Category Archives: Random Blogging

The Patriarchal Backlash

Supporters of the draconian abortion bans passed by Red states like Indiana like to pooh-pooh allegations that those bans are part of a “war on women.” But a woman’s ability to control her own reproduction is absolutely essential to her ability to participate equally in economic and civic life, and depriving her of that control is a major goal of those who want to take America back to patriarchy, to a time when women were subservient.

MAGA’s war against women doesn’t stop with abortion bans and restrictions on birth control. The Guardian recently reported on Republican proposals to cut a variety of federal subsidies that disproportionately help women.

As they prepare to take control of the White House and Congress next month, conservatives are eyeing cutbacks to federal programs that help tens of millions of women pay for healthcare, food, housing and transportation.

The ferocity of the backlash to women’s growing equality raises obvious questions: why is it that the United States, with our vaunted celebration of individual rights and civic equality, has never had a female President, as other countries have? Why are women still under-represented in our legislative bodies, compared to numerous other countries?

Recently, Yascha Mounk posed those questions to Alice Evans, a scholar who focuses on them. Evans has a book coming out titled “The Great Gender Divergence,” and her observations are instructive.

Evans noted that there are wide differences in labor force and leadership participation across the globe.

Across Scandinavia there is a very strong share of female representation. In Latin America there are 11 legislative assemblies which actually mandate gender parity, and you’ve just seen two women fight it out for the presidency in Mexico.

When Mounk asked Evans to speculate about why these differences exist, her explanation began with a history of women’s emancipation that was very similar to the one Morton Marcus and I offered in our book From Property to Partnership.

As she noted, in 1900, much of the world was very patriarchal.

Our Enlightenment, our scholars, our scientists, our parliaments, and our judiciary were incredibly patriarchal, a total sausage fest. But then there is a big disruption, and I do think economics and politics are important here. So over the 20th century, skill bias and technological change are ramping up demand for skilled labor. That happens across the world. These factories open up and women seize the economic opportunities they create. It’s also mediated by technology: When women have contraceptives they can control their fertility, further their education and then build careers.

So what accounts for the striking differences in female political and economic participation across the globe? Culture. Especially the persistence of patriarchal cultures, where male status depends upon “protecting” women and keeping them submissive, and where a “husbands’ status is contingent upon them being the breadwinner and women remaining at home.”

The interview is wide-ranging, and focuses largely on the situations of women in countries where male resistance to female empowerment is far more powerful and effective than in the U.S. But Evans’ observations about culture–especially patriarchal culture–have obvious pertinence to America, where our citizenry includes a wide variety of subcultures, many of which are patriarchal to a greater or lesser degree. 

There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the fact that Trump pulled more than the expected vote percentage with some traditionally Democratic-voting constituencies. Pundits have offered various theories, almost all based upon policy differences, ignoring  the likely effect of the “macho” elements of some of these cultures, and the corresponding belief that women are unfit for the Presidency. Then there is the influence of fundamentalist religions, virtually all of which circumscribe the role of women. The recent resurgence of White Christian Nationalism is at least partially a backlash against  the growing role of women and gays in American society.

Project 2025 proposes an agenda that is thoroughly paternalistic and patriarchal, and anyone who thinks the Trump administration won’t try to impose its provisions on American society is, as they say, “smoking something.” (The extent to which his chosen clowns, conspiracy theorists and buffoons will succeed is a different question.)

James Davidson Hunter coined the term Culture Wars back in 1992. It was an apt phrase then, and it is even more appropriate now. The divisions between modernists and “traditionalists,” between urban and rural Americans, between resentful Whites and people of color are all essentially cultural. 

Today’s “cold civil war” isn’t between Republicans and Democrats. (Face it, there aren’t any real Republicans anymore.) It’s a culture war between a MAGA movement that wants to reinstate a racist, homophobic, patriarchal society and those of us who want to live in an inclusive 21st Century.

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Doxxing Nazis

A recent essay from The Bulwark defended the act known as “doxxing”–revealing the identity of people who make controversial (or in this case, horrifying and hateful) assertions online.

Anyone who follows such matters can hardly be unaware of the steep rise in the magnitude of online hate, much of it facilitated by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The essay repeats some of the tweets Musk has promoted, and notes–quite accurately– that “this isn’t winking and nodding. It’s goose-stepping.”

The essay began by noting that the Texas Observer had doxxed four Twitter users who had authored those “goose-stepping” posts, and defended the publication’s decision to unmask those individuals.

“Doxxing” has long had negative connotations. Supposedly it’s a bad thing.

I’ve never understood that.

My general view is that if you say things in public, you are accountable for your words. It’s fine to hide behind anonymity, but no speaker should reasonably expect that to be absolute. If someone pulls the mask off, the speaker has no grounds to cry foul.

Musk isn’t the only prominent person to follow and amplify explicitly neo-Nazi posts. According to the article, Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky follows three neo-Nazi accounts and GOP Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers follows two, while the account belonging to Sebastian Gorka, former and future deputy assistant to Donald Trump, follows one of the most “out there” neo-Nazis and Chuck DeVore, an executive at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, has retweeted at least one post from that account.

Which leads to my first point: Nazism/white supremacism has been mainstreamed to a degree that many people may not quite realize. This stuff isn’t just buried on obscure message boards or circulating via photocopied handouts. It’s just out there. And the social stigma about interacting with it is shrinking by the day.

The author then makes an important point about the anonymity offered by these internet platforms:

None of these four wadbags would have been willing to say this stuff out loud if they’d had to have their names attached to it.

It was only the warm blanket of anonymity that permitted them to enjoy the fruits of liberalism while secretly poisoning liberal society.

Liberal societies require robust codes of social stigma precisely because you can’t legislate morality. Morality has to emerge from the society itself. How does that happen? It’s not because of laws. It’s because of social mores.

If you walk around your neighborhood wearing a Nazi t-shirt and shouting “Sieg Heil!” at people, no one will talk to you. The people at the coffee shop won’t serve you. Steady employment will be difficult. Good luck finding a date.

Internet anonymity allows people avoid social stigma by leading dual lives. This is toxic.

I have been one of those people who enthusiastically welcomed the Internet, believing in its multiple social benefits. And those benefits are very real. But we are now seeing the downsides–the ability of small groups of disgruntled, resentful, bigoted and hateful individuals to connect with others who share their anti-modern, anti-American world-views.

The Nazis–“neo” may be a misnomer–can now connect to and make common cause with other fringe groups, including the emerging White Christian Nationalists, in an effort to disrupt and reverse an increasingly inclusive culture. They want to take America “back” to a time when straight White Christian males were dominant.

Although I wouldn’t call it “doxxing,” exactly, an important film that sheds light on “Christian” Nationalism is “Bad Faith,” and for those interested in seeing it, it will be presented by Indianapolis’ Common Cause chapter at the Kan-Kan Cinema on January 8th. You can get tickets here. (Common Cause chose the date because that is the day that Micah Beckwith–Indiana’s own White Christian Nationalist– and his fellow travelers take office.)

These allied fringe movements represent a minority of Americans, but gerrymandering, the Internet and social media have allowed them to gain power vastly disproportionate to their numbers. They have captured the GOP, and they are a significant part of Trump’s base. In order for the rest of us to counter them, we need to engage in our own form of “doxxing.” We need to make them truly visible to the millions of Americans who simply haven’t noticed.

Most of us don’t follow people on Twitter/X. Unfortunately, most of us don’t follow the news, either–especially political news. (That’s why so many Americans who do follow the news were shocked by Trump’s election–surely no one who understood what he was could vote to put him in the Oval Office.)

We need to shine a very bright light on these anti-American movements. Call it “doxxing.”

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Organizing For Resistance

I spoke about Hoosiers’ post-election options to a group of volunteers at a Women 4 Change event a couple of days ago. Here’s what I told them. Much of it will sound familiar….

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I’ve done a lot of thinking since the election. Some of my conclusions are pretty obvious:

Americans don’t occupy a common reality, thanks to our information environment. It isn’t just the fragmentation and the ease with which we can all indulge our confirmation biases, although that’s a big part of it. It’s also the case that Rightwing propaganda sites are all pumping out and reinforcing the same talking points, misinformation and propaganda. The result is that many people occupy bubbles impervious to inconvenient facts.

We know that Americans are polarized between educated and uneducated, informed and uninformed people. In November, voters who reported following political news went for Harris by 8 points, while voters who reported seldom or never following the news went for Trump by 19 points.

During the campaign, we were repeatedly told that the election was a battle for American democracy. But we’ve already lost that battle. We lost it in 2010, when the Republican RedMap project was successful in gerrymandering across the country. W4C has been fighting Indiana’s extreme gerrymandering—thus far, without success—so you all understand how pernicious partisan redistricting is. Not only does it tilt the playing field, it suppresses turnout. Since 2010, Republicans have exercised power vastly in excess of their percentage of the vote, especially in the U.S. House and in statehouses around the country. That’s especially been the case in states like Indiana where we don’t have  access to mechanisms like referenda or initiatives.

The question, as always, is what can groups like W4C do? How do we counter the loss of democratic decision-making?

Here’s my preliminary “take” on that question:

  • We need to focus on Indiana. Our resources are limited, and the likelihood that we can have much of an effect elsewhere is minimal.
  • We need to communicate. Not just with each other—although that’s helpful too—but in ways calculated to break through to those who follow only Rightwing news sources or none at all. I’ve been working with Hoosiers 4 Democracy to plan a peaceful protest on Monument Circle, to take place on the day of the Inauguration. We will bring together people representing as many parts of the community as possible, to explain why we resist the profound anti-Americanism of the coming administration. It should be covered by Indiana media outlets.
  • What we need, however, goes far beyond such isolated events. We need a plan to take factual information into all parts of the state, to people who haven’t been paying attention, who haven’t been voting, who aren’t going to visit blogs and websites and credible media that don’t reinforce the misinformation that makes them comfortable.
  • Ideally, that plan should be produced by a “pro-democracy” coalition that includes as many partners as possible: the ACLU, faith leaders, Common Cause, W4C, H4D, etc. etc. The coalition should plan a two-pronged movement: one focused on penetrating the (largely rural) information bubble, and one focused on the General Assembly. With respect to the legislature, my own preference would be to lobby for a referendum. Indiana’s legislators will not abandon gerrymandering, because they benefit from it– most owe their seats to it. If we could at least generate support for a referendum, in the future we could use that process to overturn gerrymandering.

The next few years are going to be difficult—and pivotal. We have some assets: at the state level; extremist Christian Nationalists like Micah Beckwith offend a lot of people who typically vote Republican. At the national level, if Trump follows through with his promises (threats?), the negative effects will be pretty immediate and hard to ignore.

Our job should be to ensure that Hoosiers know what these people are doing, and why their actions are inconsistent with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, basic ethics and common sense.

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America: The Tower Of Babel

An article I read recently in the Atlantic compared today’s United States to Babel. 

The Genesis story of the Tower of Babel is a tale about a mythical time when all people on Earth spoke the same language. They decided to build a great tower reaching up to the heavens. God, seeing their project as evidence of pride, confused their languages so they could no longer understand each other. That lack of ability to communicate caused them to abandon the unfinished tower and disperse across the Earth.

“Babel”  means “confusion” in Hebrew, and references to the “Tower of Babel” are often used as a shorthand for our very human miscommunications and misunderstandings.

Trump did not destroy the tower, but he exploited its fall.

He was the first politician to master the new dynamics of the post-Babel era, in which outrage is the key to virality, stage performance crushes competence, Twitter can overpower all the newspapers in the country, and stories cannot be shared (or at least trusted) across more than a few adjacent fragments—so truth cannot achieve widespread adherence.

So much of our current dysfunction as a society is a result of the current, fragmented state of an information environment that encourages people to indulge confirmation bias and reject inconvenient realities–an environment in which propaganda and conspiracy theories thrive. (Not that what we call “legacy media” is exactly covering itself with glory…) The result is that people live in alternate realities and are increasingly unable to communicate.

That mutual incomprehension doesn’t just infect our political life.

It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.

Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people.

The article notes that initially–in the 1990s–the Internet, with its chat rooms, message boards, and then its first wave social-media platforms (launched in 2003) were hailed as boons to democracy.

Myspace, Friendster, and Facebook made it easy to connect with friends and strangers to talk about common interests, for free, and at a scale never before imaginable. By 2008, Facebook had emerged as the dominant platform, with more than 100 million monthly users, on its way to roughly 3 billion today. In the first decade of the new century, social media was widely believed to be a boon to democracy. What dictator could impose his will on an interconnected citizenry? What regime could build a wall to keep out the internet?

What holds large and diverse secular democracies such as the United States together? Research has identified three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: “social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories.”

Social media has weakened all three.

The article explains how social media has changed over time—and especially since 2009–with the introduction of algorithms that encourage dishonesty and what the author calls “mob dynamics.” The lengthy article is well worth reading in its entirety, but the following observation is at the crux of the (very persuasive) analysis:

The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking.

It was just this kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution. The Framers of the Constitution were excellent social psychologists. They knew that democracy had an Achilles’ heel because it depended on the collective judgment of the people, and democratic communities are subject to “the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions.” The key to designing a sustainable republic, therefore, was to build in mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment while still holding them accountable to the people periodically, on Election Day.

Thanks to social media–our very own “tower”–we’re in a fragmented world of hurt, and I don’t see us emerging any time soon.

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The Institutional Party

I often quote Talking Points Memo, which is one of the most reliable–and intelligent–sources of political reporting on the web. A few days back, the site’s Morning Memo had a very good essay on our era of distrust, which it preceded with what I think was an absolutely perfect characterization of the deluge of diagnosis and advice in the wake of the election as “variously half-baked, hyperbolic, histrionic or merely silly.”

I couldn’t agree more. We’ve been inundated with un-self-aware pontifications and nit-picking, which I’m sure soothed the angst of those issuing these pronouncements, but that generally were–as the essay accurately noted–half-baked, hyperbolic, histrionic and (usually) silly.

The essay then turned to a subject that didn’t fall into any of those categories–widespread public distrust. (A subject I addressed in my 2009 book, “Distrust, American Style: Diversity and the Crisis of Public Confidence.”)

A key reason that many people are Democrats today is that they’re attached to a cluster of ideas like the rule of law, respect for and the employment of science and expertise, a free press and the protection of the range of institutions that guard civic life, quality of life and more. On the other side, say we have adherents of a revanchist, authoritarian politics which seeks break all those things and rule from the wreckage that destruction leaves in its path. So Democrats constantly find themselves defending institutions, or “the establishment,” or simply the status quo. Yet we live in an age of pervasive public distrust — distrust of institutions, leaders, expertise. And not all of this distrust is misplaced. Many institutions, professions, and power centers have failed to live up to their sides of the social contract.

In short, Democrats are by and large institutionalists in an age of mistrust. And that is challenging place to be.

It sure is. The essay pointed out that defending an institution shouldn’t include defending flawed examples of that institution. A free press, for example, is a vital institution in democratic systems. Democrats largely agree that it’s critical to support the press rather than tear it down. But that has often meant supporting and protecting flawed examples that routinely shortchange them on basic fairness. (The New York Times is a good example. Its coverage of Trump served to normalize a distinctly abnormal–and dangerous– candidate.)

When it comes to the establishment press, I think Democrats need to get used to running against the press. I don’t mean that simply because it’s good politics, though it probably is in many cases. I mean it because in many cases the way establishment press covers political news is very much part of the problem. You can criticize and yes even bash bad news coverage without in any way questioning the centrality of press freedom. A lot of people really seem to think they’re the same thing. They’re not. It’s stupid and wildly counterproductive to think otherwise.

But often it’s not as simple as that. The country needs an at least relatively disinterested Department of Justice. It needs scientists and clinicians studying and safeguarding public health. It needs a robust press and all the other infrastructure of civil society that together make up the soft tissue of civic freedom. If one side is saying “Burn it down!” and another is saying “We’re rootin’ tootin’ mad and we have many questions!” well then it’s definitely going to get burned to the ground because there’s no one taking up the defense. So often it’s not that simple.

Adding to the complexity is the fact that different institutions require different approaches. The essay references the people who lament every latest Supreme Court travesty because it reduces faith or trust in the Court. But–as most observers have come to recognize– the current Court is thoroughly corrupt. “Respect for the Court’s decisions and the Court itself is a problem to be solved, not a rampart or castle wall to be reinforced.”

Being the party of institutions in an age of distrust is an inherent challenge. It’s at the heart of why Democrats often think and talk in ways that don’t connect, break through to big chunks of the electorate. Democrats aren’t going to stop being the party of institutions because they want the rule of law; they want elections where votes are counted; they want real medicine over quacks. This is the foolery of those people whose response to the election is to fire Democrats’ voters. That’s not how anything works. But being a party of institutions and expertise in era of pervasive distrust is, again, an inherent challenge. You don’t surmount that challenge without giving the issue some real time and thought.

Yep.

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