Category Archives: Random Blogging

Very Good Questions

I’m not a huge fan of Maureen Dowd, the columnist for the New York Times. I probably agree with her more than I disagree, but I’ve been put off at times by what comes across as cattiness, or perhaps just a “too cute” writing style.

That said, she ended last Sunday’s column with a very important set of questions.

The column was about the hugely controversial testimony of three college presidents over anti-semitism on their (very elite) campuses. My own reaction parallels that of another Times columnist, David French. French is a former litigator who spent a considerable portion of his legal career battling censorship on college campuses. He wrote that what struck him about the presidents’ answers wasn’t legal insufficiency “but rather their stunning hypocrisy.”

As French accurately notes, private universities are not bound by the First Amendment, although academic freedom principles–which they do follow– are modeled after the Free Speech provisions of that Amendment. If those schools hewed more closely to First Amendment analysis, the “context matters” responses would have been largely correct.

So if the university presidents were largely (though clumsily) correct about the legal balance, why the outrage? To quote the presidents back to themselves, context matters. For decades now, we’ve watched as campus administrators from coast to coast have constructed a comprehensive web of policies and practices intended to suppress so-called hate speech and to support students who find themselves distressed by speech they find offensive.

The result has been a network of speech codes, bias response teams, safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students.

French is absolutely correct that “the rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.”

Dowd similarly alluded to the hypocrisy of the testimony. She quoted Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, who criticized “the inability of these individuals to articulate a simple, straightforward answer to what should have been the easiest question in the world… These presidents are not committed to free speech. They’re committed to favored speech. They selectively enforce the codes of conduct when it works for them or their friends in the faculty lounge.”

When it comes to the current war in the Middle East, Dowd points out what every sentient person knows about the conflict: there are no good guys.

Netanyahu isn’t just personally despicable, he and his supporters have done enormous damage to Israel both domestically and internationally, and there is simply no justification for the way Israel has treated the Palestinians over the past twenty plus years. But as Dowd says, that’s no excuse for what Hamas did on October 7th. Hamas is a terrorist organization intent upon wiping Israel and all Jews off the face of the globe. But again, that undeniable fact does not justify the indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinian civilians.

As Dowd writes, these things should be self-evident. But then, so much of our current political turmoil is the result of refusal to accept facts that should be self-evident.

Dowd writes:

I think this is still America. But I don’t understand why I have to keep making the case on matters that should be self-evident.

Why should I have to make the case that a man who tried to overthrow the government should not be president again?

Why should I have to make the case that we can’t abandon Ukraine to the evil Vladimir Putin?

Why should I have to make the case that a young woman — whose life and future ability to bear children are at risk — should not be getting persecuted about an abortion by a shady Texas attorney general?

Why should I have to make the case that antisemitism is abhorrent?

To which I will add another: why should we have to make the case that criticizing Israel is not antisemitic, but blaming all Jews for decisions made by the Israeli government (or for whatever is going wrong in someone’s life) is?

I see an eerie parallel between the current eruption of anti-Jewish hatred sparked by the events in the Middle East, and the explosion of anti-Black bigotry that followed the election of Barack Obama. Obviously, ancient tribal hatreds had been there all along–simmering, barely suppressed bigotries just waiting for an excuse to emerge.

The most poignant “why” question of all has to be: why are we humans so tribal? Why do we insist on seeing people who differ from us in some way as a monolithic “them” rather than the discrete individuals they are?

In the immortal words of Rodney King, why can’t we all just get along?

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A Global Phenomenon

 A few days ago, a reader of this blog asked me to address the global growth of populism. 

It’s a question I’ve had as well; as regular readers know, one of my sons lives in Amsterdam, and in the recent election in the Netherlands, he and I were both appalled when a far-Right figure won the majority of votes cast. (That “majority” was 24%, and it looks like he’ll be unable to form a government without substantially modifying his agenda–there are virtues to parliamentary systems. But still…) 

An article about the Netherland’s election attributed the rise of populism there to the country’s growing urban/rural divide, and when I did some research, I found a number of scholarly papers supporting that thesis.

One paper advancing the argument that the urban/rural divide is what is powering populism was titled “Europe’s widening rural–urban divide may make space for far right.” That researcher argued that the divide between rural and urban areas has threatened the political trust and social cohesion necessary to stable governance, and that far-right political movements are “taking advantage of rural discontent to win seats in parliaments.”

Over the past decade, incomes have been consistently higher in urban areas than in rural areas. In fact, between 2012 and 2021, the rural–urban gap in incomes increased by almost 20%. This is not surprising when we consider that employment rates have also been consistently higher in urban areas than in rural areas (this is another widening gap, albeit not as dramatic)….

This growing rural–urban divide is not likely to reverse anytime soon, in part because the rural population is falling behind in the attainment of education and skills. Tertiary educational attainment is higher in cities, and the gap with rural areas has widened over the past decade. Residents of cities are also more likely to have digital skills than their rural counterparts. Because levels of education and skills are higher in cities, urban areas are better equipped to reap the advantages of globalisation and technological change.

Another academic paper examining populism in Europe reported that in a number of Western European elections, support for far-right populist parties has been significantly higher in non-urban areas than in urban areas. The paper examined whether the urban/rural divide could be explained by differences in education, income and other individual characteristics of voters, or by variations in immigration. Researchers also examined whether variations in public service supply might explain at least some of the difference between urban and rural areas’ support for far-right populism.

The results in this paper suggest that voter characteristics and immigration explain a substantial part of the urban–rural divide. However, the propensity to vote for a far-right populist party is still higher in regions with lower population growth even when controlling for individual characteristics and immigration…. The propensity to vote for a far-right party decreases with higher public service supply and higher share of immigrants. The findings in this paper thereby support the hypothesis that individuals in shrinking areas with lower access to public services are likely to respond to the deterioration of their location by casting a vote on the far-right (i.e., protest voting).

A very similar phenomenon can be seen in the United States. Pew researchers have examined the urban/rural divide, noting that it has gotten steadily worse. For most of American history (actually, as recently as the early 1990s) both major political parties included both rural and urban constituencies. Since then, America has become deeply divided geographically, with rural areas increasingly Republican and urban places increasingly Democratic.

Needless to say, the growth of the rural-urban divide has fostered polarization and what researchers call “democratic vulnerability.”

The Brookings Institution has also studied the phenomenon, and cautions against a media framing that has all of urban America diverse, educated, and economically productive and all of rural America White, dependent on dying industries, and characterized by stagnation, decline, and despair.

It is–as always–much more complicated than that, and Brookings points out that “dividing the nation into such a binary has immediate, lived consequences for people living in all corners of America.” The extreme binary  narrative can be harmful in four ways: by  prioritizing the political concerns of an imagined, White rural monolith (and erasing the needs of rural people of color); by furthering misconceptions which devalue the role of rural places in American; by propagating “a myth of place-based poverty that erases people living in a range of high-poverty geographies, justifying oversimplified antipoverty policies;” and by obscuring effective policy solutions for rural economic development. 

Brookings’ caution has merit, especially as policymakers move to address–and ameliorate– the urban/rural divide. But the fact remains that–worldwide–that divide is a primary reason for the electoral victories of some very frightening political forces. 

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Our ‘Bespoke Realities’

A New York Times essay by David French recently considered the differences between belief in what he termed “confined” conspiracy theories and what he aptly labeled “bespoke realities.”

As French pointed out, lots of people have suspicions or doubts about official reports of  phenomena like UFO sightings, or official explanations of events like the assassination of JFK, but those suspicions are limited to specific situations. As he says, that’s nothing new.

But in recent years I’ve encountered, in person and online, a phenomenon that is different from the belief or interest in any given conspiracy theory. People don’t just have strange or quirky ideas on confined subjects. They have entire worldviews rooted in a comprehensive network of misunderstandings and false beliefs.

And these aren’t what you’d call low-information voters. They’re some of the most politically engaged people I know. They consume news voraciously. They’re perpetually online. For them, politics isn’t just a hobby; in many ways, it’s a purpose.

What we are seeing these days is something different, and infinitely more troubling.

There is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, someone who lives in the real world but also has questions about the moon landing and, on the other, a person who believes the Covid vaccines are responsible for a vast number of American deaths and Jan. 6 was an inside job and the American elite is trying to replace the electorate with new immigrant voters and the 2020 election was rigged and Donald Trump is God’s choice to save America.

These are not individuals who simple believe in one or another conspiracy theory.  These are folks who’ve gone all the way down the rabbit hole. French adopts the term “bespoke reality”  from his friend Renée DiResta.  “Bespoke,” of course, is a word that we most often associate with tailors–usually British –who create clothing fashioned specifically for a given customer. The residents of French’s “bespoke realities” operate within a world created and maintained just for them, a world with “its own norms, media, trusted authorities and frameworks of facts.”

The essay took me back to Eli Pariser’s warning in his 2012  book, “The Filter Bubble.” Filter bubble was Pariser’s term for the informational environment produced by the algorithms that allow content to be personalized to each user–algorithms that bias or skew or limit the information an individual user sees on the internet. We all inhabit those information “bubbles” to a greater or lesser extent. As French wrote,

Combine vast choice with algorithmic sorting, and we now possess a remarkable ability to become arguably the most comprehensively, voluntarily and cooperatively misinformed generation of people ever to walk the earth. The terms “voluntarily” and “cooperatively” are key. We don’t live in North Korea, Russia or the People’s Republic of China. We’re drunk on freedom by comparison. We’re misinformed not because the government is systematically lying or suppressing the truth. We’re misinformed because we like the misinformation we receive and are eager for more.

The market is very, very happy to provide us with all the misinformation we like. Algorithms recognize our preferences and serve up the next video or article that echoes or amplifies the themes of the first story we clicked. Media outlets and politicians notice the online trends and serve up their own content that sometimes deliberately and sometimes mistakenly reinforces false narratives and constructs alternative realities.

Thoughtful folks can and do escape these bubbles, at least partially, by purposely accessing a wide variety of sources having different viewpoints, but confirmation bias is a strong element in most of our psyches.

As DiResta writes in her upcoming book, “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality,” “Bespoke realities are made for — and by — the individual.” Americans experience a “choose-your-own-adventure epistemology: Some news outlet somewhere has written the story you want to believe, some influencer is touting the diet you want to live by or demonizing the group you also hate.”

On the Internet, “you can always find evidence, real or imagined, to validate your priors.” You can also protect yourself from information contrary to your preferred worldview.

It isn’t difficult to identify the people who have chosen to occupy an alternate “reality;” you see them often in comments to Facebook posts, and even in occasional aggressive–if factually deficient– posts by trolls to this site.

The urgent political question is: how many Americans occupy a “bespoke reality” that is inconsistent with demonstrable empirical fact? And how many of them will go to the polls to vote their bespoke realities in November of 2024?

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The Stakes

It may not be 2024 yet, but here in Indiana,  Republican candidates for governor have already been blanketing the airwaves with introductory campaign spots. Someone named Doden tells viewers that he will be a champion of small town and rural “values,” identifies himself as the “grandson of a minister” and shows himself exiting a church; Mike Braun, who is leaving the U.S. Senate (where he failed to distinguish himself, to put it mildly) says he’ll “stop China” and make Hoosiers safe (safe from China?? He doesn’t identify the threat from which he’ll protect us, or explain why stopping China is the job of a governor.) Brad Chambers, who identifies as an “outsider,” also focuses on antagonism to China.

All of them–as well as the GOP gubernatorial contenders who aren’t on TV– are making a play for the GOP’s MAGA base and tying themselves tightly to Trump. (So is the likely GOP Senate candidate, odious culture warrior Jim Banks.)

Heather Cox Richardson, as usual, has described in detail just what that fidelity means. These Republican candidates, and those in other states who are lining up with Trump, are explicitly endorsing the agenda that Trump himself has been articulating.

The once-grand Republican Party has been captured by the right wing. It has lined up behind former president Donald Trump and his cronies, who have vowed to replace the nonpartisan civil service with loyalists and to weaponize the Department of Justice and the military against those they perceive as enemies. They have promised to incarcerate and deport millions of immigrants and children of immigrants, send federal troops into Democratic cities, ban Muslims, silence LGBTQ+ Americans, prosecute journalists, and end abortion across the country. They will put in place an autocracy in which a powerful leader and his chosen loyalists make the rules under which the rest of us must live.

Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?

I’ve now forgotten who said “When someone tells you who they are, believe them,” but I want to strenuously echo that sentiment.

Trump has been very clear about the kind of government he wants to install. Let me be equally clear about the sort of government I want.

I want a civil service filled with people whose loyalty is to the Constitution and Bill of Rights–not to any individual politician or any political party. I want a legal system dedicated to the pursuit of justice and constrained by the rule of law, a system populated with dispassionate, fair-minded lawyers who would refuse to engage in a frivolous pursuit of anyone’s political enemies. I definitely don’t want a military willing to intrude into issues of civilian governance, or a military that throws its (armed) power behind a particular politician or political party.

I am absolutely furious about the bigotry that prompted the Muslim ban that the Trumpers want to reinstate, the racism that clearly motivates the animus toward immigration and immigrants, and the homophobia that permeates Trumper rhetoric. 

And don’t get me started on the anti-woman motivations behind GOP efforts to ban abortion. (If they prevail, the most rabid culture warriors have already indicated their intent to come for birth control next. And I thought the Handmaid’s Tale was “out there” science fiction!!)

Republicans running for office in Indiana who have tied themselves to Donald Trump–and that’s most of them–have explicitly and enthusiastically signed onto the agenda that Richardson has accurately outlined. Those like Banks and Braun, who proudly point to  Trump’s endorsement of their candidacies, are telling voters exactly who they are and what sort of world-view will animate their activities if and when they are elected.

Even in very Red Indiana, data confirms that there are more people who want to retain democracy and our individual liberties than people who want to dismantle democracy and curtail our rights. The only question is: will they vote?

It has never been more important to Get Out The Vote.

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Now For Something Different

I spend a lot of time on this blog bemoaning the negatives–and there are certainly plenty of negatives to bemoan and warnings that really must be issued and heeded. But it is also the case that–along with the seeming avalanche of threats and reminders of our collective deficits, many good things are occurring.

I get a weekly newsletter titled “Good News for Humankind,” which helps me balance out all the Bad News for Humankind. (I think the actual title is Spark of Genius, and I don’t have a link–but I assume a Google search will lead to a subscription opportunity.)

The most recent newsletter reported the following items:

Nepal has now become the first country in South Asia to recognize a same-sex marriage,  after issuing a formal recognition of a marriage from 1997.

The U.S., Czech Republic, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Iceland, Kosovo and Norway all formally joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance. The Alliance was launched in 2017 by the U.K. and Canada. The new members have committed to not developing new unabated coal power plants and to phasing out existing unabated coal plants. I hadn’t previously encountered the term “unabated” in this context; according to Dr. Google, it means “the use of coal, oil and gas without substantial efforts to reduce the emissions produced throughout their life cycle.”

In other good news for the environment, a court of appeals in Brussels ordered Belgium to cut its planet-heating pollution by at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030. Evidently, as of 2021, Belgium had cut its emissions by a bare 24%. The court rejected government arguments that minimized the importance of the country’s efforts, arguing that Belgium’s impact on the climate crisis was limited by its small size.

More good news for the environment–and for drivers–comes from a very promising experiment in Detroit. Detroit became first city in the United States to install a wireless-charging roadway. The experiment will begin with the use of a Ford E-Transit fitted with a receiver to gather data; that is part of a five-year pilot project intended to perfect the technology “in real-world settings” and to study its potential for public transport applications. The report said that there are also plans to open the electric road system to the public within the next few years.

Other “good news” items:

Massachusetts became the fifth state  to make prison calls free.

“Ensuring that individuals in state and county prisons can keep in contact with their loved ones is key to enhancing rehabilitation, reducing recidivism, and improving community safety,” Governor Healey said in a written statement.

There are also positive stories from the Good News Network. A small sample of items having an environmental impact:

In the Bay Area of California, home of San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Clara County, and Silicon Valley a famous Pacific resident is heading home for the holidays—up newly-cleaned creeks to spawn.

Who could have thought that the cradle of 21st-century civilization, with its problems and advancements, would have space for wild river ecosystems capable of supporting salmon runs?

But here they are, reports KTVU, as large as 30 pounds, as long as 35 inches, running up the Guadalupe River Watershed by the hundreds.

Google may be defending against anti-trust accusations, but the company with a former “do no evil” motto is also doing good.

An advanced geothermal project funded and developed by Google has begun pumping carbon-free electricity onto the Nevada grid to power the company’s data centers there.

Geothermal energy was once confined in theory to areas of geothermal activity, but if one drills deep enough, there’s extreme heat from the planet’s core essentially everywhere to be harnessed to make steam and drive turbines to create carbon-free electricity 24 hours a day when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

For this reason, Google made an early bet on this enhanced geothermal technology, and partnered with the Utah-based Fervo Energy, which uses drilling techniques from the oil and gas industry to create a first-of-its-kind power plant in Nevada.

GNN reported that initial tests in July showed that the technology was working, in which the hypothesized 3.5 megawatts were indeed being delivered.

When I am particularly depressed by political turmoil and climate change, I try to remember that there are thousands of people around the globe who are working to understand and hopefully solve our most pressing problems. We owe them not only our gratitude, but our own efforts to improve our political and natural environment–beginning with our votes for sane lawmakers next November.

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