Random Blogging – Page 167

Memorial Day Observations: Patriotism, Coercion and the NFL

The purpose of Memorial Day is to remember–memorialize– those who died in active military service to the country.

As we contemporary Americans enjoy our beers and barbecues, perhaps we should take a few minutes to consider what national characteristics and ideals have been considered important enough to merit that ultimate sacrifice. (It’s a holiday; we can postpone consideration of how frequently we’ve fallen short of those ideals to another time…)

Liberty and equality are often said to be the basic American values. The nation’s founders defined liberty as personal autonomy–your freedom as an individual to “do your own thing,” so long as your “thing” wasn’t harming the person or property of someone else, and so long as you were willing to accord an equal liberty to others.

In other words, live and let live–at least up to a point.

Americans have often disagreed about what constitutes harm and about the proper limits of government’s power, but generally within the confines of that libertarian definition. The nation’s courts have increasingly taken a dim view of government efforts to intrude into matters that are properly the purview of personal conscience and individual decision-making.

Since the Bill of Rights only limits what government can do, arguments against improper exercises of private power must rest on consistency with our national values unless they contravene some affirmative law.

Which brings me to the NFL, and its recent decision to require players to exhibit public behaviors that team owners and our ignoramus President deem “patriotic.” The NFL is not government; as private employers, owners cannot violate the First Amendment. They can, however, demean its principles and the very concept of patriotism. And by imposing a rule that government could not constitutionally impose, they have.

A few observations:

The “fans” who have declared themselves so offended–who claim that “taking a knee” is “disrespectful” to the flag and unpatriotic–haven’t complained about the longstanding forms of “disrespect” that routinely occur during the national anthem: food vendors hawking, large numbers of attendees ignoring the ceremony and talking, etc. Nor have they mounted an effort to ban flag bathing suits and bandanas, or protested when some civil war apologist displays the confederate flag. So you’ll excuse me if I conclude that their real objection is to black athletes having the temerity to (quietly and yes, respectfully) protest police brutality toward African-Americans.
Genuine patriotism expresses itself by fidelity to the principles upon which this country was founded. Among the most important of those principles are freedom of speech and conscience, and civic equality. The soldiers we memorialize today didn’t fight and die for a piece of cloth; they were defending the principles that the piece of cloth symbolizes. The player protests are consistent with those principles; the NFL rule is an expression of contempt for them.
The exercise of power doesn’t change hearts and/or minds. If human history teaches us anything, it is that coerced expressions of religious belief or patriotic allegiance are not only inauthentic but counterproductive. Forcing children to recite a prayer in school doesn’t make them religious; forcing grown men to forego public expression of their grievances doesn’t lessen the grievance.

The NFL has caved in to the bullying of a racist President and the noisy anger of his rightwing base. It will be interesting to see the reaction to this rule from people who understand genuine patriotism to require respect for the rights of players to express opinions with which they may or may not agree.

Noise, after all, doesn’t equate to numbers, and I’m willing to bet that the people disgusted by the NFL’s cowardly effort to placate phony “patriots”outnumber those noisemakers by a substantial margin.

If the NFL owners lose more business than they gain, it will serve them right. Their brand of “patriotism” dishonors the flag they purport to be respecting.

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Overthinking Mental Incapacity

Sometimes, a simple explanation is better.

A recent article in Alternet asked an important question: Why are some people so resistant to science and evidence?

Currently, there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among laypeople: climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination. On all three issues, prominent members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research.

This widespread rejection of scientific findings presents a perplexing puzzle to those of us who value an evidence-based approach to knowledge and policy.

Agreed. So far, so good.

The author of the piece, a psychologist, then notes that many people resist complexity and shades of gray; they live in an either-or, black or white universe, and are extremely uncomfortable with “non-dichotomas” thinking. He notes that this characteristic is a factor in depression, anxiety, aggression and, especially, borderline personality disorder.

In this type of cognition, a spectrum of possibilities is divided into two parts, with a blurring of distinctions within those categories. Shades of gray are missed; everything is considered either black or white. Dichotomous thinking is not always or inevitably wrong, but it is a poor tool for understanding complicated realities because these usually involve spectrums of possibilities, not binaries….

In my observations, I see science deniers engage in dichotomous thinking about truth claims. In evaluating the evidence for a hypothesis or theory, they divide the spectrum of possibilities into two unequal parts: perfect certainty and inconclusive controversy. Any bit of data that does not support a theory is misunderstood to mean that the formulation is fundamentally in doubt, regardless of the amount of supportive evidence.

Similarly, deniers perceive the spectrum of scientific agreement as divided into two unequal parts: perfect consensus and no consensus at all. Any departure from 100 percent agreement is categorized as a lack of agreement, which is misinterpreted as indicating fundamental controversy in the field.

The article goes on to explain that people whose minds work this way will latch onto any anomaly or disagreement, any “non-consistent” factoid, as confirmation that the entire theory–evolution, climate change, the efficacy and safety of vaccination–is bogus.

Where I part company with the author is his willingness to see this “conceptual approach” as a sign of a mental mal-adaptation, an indicator of other (generally mild, but troubling)mental illness. Although I’m certainly willing to concede that this may sometimes be the case, a couple of other explanations are more consistent with Occam’s razor– the principle that, when presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, one should select the answer that requires the fewest assumptions.

In other words, simpler is likelier.

Among the elected officials who dismiss climate science, for example, are a significant number whose campaign coffers are regularly replenished by fossil fuel companies. I suspect these lawmakers’ expressed opinions are more convenient than real.

And if I may be permitted a decidedly un-politically-correct observation, a genuine inability to understand the difference between the scientific method and religious dogma–the inability to recognize the difference between empirical evidence and a preferred and comforting world-view– may be a sign of limited intellectual capacity.

In other words, these people aren’t mentally ill. They’re just not very smart.

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Another Perspective On How We Got Here

Yesterday, I noted the ubiquity of efforts to understand what happened to the Republican Party. Equally predictable are the efforts to understand how America could have elected Donald Trump–how a man so manifestly unfit for the Presidency (or really, life in polite company) could have garnered millions of votes. True, he lost the popular vote, but that doesn’t negate the fact that millions of people actually cast ballots for him–and that even in the face of the damage being caused by his impetuousness and ignorance, many of them continue to support him.

Amanda Marcotte, who writes for Salon, is out with a book that attempts to answer that question. Her conclusions in Troll Nation won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog with any regularity, but her approach is worth considering, as Andrew O’Hehir’s review makes clear.

“Troll Nation” is not about the election of Donald Trump. Amanda and I have certain areas of cheerfully-expressed political disagreement, but I think we share the view that Trump was the culmination of a long process, or is the most visible symptom of a widespread infection. Amanda’s analysis is, as always, calm, sharp-witted and clearly focused on available evidence. American conservatives, she says, used to make rational arguments and used to present a positive social vision. Did those arguments make sense, in the end? Did that “Morning in America” vision of the Reagan years conceal a vibrant undercurrent of bigotry?

The answers to those questions — “no” and “yes,” respectively — led us to the current situation, when conservative politics has become almost entirely negative….Most Republicans gleefully embrace incoherent or self-destructive policies designed to punish or horrify people they dislike, whether that means feminists, immigrants, black people, campus “snowflakes,” members of the “liberal elite” or (above all) Hillary Clinton. I am not the world’s biggest fan of Hillary Clinton, as Amanda knows! But what the hell she ever did to all those people to make them despise her so much is entirely unclear..

As O’Hehir notes, the self-proclaimed conservatives of the GOP have morphed from the “supercilious, upper-crust conservatism “of William F. Buckley Jr., whom he accurately describes as the dictionary definition of an elitist, to the delusional ignorance of Alex Jones and the small-minded hatred of Charlottesville.

The basic premise of Marcotte’s book is that Trump is not an anomaly. Much as we might like to believe that we are living in a time that is a departure from the trajectory of American history, Marcotte sees Trump as the logical conclusion of an undercurrent in conservatism that’s been going on for decades — attitudes and resentments encouraged by talk radio, Fox News and their imitators that have “reconstructed” American conservatism. Today, rather than political opinions or policy positions, it’s all about hate and bigotry and who doesn’t belong–who isn’t a “real” American.

Plenty has been written about Fox News, talk radio and other media that ranges from spin to propaganda, and the extent to which those outlets are implicated in the twisted worldviews of their audience, but Marcotte shares an important insight that often gets overlooked:

I want to convey in this book, and I hope in this interview, that conservative audiences respond to this kind of media because they want to. I think we underestimate how much people are going to do what they want to do and believe what they want to believe.

Blaming the propagandists and conspiracy theorists lets their audiences off the hook–it assumes a lack of moral agency. The people who parrot “Fox and Friends” choose their news, and they choose not to balance it with other perspectives. For whatever reason–impelled by whatever inadequacies and resentments–they choose to indulge in confirmation bias rather than resisting it.

It’s co-dependency.

Without their willingness to suspend critical thinking–their desperate need to believe in their own racial and/or religious and/or gender superiority, the Rush Limbaughs and Fox News blonds and purveyors of Pizza conspiracies would be out of business.

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Faith-Based Politics

Among former Republicans of a certain age, “what the hell happened” is a popular topic of conversation. What turned a major political party composed of people with a reasonable range of respectable views into a cult imposing extremist litmus tests? What accounts for the rejection of evidence, disdain for science and rigid refusal to compromise even the most extreme positions?

When did the Grand Old Party go nuts?

In a new book, The Party’s Over: How Republicans Went Crazy ,Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted former GOP strategist Mike Lofgrin blames religion.

Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

In retrospect, Lofgren sees Pat Robertson’s strong showing as a Presidential candidate in 1988 as the warning sign for what was already underway: the capture of one of the country’s major political parties by religious fundamentalists and fanatics.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

Lofgren takes aim at a theory that I have held for some time–the theory that the differences between what we used to call the “country club” wing of the GOP and the religious zealot wing would eventually cause a split. It seemed reasonable to assume that the socioeconomic and philosophical gulf separating the party’s business wing from the religious right would make for instability.

I’ve been predicting this split for at least twenty years, and I’m still waiting, so he may be right when he suggests that there really isn’t a basic disagreement between these factions on the direction the country should go– just a quibble about how far.

The plutocrats would drag us back to the Gilded Age; the theocrats to the Salem witch trials. If anything, the two groups are increasingly beginning to resemble each other. Many televangelists have espoused what has come to be known as the prosperity gospel—the health-and- wealth/name-it-and-claim-it gospel of economic entitlement. If you are wealthy, it is a sign of God’s favor. If not, too bad! This rationale may explain why some poor voters will defend the prerogatives of billionaires. In any case, at the beginning of the 2012 presidential cycle, those consummate plutocrats the Koch brothers pumped money into Bachmann’s campaign, so one should probably not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.

As for the supposedly libertarian Tea Partiers, Lofgren cites academic studies that identify them as authoritarian rather than libertarian. Over half of Tea Party members self-identified as members of the religious right and 55 percent insisted that “America has always been and is currently a Christian nation”—a higher percentage than non-Tea Party Christian conservatives.

If Lofgren is right, it explains how we got here, and why government is broken. You can reason with someone who holds a political or policy position. You can negotiate a compromise– a “win-win” with someone whose ultimate goal is different from your own.

When a political position is held with religious fervor, however, it becomes immune to logic and evidence.

Did you all hear about the Republican Representative who attributed the ocean’s rise to the fact that rocks fell into it?

I rest my case.

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Collusion, Not Statecraft

I don’t usually cite to Daily Kos, because I am aware that its articles are reported through a liberal lens and I’m not interested in simply becoming part of an echo chamber.

Despite its clear–and acknowledged–editorial perspective, however, I have found the site to be factually accurate–and often, very persuasive. I was especially convinced by a post analyzing the effects of Trump’s decision to renege on U.S. commitments made in the Iran Agreement (an agreement our inarticulate President likes to call a “deal.”)

A number of foreign policy experts have expressed frustration with the withdrawal because it reduces America’s ability to exert influence in the region and rather dramatically increases the prospects of destabilization, if not war. The recurring critique is that no one (not even Israel, Bibi notwithstanding) benefits from this decision.

As the post reminds us, however, there is a beneficiary. Putin’s Russia.

Crude oil futures have leapt from $26 at the time of Trump’s election to $77 today. Back in January, Trump actually certified that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement. However, Trump threatened to end the agreement if it wasn’t expanded to include items unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program and “strengthened” in unspecified ways.

Trump increased his warnings that he would end the deal in February, and by March was engaged in talks with European allies—talks at which allies consistently urged Trump to remain in the deal and Trump consistently announced his intention to walk away. As the talks wore on, and Trump’s intransigence became clear, fears of a destabilized Middle East began to shore up oil prices.

Russian oil production hovers around 10 million barrels a day. That means the increase that has already happened in oil prices is providing Putin with an extra $520 million a day. …

Everything else that Trump has or hasn’t done about Russia, any sanctions, any tariffs, any expelled diplomats, absolutely pales in comparison to the huge boost he provided to the Russian economy by backing away from the Iran nuclear deal. In fact, short of actually starting a shooting war in the region, it’s difficult to find anything else that Trump might have done of more benefit to Putin. It’s certainly difficult to think of anything Trump might have done to generate a more certain boost for Russia.

As any political pundit worth her salt will confirm, poor economic performance is a threat to even an autocratic politician, and Russia–which is very dependent on oil prices–has been running up steep deficits and cutting vital programs.

As the post notes, Russia’s economic problems have also hobbled its ability to deploy its military.

In 2014, as oil prices declined again, the value of the ruble tumbled, making it more difficult for Russia to borrow or import goods. At the start of 2015, the purchasing power index for Russia—the actual value of the country’s money when it comes to buying a standard “basket of goods”—was the lowest in the world.

The falling ruble triggered waves of inflation across Russia, putting prices up by double digits across the board, raising the interest rates to near 20 percent, and leading to widespread calls for wage and price controls. In 2016, Russia faced growing debt and declining GDP. Retail sales and personal wealth were both sharply down. Predictions were for a sustained period of oil prices below $20.

Anti-Putin demonstrations during the past few years have addressed a number of grievances, but this economic reality was clearly a major source of popular dissatisfaction. But as long as Iran continued to participate in the world’s oil markets, the oil prices that are so important to Russia’s economy would remain low.

Oil prices could be driven up only if the U.S. re-imposed the sanctions that had prevented Iran–the third largest player in OPEC–from selling its oil on the world market. Those sanctions had been lifted under the agreement Trump just trashed. Immediately after he reimposed them, Americans faced additional sticker shock at the gas pump.

Rising pump prices are blunting the positive effects of sweeping tax cuts on Americans’ spending, potentially undercutting a pillar of economic growth this year.

Withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran agreement may have infuriated our European allies, imposed costs on American consumers and made the world less safe. But it was a huge gift to Putin.

For a communist, Putin sure understands return on investment.

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