Rokita Again

I have wasted far too many pixels over the years on Todd Rokita, Indiana’s pathetic Attorney General. (I really should put quotation marks around “Attorney General,” because Rokita has shown scant interest in the actual job, preferring performative outreach to MAGA partisans.) But once again, he has done something I can’t simply ignore.

Rokita has filed suit against members of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission for “violating his First Amendment rights to free speech.” And how, you might ask, has the Disciplinary Commission done this? Evidently, by investigating the multiple disciplinary grievances filed against him–grievances that he lists in his complaint, and that the Commission has a duty to investigate. (He also included a grievance initiated by the Commission itself, an investigation into whether Rokita–in a very Trumpy move–had directed his staff to review the voting records and political-donation histories of people who had filed grievances against him.)

Rokita’s filing also revealed that Hoosier taxpayers have paid $491,508 to the private attorneys he has employed to defend against these charges.

I’ve been a First Amendment purist for a long time, but I was unaware that the First Amendment protects officials against inquiries into charges of ethical misconduct. John Krull–who, like yours truly, was once an Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU–has also weighed in on the lawsuit, concluding that complaint “makes clear what his real grievance is. The commission hurt his feelings by examining his most questionable actions.” Krull writes that

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has genuine gifts.

 He is spectacularly good at wasting time, squandering taxpayers’ money, starting silly fights and wallowing in self-pity.

On the negative side, though, he has no gift at all for exercising common sense. The poor fellow doesn’t seem to have the wisdom God gave a pet rock.

Krull points out that, by filing the suit, Rokita has publicized the significant number of times his fellow lawyers have filed complaints about his conduct, noting that “Our attorney general has been accused of unprofessional and unethical conduct almost as often as Al Capone was.” Krull also notes that Rokita has used his office to pursue complaints that are entirely personal, including an argument over the purchase of a jet ski. (Last time I looked, the position of Attorney General does not require use of jet skis…)

A lawyer friend of mine who is equally bemused by this recent, additional evidence of Rokita’s cluelessness, supplied me with case law suggesting that Rokita’s suit faces long odds–cases that strongly suggest that suing  the Commission is poor strategy–not to mention the blatant impropriety of using our tax dollars to sue the Commission. As he noted, Rokita should be doing that “on his own dime and on his own time.”

Here are a few quotes from the cases my friend supplied.

In the Matter of M. Daniel Friedland, the Court wrote ”

The evidence in this case also demonstrates that Respondent engaged in a pattern of litigation directed toward intimidating and influencing public officials and adverse witnesses. He attempted to use the lawsuit as a weapon against those who administered and prosecuted grievances against him. His motivation is evident from the fact that he directed this litigation at the individuals involved in the grievance process, only tangentially attacking the merits of the issues to be determined through this process. The Respondent wanted to punish the persons who filed grievances, and intimidate the persons who administered the process.

In In Re Terry,

After members of the Ripley County bar initiated a request for investigation of respondent by the Disciplinary Commission, respondent and his agents began a massive publicity campaign to abort the disciplinary proceedings. Petitions were prepared in support of respondent. On February 23, 1974, respondent, in response to a question from the pulpit during a worship service, stated that he had extra petitions in his car for anyone wishing to distribute them. Respondent knew, or should have known, that requests for disciplinary action are not terminated at the outset by publicity campaigns. Disciplinary proceedings will be terminated after initial investigation only if no substantial question of misconduct exists.

And in IN RE: Thomas M. Dixon the Court was directly on point, writing that the “First Amendment protects the societal interest of enabling robust public discourse on issues of public concern, and its protections are therefore necessarily very broad. However, this interest must be balanced against the societal interest in the public’s confidence in an impartial adjudicatory process, which unwarranted public accusations by an attorney against a judicial officer do nothing but weaken and erode.”

A competent lawyer would have researched these (and several similar) precedents before bringing a case that only serves to highlight his unfitness for public office.

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Our Lost Civility

Given the amount of damage Trump has done to American government, not to mention the incredible and growing extent of his corruption, the gobsmacking lack of civility he has ushered in may seem irrelevant or unimportant.

It isn’t.

I think Miss Manners got it right when she defended civility as  a system of behavior that enables people to resolve conflicts and live together–outcomes much harder to achieve when people are trading insults and expressing aggressive hostility. Civil discourse provides us with a structure within which we can disagree more or less productively–it imposes shared rules of social conduct that keep daily irritations from turning into disagreements that leave deep psychic wounds and/or necessitate legal intervention or government regulation.

Trump has yet to exhibit even basic civility–not to mention dignity or humankindness–and his (mis)behavior has been seen by far too many people as permission for the expression of truly hateful and vicious insults and attacks. As the Bulwark recently noted, his mean-spiritedness has accelerated as his approval ratings have collapsed, and as Democratic candidates have made inroads into Red territories.

As an example, the Bulwark quoted Trump’s recent diatribe against South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews, in which he leaned in to the GOP’s current fixation with transgender Americans.

Annie “Trannie” Andrews is running against our wonderful Darline Graham for the Senate in South Carolina. . . . Darline is a High Quality person, maybe the Highest, and Annie Trannie is not, in particular, as it pertains to representing the Values of the Great People of South Carolina—She is in favor of Transgender for Everyone, Open Borders, Defunding the Police, High Taxes, a Weak Military, and will absolutely fight to take your guns away—In other words, she is against our Great Second Amendment! Trannie is not for South Carolina, and South Carolina must show, in the upcoming Election, that it is not for her. VOTE FOR DARLINE GRAHAM—SHE HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT, AND WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Republican bigotry against transgender folks has taken center stage as the party has lost any substantive policy accomplishments to which its candidates can point. The Bulward noted that the tactic is revolting, and then focused on what we have lost in an era it correctly labeled as “uncivilized.”

In a civilized era, it would be shocking to see it coming from a president of the United States. But we do not live in a civilized era. In a non-cowardly era, the slur would be denounced by Republicans as well as Democrats. But we do not live in a non-cowardly era. In a better era, Andrews’s Republican opponent, Sen. Darline Graham, would step up to criticize a supporter for using the term. But we do not live in a better era.

That paragraph reminded me of John McCain’s response to a woman who claimed that Barack Obama was an Arab who “cohorts with domestic terrorists.” McCain responded “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign’s all about.”

It is absolutely impossible to imagine Donald Trump saying anything that gracious. And as a result of his constant schoolyard insults and belligerent childish rhetoric, we live in an increasingly angry and dangerous society, where newspapers report on things like an argument about Trump in an Ohio dog park that led two men to draw guns.

Pundits frequently talk about the erosion of the democratic and social norms that have operated as guardrails to the conduct of government. Civility is one of those very important norms, and its loss has led to the embarrassing exchanges we increasingly see between elected officials and those they disdain. The recent treatment of prosecutor Jack Smith– in which Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt called Smith a “dirtbag” (before Schmitt’s ignominious face-plant)– is just one example.

Serious people don’t stoop to name-calling. There’s a reason ad hominem attacks have long been considered evidence that the person levelling such attacks has no evidence or other substantive response to offer.

As we head into the midterms, one of the bright spots for me is the quality of numerous Democratic candidates, who have largely refused to respond to nastiness in kind. If those civilized folks prevail, they’ll have their work cut out for them. But one thing they can do almost immediately is model civil and adult behavior for a country that is hungry for it.

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Vote Out The Facilitators!

Here in Indiana–and in a number of other states–early voting has started. Given the likelihood of Trumpian efforts to suppress, rig and lie about the upcoming election, it’s important that everyone who can cast an early ballot (preferably in person) do so.

Granted, Donald Trump is not on the ballot. But as a recent essay in the Contrarian reminded readers, people who are on our ballots are equally culpable for the multiple woes we face. Republican incumbents running for re-election to the House and Senate have abdicated their constitutional powers, and shirked their constitutional duties.

As the Contrarian put it:

As Democrats make their final pitches to voters, they will no doubt emphasize that House and Senate Republicans are wholly responsible for Trump’s inane tariffs, Iran war, huge deficits, chaos-generation (e.g. ICE wreaking havoc with local economies, incompetent financial advisers spooking the markets), and self-indulgent graft (building monuments to himself while ordinary voters cannot pay the bills). They could have taken back tariff authority. They could have cut off authorization and funding for the war. They could have reined in ICE to, among other things, protect hard-hit industries rocked by loss of workers (e.g. construction, agriculture, hospitality, tourism). They could have refused to confirm unfit Cabinet secretaries and a weak Federal Reserve chairman. And, most of all, they could have rejected the Big, Ugly bill which took away SNAP benefits and healthcare coverage, doled out trillions to the ultra-rich, and sent the deficit soaring.

Republicans did none of those things, and now they will have to face the voters with an economy that cannot be blamed on anyone but them and their addled president. And if they now dread Trump coming to their district/state or appearing in ads paid for by the taxpayers (another egregious affront), that’s simply political karma.

A (slight) majority of We the Voters made a huge mistake in 2024 by placing the House and Senate in the hands of Republicans who were cowardly (or worse, MAGA zealots). We elected officials who have proved unwilling to do the work required by their job descriptions and oaths of office. We need to begin rectifying that mistake this November.

As important as it is to ensure that Democrats gain control of the currently non-functioning House and Senate, we need to recognize that America’s current woes aren’t solely attributable to the pathetic crew that was elevated to federal office.

Voters make an enormous mistake if they discount the importance of state and local elections. Indiana is a poster child for the harms that result from non-competitive elections. Our very Red state has been gerrymandered to insulate most candidates of the GOP from actual challenge, and the state’s embarrassingly low turnout is a consequence of the perception that, in most cases, there’s no real contest.

The result–as most Hoosiers know–is a retrograde state legislature consumed with culture-war issues that are either irrelevant or harmful to citizens’ daily lives, and state officeholders who are an incompetent and embarrassing mix of MAGA zealots and Christian nationalists. (I have often complained that rural Indiana folks would elect a rutabaga if it had an R next to its name, but really, in some cases, we’d be better off with the rutabaga…)

Until and unless Hoosiers find a way to escape the GOP’s stranglehold on the state’s redistricting, we will continue to be a backwater, lacking competent governance and lagging in multiple quality of life measures.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the emergence of the new Lincoln Party will, over time, inject needed competition into Indiana’s moribund elections, but that won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, every Hoosier who cares about the world we will leave our children and grandchildren needs to impress upon family, friends and neighbors the extreme importance of this year’s elections at all levels–federal, state and local.

We need to replace the Congress-critters who have meekly succumbed to Trumpism–who have facilitated the massive incompetence and corruption by confirming the incompetent grifters and loons who occupy the cabinet, and by ignoring their constitutional oversight duties. We need to replace the state-level clones who are currently running for re-election, and defeat the newcomers who are likely to emulate them. And we need to continue those efforts in 2028 and beyond.

We the People need to get off our dierriers and vote–massively, and preferably early–if we are going to save the American Idea.

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Those “Superior” Private Schools

Americans’ deep-seated anti-government biases explain a lot of defective policy positions. (I’ve previously written about the resistance to a national health system, despite the fact that we have the world’s most expensive and least comprehensive health care, and despite the fact that government already pays over 70% of those inflated costs.) Anti-government prejudice and a belief that the private sector is always more efficient also explains efforts to privatize various government functions –including schools.

I’ve done a fair amount of research on privatization, the results of which haven’t been pretty, but as regular readers of this blog are aware, evidence–even probative, credible evidence– rarely sways public opinion. Stories and anecdotes are more likely to make an impression than data amassed with academic rigor, a reality that drives us academic types up the wall.

A regular reader recently shared such a story–one that will probably have a greater impact than the copious research debunking defenses of America’s proliferating voucher systems.

Reporters for Pro Publica tested the processes for establishing private schools in three states. As they explained, their prior reporting had uncovered how easy it was for people —even people with questionable backgrounds — to found private schools (and to locate them in barns, strip malls and similar places.) That reporting led them to an experiment: could they open a school? After all, as they wrote,

We have no business running a private school.

We’re reporters, not teachers. That doesn’t matter. Inexperience has hardly been a barrier for those who want to start their own schools, as we have reported this year. And it didn’t stop us, either.

Over the last few months, to test the process, reporters from ProPublica partnered with local journalists in three states to establish private schools. None required much effort.

In Arkansas, all it took was a few clicks on the Arkansas secretary of state website, $45 and an American flag to form a bona fide private school with the Arkansas Times.

They established a school in West Virginia by filing the new school’s “name and location with authorities on a piece of notebook paper, then exchanging a few emails.” In North Carolina, they filed an online notice of intent to open a private school in a brewery in Durham.

We used our names and news organization email addresses, following each state’s rules for starting private or microschools, a type of private school intended for just a few students. Experience running a school wasn’t needed. No one from any of the states asked us about our backgrounds or qualifications, though West Virginia did ask for proof of a high school diploma. No one questioned what we plan to teach or how we would measure whether students are learning.

Despite those arguably significant omissions, they were immediately able to enroll students in two of those states,  and Arkansas sent information about how their school could accept public money through the state’s voucher system. As the reporters discovered, Arkansas’ Department of Education doesn’t bother to regulate private schools once they’ve been opened, and didn’t inspect the Arkansas Times newsroom, the location they’d identified for the school. Insofar as they were able to determine, no one checked their backgrounds.

When Arkansas adopted its voucher plan in 2023 the state had fewer than 100 private schools. By the fourth year of its “Education Freedom Accounts” voucher program, the state had more than 220.  Arkansas also had 143 microschools, a different category, also approved to accept tax dollars.

The story was much the same in West Virginia, where dozens of new private and microschools have been established in recent years to take advantage of the roughly $5,400 the state’s “Hope Scholarship” offers each student. In West Virginia, while brick and mortar schools must pass a safety test,  there is absolutely no state oversight of the microschools.

North Carolina was somewhat better: in order to join the 169+ other new private schools that have opened in North Carolina since the expansions of the state’s publicly funded voucher program, they would have to undergo criminal background checks.

There’s much more, and it’s all illuminating. I encourage you to click through and read the full descriptions of the “processes” involved. I also encourage you to consider the physical and educational dangers to students enrolled in these private “academies,” and the millions of tax dollars being siphoned from the nation’s “government” schools to pay for their attendance.

Maybe they’ll learn to spell “scam.”

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An Uncivil Conclusion

Well, this is sort of disquieting. A commitment to civility requires citizens to conduct public debates in a manner that avoids name-calling–that we respond to what we perceive to be wrongheaded or inaccurate positions with evidence and facts. Nice people don’t call the intellect of their opponents into question. (Such name-calling is a tactic our mentally-ill President routinely employs, and no sentient American wants to emulate that embarrassing buffoon.)

My belief in the importance of civil debate was the reason I was originally reluctant to share a recent scholarly paper by Samuel L. Perry, in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, even though its findings explain a lot (and confirm some of my least nice suspicions). But the study was clearly well designed, consistent with other research I’ve seen, and explanatory, so I decided to overcome my hesitation in describing it.

Perry’s study explored the relationship between cognitive ability (in other words, intelligence) and Christian nationalist beliefs.  Here’s the abstract:

Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalist beliefs tend to be characterized by lower education and substantial knowledge deficits across multiple domains. Building on research connecting lower cognitive ability to religious fundamentalism and reactionary political views, I theorize cognitive ability as an important factor influencing Americans’ adherence to Christian nationalism. Analyses of multiple waves of the General Social Survey reveal that cognitive ability (measured with the wordsum vocabulary exercise) is significantly, negatively associated with believing that being a Christian is important to being “truly American” and favoring mandatory Christian prayers and Bible-reading in public schools. These associations persist after controlling for education and various religious, political, and demographic characteristics. Interactions reveal these associations hold across survey waves and subgroups, disappearing only among the least educated Americans. Findings affirm that Christian nationalism appeals to Americans with lower verbal intelligence, suggesting an underlying role of differential cognitive resources not reducible to educational disparities.

The study has provoked considerable interest among scholars of various disciplines.

An article in PsyPost –a subscription service that covers psychology and neuroscience–begins by reminding readers of the definition of Christian nationalism:– the belief that the United States was founded by conservative Christians and that the government should therefore institutionalize Christian dominance in American society. Christian nationalists merge Christian religious identity with civic belonging. (In other words, people like Micah Beckwith and Todd Rokita believe that only White Christians are really Americans.)

The PsyPost article noted that prior research is consistent with the recent study. Former research has repeatedly found that, as a group, Americans who adhere to Christian nationalist beliefs are less educated, and that people who subscribe to Christian nationalist views (even after accounting for the level of education) “exhibit significant knowledge gaps across a variety of different domains.”

For example, people who strongly endorse the ideology tend to score poorly on tests about “American history or scientific knowledge,” Perry noted. “They are also more likely to hold factually incorrect beliefs about vaccines,” he said, referencing a 2021 study he co-authored, which was covered by PsyPost. “And related to that last point, they are also more likely to affirm ridiculous conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, January 6th, or QAnon.”

Scholars have previously attributed these knowledge deficits to a combination of motivated reasoning and siloed information sources. As the author of the new study noted, both of those theories undoubtedly contribute. But his research uncovers evidence of a “gap in cognitive resources, one that can’t be explained solely by educational background or other relevant factors.”

This particular research study focused on the question whether and to what extent general cognitive ability should be seen to play a role in explaining Christian nationalist beliefs.

Cognitive ability refers to a person’s capacity to learn, apply new information, and engage in the complex reasoning required for critical thinking. A study covered by PsyPost in 2017 provides evidence that an intuitive thinking style tends to predict higher religious belief, while lower cognitive ability predicts higher social conservatism.

The new study built on prior research documenting an association between lower cognitive ability and religious fundamentalism, political authoritarianism, and a variety of right-wing views.

If we assume the accuracy of the study’s conclusions, we’re faced with a significant problem. How do we argue with people who simply lack the mental bandwidth to recognize their errors, no matter how cogently (and gently) the evidence of those errors is presented?

Commenters to this site frequently share their belief that hard-core MAGA/Christian nationalist folks are a lost cause, that they are simply unpersuadable. Perry’s study would seem to confirm that impression.

At the very least, sensible voters must remove them from positions of authority.

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