Category Archives: Random Blogging

Uncomfortable Parallels

I realize that this blog has become something of a “downer,” and I apologize in advance for this particular post.

The other day, I was trying to cheer myself up by thinking of times in U.S. and world history when the prospects seemed bleak but the challenges were ultimately surmounted–the civil war, the 60s, etc. Then I thought about the Dark Ages, so I did a bit of googling. It appears that there is a fair amount of scholarly bickering about how long and how “dark” the Dark Ages actually were, but what made me sit up and take notice was an article on a history site titled “The Five Major Causes of the Dark Ages.”

According to the article, those five causes were 1) the fall of the Roman Empire; 2) the little Ice Age; 3)Famine; 4) the Black Plague; and 5) a lack of good roads.

If you think of the last century or so as an “American Age” during which the U.S. has dominated the world in much the same way that Rome dominated its time,  America’s current retreat from international leadership becomes especially ominous. It was concerning when George W. Bush’s cowboy demeanor and war in Iraq incurred the strong disapproval of many of our allies, but that faded with the international popularity of Obama .

Trump’s ignorance and bellicosity–not to mention the embarrassing buffoonery that has generated barely veiled personal disdain from world leaders–has diminished America’s stature, undermined important alliances and generated pushback from longtime allies. Books and articles comparing the current status of the U.S. to Rome are proliferating.

We are unlikely to see an Ice Age, but we are increasingly likely to see dramatic environmental degradation, thanks to the current administration’s anti-science unwillingness to confront climate change. (Gotta keep those fossil fuel donors happy!) Current predictions include warnings that areas of the globe where millions of people now live will become uninhabitable–or “best case” (!)– that huge portions of the earth that are currently being cultivated will become unsuitable for farming and food production. Famine, anyone?

I don’t know enough about medical science or the likelihood of pandemics to form an opinion, so let’s assume that isn’t a major threat (although millions of migrants and not enough food sounds like a breeding ground for epidemics).

But a lack of good roads?

We’re there. For years, America has allowed its infrastructure to decay–we wouldn’t want to pay taxes to fix those crumbling roads and bridges. We especially wouldn’t want to tax those “makers” whose corporations have profited from an infrastructure that has allowed them to receive raw materials and ship finished goods….

You’d think that intelligent self-interest would cause us to modify behaviors that are so obviously destructive. Take climate change: if we act to protect the environment, and the scientists are all wrong, we’ll just end up with clean air and drinkable water. Bummer. If we don’t act, and the scientists are right, welcome to the Dark Ages. Much bigger bummer.

Or take infrastructure. When those profitable companies that are fat and happy using their tax breaks to buy back their stock suddenly face major expenses or even a complete inability to do business due to failing roads and bridges or the degradation of the electrical grid, who are they going to blame? (We know the answer to that one….)

Wasn’t it Santayana who said “Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it?”

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The Science of Stereotypes

When you look at the history of human conflicts, it sometimes seems as if most of them can be boiled down to battles of “us versus them”–however the relevant combatants are defining “us” and “them.”

Anyone who is, or has ever been, part of a group marginalized by a particular society knows the sting of the stereotype: In the U.S. it has been”scheming” Jews, “sissy” gays, “shiftless” blacks…In our trips to Europe, Spanish people have warned us against “thieving” Moroccans, a Hungarian expressed disdain for “dirty” Gypsies, and in a small town in Northern England, we were told to beware of people from Yorkshire.

Anyone with two brain cells recognizes how ridiculous it is to apply sweeping generalities–positive or negative– to any group of people. That said, it is clear that even nice people have implicit preferences for those with whom they identify. That undeniable human tendency raises two questions: why? and how do we overcome a deep-seated trait that–whatever its original utility– is increasingly counterproductive?

A recent article in The Conversation looked at the science of stereotyping.

As in all animals, human brains balance two primordial systems. One includes a brain region called the amygdala that can generate fear and distrust of things that pose a danger – think predators or or being lost somewhere unknown. The other, a group of connected structures called the mesolimbic system, can give rise to pleasure and feelings of reward in response to things that make it more likely we’ll flourish and survive – think not only food, but also social pleasure, like trust.

But how do these systems interact to influence how we form our concepts of community?

Implicit association tests can uncover the strength of unconscious associations. Scientists have shown that many people harbor an implicit preference for their in-group – those like themselves – even when they show no outward or obvious signs of bias. For example, in studies whites perceive blacks as more violent and more apt to do harm, solely because they are black, and this unconscious bias is evident even toward black boys as young as five years old.

Brain imaging studies have found increased signaling in the amygdala when people make millisecond judgments of “trustworthiness” of faces. That’s too short a time to reflect conscious processes and likely reveal implicit fears.

These studies, and many others like them, can help us understand distrust and fear of the “other.” They also explain the innate preference for people with whom we identify:

As opposed to fear, distrust and anxiety, circuits of neurons in brain regions called the mesolimbic system are critical mediators of our sense of “reward.” These neurons control the release of the transmitter dopamine, which is associated with an enhanced sense of pleasure. The addictive nature of some drugs, as well as pathological gaming and gambling, are correlated with increased dopamine in mesolimbic circuits.

The good news is that biology is not destiny.

Even if evolution has tilted the balance toward our brains rewarding “like” and distrusting “difference,” this need not be destiny. Activity in our brains is malleable, allowing higher-order circuits in the cortex to modify the more primitive fear and reward systems to produce different behavioral outcomes.

Research has confirmed that when diverse people work together–in business, or on a common problem–they are more innovative and productive than more homogeneous  groups. When people of different backgrounds socialize, they stretch their frames of reference and reduce their instinctive suspicions.

Of all the damage done by Trump voters, perhaps the very worst has been their willingness to reward political candidates–including legislators–who appeal to crude stereotypes and enthusiastically encourage fear of “the other.”

Humans can learn. To be human is to have a choice. We can tame our destructive instinctive responses. But in order to do that–in order to be more humane and less primordial–we need leaders who model our preferred behaviors and call on us to be the best version of ourselves.

Those are the people who deserve our votes in November.

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Civility, Morality And The Tipping Point

A couple of recent episodes have triggered an important–and confounding–debate about the importance, including the strategic importance, of civility.

The incidents involved Sarah Sanders, the President’s spokesperson, who was asked to leave a restaurant unwilling to serve her, and patrons of two Mexican restaurants who heckled Steven Miller and Kirstjen Neilson, who were (inexplicably, given their official disdain for Mexicans) dining there.

Inhospitable and rude reactions are inconsistent with the way most of us were raised. Parental admonitions not to discuss religion or politics rested on concerns that passions might lead to impolite behaviors. The American devotion to free speech is based upon an underlying premise that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. Furthermore, civil debate and discourse are essential to genuine communication.

For all these reasons, nice people don’t call each other names, or accuse those with whom they may disagree of lying or evil intent. One of the most appalling features of an appalling President is precisely his flouting of that social convention–and the encouragement his boorishness provides to others to do likewise.

As Adam Gopnik points out, in an eloquent New Yorker comment, that deeply embedded preference for civility, for giving others the benefit of the doubt and a place at the table, runs into an equally potent concern based in history and human decency: the need to stand up to immoral and malevolent behavior.

Nice Germans looked away–they “didn’t notice” the disappearance of their Jewish neighbors. “Polite” Southerners who recoiled from lynchings and other racist injustices nevertheless failed to come forward to testify or protest.

When do moral imperatives outweigh the undeniable virtues of civility? And what about the more strategic argument–that naming and shaming the bigotry implicated in current anti-immigration attitudes and Trump support simply acts to harden deeply-rooted antagonisms, making it more difficult to persuade–or at least communicate with– those who may have more mixed motives or less hardened hatreds?

These aren’t easy questions, and they don’t have easy answers.

Recently, a Washington Post editorial criticized the restaurant that refused to serve Sanders. A friend of mine–ironically, one of the most civil and courteous people I know–responded on Facebook.

Those who share the politics of this flack, her father, and her boss refuse service to gays, harass women seeking to exercise their lawful right to abortion, and open carry weapons at rallies to intimidate their political opponents. The response of moderates on the left and right is, in essence, yes these people are ignorant and beneath contempt, but we must practice the noblesse oblige of modeling civility and not respond in kind. And we must refrain from criticizing the vapidity of their political base. I suppose that makes us feel superior, but I’m not sure I see what else it’s really getting us. Perhaps it’s true you can’t win a pissing match with skunks like Huckabee and Trump. The Republican right has vast stores of cruelty, meanness, hypocrisy, and irrationality that Democrats cannot and would never want to match. But increasingly I think that refusing to play hard ball with these liars, quislings, and religiofascists is merely its own form of condescension. The Republican Party is already batshit crazy, and politeness by its opponents hasn’t made it less so.

Jennifer Rubin, a columnist for the Post, highlighted an important distinction.

On CNN, Ana Navarro tartly observed, “You make choices in life. And there is a cost to being an accomplice to this cruel, deceitful administration.” So, are these reactions to Trump aides reassuring and appropriate acts of social ostracism that communicate to the cogs in a barbaric bureaucracy that they cannot escape the consequences of their actions? Alternatively, should we view these as a sign of our descent into incivility, evidence that we are so polarized we literally cannot stand to be in the same room as those with whom we disagree?

It depends on how you view the child-separation policy. If you think the decision to separate children from parents as a means of deterring  other asylum seekers is simply one more policy choice, like tax cuts or negotiations with North Korea, then, yes, screaming at political opponents is inappropriate. Such conduct is contrary to the democratic notion that we do not personally destroy our political opponents but, rather, respect differences and learn to fight and perhaps compromise on another day. If, however, you think the child-separation policy is in a different class — a human rights crime, an inhumane policy for which the public was primed by efforts to dehumanize a group of people (“animals,” “infest,” etc.) — then it is both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun the practitioners of such a policy.

There are obvious dangers here. Plenty of political partisans–left and right– label every policy with which they disagree “immoral.” There are legions of insulated and self-righteous “defenders” of this or that religious dogma or political ideology who are always primed for down-and-dirty battle. These zealots manage to be both uncivil and counter-productive.

Nevertheless,  I think Rubin’s differentiation is key.

There is a point at which behaviors are so detrimental to democracy, so damaging to the social fabric and to human and humane behavior that failure to “name and shame” them is moral cowardice. Fair-minded people can debate–politely– where that point lies. We can–and should–feel genuine anguish when we believe we’ve reached it, when our desire to give others the benefit of the doubt can no longer justify responding to viciousness with silence or forced civility.

Individuals must locate that tipping point for themselves. For most of us, I hope, it will come only after we have given those with whom we disagree a great deal of latitude.

Being human, however, requires possession of a moral sense, and failure to speak out when that tipping point has been reached–failure to condemn actions that are an affront to human decency– is both a moral and human failure.

Some people have forfeited their right to a seat at the community table.

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Bread, Circuses and Snake Oil

Abraham Lincoln summed it up pretty well: you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but not (so he said and so we hope) all of the people all of the time.

From itinerant peddlers selling snake oil to today’s more sophisticated propagandists selling political nostrums, there have always been hucksters preying on our very human yearning for simple solutions for what ails us.

Drink this, and your brain tumor will vanish/your belly fat will disappear. Believe that, and you will no longer feel disoriented/diminished. Vote for him (rarely if ever her) and he’ll make (your preferred version of) America great again.

A recent column in the New York Times put a name to those who pander to that all-too- human yearning: charlatan.

It’s impossible to characterize a historical period before it’s over, but I think one plausible name for our era will be the Age of the Charlatan. Everywhere you turn there seems to be some kind of quack or confidence man catering to an eager audience: Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity have moved from pushing ill-informed opinion to flat-out conspiracy mongering; pickup artists sell “tried and true” methods for isolated young men to seduce women; and sophists pass off stale pedantries as dark and radical thought, selling millions of books in the process. In politics, too, our highest office is occupied by a man who was once aptly called a “carnival barker.”

What makes us so vulnerable to charlatans today? In part it’s the complexity of the modern world and the rate of technological and social change: Quackery provides what Saul Bellow once called a “five-cent synthesis,” boiling down the chaotic tangle of the age into simple nostrums.

The author refers us to a long-forgotten 1937 book titled “Die Macht des Charlatans,” or “The Power of the Charlatan.” It was a history of the quacks who roamed Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern period, written by an Austrian journalist  named De Francesco (but published, for obvious reasons given the date, in Switzerland).

Ms. De Francesco explains that the word “charlatan” comes from the Italian “ciarlatano,” itself probably related to the verb “ciarlare,” which means to babble or to go on incessantly without reflection. The original charlatans would babble on and on to mesmerize their audiences.

Babble without reflection. A perfect phrase to describe the noises that come out of President Trump’s mouth…

Nor was that the only parallel to be drawn. The book described the “often elaborate” shows mounted by Medieval and Renaissance mountebanks, with musicians, clowns and even performing animals. ( Presumably, too early for cat videos..)

Ms. De Francesco observes that this was the beginning of the mass communication techniques perfected by the public relations and advertising industries.

Crucially, the charlatan provides palliatives for a confused public. These nostrums can be either literal pills or phony ideas, for as Ms. De Francesco notes, “a quack is a quack — whether he sells opinions or elixirs.” Frequently they sell both. See for example Alex Jones, one of the most popular charlatans of the present age. He peddles bizarre conspiracy theories, including that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, but also his own line of snake oil in the form of dubious dietary supplements.

Bottom line: when reality bites, entertainment that distracts you, easily grasped “explanations” for your predicament– and especially some “other” to blame for your problems– will ease your discomfort. In Roman times, it was bread and circuses. 

Today it’s Fox News….

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If Demographics Are Destiny…..

The most encouraging headline I’ve come across lately was on a Brookings Institution study titled “Trump Owns a Shrinking Republican Party.”

It’s worth remembering the central point of the study when we read that a majority of Republicans remain adamant in their support of Trump–that’s a majority of a smaller and smaller number of voters.

The opening paragraphs of the report confront the puzzle of Trump’s disinterest in what has typically been the first goal of political candidates and parties alike: expanding one’s base.

Most American presidents come into office seeking to expand their support beyond their most loyal voters. But among the many peculiarities of the Trump presidency is his lack of interest in expanding his base, a fact that is even more surprising for someone who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million and carried his key electoral college states by less than 100,000 votes. The story of Trump and his base has two sides.

The first “side” is what is most often reported: the devotion of Trump’s base. These are the people who would vote for him even if he shot someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue, as he famously boasted.

Loyalty to Trump among the Republican base is looking so strong that it led Republican Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a Trump critic who is not running again, to tell reporters “It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?”

Indeed it is.  (As regular readers of this blog know–I have some fairly strong and not at all complimentary opinions about why people join that cult.)

The other “side” of the equation is the continuing erosion of party identification, especially Republican identification.

As the following graph of Gallup polls indicates, both political parties find themselves less popular now than they did in 2004 with a substantial rise in those who identify as independents. For the Democrats, party identification peaked in Obama’s first term and then dropped in his second term. For Republicans, party identification took a sharp drop at the end of George W. Bush’s second term and never really recovered. The trend seems to have taken another drop after Trump’s election.

How can we explain what looks to be a long-term decline for the Republican brand? Age, for one thing. From the beginning of the Trump administration the oldest Americans, those aged 50 and over, have consistently given Trump his highest approval ratings while young people aged 18–29 have consistently given him his lowest approval ratings.

The study concludes–not unreasonably–that a political party unable to attract young people, especially when a generation is as big as the Millennial generation, is not a party with a very bright future.

But it isn’t only young people. We don’t have data–at least, I’m unaware of any–that gives us a handle on the numbers of disaffected “old guard” Republicans, the good-government, civic-minded folks I used to work with, who are horrified by what their party has become. The Steve Schmidts and other high-profile “never Trumpers” are only the tip of that iceberg.

Of course, the GOP establishment is aware of these demographics; those dwindling numbers are the impetus for the party’s constant efforts to rig the system–to gerrymander, impose draconian voter ID requirements, purge registration rolls and generally do whatever they can to suppress turnout.

They know that members of the cult will vote, no matter what. If the rest of us–however numerous– don’t, the current (profoundly unAmerican) iteration of what used to be a Grand Old Party will retain power.

You don’t have to love the Democrats to find that prospect a chilling one.

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