Category Archives: Random Blogging

Chickens and Eggs

Chris Mooney has written several books about science–or more accurately, the rejection of science by conservative Republicans. His most recent book is The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality.

While Mooney has an obvious political perspective, his analysis of the role of media–and specifically, Fox News, is interesting.

Mooney reviews a number of peer-reviewed studies looking at the connection between political misinformation and media preferences–public information surveys that ask citizens about their beliefs on factual issues and their media habits. It won’t come as a revelation that people who depend exclusively or primarily on Fox News are far and away the most misinformed. The more interesting question, however, is whether Fox creates a particular mind-set, or whether people with that mind-set seek out Fox and similar sources.

Is Fox the chicken or the egg?

Mooney cites a 1957 seminal book by Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. That book predicted that people who are highly committed to a belief would try to avoid encountering claims that challenge that belief. Rather, they would seek out “information” that confirmed their preconceptions.

This was well before the internet facilitated the construction of such information “bubbles.”

Festinger called his prediction theory “selective exposure.” Today, we more often refer to it as “self-selection.”

A recent meta-analysis of 67 studies by a University of Alabama psychologist found that people overall were nearly twice as likely to “consume ideologically congenial information than to consume ideologically inconvenient information”–and that the most “highly committed” people were far more likely to do so.

According to the research, people most likely to be among this “highly committed” category are right-wing authoritarian personalities.

So while we do have examples that Fox News “makes shit up”–a practice that distinguishes the network from networks like MSNBC that “spin” facts to favor a political perspective but generally refrain from manufacturing them–the chicken and egg question remains.

Are people who get all their information from Fox being indoctrinated, or do they watch Fox because they are looking for confirmation of their pre-existing ideological commitments?

Of course, no matter what the answer to that question, there’s another: if Fox–and Rush, and Drudge, etc.–didn’t exist, would America still be so polarized? Or did our polarization lead to the creation of Fox, Drudge, et al?

Chicken? Egg? I report–you decide! (Sorry–couldn’t resist!)

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Allen and Joe

After he called members of Congress’ Progressive Caucus “Communists,” several commentators compared Congressman Allen West to Joe McCarthy.

It’s a bad comparison.

McCarthy’s charges were dishonest at best, paranoid at worst, and he did a lot of damage to a lot of of people and to the country as a whole. But give him credit for one thing–he did know what a communist was.

West, on the other hand, is a loon and an embarrassment even by the standards of today’s Tea Party GOP. (Google him if you are unfamiliar with his delusional worldview.) I doubt he could define “communist” if his life depended on it. His latest paranoid rant is worth mentioning only because it is a slightly exaggerated example of a much more common–and worrisome–aspect of what passes for political discourse these days.

Increasingly, Americans use words as epithets, rather than to communicate ideas. Terms like “liberal” “evangelical” “socialist” “fascist” and the like are thrown around by people who clearly have no idea what those labels mean. The result is that we no longer have arguments between people who hold different points of view, we have tantrums. As a colleague of mine noted a few months ago, after one  disheartening episode of political pique, when a serious legislator suggests a course of action, he won’t be countered with reasons why that proposal is flawed, but with the functional equivalent of “you’re a poopy-head!”

In a sane world, people like Allen West would be medicated, not elected to Congress.

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I Just Don’t Understand

There are a lot of positions conservatives take that I understand, although I disagree with them. There are sincere anti-abortion people who believe life begins at conception, for example. Belief in “fiscal responsibility” leads many people to draw (bad) analogies to household budgets and disputes over what sorts of behaviors actually are fiscally responsible.

I even understand–I think–where less intellectually respectable positions come from. The desire to roll back women’s rights to birth control, equal pay and similar markers of equality, the hysterical response to same-sex marriage (or even equal civil rights) for GLBT folks, the punitive attitudes toward immigrants and similar attitudes are pretty clearly part and parcel of a profound unease with contemporary realities, and a desire to return to a (largely imaginary) past.

But what in the world motivates opposition to mass transit?

A couple of years ago, Chris Christie–the Republican Governor of New Jersey–killed one of the most important transit projects in the country: a tunnel that would have linked his state to Manhattan and relieved the congestion that currently chokes both. At the time, he claimed his reasons were financial–that New Jersey’s share of the costs were simply too high.

Yesterday, it turned out he was lying.  Not mistaken, not misinformed. Lying.

I hope everyone reading this will click through and read the whole report. This is absolutely bizarre behavior, but what makes it worse is a passing reference in the article to the fact that opposition to mass transit has become part of the conservative “creed.”

Why in the world would someone have a philosophical opposition to transit? I certainly understand believing that a particular project is not well thought-out, or too expensive or otherwise flawed, but opposition to all mass transit? To suggest such a belief sounds paranoid.

The tunnel Christie killed is desperately needed, and had been planned for many years. It would have relieved congestion and helped the environment (okay, I realize that conservatives also reject science and the fact of climate change, but still). If built on schedule, it would also have created jobs at a time when those jobs were desperately needed.

I thought Christie was stupid and short-sighted for pulling the plug over up-front costs that would be recouped (many times over) over the long-term. But stupid and short-sighted are explicable; flat-out lying in order to justify an otherwise inexplicable decision is beyond my ability to understand.

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Loss of Trust

In 2009, I wrote a book titled Distrust, American Style in which I argued that a loss of trust in our social institutions–and especially in our government–has had significant negative consequences for our ability to function as a productive society.

Things haven’t improved since 2009. If anything, our levels of distrust have continued to grow, and for good reason.

A couple of days ago, major news outlets reported the emergence of a legal memorandum generated during the George W. Bush Administration. There was evidence that the Administration had attempted to destroy all copies, for obvious reasons: the memorandum opined that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques being employed and defended by the Bush Administration were war crimes. Whether one agrees with that assessment or with the more accommodating analysis provided by John Yoo, it is clear that the White House was aware that their actions raised significant legal and constitutional issues, and that it was prepared to ignore both those issues and the rule of law.

It would be comforting to conclude that such actions were confined to one rogue Administration, or at least to the federal level, but evidence suggests otherwise; in fact, there has been a rash of disclosures of local-level prosecutorial misconduct recently.  In Illinois, a recent investigation of the criminal justice system uncovered evidence that–among other improprieties–prosecutors had failed to turn over documents in their possession proving that a man convicted of double murder in 1992 could not possibly have committed the crime he was accused of — because he was in police custody at the time. (But the police managed to get him to sign a confession. It is estimated that some 25% of criminal confessions are extracted from people who are actually innocent of the crime to which they confess–another rather disturbing bit of data.)

Add to such unsettling disclosures the constant drum-beat reporting corporate misdeeds, and the pervasive belief that wealthy individuals are able to “game the system” in their favor–able to buy favorable tax treatment, able to escape regulation, able to evade the consequences of predatory behaviors, able to elect public officials that will do their bidding–and you get a level of cynicism that undermines social cohesiveness and our ability to come together to address the issues that face us.

When people no longer trust our governing institutions, it is easy to sell them conspiracy theories. It is easy to turn groups against each other. (Want evidence? Look at the recent disclosures about the tactics employed by the National Organization for Marriage!)

We can’t rebuild trust by wishing it back. It will take a national effort to insure that our institutions are trustworthy–beginning with government. Because if we don’t trust our common institutions–government, yes, but also the church, major league sports, businesses and financial institutions, none of which have exactly covered themselves with glory lately–we certainly aren’t going to trust each other.

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Doubling Down

The Chair of the National Republican Party pooh-poohs the notion that his party is waging a war on women–next, he says, the Democrats will accuse the GOP of a war on caterpillars. How silly, how over-the-top! Just another one of those politically-motivated charges that are thrown around during a campaign season.

At virtually the same time Priebus (or whatever his name is) was comparing women to caterpillars (okay–maybe that wasn’t his intent), Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (yes, that Scott Walker) was signing a new law –passed on a straight party-line vote–repealing his state’s 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

The Equal Pay Enforcement Act  made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court, by allowing plaintiffs to bring suit in state courts. Without it, federal courts are the only proper venue for such complaints. State courts, as lawyers all know, are less costly and more accessible, and typically resolve cases more quickly.

This little skirmish is typical of the tactics being used to circumscribe women’s rights. There was no outright reversal of a right–just a measure making it much more difficult to assert that right. This is the same approach being used by most of the anti-abortion measures that have sprouted like dandelions since the 2010 elections swept Republicans into office: the Supreme Court may say they can’t impose an outright ban, but they can bury clinics in a blizzard of medically unnecessary regulations that make it impossible to operate. They can “protect” poor women who clearly don’t know what they want by enacting “informed consent” provisions more burdensome than those required for major, life-threatening surgeries.

Contraception? Well, God’s Own Party has tried to permit your employer to decide whether your insurance should cover birth control, and the party has made it very clear that given the power, it would get rid of Planned Parenthood.

No war?

The troops are marching down the Trans-vaginal Highway as we speak…..