Random Blogging – Page 104

Trust

In 2009, I published a book with Prometheus Press. It was titled “Distrust, American Style: Diversity and the Crisis of Public Confidence,” and in it, I explored–and disagreed with–the then popular political science theory that America’s growing levels of social distrust and corresponding loss of social capital were a reaction to the country’s growing diversity, and the increasing numbers of neighbors who didn’t look like “us.”

My contrary conclusion could be summed up by an old adage: fish rot from the head.

By 2009, the failures of our social institutions had become more and more obvious–we had just had the Enron and Worldcom scandals, the Catholic Church was dealing with publicity about priestly child molestation, there were scandals in major league sports…and much more. Furthermore, as I wrote in the book, thanks to the Internet and the 24-hour “news holes” on cable television, it was the rare American who wasn’t bombarded daily with news of corporate malfeasance, the sexual escapades of “pro family” legislators and pastors, and the identity of the latest sports figure to fail a drug test.

At the same time, the Bush Administration was engaging in what then seemed an unprecedented assault on competent governance (who knew it could get worse?), exemplified by, but not limited to, the war in Iraq and the administration’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina.

In the face of so much evidence that Americans couldn’t trust our country’s most important institutions to operate honestly and effectively, is it any wonder that people were becoming wary, skeptical and distrustful?

To say that things haven’t improved since 2009 would be an enormous understatement.

This lack of trust matters. It has allowed Trump’s accusations about “fake news” to resonate, it has encouraged acceptance of conspiracy theories and dismissal of warnings about the pandemic. The incredible growth of internet propaganda and social media since 2009 has only added to the cacophony of sources, voices, points of view–and levels of distrust. Too many Americans no longer know who or what to believe. (For many of those Americans, the Supreme Court’s predictable dismissal of Texas’ ridiculous lawsuit yesterday probably came as a surprise.)

I recently read an article comparing contemporary features of what the author called our “post-truth society” to Dante’s Inferno. The article pointed out that, to Dante, anyone who corrupted or discredited the institutions that support society was doing something gravely wicked, and would surely be consigned to the lowest circle of hell, the 9th. (The 9th, as I recall, is for treachery, and it is where Satan lives…)

Granted, the image of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump dealing with Satan in that lowest circle gives me a “warm and fuzzy,” but I really don’t think Americans should defer remediation based upon belief in a just afterlife. We need to work on repairing the here and now.

When citizens cannot rely on the integrity of government officials, when they no longer expect those officials to enforce the rules against corporate and business malfeasance, when they see McConnell’s Senate confirming judges chosen in the belief they will be willing to corrupt the impartiality of the bench and tilt the scales of justice in the GOP’s favor–who should they trust?

Americans’ ability to trust each other depends upon the ability of our governing and social institutions to keep faith with the American values set out in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Those values include equal treatment and fair play, and especially fidelity to the rule of law–the insistence that no one is above the law and that the same rules should apply to everyone who is in the same circumstances (or as we lawyer types like to say, everyone who is “similarly situated.”)

Allowing the rich and connected to “buy” more favorable rules is a massive violation of those values, yet that is what millions of Americans see happening every day.

When governments and important social institutions all seem corrupt, trust evaporates, taking social and political stability with it. If the Biden Administration restores visible competence and integrity to government, it will be the beginning of a long and urgently needed process of Institutional repair.

And hopefully, a restoration of trust.

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The Next War

The extreme polarization America is experiencing is, as many have noted, more than just political. People–not just in the United States, but globally–seem to be choosing identities–tribes– that include but go well beyond partisan affiliations.

It’s difficult to imagine how a “war” could be fought between these contending ideological forces, which overall tend to be rural versus urban in nature. Would Red rural inhabitants attack Blue cities, or vice-versa? How would that work?

Rather than armies, will we see increasing acts of terrorism from gangs of Neo-Nazis, Incels, or self-identified “Patriot Militias”?

This admittedly strange mental exercise was triggered by a letter to Talking Points Memo. The writer worried that– between relief that Biden had won, and what he characterized as Trump’s “essential absurdity”– we are insufficiently prepared for what he fears will come next.

Specifically, I keep thinking back to Trump’s attempt to turn Lafayette Square into a mini version of Tiananmen, complete with importing troops from a far-off province (the Bureau of Prisons) to lay waste to the locals. It wasn’t that Trump hesitated, or Barr, or any of them — it was that the military leadership, ultimately and publicly, refused to play along. (The same leadership that Trump is now gutting with a month and a half to go in his presidency.)

Following Trump’s defeat we are seeing what I have rapidly come to think of as secession-in-place, which also applies to the greater Republican Party over the past fifteen years. The Tea Party wasn’t so much a domestic political movement as a psychic break in response to having a Black man in the White House, and since that moment the post-policy Republican Party has never retreated from that view. (In that context, Trump is the leader they were waiting for, not some charismatic fiend who led patriotic Republicans astray.)

What we’re watching is a percolating cold war which Trump keeps trying to ignite. The Republican base has checked out, Trump is leading them and shows no sign of faltering, and the Republican Party is almost entirely complicit and stands in silent support. And I see no way that this gets better no matter what Biden does over the next four years.

The most troubling part of these observations, at least to me, was the fact that they seem obviously and objectively correct. What part of this analysis can we dismiss as fanciful? Overblown?

An essay from The Week, titled “The Hidden World War,” only added to those concerns.

The author began by discussing earlier hopes for globalization–the once widely-held assumption that technological advances in communication and transportation would lead to more open societies and improved cultural understanding globally. As he recognized, that didn’t happen–at least, not in the way it was envisioned.

The recent shocks to both the international system and liberal expectations for the future haven’t turned back globalization entirely. They have revealed, instead, that the technological advances that were once considered a gateway to a more homogeneous world actually encourage and foster the creation of new, potent forms of cross-national solidarity and political conflict.

In other words, in much the same way that social media has allowed geographically-distanced like-minded people to forge alliances in the U.S., it has facilitated international right-wing alliances that cross national borders. Technology has made it possible–really, simple–for populists living in the mostly rural areas where such sentiments are strongest to link up with far-flung likeminded compatriots. The author argues that the internet has galvanized anti-establishment movements around the world.

The American-focused far-right QAnon conspiracy theory has spread to countries around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, and Finland. Even more widespread have been kindred protests against COVID-19 restrictions, and especially mask mandates, in dozens of nations. Trump has even found expressions of support for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election on the streets of Tokyo.

The same cross-national affinities have occurred on the left. The bottom line?

Thanks to the flood of information and images flowing ceaselessly into the incredibly powerful compact computers we carry around with us everywhere we go, political and cultural identities, affinities, and animosities are now constantly being forged and activated on a global basis. Humanity is uniting and dividing in new ways that transcend national borders.

Again, I find it difficult to argue with the analysis–and more difficult still to picture how this conflict will be waged, or how it will end.

And I have absolutely no idea what people of good will can do about it.

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White Supremacists, Islamic Terrorists, Trumpers

I know that sane Americans are all holding our breath until January 20th, when most of us are anticipating being able to breathe a sigh of relief. We foresee a return to normal concerns– policy debates based at least partially on logic and evidence, an actual national response to the COVID pandemic, and an end to waking up each day to news of the President’s latest lunacy and/or his administration’s latest, ever-more-blatant corruption.

Apparently, however, we won’t be clear of existential threats when Trump and his mobsters depart.

The Washington Post recently carried a column on the results of a study done by Jigsaw, the research arm of Google.The research looked into violent white-supremacist groups, and found that they had formed a connected global movement even before Trump’s presidency gave them oxygen here in the U.S., and that movement will almost certainly continue long after he leaves office.

These white-supremacist groups have used the Internet to recruit and train followers, much as Islamist extremists did a decade ago, argues a major new study by Jigsaw, a research arm of Google. The study, described here for the first time, is being published Tuesday by Jigsaw’s digital journal, the Current.

The study shatters the image that many analysts have of white supremacist attackers as “lone wolf” extremists. Jared Cohen, the chief executive of Jigsaw, argues that “this myth obscures the vast underlying infrastructure of white supremacist online communities around the world.”

These groups “move fluidly between mainstream and fringe platforms,” Cohen warns. They recruit followers on Facebook or YouTube, among other venues, and then direct them to protected “alt-tech” sites where they can privately share propaganda and boast about operations.

The report describes a movement that is much larger, much more violent and much better organized than most of us have realized. Information from the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database suggest the existence of a global network that has been steadily growing since 2010.

A chilling factoid: that network has expanded “in tandem with Islamist extremism, its twin in using online media to spread hate.”

Consider these comparisons: In 2009, white supremacists were responsible for six deaths in 19 incidents, while Islamist extremists were responsible for 14 deaths in 12 incidents. Those numbers kept climbing steadily through the decade. By 2019, white supremacists were linked to 165 deaths in 336 incidents, while Islamist extremists were tied to 193 deaths in 82 incidents.

In three “hot spots” for white supremacists — Germany, Britain and the United States — the number of incidents seemed to spike because of special factors: in Germany, the influx of Syrian migrants in 2015; in Britain, the angry debate over Brexit in 2016; in the United States, Trump’s presidency in 2017.

When we look at the evidence all around us–it is hard not to conclude that we live at a time when huge numbers of people are simply crazy. Not just wrong about this or that, not just uninformed or unpleasant (although most also fall into those categories), but off the charts deranged.

It isn’t just the “soldiers” of these horrifying, radicalized terrorist threats.

It’s also the huge numbers of Republicans who believe that Donald Trump was mentally and emotionally fit to occupy the Oval Office. It’s the millions who insist that an election that delivered victories to their party’s down-ballot candidates, was supervised in many states by their own party, and was lost by over seven million votes, was somehow “stolen.” It’s the huge numbers who believe in “QAnon” and its conspiratorial allegations that Democrats are trafficking and killing children and drinking their blood. It’s the inconceivable numbers who continue to dismiss the pandemic as a “hoax” while their friends and relatives die.

I know rational folks are supposed to “reach out” to those on “the other side”–but how do you reach out to people who are on the other side of sanity?

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Unprecedented Lunacy

Wow. Just wow. Someone has opened the asylum door….

It’s hard to overstate the lunacy of Trump’s “legal” team defenders. Rudy has been making himself a pathetic figure for several years now, but he isn’t the only bizarre figure who once somehow managed to graduate from law school and pass the bar exam.

Politico reports on Sydney Powell, recently expelled from those designated as official Trump lawyers for being too wacko even for a group that often seems certifiable.

Sidney Powell released the Kraken. And it turns out the mythological sea beast can’t spell, is terrible at geography and keeps mislabeling plaintiffs in court.

A congressional candidate Powell claimed to represent in one lawsuit said that, in fact, he had nothing to do with Powell or her quixotic effort, which she dubbed “the Kraken,” arguing the election was stolen from President Donald Trump. An expert witness cited in another suit named a nonexistent county in Michigan. A Wisconsin lawsuit sought data on alleged irregularities at a voting center in Detroit, which is in Michigan. And a filing in federal district court signed by Powell misspelled “district” twice in the first few lines.

According to Politico, Powell has, “at least twice,” sued on behalf of a plaintiff who had not agreed to be a part of the case.

Judges reportedly have been flummoxed/bemused by the multiple errors committed by Powell, who has continued crusading to overturn the election results even after she was booted from Trump’s legal team.

Powell and another Trump-supporting lawyer, Lin Wood, are causing chaos in Georgia, in advance of the Senate runoffs there. They have been soliciting donations and urging Republicans not to vote for the GOP candidates in those runoffs, because they say those candidates have been insufficiently supportive of Trump.

Powell and Wood allege a vast conspiracy in which states’ electronic voting systems have been manipulated by a company with ties to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. What has set them apart from Trump’s official legal team, which has offered similarly unsupported claims of fraud, is their willingness to accuse sitting Republican officials of committing crimes to aid Biden’s election.

Pro-Trump crazy hasn’t been limited to lawyers. The Republicans with whom I used to work would be equally appalled by today’s GOP officeholders. Florida Governor DeSantis is a good example of just how detached from competence and reality these people are.

In addition to urging Trump to “fight on,” DeSantis has continued to be one of the President’s staunchest supporters. He has publicly urged Republican-controlled Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Michigan to overturn results in those states. He also has accused Chief Justice John Roberts of undefined “crazy stuff.” (Perhaps, in addition to being a Trump ally, he has taken vocabulary lessons from The Donald.)

DeSantis’ lack of competence has been most damaging, of course, in his refusal to follow medical advice with respect to the pandemic. In a recent speech, he criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its “ridiculous” studies on the Covid-19 outbreak, which he said were more about “affirming” the positions of “bureaucrats” than science.

I don’t think this guy can spell science. He has steadily resisted imposing state-level restrictions on gatherings or mandating–or even encouraging– mask-wearing, even as Florida has reported more than 1 million cases.

If DeSantis were the only Republican governor inhabiting an alternate reality, you might chalk up his election to the fact that Florida voters include lots of elderly folks with dementia, but there are several others. Just last week, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has refused to issue a mask mandate, declared a “day of prayer and fasting” for those affected by the pandemic. (I thought God helped those who helped themselves…)

And that, of course, leads me back to my recurring question: who believes these clowns? Who takes them seriously?

Evidently, thousands, perhaps even millions, of people do–they send money to the demented lawyers, vote for the science-and-expertise-rejecting politicians. They post comments to Facebook asserting that an election that was won by over seven million votes was somehow “rigged,” and that failure to acknowledge that “fraud” is to believe “fake news.”

If there’s a psychiatrist reading this blog, can you weigh in and explain the appeal of obvious lunacy? Because I really, truly do not get it.

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An Intriguing Theory

I’m clearly not the only person trying to make sense of Trump’s voters. Who are they? Why do they continue to support him? Why do they seem so susceptible to conspiracy theories and alternate realities?

The political science research has found a strong correlation between racist grievance and support for Trump, but as I have previously written, I am unwilling to conclude that the 70 million Americans who voted for him are all motivated by racism. (Granted, as my youngest son points out, they obviously didn’t consider Trump’s racism disqualifying…)

And where did the extra ten million votes–those over and above his support in 2016– come from?

The founder of the liberal Daily Kos site has an intriguing theory. He began by noting that both times Trump has run, he’s turned out voters that haven’t shown up for any other election–and probably for that reason, didn’t show up in the polls.

Remember, polling was perfectly fine in 2018, and Democrats swept races in 2017, 2018, and 2019. They even won governorships in blood-red Kentucky and Louisiana!

Yet both 2016 and 2020 saw the emergence of a massive wave of white voters that polling totally missed. In fact, despite suffering some defections among suburban Republicans, Trump still managed to get 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016! So I came up with a theory: the Hidden Deplorables.

According to this theory, the “hidden deplorables” are neither Republican nor conservative.

They’re apolitical, otherwise ignoring politics, because their lives legitimately suck. They live in meth country, with dim job prospects (in fact, those two factors are highly correlated). Institutions have failed them—corporations abandoned them for cheaper labor overseas, government feels distant, and it’s certainly not improving their lives. Cities feel like walled gardens—unattainable, unaffordable, yet that’s where all the jobs are, the culture, the action. These deplorables have been left behind. So their attitude? “Fuck them all.”

In other words, these are people who have lost everything and simply want to burn everything to the ground.

Kos concedes that he has no hard evidence for his theory–that it is simply his best explanation of the fact that these Trump voters only show up when Trump is on the ballot, and why pollsters are unable to capture them. He notes research on the 2016 election conducted by David Shor, a Democratic pollster. Shor’s research echoed the findings of surveys by Daily Kos leading up to the 2020 election. Trump support was highest among white voters who had low levels of social trust — a group that researchers have found is also less likely to participate in telephone surveys.

A Daily Kos pre-election survey to measure the strength of Americans’ social networks found that nearly one in five Americans (17 percent) reported having no one they were close with, marking a 9 percentage point increase from 2013.

Think about that.

What’s more, we found that these socially disconnected voters were far more likely to view Trump positively and support his reelection than those with more robust personal networks. Biden was heavily favored by registered voters with larger social networks (53 percent to 37 percent), but it was Trump who had the edge among voters without any close social contacts (45 percent to 39 percent).

And this was especially true among white voters even after accounting for differences in income, education level, and racial attitudes. Sixty percent of white voters without anyone in their immediate social network favored Trump, compared to less than half (46 percent) of white voters with more robust social ties.

If this analysis is correct–and it certainly rings true–it would explain so much: why urban whites are so heavily Democratic (they are surrounded by community). Why suburban whites–especially women– are turning blue as well. (It could also explain why suburban men, who are less likely to engage in social activities, remain more Republican.) Why seniors–the age group most likely to be isolated–remain more heavily Republican. It even explains part of the education gap—college is a community building experience.

Kos is interested in the political consequences of this phenomenon. He posits that It is “Trump the destroyer of norms, traditions, and liberals” that motivates their votes– that they’re attracted to his specific brand of destructive chaos. If he’s right, they don’t and won’t vote unless he’s on the ticket.

If this theory is right, however, it affects far more than political strategy.

Those of us who worry about the future of the nation need to figure out how to bring these people back into the American community. Many of them, as Kos suggests, are irredeemably damaged–the incels, the QAnon followers, militia members and the like are probably lost causes. But if he’s right, there are a lot of hurting, lonely, angry people “out there.”

Ignoring them, their isolation and their pain shouldn’t be an option.

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