Forgiveness

Pardon this interruption to regularly scheduled programming. Based on yesterday’s events, I felt some soul searching was in order. The topics I cover below deserve more time than we have right now. Whether you agree or disagree with what I say, I hope you at least consider it.

The events of the last twenty-four hours are shocking in how seemingly not shocking they are. Did you call your best friend? Did you call your parents? Did you call your siblings? Or, did you go straight to social media? Growing up in the 80s I heard many stories about the day Kennedy was shot from my parents and grandparents. It was a moment of grief that marked them for life, no matter their political beliefs, for what it illustrated - disenchantment, our fallibility as a country. The Reagan assassination attempt would be the next time our country saw a commander-in-chief under literal fire. Even though my parents were fairly liberal and not fans of Reagan, the gravity of the situation was respected in my home. I cannot recall the attempt on George W. Bush’s life in 2005 when a grenade was thrown at him in Tbilisi, Georgia. Perhaps because it was on foreign soil?

Four U.S. presidents and one candidate have been assassinated since the founding of the United States, but there have been many more assassination attempts and foiled plots on candidates and sitting presidents in our history.

The above graphic leaves out foiled attempts or plots against Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Truman, Taft and Jackson.

I think many of us hoped that January 6th would be the culmination of the vitriol in this 4th turning - that we had all learned a valuable lesson, that we would start to heal as a nation…we even got a beautiful poem out of it. Unfortunately, though our political will was lacking and somehow we have ended up here on a Sunday morning in July. This is not about one man - no matter where your allegiance lies. The two men who are currently presumed to be the candidate for their respective party are the manifestations of our political will. We can argue that our vote doesn’t count, we can say that elections are rigged, we can say there is no other choice, but the truth is we have lost faith and our ability to forgive. I’m not just talking about our faith in God, or faith in our institutions, or faith in our family and friends….we have lost faith that our existence matters. How else can we explain the rage that races across social media platforms when an event such as this occurs? Last night “How Could You Miss” was trending on xTwitter. Surely a society which amplifies such hate has lost its soul?

What if - though - that message was from a bot, that then was boosted by one of the many troll farms across the world and amplified by a faceless algorithm?

What if that missive was yet another campaign to divide us by a foreign actor, or several? Quickly following the attack, Elon Musk came out in support of former President Trump.

Do you think Musk, or anyone in the media, or Big Tech, will take any responsibility for these events? The algorithms, the sensationalism, the editorializing of the news has seemingly broken us. What if though we look at it another way - that these manifestations of the worst of us are actually starting to wake us up to how far afield we have wandered from our shared humanity, our collective purpose?

Much has been written about the decline in attendance at church services.

I believe we may start to see this trend reverse. Whether you believe in God or another divine being, or none at all, faith is about believing you should be, believing that our existence matters, believing that we can do great things, believing that we can be better, believing that we have purpose. Have we lost that belief, has it been stolen? Rather than focus there, how can we believe again that we matter, that there is more to life than all that you can take from it?

We cannot get lost in how far we have to go. I honestly believe that we may not have as far to go as we think. The first step is listening to those who disagree with us. And we must not only listen to what they say, but what they are trying to say, what they are feeling. Underneath all that rage is fear and uncertainty. The increase in deaths of despair since 2000 illustrates this starkly:

Mortality from deaths of despair far surpasses anything seen in America since the dawn of the 20th century. (The trend for middle-aged whites reveals a more dramatic rise but only goes back continuously to 1959.) The recent increase has primarily been driven by an unprecedented epidemic of drug overdoses, but even excluding those deaths, the combined mortality rate from suicides and alcohol-related deaths is higher than at any point in more than 100 years. Suicides have not been so common since 1938, and one has to go back to the 1910s to find mortality from alcohol-related deaths as high as today’s. At the same time, a long-term perspective reveals that while drug-related deaths have been rising since the late 1950s, the current increase in suicide and alcohol related deaths began only around 2000, as the opioid crisis ramped up. Suicide and alcohol-related mortality trends track each other well over the past 45 years, and after accounting for the changing age distribution of the US, combined deaths from the two causes were as common in the mid-1970s as today.

Although world hunger has decreased and quality-of-life has supposedly improved, we are seemingly unhappier now than we’ve been in the last 100 years. I believe this is even more true for our men.

As you know, this column focuses primarily on housing and the economy. It is personally my belief that much of what ails us has roots in hyper-financialization and the proliferation of profits - transferred to the few - over productivity. I remember sitting in a graduate seminar in 2000 at the University of Minnesota where I found myself studying more about the International Monetary Fund (IMF), its failed policies in post-colonial nations and the way that was evidenced in the literature of those nations, than literature itself. By studying the failures fueled by supposed “cheap” loans in these nations I had a different lens to look at what was happening in our country. Back then I remember thinking we were marching to revolution between the haves and have-nots. September 11th arrested for a moment that march, but in 2011 Occupy Wall Street haphazardly brought those themes to the forefront as young Americans railed against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance and the influence of money in politics. You heard the vestiges of that movement in Biden’s press conference when he referenced corporate greed, but the words fell flat as we have seen politicians on both sides of the aisle profit enormously from that corporate greed. No matter how many debt-fueled programs we have conjured, the wealth gap has only increased.

As of the latest census update (v2023), there are 334,914,895 people in the United States and 125,736,353 households. 13.2 million families, according to the St. Louis Fed, hold 74% of the wealth. Are you among them? If so, you are doing better than roughly 89% of American households.

No longer do companies invest in their people or even products. Instead, they focus on buybacks to enrich shareholders and executives, starving operations and squeezing every ounce out of their employees. Where we should be making leaps and bounds in improving human health, we instead focus only on the drugs that sell for hefty profits, sometimes creating addictions so that we can sell more drugs...and those drugs are becoming more expensive.

Wages needed to obtain the American dream we grew up wanting are as illusory as our COVID fever dreams. The large, blue piece of the pie above looks like a reverse Pac-Man who is eating the rest of us. Various policies such as down payment assistance for mortgage, rent vouchers, affordable health care, increased SNAP benefits, student loan forgiveness, etc. have worked to change this dynamic, but instead of making things more equitable or attainable, the situation has only gotten worse. In the meantime, we have lost agency and mercy.

As humans we often understand ourselves in relation to others. The herd mentality is one of survival as in hunter-gatherer times being left behind surely meant death. We must remember such things when we discuss FOMO, or the fear-of-missing-out, that has driven much of the mania we have seen unfold over the last several years. I would argue that it is not the greed of many that is driving this bubble, but of few. It is just that the rest of us are terrified of being left behind to wither and die. In this vein, we must stop blaming one another. Pointing at the failings of Boomers and Millennials is social media sport, but we are all just people. Former President Trump is just a person. President Biden is just a person. We are just people - deeply flawed and afraid.

I’m not afraid you say, I’m angry. It’s the same thing. What is anger? Brene’ Brown writes that “anger is an emotion that we feel when something gets in the way of a desired outcome or when we believe there’s a violation of the way things should be.” Why do we desire certain outcomes over others, why do we get upset when we think someone has violated the rules of how things should be? Because we are afraid we will be shunned, afraid that we will lose our security, our place in society. Othering others, is a non-productive way to define our identity, borne out of fear. Brown also says that anger is a messenger that exists to tell us that something is amiss.

Something is seriously amiss, and anger is just the signal. It’s time we heed that signal and become productive about it. The first step - forgiveness. And, no, not just forgiveness of others, but forgiveness for ourselves. We must start there. I’m the victim, you may say. Is that how you really feel? Or is that black hole of rage more about feelings of shame that you weren’t able to achieve the things that you want, or that you perhaps lost the things you had? Social media encourages us to present fake versions of ourselves…versions that we start to believe are real but haunt us when we fail each day to live up to that standard - smiling, happy (intact) family; successful professional; healthy-eater; award-winning scholar; avid exerciser; homeowner….and the list goes on and on. The 20-year-old young man who attempted to assassinate our former president is shown here in a BlackRock commercial, seemingly an eager and attentive student.

We get lost in these versions of ourselves because we fail to see humanity’s purpose. Humans are incredibly inventive. We will find our way out of this crisis if we focus on coming together instead of tearing things apart. For those who believe that we are spiraling toward the abyss for one reason or other, we have always felt that way. As Simon Sinek teaches us in The Infinite Game, we cannot win at life - we all die. And, sure there are some very rich folks out there that think they can game that as well, but to what end, what purpose? Anyone who has been very successful knows that when you get to the top of your latest achievement there are only more hills to climb, or more things to attain. Those things matter little when you face death. It is not us versus the world…rather our focus should be us in the world because that is the gift of life, no matter how short or long it might be.

In the inaugural episode of my series called The Forgotten American, now on YouTube and Spotify, I interview Marley Price, a young American who said, if not me, then who. When an illegal short-term rental, owned by Mom-and-Pop investors from out-of-state, set up shop on her street, she productively, legally and non-violently took matters into her own hands. To date she is responsible for bringing 23 homes to market which will hopefully be bought by families seeking permanent residence in her town.

Snitches get stitches is a saying I have heard in one form or another my whole life. But, Marley, better than I, can describe why what she is doing is important and is not a case of snitching on your neighbor for a small, meaningless infraction. The people she has reported are not just a nuisance, but they are actively flouting the law to the detriment of her community.

There was much I planned to write about today, but we cannot let this moment pass us by. And, simply, we must do better. Gone are the days where we hope and pray our politicians do better. We have to make a stand in the ways that we can, are able to, based on our particular circumstances. For many of us we simply have no time to do anything other than work to provide for our families. If that is indeed the case for you, you can still choose to make a difference by seeking out and listening to your (annoying) co-workers, bringing a smile to your over-worked grocery clerk and importantly, by interrogating the ball of anger that sits inside of you to try and understand what you are really feeling. We must self-identify as humans first. I promise you are not alone. There will be many opportunities for smallness over the next four months…only we can make the decision to eschew those opportunities for acts big and small that will bring us closer together. Trite as it may be, the future of our children (biological or otherwise), depend on it.

Redfin data should be out in the next few days, and my plan is to do another post this week for a cursory review of June’s results. Those results will be very telling for the path we will take over the next few months. I do believe that yesterday’s events might put a dent in any unchecked optimism for what’s ahead. Additionally, I will discuss the recent rule changes announced by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) as well as a discussion of the new loss mitigation plan released for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Today, however, I’m going to spend the rest of my time reflecting and bringing folks together with a meal.

Until next time….