Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

OK–Let’s Talk About Virtue Signaling

A few days ago, a commenter dismissed the recent Women’s Strike as “useless virtue signaling.” That contemptuous comment prompted me to consider both the attitude prompting someone to post that condescending taunt as well as the definition and effect of virtue signaling.

I’m at a loss about the attitude, but I have some very definite opinions about what does–and does not–constitute behavior intended to convey one’s “virtue.”

I first encountered the phrase “virtue signaling” several years ago, when I purchased my first Prius, and a colleague–who, I hasten to say, approved of the purchase and who worries about climate change– told me that Toyota depended upon virtue signaling as a marketing tool. Making people feel virtuous for reducing their use of fossil fuel helped them sell their cars. It’s all about the bottom line, baby!

I understood his point; after all, people have been purchasing cars to “send a message” for generations. Until recently, that message had little to do with virtue or the environment–it was more along the lines of keeping up with the Joneses (or letting them know you could afford that Cadillac…)

Wikipedia’s entry on the term distinguishes between virtue signaling that is what we sometimes call “humble bragging” and the other motivations for– and effects of– communicative behaviors. The entry also included the following, very interesting, observation:

Linguist David Shariatmadari argued in The Guardian that the very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signaling in itself. The Conversation‘s Karen Stollznow said that the term is often used as “a sneering insult by those on the right against progressives to dismiss their statements.” Zoe Williams, also writing for The Guardian, suggested the phrase was the “sequel insult to champagne socialist“.

The Wikipedia article also suggested that the term is most commonly applied to online expression rather than in-person behaviors and activities.

The dismissal of the Women’s Strike (and presumably the Women’s March that occurred after Trump’s election) as useless “virtue signaling” struck me as not only patronizing but entirely wrong. It utterly misses the point of civic demonstrations, which are an important–and effective– element of social movements and social change.

The first and most immediate effect of a successful demonstration–a strike, a march, or other public display–is communication. Participation in a protest or other public display does two things: first, it tells other people that their concerns are broadly shared, that they are not alone; and second, it sends a message to those who are in a position to correct the problem that generated the event.

When a segment of the population is upset about something–racism, homophobia, misogyny, failure to fix potholes, whatever–concerted public actions that serve to tell individuals that they aren’t alone, aren’t the only people with that particular concern–are extremely important. (If you hold a demonstration and no one comes, that’s an important message too.) Brooding alone about problem X leads to feelings of powerlessness; joining with others who share your concern or anger strengthens your resolve to do something about it.

It also facilitates contact with others who agree with you, making other action more likely.

In states unlike Indiana, where the existence of referenda or the absence of gerrymandering means that legislators actually have to respond to constituent concerns, demonstrations and other public actions alert those in office to matters requiring their remedial action.

It’s true that few of these public protests get prompt positive results.

But even when strikes or marches or other displays of public concern fail to produce immediate results, over time, those expressions of opinion can and do change the culture. Little by little, they produce social change. Where would the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement or the women’s movement be today without the years of “virtue signaling” that John Lewis aptly called “good trouble”?

In any effort to effect social change, there will be good-faith arguments among proponents about the tactics to be employed. Will X be effective or counter-productive? Is this the right time to try Y? What if we plan a march and no one comes? Those are important discussions.

But they have absolutely nothing to do with “virtue signaling.”

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Women’s Strike Tomorrow

Somewhere in our various educations, most of us have come across Aristophane’s play Lysistrata. In the midst of a war between Athens and Sparta; an Athenian woman named Lysistrata calls women from throughout Greece together, to present her plan for ending the hostilities. The women agree to dress provocatively and act seductively towards their husbands and boyfriends, but then withhold sex until the men swear to end the war. It evidently worked.

Lysistrata appears to be the very first Women’s Strike.

Tomorrow, June 24th, Hoosier women are planning to join with other American women in a more modern-day version. As the strike website describes the effort: 

Women4Change and women in Indiana are going on strike, June 24th, 2024 with thousands of our sisters across the United States.

Why are we going on strike?

In acknowledgement of the 2nd anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we are removing ourselves for 1 day en masse.

What is a strike?

No spending. No work. No school.

(Evidently, the “no sex” aspect pioneered by Lysistrata is up to the individual woman…)

Hoosiers for Democracy has elaborated on the motivation for this one-day expression of resistance.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court reversed a fifty-year constitutional right to reproductive health and safe access to abortion. The country has ample evidence that Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas are under the influence of White Christian Nationalists and ‘dark money’ contributions. We have a tape recording of Justice Samuel Alito saying that he will fight to return this country to a state of Godliness; so we can assume that the upside flag that flew outside his house on the day of the attack on the Capital and the white nationalist pine tree flag that has been seen waving at his summer home were not by mistake. Justice Clarence Thomas has received a little over 4 million dollars in gifts from Republican mega donor Harlan Crow. We also know that the three justices appointed by Donald Trump lied when they stood before their Senate Confirmation Hearing and testified that they believed Roe V. Wade was ‘settled law’. The Supreme Court has only begun reversing personal freedoms. The right to contraception, the right to gay marriage, protection of voting rights and an attack on the LGBTQ+ community are in the ‘wings’ of what is coming next.

It was actually much simpler for women back in olden-times Greece–women didn’t hold jobs or attend school. (I’m not sure whether they even had the right to spend money in that patriarchal society.) Withholding sex was pretty much the only “strike” available. Today’s women, having gone from being property to something approaching partnership (hence the title of the book I wrote with Morton Marcus and that I continue to promote here), undoubtedly find themselves in a more complicated situation when it comes to withdrawing from their obligations, even for one day.

But as Hoosiers for Democracy remind us, Indiana women face a particularly ferocious attack.

  • The Republican candidate for Governor, Mike Braun, supports Indiana’s six-week abortion ban and is an ardent Trump supporter. He ‘goes along’ with whatever Trump says. His running mate for Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist, and was the person spearheading the Hamilton County Library Board’s decision to remove John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars, from the Young Adult section of the Fishers library. Beckwith says that the January 6th attack on the Capital was ‘divinely inspired’.
  • The Women’s Strike is an important action for Hoosier women and their allies. The 2022 Dobbs decision to deny women their constitutional right to an abortion is a decision that several of our state candidates support. Mike Braun, the Republican candidate for Governor, Micah Beckwith, the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Jim Banks, the Republican candidate for Senate, and Victoria Spartz, the Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District will work to further those restrictions. We must let them know that we will not go back. We can make a statement on June 24, 2024 and again on November 5, 2024.

At the very least, we women can withhold our dollars tomorrow. Absent some important obligation at the office that cannot be rescheduled, or an exam that a teacher will not allow a student to take at a different time, a one-day absence from the office or classroom shouldn’t work a hardship–but should send a message.

And while we’re sending that message, we need to demonstrate support for Jennifer McCormick’s campaign for Governor and Valerie McCrae’s Campaign for Senate. Send them money–no amount is too small to function as evidence that you support sanity and sense over theocracy and misogyny.

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Parties Versus Cults

A recent essay in the Washington Post considered the inside baseball aspects of party platforms.

“Back in the day,” when politics was far more focused on policy, I participated in local efforts to craft platforms that reflected thoughtful policy positions; as the linked article notes, those days–and their “thoughtful discussions”– are long-gone. As the essay also noted, while candidates sometimes tried to distance themselves from unpopular planks, platforms mattered. They revealed which factions really held power, and testified to the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

That was then. Policy doesn’t matter when politics is all about a cult waging culture war.

Four years ago, having scaled back their convention because of covid-19, the Republicans who nominated Donald Trump to a second term didn’t bother to adopt a platform at all. Instead, the party decided to stick with its 2016 document and “continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”

The last actual GOP platform contains all sorts of commitments that the the current crazies have abandoned.

That eight-year-old platform is a fossil of primordial, pre-MAGA conservatism — of a day when abortion rights seemed secure enough that posturing against them carried little political cost; when Republicans could agree that Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” needed to be defended against “a resurgent Russia.”

Written before our rogue Supreme Court overturned Roe, the platform pandered to single-issue anti-choice voters with a plank supporting a human life amendment to the Constitution that would make the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth. That’s going to be a bit awkward in a country where something like 70% of voters are pro-choice– and angry about the first-ever retraction of a constitutional right.

So maybe it is time for today’s Republicans to acknowledge the truth. They are no longer a party with any firm principles at all. Enduring and consistent values? Not for them.

Come to think of it, this whole exercise of writing a 2024 platform for the Republican Party could be pretty simple. Why bother with putting together another 60-page document when the truth about today’s GOP can be summed up in a single sentence?

“RESOLVED, That the Republican Party stands for whatever the hell Donald Trump says it does.”

Robert Hubbell recently reminded us just “what the hell” Trump has said lately.

Trump has promised to deny funds to any school that requires mandatory vaccines. Childhood vaccines against 16 diseases have saved hundreds of thousands of lives over the last century. Defunding schools that require vaccines will cause outbreaks of diseases that have been effectively eliminated. See HuffPo, Trump Makes Bizarre Threat About Schools And Vaccine Mandates.

Trump says that business leaders who do not support him should be fired. NBC News, Trump says business executives should be ‘fired for incompetence’ if they don’t support him.

Trump trashed Fox News for having the temerity to interview a guest—former Speaker Paul Ryan—who was critical of the former president. Trump said, “Nobody can ever trust Fox News, and I am one of them.” MSN, Trump Loses It At Fox News, Says No One Can Trust It.

Trump said that President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plans are “stunts” that will be “rebuked” if Trump is elected. See The Independent, Trump calls Biden’s student loan forgiveness a ‘vile’ publicity stunt.

Trump recently told the Danbury Institute that, if elected, “These are going to be your years because you’re going to make a comeback like just about no other group . . . And I’ll be with you side by side.” The Danbury Institute promotes fetal personhood, opposing abortion from “the moment of conception” (a position that would effectively ban IVF). See Missouri Independent, Trump says he’ll work ‘side by side’ with group that wants abortion ‘eradicated.

Granted, Trump says whatever he thinks a given audience wants to hear–his lack of any comprehensive policy commitment (or understanding of what policy is or how government operates) is one reason his initial term did less damage than it might otherwise have done. Should he win in November, he’ll have the far greater competence of Project 2025 authors to draw on.

David Sedaris said it best. Anyone who thinks there is any equivalence between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is like the airline passenger in his often-cited example:

The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

To vote for Donald Trump–or the Indiana GOP’s Christian Taliban–is to reject the chicken.

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The “Clean Hands” Posturers

As political campaigns proceed toward November, I become more and more terrified. It isn’t simply at the Presidential level–although the prospect of giving a stark raving lunatic access to the nuclear codes does, among other things, keep me up at night. Even a superficial acquaintance with the antics of the MAGA know-nothings in Congress and their peers in Red state legislatures is incredibly depressing.

November will tell the tale. Will sensible Americans reject the party of out-and-proud theocrats and culture warriors running for state and federal offices? Here in Indiana, the GOP–in thrall to the lunatic– is running candidates for state office who would have been unthinkable even to the right wing of the party just a few years ago.

It’s not just Beckwith.

Lots of sensible Hoosiers will never learn of the outrageous positions held by Braun, Banks and Rokita, thanks to our current information environment. And some segment–small, but arguably important–will adopt what Tom Nichols has accurately dubbed the “Clean Hands” posture. These are the “holier than thou” voters who recognize that Trump is completely unfit for office and will not vote for him—yet will not vote to stop him.

Bill Barr comes to mind, as does Nikki Haley. Barr is a true believer, and Haley is a shallow opportunist, but both are pillars of courage next to Republicans such as Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and John Bolton, the supposed guardians of the guardrails who have made the case against Trump but have also vowed not to vote for either Trump or Joe Biden. (Bolton has said that he will write in Dick Cheney.) Even former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a more moderate Republican now running for a Senate seat, has said that he will write in a “symbolic vote that states my dissatisfaction with where the party is.”

It isn’t simply these political insiders who are posturing about the “morality” of their votes. As Nichols notes,

I am aware of all the arguments people make in favor of protest votes, and about how no one should have to mark the box for a candidate they don’t like. In a normal political year, I might even buy some of them. If you genuinely think that Trump and Biden are exact political isomers of each other—symmetrical in their badness and differing only in style—then not voting for either of them makes sense at least in theory, because you are in effect saying that you don’t think anything will really change either way.

But anyone with even half a brain knows that–between Biden and Trump–there is zero equivalence.

Biden is a typical (and relatively moderate center-left) American president, and the Jimmy Clean Hands Republicans know that outside MAGA world, they would sound pusillanimous if they started mumbling about egg prices and diversity training programs while Trump is threatening to attack the Constitution, release insurrectionists from prison, and use the government to get revenge on his personal enemies.

In the end, the Clean Hands position encourages people to think that their vote really does not matter, other than as a solipsistic expression of personal dissatisfaction. It indulges the narcissistic fantasy that on Election Day, a town crier will say, “1 million votes for Biden, 1 million and one votes for Trump, and one admirable vote for Ronald Reagan. We all want to thank you for your deeply principled stand. And it’s not your fault that Trump won the state.”

As Nichols reminds us, the reality is that only one of these men will emerge with the codes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. And he ends with a statement that every one of us ought to take seriously:

Personally, I vote as if my vote is the deciding ballot. I know it isn’t, of course, but it focuses my mind and makes me take the civic duty of voting seriously. People have given their lives for my right to stand in that booth, and when American democracy is facing a clear and existential threat, their sacrifice deserves something more than the selfish calculations of the Jimmy Clean Hands caucus.

No sane voter thinks that Jill Stein or JFK, Jr. is going to win the Presidency. A vote for one of the “spoiler” candidates is a mark of moral cowardice–a refusal to acknowledge that no candidate, of either party, is faultless–or even close– and that our duty as citizens is not to clutch our pearls and posture, but to choose between the alternatives genuinely on offer.

And anyone who thinks Joe Biden and Donald Trump are remotely close to equivalent ought to see a psychiatrist.

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How Red is Indiana?

Wow…Just wow.

At the party’s convention on Saturday, Hoosier Republicans rebuffed their gubernatorial candidate’s choice of a lieutenant governor candidate in favor of an out-and-out, well-known Christian Nationalist–despite the fact that Braun, the gubernatorial candidate, had prevailed upon Trump to endorse his less-known-to-be looney choice.

The victory of Micah Beckwith exposed both the current rifts in the party and the degree to which the party faithful have succumbed to extremist culture war and Rightwing grievance.

The GOP’s choice led to yet another “schism”–this time, in my family. While all of us find Pastor Beckwith horrifying, we’re split on whether his selection really reflects the beliefs and bigotries of Indiana citizens. My youngest son thinks this extreme culture warrior is “in sync” with Hoosier voters; I believe his addition to an already terrifyingly extreme GOP ticket will hurt Republicans in November. (My son says he desperately wants to lose our bet on this issue, but he long ago lost faith in Indiana’s electorate.)

What do we know of Pastor Beckwith’s ideology?

We can begin with his statement that his choice by the delegates was “divinely inspired.” Presumably, he is confident that he is God’s choice…Indeed, Beckwith has been a constant voice for his rather unique views of “godliness.” He relishes the fight against “wokeness” and “woke indoctrination”–by which he means genuine education, efforts at inclusion or support for a social safety net–not to mention hysterical opposition to reproductive choice, women’s rights and–of course– church-state separation.

He also opposes freedom to read. Beckwith’s previous public service was as a member of the Hamilton East library board, where his efforts to censor hundreds of books generated a huge blowback from local citizens and triggered an eventual return to previous library policies.

I’m unsure how any of these extreme culture war preoccupations equip him for a position tasked with increasing tourism (!) and supporting agriculture…

Beckwith may be the most extreme example of the state GOP’s lurch to a very unAmerican far right, but he really does fit well with the rest of a state ticket on which Braun is arguably the least scary, which is really saying something. (He at least gives occasional nods toward sanity.) I have posted numerous times about Jim Banks--aka “Focus on the Family’s Man in Washington”–whose culture war positions include support for a national ban on abortion with zero exceptions, unremitting attacks on education, support for permitless carry (because that’s so “pro-life”…) and vicious assaults on trans children, among others.

I’ve posted even more frequently about Todd Rokita, the current occupant of the Attorney General’s office. Rokita has taken every possible opportunity to pander to the far Right of the Republican Party, most (in)famously in his vendetta against the doctor who performed an abortion on a ten-year-old rape victim, charging her with improprieties he knew to be false. He has subordinated his duties as AG to participation in national litigation brought by Rightwing AGs from other Red states, been chastised by the state’s Supreme Court (members of which were selected by Republican governors), and routinely acted in ways to embarrass not just Indiana, but the entire legal profession.

This slate of candidates makes outgoing conservative Republican Governor Holcomb look leftwing by comparison.

So–here we are. As I have previously noted, in November, Indiana voters will choose between a statewide slate of three talented and accomplished women whose credentials are appropriate for the jobs they seek, and whose positions on the issues are mainstream and sensible, and a collection of out-and-proud MAGA misogynists and theocrats. This won’t be an election in which differences are minor. Unlike so many elections in Indiana, it also won’t be an election affected by gerrymandering–even Hoosier Republicans can’t gerrymander a statewide race.

If you agree that most Indiana citizens reject the Neanderthal positions of these misogynist theocrats, you should send McCormick, McCrae and the eventual Democratic AG candidate a few dollars each–giving them the wherewithal to inform Indiana’s voters that Braun, Beckwith, Banks and Rokita are nothing like Indiana’s traditional Republicans.

As my students might have put it– these are scary dudes, and Indiana’s voting public needs to understand just how scary they are.

These four men all reject America’s constitutional values, and I  refuse to believe they reflect the values of Hoosier voters. Despite my son’s contrary views, I am convinced that these “Christian warriors” will only win if the Democrats lack the resources to expose them for what they are: the Christian Taliban.

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