constituency.” Or how Andrew Sullivan of The Weekly Dish can suggest young Mr. Vance has abandoned logic in exchange for political power.

Why must we always demonize a political opponent? Even a politician with whom we disagree most of the time is capable of a reasonable position now and then. But it’s as if once we’ve condemned someone, we must maintain our resolve and continue to do so in every instance. Another behavioral tick is how a political opponent can’t just be ‘wrong’ on a given issue, they also have to be a bad person.

Why does our version of political theater insist we always turn people we disagree with into a nasty, sarcastic punch line?

Mr. Vance comments on the nature of character assassination in politics in the first of half of the Douthat interview, when he says: “The thing I kept thinking about liberalism in 2019 and 2020 is that these guys have all read Carl Schmitt – there’s no law, there’s just power. And the goal here is to get back in power.”

The rabid attacks that each side inflicts upon the other unfortunately seem to be focused on just that – vanquishing the enemy and retaining or getting back into power. Instead of trying to parse out the best policy proscription, or on achieving a compromise most can live with.

I find J.D. Vance to be a fascinating figure, for the very reason Andrew Sullivan mentions at the end of his piece. Vance is in the process of “juggling the legitimate insights of Trumpism with the lying, livid lunacy of Trump himself…” I will be watching to see how Vance navigates all this, moving forward.

Conclusion: The people who loath the idea of a second Trump Presidency just scroll past what J.D. Vance has to say about economic populism, eviscerating him because of his support for Trump’s candidacy. But Mr. Vance’s views on economics can form the basis of valid policy positions, with or without Trump. And even after Trump is gone. It doesn’t really matter who gets that flag to the top of the hill.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

Recent Posts

The Authorship Question

by Robert Cavanaugh | Jun 10, 2024 | Literature, Politics

A Philadelphia-area native offers a layman's perspective.

Home About Contact

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

The Authorship Question

June 10, 2024 | 1,556 words | Literature, Politics

The controversy over who really wrote the plays and poetry attributed to Shakespeare persists, even if it is not at the top of the morning news feed, or never comes up in your house.

Just last month the famed actress Judi Dench was doing some publicity for her new memoir, Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, when she was asked if she has any interest in the Shakespeare authorship ‘debate.’ She replied with a simple; “No. William Shakespeare from Strafford is good enough for me and I’ll settle for that.”

And who would want to argue with Dame Judie Dench? After all, what difference does it make!

In the movie The Gambler, Mark Wahlberg plays a literature professor who leads a secret double life as a high stakes you-know-what. In one of the early scenes establishing his brilliant but mercurial nature, Professor Wahlberg demolishes a contrarian student’s passionate argument for Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, as the true author of Shakespeare’s work. Wahlberg ends his rebuttal with a flourish, saying something like “why would a genius capable of creating a masterpiece like Hamlet not put his name on it?”

That very question occurs to me now, as I am reading Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. This slim volume was published in 2018 after Donald Trump’s improbable first presidential win, and is Mr. Greenblatt’s attempt to place a most unsettling election result in some sort of historical context. I just found it on a discount table, and I guess I am reading it to help brace myself for the distinct possibility of a second Trump triumph in the upcoming Fall election.

As to why a literary genius with a political bent in 1590s England might want to remain anonymous, we need look no further than page 2 of Tyrant, where Mr. Greenblatt informs us:

“There was no freedom of expression in Shakespeare’s England, on the stage or anywhere else. The 1597 performance of an allegedly seditious play called “The Isle of Dogs” led to the arrest and imprisonment of the playwright Ben Jonson and to a government order – fortunately not enforced – to demolish all the playhouses in London.

“Informants (regularly) attended the theater, eager to claim a reward for denouncing to the authorities anything that could be construed as subversive. Attempts to reflect critically on contemporary events or on leading figures were particularly risky.”

Then on page 21 we are told:

“By statues dating back to 1352, it was treasonable ‘to compass or imagine’ the death of a king or queen or of the principal public officials.’”

At the end of page 23 Stephen Greenblatt lets us know:

“In the wake of the coup attempt (of 1601, which is described earlier), the special staging of Richard II (not Richard III) became a focus of one of the government’s investigations. One of Shakespeare’s associates was compelled to testify before the Privy Council and explain what the Lord Chamberlain’s Servants thought they were doing (by staging this play, at this time). His answer – merely making a bit of extra money – was accepted.

“Sir Gelly Meyrick (one of instigators of the coup attempt, who requested that Richard II be performed in hopes of generating public support for his cause) was not so fortunate. Convicted on charges of arranging the special performance, along with other actions in support of rebellion, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

To be clear, Mr. Greenblatt is sharing this context to explain why he thinks Shakespeare steered clear of current events, and set his ‘historical’ plays a century or more earlier. But I find these references to be equally valid for explaining why an author might want to hide behind an alias.

Stephen Greenblatt is a world-renowned Shakespeare scholar, and nothing in his impressive oeuvre seems intended to fuel the authorship debate in any way. Judging solely by the titles that have sprung from his pen, specifically Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare, one would assume Mr. Greenblatt is firmly in the Judi Dench camp on the subject.

And that is fine with me, since I am not going out of my way to upset anybody’s applecart.

*

But I do confess to being a tad curious about who wrote what, and why a literary genius might want to remain largely anonymous. And that curiosity is always reignited whenever the ‘authorship question’ pops up in public discourse.

My curiosity began in 1997 with the publication of Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time. Written by the syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran (1946-2010), an author whose work I had been reading for about a decade by that point, and who I credit as being one of the writers who helped me develop an adult mentality.

Once I started on this low-key literary adventure, I soon tuned into how this line of inquiry marks one “as an eccentric and a crank” in the eyes of what might be called the ‘Shakespeare industry.’ But then I have always considered myself open-minded, with a healthy disregard for conventional wisdom. So, Mr. Sobran’s “riveting solution to the Shakespeare puzzle” hooked me from the start.

The book jacket for Alias Shakespeare does a good job of summarizing the fine detective work to be found inside:

“An enormous shelf of biographical scholarship has grown up over the past 300 years around the ‘Swan of Avon.’ But what are these histories based on? Revealing that no more than a handful of fragmentary documents attest to Shakespeare’s existence – and none which link him to the plays themselves – Sobran delightfully debunks this elaborate egalitarian myth concocted in equal parts speculation, wishfulness and fantasy.”

“… Sobran shows how many questions the myth leaves unanswered: How could a provincial actor from Stratford gain such an intimate knowledge of court life? How could he know so much of classical authors and not own a single book? How could he write compromising love sonnets to his social superior, the powerful Lord of Southampton? How could he know so much of Italy, a place he never visited? Why was there no notice of the famous writer’s death in 1616? Why, in short, does Shakespeare remain such an obscure and shadowy figure?”

“Methodically demolishing the case for ‘Mr. Shakspere,’ Sobran shows it is highly implausible he wrote the poems and plays we know as The Works of William Shakespeare. Other candidates exist, of course, including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon. Sobran dispenses with these claimants, then sets forth the startingly persuasive case for Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.”

“Oxford was a widely traveled, classically educated member of the Elizabethan court. A swashbuckling spendthrift, his swung high and low in the eyes of his peers. Having spent most his fortune on adventures in Italy and elsewhere on the continent – like Hamlet, he was captured by pirates in the English Channel – he fell into disrepute for reasons that included rumors about his homosexuality.”

“Still he topped many lists of the best Elizabethan poets at the time, even ranking above Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney. He was an avid book collector, and a love of the literary arts ran in his family. His uncle not only pioneered the sonnet form that came to be known as Shakespearean, he also translated the English edition of Ovid that indisputably guided Shakespeare’s pen.”

“More strikingly, Oxford was the ward of Lord Burghley – the man widely acknowledged as the model for the character Polonius in Hamlet. Ultimately, Sobran shows us why a disgraced nobleman such as Oxford would have sought solace in the anonymity of writing pseudonymous plays and poetry.”

*

The conclusion Joseph Sobran reaches in his “genial and entertaining” 1997 book does not lessen my keen interest in what Stephen Greenblatt has to say in Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. I remain on the edge of my seat as I continue to read Mr. Greenblatt’s book, drinking in snapshots of a superlative poet and playwright such as these:

“From the early 1590s, at the beginning of his career, all the way to its end, Shakespeare grappled again and again with a deeply unsettling question: how is it possible for a whole country to fall into the hands of a tyrant.”

“In depicting the aspiring tyrant’s strategy, Shakespeare carefully noted among the landed classes of his time the strong current of contempt for the masses and for democracy as a viable political possibility. Populism may look like an embrace of the have-nots, but in reality it is a form of cynical exploitation. The unscrupulous leader has no actual interest in bettering the lot of the poor.

“Surrounded from birth with great wealth, his tastes run to extravagant luxuries, and he finds nothing remotely appealing in the lives of the underclasses. In fact, he despises them, hates the smell of their breath, fears that they carry diseases, and regards them as fickle, stupid, worthless, and expendable. But he sees that they can be made to further his ambitions.”

I simply cannot get enough of Stephen Greenblatt’s insights into the Bard’s body of work. Even if every time he uses the word “Shakespeare” I find myself picturing Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, as the one sitting at the writing desk with a quill in his hand.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

Recent Posts

Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant

by Robert Cavanaugh | Jun 6, 2024 | Philosophy, Politics

A Philadelphia-area native offers a layman's perspective.

Home About Contact

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant

June 6, 2024 | 1,091 words | Politics, Philosophy

Since no amount of scandal seems able to deter Donald Trump from recapturing the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in the upcoming Fall election, now might be a good time to look back and review one of the more unique analyses of his improbable first win in 2016.

World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt was moved to publish Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics in 2018, as his way of processing a most unsettling election result.

By exploring the famous playwright’s portrayals of bad (and often mad) rulers, Mr. Greenblatt shows us just how contemporary the Bard’s insights can be.

I happened across this little book a few weeks ago and am only halfway through the slim volume. So far, every page is a highlight, there is no filler. Two of the plays Mr. Greenblatt uses in this first part of his book to draw inferences to our present-day political machinations are the not-often produced Henry VI, and the much better-known and frequently revived Richard III.

You need not be a Shakespeare aficionado, or even particularly familiar with either of these two plays, to find this book utterly fascinating. All you need is an interest in learning a slightly different perspective on how we got to where we are, politically speaking. And a wry sense of how there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human nature.

As a side note, while I have always been fond of Shakespeare’s sonnets, I have also always found the plays, especially the historical dramas, a bit dense and hard to follow.

If you are in that camp with me, there is no need to worry. Stephen Greenblatt unpacks things nicely for the novice. The short excerpts he quotes from each play help the general reader in two ways. First, they highlight the inherent poetry in the writing, and make that poetry easier to discern in bite-size chunks. And second, these excerpts drive home the comparisons being made between Shakespeare’s take on the royal court of 15th century England and our own time.

And of course, Mr. Greenblatt’s extensive commentary does a fine job of underscoring those comparisons as well. As I say, every page is a highlight reel, but allow me to quote from the opening of his Chapter 5, entitled “Enablers”…

“Richard III’s villainy is readily apparent to almost everyone. There is no deep secret about his cynicism, cruelty, and treacherousness, no glimpse of anything redeemable in him, and no reason to believe that he could ever govern the country effectively. The question the play explores, then, is how such a person actually attained the English throne. The achievement, Shakespeare suggests, depended on a fatal conjunction of diverse but equally self-destructive responses from those around him. Together these responses amount to a whole country’s collective failure…

“There are those who cannot keep in focus that Richard is as bad as he seems to be. They know that he is a pathological liar and they see perfectly well that he has done this or that ghastly thing, but they have a strange penchant for forgetting, as if it were hard work to remember just how awful he is. They are drawn irresistibly to normalize what is not normal…

“Another group is composed of those who do not quite forget that Richard is a miserable piece of work but who nonetheless trust that everything will continue in a normal way.

“They persuade themselves that there will always be enough adults in the room, as it were, to ensure that promises will be kept, alliances honored, and core institution respected. Richard is so obviously and grotesquely unqualified for the supreme position of power that they dismiss him from their minds.

“Their focus is always on someone else, until it is too late. They fail to realize quickly enough that what seemed impossible is actually happening. They have relied on a structure that proves unexpectedly fragile.”

*

As the book’s jacket cover notes, Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant displays Shakespeare’s “uncanny relevance to the political world in which we now find ourselves.” There are eerie temperamental and stylistic similarities between Richard III and Donald Trump, even though author Greenblatt never comes right out and mentions the latter by name.

That said, there are some important differences between these two big-time connivers we should also keep in mind.

Richard was an ambitious young man who left a trail of dead bodies in the wake of his callous maneuvering, reigned over England only two years, and suffered an inglorious death on the battlefield at the tender age of 32. Mr. Trump, of course, is a much older man who did not formally enter the political arena until his late sixties, is now going for a second four-year term in the White House, and as far as we know has not yet been responsible for any of his political adversaries meeting an untimely end.

Though there are those who will tell you the form of free-market capitalism Donald Trump has practiced all his life is a lethal form of violence.

*

We the American electorate have certainly been given unappealing choices in previous presidential elections, but this year’s Biden-Trump rematch feels like one of the least appealing in recent memory. At one point I was hopeful the upstart group ‘No Labels’ would assemble a viable ticket and gain enough ballot access across the country to make voting ‘third party’ a realistic option this time around. Since that promise fizzled, we are left with the standard crop of marginal third party longshots who have zero chance of being elected.

In the opinion of many, including me, Mr. Biden should not be seeking re-election and should have instead focused his energy on identifying a worthy successor who would have allowed him to bow out graciously after a largely successful first term.

Then again, that a consummate political animal like Biden would not walk away from the world’s most prestigious job, the one he has spent his entire career in public life chasing, is maybe something we should have expected.

Given the alternative, this voter will have no choice in November but to punch Joe’s ticket for a second term. Even if at this stage of the game he obviously needs help getting up and down stairs, and is prone to slurring his words.

In the meantime, as we slog our way through the next five months of desultory campaign coverage, I will cheer myself by reading on. I am looking forward to more of Stephen Greenblatt’s entertaining and enlightening insights into Shakespeare’s many other tyrants.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

Recent Posts

Protesting the War in Gaza

by Robert Cavanaugh | Apr 26, 2024 | Politics

A Philadelphia-area native offers a layman's perspective.

Home About Contact

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

Protesting the War in Gaza

April 26, 2024 | 129 words | Politics

This week the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests, which at times have included some unforgivable excesses directed at Jewish students, spread from a few high-profile universities on the East Cost to many different college campuses across the United States.

These events have been examined and analyzed by a variety of responsible media outlets, especially in the last couple of days, and I have nothing much to add.

Except to repeat the observations already cited by others: Concern for the plight of innocent Palestinian citizens is not the same as support for the militant Hamas group. And criticizing the Biden administration’s ongoing funding of foreign aid to Israel, given the indiscriminate way the Netanyahu government there has chosen to prosecute its’ war against Hamas, should not automatically brand one as an anti-Semite.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.

Recent Posts

Digital Discrimination

by Robert Cavanaugh | Nov 15, 2023 | Economics, Politics

A Philadelphia-area native offers a layman's perspective.

Home About Contact

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

Digital Discrimination

November 15, 2023 | 542 words | Politics, Economics

In a recent editorial the Wall Street Journal takes issue with a new rule the Federal Communication Commission is considering to prevent what is referred to as “digital discrimination.” This proposed action is a by-product of the 2021 infrastructure bill that included a directive for the FCC to monitor disparities in broadband access “based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.”

The esteemed WSJ sees such a statute as a simple case of “identity politics” run amok. Especially since by its own admission the FCC has found “little or no evidence” indicating “intentional discrimination by industry participants.” But to my way of thinking that is hardly the point, as the agency now seeks to hold broadband providers liable for any actions or “omissions” – intended or not – that result in a disparate impact.

As we all know, high-speed internet access has become a pre-requisite to full participation in the life of the nation, just as access to basic electrical service was in a previous generation. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 addressed a glaring omission at the time: Americans who lived in outlying areas had limited access to electricity because private utility companies claimed it was not economically feasible to run power lines out to them. Back then those providers worried about recouping the upfront costs of installing the elaborate infrastructure needed to get things up and running.

Sound familiar? It is amusing (and more than a little annoying) to read the WSJ register the following objection to the FCC’s new rule: “Wireless carriers might also be prohibited from building out 5G networks in suburbs and city downtowns before inner cities and rural areas.” Yes, that is correct, Mr. Editorial Writer. The federal government is trying to prevent inner cities and rural areas from being left behind when it comes to something as vital as broadband access.

The short, punchy piece then gives readers a concise example of what I like to think of as WSJ-style unintended humor, by way of a primer on how the free market operates to elegantly solve all of society’s problems:

“Companies don’t have unlimited capital so they typically prioritize network upgrades in areas where they can earn a higher return on the investment, which they then use to finance improvements in lower-income and rural areas.”

Ah, if only the latter part of that statement were true, what a wonderful world this would be! The FCC would have no reason to draft a new policy rectifying disparate impacts, since the citizenry would already be enjoying “digital equity” from sea to shining sea.

But of course that is not the world we live in. Our world requires a regulatory body like the FCC to provide oversight of a burgeoning industry, so the vagaries of the for-profit marketplace do not inadvertently leave certain underrepresented and disadvantaged populations out of the digital mix.

Which, if you think about it, should not really bother the folks over at the WSJ. Since this proposed rule will merely codify what their editorial board believes is the established and oh-so socially-conscious standard operational procedure of the nation’s kindhearted broadband providers.

Even if some of the statutory language being employed by the FCC strikes the WSJ as identity politics run amok.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.

www.robertjcavanaughjr.com

bobcavjr@gmail.com

Use the contact form below to email me.