Category Archives: Random Blogging

Nature/Nurture

I came across a fascinating study the other day (hat tip to Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars). There has been a good deal of research suggesting that racism has a biological element–several studies show the amygdala lighting up in reaction when a person of a different race appeared, for example. However…

“In a paper that will be published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Eva Telzer of UCLA and three other researchers report that they’ve performed these amygdala studies–which had previously been done on adults–on children. And they found something interesting: the racial sensitivity of the amygdala doesn’t kick in until around age 14.

What’s more: once it kicks in, it doesn’t kick in equally for everybody. The more racially diverse your peer group, the less strong the amygdala effect. At really high levels of diversity, the effect disappeared entirely. The authors of the study write that “these findings suggest that neural biases to race are not innate and that race is a social construction, learned over time.”

The upshot of the study, at least as I understood it, was that humans do have strong “tribal” instincts, but the preference for ones own tribe is not based on any particular characteristic. It’s enough to be different–the nature of the difference is irrelevant. That’s the bad news. The good news is that, with sufficient diversity while we’re young, the differences that divide us, that bring out our tribal instincts, can be overcome.

That “nature versus nurture” argument just gets more and more complicated….

Projecting the Vote

There’s so much fabrication floating around the internet, it’s hard to trust anything you read–especially as the election draws closer. So when a Facebook friend posted an article from a source I didn’t recognize, my first inclination was to categorize it with the various paranoid fantasies of “dirty deeds” and “voter fraud” that have grown thicker than ragweed this election cycle. The article claimed that Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, and other members of the Romney family, are part owners of Ohio’s voting machines–specifically, those supplied by Hart Intercivic.

A search of Snopes turned up nothing, pro or con. Google, however, was more accommodating, as were a few Facebook friends. The story was corroborated by several sources, among them Politifact and that noted left-wing publication, Forbes. Forbes reported that Hart Intercivic is largely owned by H.I.G. Capital, that H.I.G. Capital employees hold two of the five board seats–and both of them have made direct contributions to Romney’s campaign. Tony Tamer, the firm’s founder, is a major bundler for Romney, as are three other directors of H.I.G. In fact, H.I.G. is Romney’s 11th largest contributor. And to top it all off, H.I.G. has shared business interests with Solamere Capital, owned by…Tagg Romney.

Election experts have long warned that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to hacking; that’s one reason many jurisdictions have begun insisting on a paper trail. (I’m told some European countries have recently gone back to paper ballots in order to reassure voters of the legitimacy of election results.) There are all sorts of reasons why this latest bit of news is disquieting: the centrality of Ohio in our electoral vote system, the persistent accusations of irregularities in that state’s vote in 2004, and the increasingly brazen efforts by Republicans to suppress minority votes.

It began with so-called “Voter ID” laws, purportedly aimed at in-person voter fraud, a largely imaginary problem. As some unguarded comments by GOP operatives have confirmed, the real aim of such laws is to suppress the votes of elderly, poor and minority Americans–those most likely to lack the documentation, transportation and/or resources needed to obtain the necessary ID.

The Voter ID efforts have been accompanied by persistent measures to restrict voting–to limit early voting periods, and refuse to authorize satellite voting sites, and generally to make exercising ones franchise as inconvenient as possible, again on the theory that such measures would be most likely to discourage lower-income voters who tend to skew Democratic.

In the past week or so, there have been reports from swing states of other shenanigans: in Florida, Republican operatives were caught trashing registrations; in several other localities, robo-calls have been made to minority voters “reminding” them to vote–on November 8th. (The election, of course, will take place on November 6th.) Then there were the billboards in minority neighborhoods, featuring a judge’s gavel and the text “Voter Fraud is a felony—up to 3 1/2 years and a $10,000 fine.” Those appeared in Cleveland, Columbus and Milwaukee. (Clear Channel has now responded to community outrage and begun taking them down; however, much of the harm has been done.)

I’m sure there must be places where the Democrats are engaging in similar tactics, and they certainly have done so in the past, but reports of Democratic chicanery  haven’t surfaced in this election cycle. My sense is that these are the sort of tactics used by folks who smell defeat–who realize that winning will require a bit of “fudging” here and there, and for whom winning is more important than playing fair and square. This year, despite the close national polls, that best describes the Romney/Ryan team.

Their faux concerns about voter fraud are an example of what psychologists call “projection.”

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The N Factor

One of the more prestigious political science journal just published an issue devoted to prognostications about the upcoming Presidential election. A variety of academics used their favored forecasting methodologies, and predicted the likely winner. The results ranged from “comfortably Obama” to “very, very close” to one “Romney by a nose.” (I’ve noted that “scientific” methods are a lot more accurate after the election has occurred.)

The problem with forecasting models is that they rarely take into account elements like likability; heretofore, they have not had to confront massive spending by SuperPacs, either. And even the scholars who employ them hedge their bets.

One element that was not measurable before 2008–and has now been measured–is the influence of race, as in the race of the candidates. Any sentient being knows that much of the anti-Obama animus is race-based (the “birthers” and people convinced that the President is a Muslim are so obviously substituting those charges for the N word). What has been unclear is the extent to which that racism motivates votes. In that journal’s issue on the election, one article analyzed data from the 2008 election, and concluded that his race had cost Obama five percent of the vote–that is, that Obama’s percentage of the popular vote would have been five percent higher had he been white. The author of that article forecast a slightly better result this time around; according to his calculations, racism will “only” cost Obama three percentage points this time around.

Of course, in a very close election, three percent is enough.

A lot of folks are in denial about the extent to which race influences attitudes about the President. They shrug off the more obvious indicators, like the guy in the photo taken at a Romney rally, whose tee shirt read “Put the white back in the White House.” I have friends whose unease with the President is pretty clearly based upon his “otherness,” but who don’t recognize or admit to themselves that such feelings are a part of their political calculus.

If we are inclined to dismiss the influence of racism, a look at Gallup’s polling may serve as a wake-up call. Gallup has been an “outlier” lately, showing Romney five or six points ahead in the popular vote. When you look at the internals, you see an interesting phenomenon: in Gallup’s numbers, Obama holds modest leads in the Northeast, Midwest and West. Romney leads in the South–by twenty-two points.

Maybe we shouldn’t have fought the civil war–and just let the South go.

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In Defense of Apostasy

A good friend of mine, one of those thoughtful Republicans from a former era, has decided–after internal struggle–that he will cast his vote for Richard Mourdock–despite his obvious distaste for the man and his positions. His justification is that Mourdock will cast his first vote for leadership of the Senate. My friend, a long-time Republican who has held elective office, is a “team player.” He cites the old adage: “he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”

I understand the reasoning. If you truly believe that your “team” has better ideas, will do better by the country, you can justify swallowing hard and supporting dubious team members.

But what if your whole team is playing dirty? What if the mean-spirited and intellectually limited guy you are holding your nose and voting for is more typical than you want to admit? What if your team has abandoned the ideas and positions that drew you to join in the first place? Where should your loyalties lie–to the team, or the sport? To your party, or the country?

People join political parties for many reasons. Mom and Dad were Democrats or Republicans. You want to get ahead, and you live in one of the increasingly common areas where one party dominates. You identify as union, or management, and that identification trumps other concerns. Or you develop a political philosophy and choose the party with the platform that is most consistent with that ideology. Whatever the reason for that original choice, political scientists tell us that few of us rethink it. Instead, we continue to root for our first “team,” much as sports fans do.

In my own case (being a teenager who read a lot and didn’t date much), I became a Republican because I had formed pretty firm political positions; I was a social liberal and a fiscal conservative (still am), and in the early 1960s, the Democrats were much farther to the left than I was (or than Democrats are today). I was drawn to the libertarian wing of the Republican party, which came closest to my own beliefs. In the years since, both the Democrats and GOP have moved further and further to the right, and I became less and less comfortable with my “team.” George W. Bush was the final straw, and I left the party. I became an apostate. Many of my former political friends understood; others became very chilly, and some very critical opinions of my apostasy have gotten back to me. Fair enough.

But here’s the thing. Politics isn’t football, where who wins and loses doesn’t ultimately make a difference in the lives of real people. Many of my Republican friends from the “old days” recognize how much the party has changed, but they can’t bring themselves to sever the bond. They tell themselves that the Mourdocks and the Pences and Akins and Wests and Bachmanns and Brouns and so many others are just outliers, that the Democrats also have whack jobs (true enough, just not nearly as many and not currently in control of the party). So they justify continuing to support the very people who are destroying the once-respectable Republican brand.

No intellectually honest person will agree with any political party 100% of the time–or even 90%. We all fit imperfectly into those political boxes. But when the party you vote for holds positions you know to be deeply damaging to the body politic, when too many of the people you are nominating are uninformed bloviators and  worse, it’s time to consider apostasy.

If we all became “swing voters,” willing to abandon either party when it loses its way–if neither party could depend upon a base of knee-jerk support from people who are cheering for a team rather than voting their policy preferences–I think we’d get better parties.

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The Ultimate Entanglement

Over at Political Animal, in an explanation of his prediction that a Republican defeat in the upcoming election will not trigger a reconsideration of the rightward march of the party, Ed Kilgore makes an important and often overlooked point.

“In case folks haven’t noticed, the import of the advent of “constitutional conservatism” and its continued ascendency is that the Right and the GOP are in the process of chaining themselves to a permanent, immutable vision of governance that for many adherents is quite literally a divine gift to the Founders and the entire purpose of America. You don’t “rethink” this birthright, or debate it. And the usual search of political parties for “new ideas” is a bit irrelevant.”

This is a reference to a transfiguration that has been lost on most of us unreconstructed rationalists, but is evident to anyone who follows the fevered pronouncements of the Michelle Bachmann wing of the party, or the wildly ahistorical inventions of David Barton and his ilk.

We react with shock and bemusement when Republican members of Congress–including several members of the Science and Technology Committee–emphatically reject science, evolution, global warming and pretty much the entire intellectual structure of modern life, but we think of these as isolated instances. We don’t see those regressive opinions for what they are: part and parcel of a coherent, if frightening, worldview that has gradually become the worldview of the base of the Republican Party.

The “true believers” have always lurked on the fringes of the party, but gradually they have prevailed; they have entwined “biblical” Christianity and radically reactionary political positions in a new version of Constitutional Christianity. In this reading, the Constitution (as they read and interpret it) was a gift from God. it isn’t the product of a group of gifted men, a brilliant document that nevertheless requires inclusion of new populations and application to new realities; it is inspired by the God of fundamentalist Christianity, and must be approached with that understanding. Deviate from their literal beliefs–about the bible OR the Constitution–and it’s not a different point of view, it’s blasphemy.

The sane and moderate folks who used to make up the vast majority of the GOP have either left the party or failed to recognize how completely the crazies have assumed control. With the exception of a few people–David Frum, Bruce Bartlett and Norman Ornstein come to mind–they’ve kept quiet.

It has become a truism that demographics bode ill for the GOP’s future. It is increasingly, as many have noted, a party of old white men; furthermore, the party’s increasingly wild-eyed conspiracy theories and religious extremism are wearing very thin with the general public. Those trends bode well for Democrats, but not for the country, which needs two sane, responsible political parties.