Joseph Heller, Fear and Immigration

Today I read an excerpt from Something Happened by Joseph Heller.  It is the beginning of the second chapter, entitled "the office in which I work", and I read it in the summer edition of Lapham's Quarterly.  I also spent some time today reading the recently released transcripts of President Trump's phone calls during his first weeks of office to the Presidents of Mexico and Australia.

The first paragraph of the reprinted portion of Something Happened is as follows:

"In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid.  Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of 120 people who are feared by at least one person.  Each of these 120 people is afraid of the other 119, and all of these 145 people area afraid of the twelve men at the top who helped found and build the company and now own and direct it."

At some point in my career as a mid level manager, I internalized the notion that management by fear was an outdated concept.  While certainly, a respect for the chain of command was necessary for the orderly functioning of any organization, the management style that emphasized blind obedience over constructive disagreements, the promotion of yes men (women) over those who questioned inefficient procedures, and the overall belief that keeping one's staff in a perpetual state of fearing for the loss of their job or promotion opportunities, inexorably led to the best people leaving for more challenging opportunities, condemning the organization to mediocrity, at best, eventual failure at worst.

Of course, Heller wrote Something Happened in the 1970's, yet it seems that management by fear and intimidation is still alive and well, perhaps not surprisingly within the biggest corporations and most extensive bureaucracies.  What is unfortunate is that, as Heller continues to describe the various bosses at his present and past employers, it becomes clear that once fear is the modus operandi of an organization, it permeates all levels, from the top to the bottom, even going so far as to create the insidious feeling within many of the workers that "someone nearby is soon going to find out something about me that will mean the end, although I can't imagine what that something is."  In essence, an outlook of fear and dread is created which infects other aspects of the employee's life, even outside of work.

I recently saw this kind of dread in a number of people in my circle of acquaintances.  For one, a lurking fear that his employer, after 25+ years of service, is setting the table for dismissal, just when the fruits of his longevity are about to pay off.  For another, that a reassignment is the result of an opinion viewed, not as professional disagreement, but as questioning the decisions of those in charge, and for a third, the harrowing perspective that the skill set of a mature worker is not applicable in today's employment market, so its best to tolerate poor working conditions and sub par instructions for fear of loss of income and health care insurance.  

I had often stated that I hoped that those employers who took advantage of the recession of 2008-2010 by cutting benefits, salary or both with the admonition that workers "should just be grateful they have a job", would be the first to lose good people when the economy recovered.  Now, 8 years into the recovery, there is still little progress on raising minimum wages, addressing overall income inequality, and creating a foundation for the middle class to recapture the loss of buying power that has resulted from the love affair with trickle down economics.  All the while, and sadly, despite having a two term Democratic President, the incomes and wealth of the top 5% has improved at a staggering pace.

Which brings us to President Trump.

While I hope that these first 6 months can be chalked up to the learning curve of a CEO who must absorb the difference between running a business and running a government, I am not encouraged by his use of fear in his dealings with the media, his critics, those in the GOP establishment, various judges, our allies, our healthcare conundrum, and, it appears, even those he has chosen to be in his cabinet.

Clearly, his travel bans, a policy based on the fear of immigrants and refugees and which played well with those Americans with a similar fear, as well as his recent reversal of allowing transgender people to serve in the military, establish a pattern of blaming various minority populations for all our troubles which enhances the fears of those who find it easy to dehumanize a group based on their differences.

When I read the aforementioned transcripts, especially the one detailing his conversation with Australia's Prime Minister, I found a man unwilling to listen to the specifics of the deal created to provide new homes for some middle eastern refugees.  He had promised his supporters to ban those "bad" people, and was unable or unwilling to separate economic refugees from terrorists.  He had successfully used blind fear to gain votes, and was not about to attempt to separate blind fear from a reality based fear for those who were so easy to sway.

Additionally, in both conversations, President Trump emphasized, at times even exaggerated, his popularity, in part to hammer home his points that he couldn't go back on his campaign promises about the wall and about immigration, but also, it seemed, to remind the foreign presidents that they should also fear the ramifications of statements and actions not in line with Trump's perspective.  Not that I would expect our president to do anything rash against either of these countries, rash being defined as a military response, but it reveals an attitude that says "Your lack of cooperation and agreement will ultimately result in a detrimental consequence".  Whether that level of consequence is trade related or force related seems dependent on the country and its misstep.

Curiously, President Trump does not seem to exhibit that same attitude when it comes to Russia. Even in signing the bipartisan sanctions bill against Russia he found it necessary to express his displeasure with the bill, a displeasure that may reflect both his opinion of the sanctions and the fact that he felt compelled to sign them.

Is immigration, illegal and otherwise, the biggest threat to America?  Is ISIS and other forms of terrorism?  Is it North Korea and their over the top nationalism that is fueled by a dictator who is loved by all his citizens and takes pains to prove it everyday?

Or is it the threats to our democracy? Threats that have existed since the Cold War began and are very really positioned at the end of thousands of ICBM's pointed to Europe and America, threats that were exercised in both overt invasions of minor countries and subversive cyber invasions which created and enhanced misinformation meant to sow doubts in our allegiances to other democracies.  Threats that attack our democracy from within by legitimizing the power of money to sway elections, and that leave the vast majority without recourse when the minority creates laws that reinforce the circle of influence, power, and control.

We all feel fear, personally and collectively.  We don't always gauge it properly, whether it is an unhealthy fear of closed spaces, or a xenophobic fear of those who look differently.  But we should expect, especially from our leaders, an assessment of fear that is based on facts not phobias.