Last year and in 2016, the news cycle was a constant stream of misinformation, half-truths, spin, negligent omissions, and a clusterf*ck of political hacks throwing shit wherever they could just to see what would stick.
But recently I found a few tools to help me wander with a bit more confidence through our national swamp of news. I've only used them for a few hours so no guarantees. I can only give my first impressions, and they are good:
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Ground News: A website and app that shows how much a story is reported via sources on a left-right spectrum. It has a very nice blindspot feature (most of which is unfortunately behind a pay-wall) which highlights stories reported from mostly left and mostly right sources--so you can see what the other side is reading and probably outraged about that day.
From their "about" page:
Looking to break free from your echo chamber?
We’ve already helped over 250,000 escape theirs and see the news from a different perspective. Ground News was created to be a news destination for everyone, regardless of political ideology.
I hope Ground News is as good as it appears to be. If so, I may even subscribe just for the blindspot feature. You may quibble with their left/right/center attribution to various news outlets, but at a glance, it's not too bad. Unless you think the WaPo is a rightwing rag, then I don't know how to help you.
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Influence Watch: founded in 2016 by Capital Research Center (which kind of explicitly leans right), pretty much gives the downlow on any person or group that has any significant connection to American politics. As my biases tend to lean right and I frequent a lot of right-leaning sites, I am very surprised I've never heard of this site.
What the hell, rightwing media? This site is amazing, why aren't you linking it?
So I thought maybe Influence Watch was too one-sided for even the rightwing, but no, it seems to be a refreshingly even-handed wiki of sorts about major political players and journalists. I've only been perusing the site for a couple hours, but I have yet to spot any red-flags or obvious lies, spin, etc.
From their "about" page:
Capital Research Center conceived of this project after identifying a need for more fact-based, accurate descriptions of all of the various influencers of public policy issues. Many so-called “watchdog” groups are instead opponents of the outlets they are watching. Armed with 30-years of research and data on advocacy organizations, foundations, and donors, CRC utilizes a universe of well-trained contributors to help build the individual and organizational profiles that will populate the website.
CRC has a perspective on the public policy process as well, but this resource is more important than that. We let the information speak for itself—information that frequently is not cited in reports about these individuals and organizations.
InfluenceWatch strives to be comprehensive, and profiles are frequently updated and written in a manner that’s accurate and measured. InfluenceWatch brings unprecedented transparency to the funding, motives, and interconnections of the entities profiled.
I've bookmarked both sites and plan to use them frequently. After the last 4+ years of garbage news, these recent discoveries give much needed relief and hope. More of this please.
Excuse me, I'm trying to find the video of Trump inciting the riots.
While I don't doubt Trump is capable of such, and wouldn't be surprised if he did in fact start the riot with a poor choice of words, I am having trouble finding the video of him using language slightly more specific than platitudinous schlock, and at least half as damning as what many, many antifa sympathizers (a lot of which hold office) had to say this past summer.
The president should be held to a higher standard. And Trump falls far short daily when it comes to word-choice and rhetoric. No "buts" here, except this one: every citizen deserves the same due process. Incitement is one of few asterisks to the first amendment, and proving it requires (or should require) a lot more than a mob.
All I could find so far was a short CNN clip where the worst thing I found Trump saying was to "show strength and be strong" which was preceded by images of the rioting--labelled an insurrection--and followed by snarky narration of judgment damning Trump--objective reporting there, top marks.
I've never been 100% libertarian (whatever that is), but I have always been for free speech, free association, freedom of thought--basically the almost completely unrestricted right of a person to do and think as they see fit, so long as it doesn't physically harm or physically threaten another.
But I am sick of the rioting, the violence, the ugliness, the lies, the misinformation, the nastiness, and the persistence of those things. And I suspect, a vast number of Americans are as well.
At what point does the right to protest--which now seems to invariably include rioting, violence and destruction of property--stop outweighing property rights, order, and a basic sense of I'm-pretty-sure-I-won't-get-shot-or-beaten-because-I-may-be-perceived-as-belonging-to-the-outgroup today?
I don't know, but I think at some point it does, and we're close to it, if not way past it.
I support protests, but I am against rioting. To state the obvious, which is feels less obvious today: Protesting is a Right; Rioting is a Crime.
When those two things become impossible to differentiate, we will lose the right to protest. Or we may gain a right to crime. Neither is appealing, and something needs to be done, soon.
Is it fair to paint with a broad brush? Is it fair to judge the many based on a few bad apples? No. But what is fair and what is real are two different things.
We are often judged by our biggest mistakes, our worst moments, our few shortcomings, our biggest and loudest idiots.
The media, by their nature, broadcasts, criticizes, and judges the loud idiots and all who could conceivably be associated with (fairly or not) said idiot. This process is a very vivid, controversial, and sensational method of catching eyeballs, and thus, ad revenue.
Unfortunately, it is a pretty shit way to foster civil political discourse, let alone political tolerance.
But that's what we are now, and that is especially what the left is now. They couldn't swallow President Trump's bait fast enough. So four of the biggest idiot Democrats now pretty much speak for the left in this country. That's on them.
And if you happen to be a lefty who disagrees with them, you don't count (and they applaud this).
It's not over yet, and I missed bits and pieces, but I've seen enough.
If one wants candid answers to important and pressing questions, a televised congressional hearing is one of the last places you'll find them.
Although part of it was quite entertaining, if regrettable, but only further contributes to the idea congress is a cesspool and their televised events little more than clown shows.
The only new thing I learned, was that Peter Strzok does not appear to be all that intelligent. That and his somewhat recently publicized texts, doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the FBI, let alone the town in which all this is taking place.
In summary, when it came to the substantive issues discussed, all interrogative progress was expectedly stalled when Strzok and his fellow Democrats began arguing over the definition of bias, and concern trolling about conflating personal political views with bias.
In other news, I'm pretty sure I just heard Shep Smith say, very matter-of-factly, as if he were Walter fucking Cronkite, that Russia is in fact our enemy and they did tamper with our democracy.
They probably did tamper, but he said it as if Russians infiltrated every other polling station and falsified the outcomes, and we're on the verge of war with those dirty bastards. Where's my fainting couch? Get a grip, Shep.
Lefty bubbles. Insulated warm, fuzzy cocoons. Walled gardens. Epistemic closure beguiled by positive feedback loops. The pleasant echos lulled half a country and its "elite" into a false sense of authority.
And then it all came tumbling down. Crashing. I think it was a surprise for nearly everyone. Good for some, bad for others.
I'm not sure I have much to say given what's already been said. So what follows is a roundup of reactions to the election, a bit of the more poignant commentary, and my thoughts on each. Some of which I don't quite understand, but am trying to. Some of it I agree with wholeheartedly and think needs a bit more sunlight, and then some I disagree with.
When bubbles burst, it's usually a shock to those inside. Their thoughts and behavior during the aftermath can be illuminating.
The Left
I'll start with J. D. Vance at the NYT, who like so many others after the election, acknowledge the bubbles they've been living in:
Failed political prognostication is hardly a grievous sin, but it raises difficult questions about the other bubbles I live in. Few would accuse me of lacking compassion for the Trump voter, but the same can hardly be said for many other coastal
elites.
Meanwhile, our country has other groups deserving of compassion. Shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory became clear, a black friend told me that his kid brother had been subjected to racial taunts at school. I wonder now whether I’m empathetic enough to my friend and his family, and I worry whether those who cast their ballots for Mr. Trump have much understanding for why so many fear a
Trump presidency. The benefits and prejudices of a life lived within a bubble are hardly limited to urban progressive professionals.
You will see this narrative over and over. "Out of touch," "living in a bubble," "we have some reflecting to do," but also the usually subtle implication that the racists have taken over, and super-racist Nazi America is but a shoe drop away.
How do they know? Because Trump once said he wants to ban Muslim immigration. Trump then walked back that stance. Also something about building a wall. I'll admit Trump is brash and far from eloquent, but wanting tighter, more secure immigration and the occasional verbalization of stereotypes does not a Hitler make. And of course, the only kind of person willing to vote for that kind of a man, is a racist.
But people are scared now apparently. I get that for some, relatively very few, discrimination is a real and ugly thing they have to deal with and I want to help them. But for most in modern America? Call me skeptical, but I'm going to have to ask for proof.
Still, for a lot of people, this election is proof enough for them. From Reddit:
click image to enlarge
"I'm a Muslim living in the States. Trump doesn't scare me as much as his supporters do."
"I'm Jewish and I'm right there with you in fearing his supporters..."
Am I in my own bubble? I've never personally witnessed racial or political violence, or threats thereof. Such reports I see are from the same news sources (mostly) "coastal elites" use. I don't see large-scale racial violence or discrimination happening, or even medium-scale. It's generally the occasional something-bad-happened-to-one-person story. Like police going too far, but even then it's not always so clear.
Are they afraid, like we're living in Europe, or the third world hellholes many leftists fetishize?
I want to say I did some looking around for this fear, but no. Just skimming the various newzy and social sites it became abundantly clear. Trump really is the next Hitler to them. The following images are screenshots I took in the hours following the election results:
There was even a "homophobia" in there! Despite Trump being the first Republican presidential nominee to embrace marriage equality, and prominently supported by Peter Thiel. Fucking come on, the Republicans are, and will continue to get, on board the LGBTQ train--so long as it's compatible with individual and religious liberty.
No matter, frequently fallible Paul Krugman will set things straight:
What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous. ...
There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy.
He says he truly didn't understand the country, then in the very next paragraph, half a day after the election, he now claims to know: and its name is backwardness. Jesus Christ; and they wonder why half of America collectively gave them the fucking finger. Arrogant condescending pricks, the whole lot of them.
Might as well get it all out. What insulting buzzwords are America you say?
Way to be civil. Want some grace from the winners? Maybe try not spitting on them.
Trump wasn't my preferred candidate, but the racist labeling only made me want to support him more. Why? It was unfair. If he said the N-word in the last several years, and/or displayed any other overtly racist behavior I would be calling him that myself. But now, in many circles, merely opposing lax immigration is 100% straight-up racist.
But it doesn't even matter. If he's a scumbag then he's a scumbag. What matters is what he'll do as president. What policies he'll bring. What judges he'll appoint. Scumbagerry doesn't translate well into policy, although there are exceptions.
Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and a Republican congress didn't overturn Roe v. Wade. There was some pushback on gay marriage, but look where we are now. We're even legalizing drugs!
After all the hysterics, I feel it's time to Voxplain a thing or two.
Oh my. Vox can't even keep a cool head. People sure aren't taking this well:
So there's the reactions. Fear, sadness, anger, resentment, disgust, combinations of denial and acceptance. But what does it all mean? What brought about this Trump victory?
The Democrats
To paraphrase President Obama, we need to spread the blame around. Hillary's campaign miscalculated. Badly:
“They are saying they did nothing wrong, which is ridiculous,” said
one Clinton surrogate. “She was the wrong messenger and everyone
misjudged how pissed working class people were.” ...
In interviews with close to a dozen top Clinton allies and
former operatives, who did not want to publicly criticize the losing
campaign or candidate, many expressed a deep frustration that the party
had pinned its hopes on a divisive establishment candidate. ...
The issues were crystal clear as early as January 2015, but the campaign thought it could overcome it.
“Make a virtue of her longevity,” Palmieri advised in an email that
month to Podesta, released by WikiLeaks. “Embrace all the Clinton-ness —
the forty years in politics, the decades on the national stage...”
A lot of commentators are saying Trump won because Hillary and the
Democrats colossally fucked up. All that nastiness you see above, well Trump supporters were experiencing that every time they opened their mouths prior to the election. Not the best persuasive technique. The left in general and Democrats in particular really didn't do much to dissuade that strategy. There's more to it
than that--which I'll get to later--but Jonathan Pie nails it:
The Media
Lets not forget the media. For a long time the left and the media would mock the right for complaining about bias. What a time we live in when they openly admit it, and try to justify it. Of course, it was the wrong thing to do. Not because it was unethical, you see, but because it backfired:
John King of CNN proclaimed to his huge election night audience that
during the previous couple of weeks, “We were not having a reality-based
conversation” given the map he had before him, showing Mr. Trump with a
clear opportunity to reach the White House.
That was an extraordinary admission; if the news media failed to present
a reality-based political scenario, then it failed in performing its
most fundamental function. ...
They
think something is so wrong that all the fact-checking of Mr. Trump
this year, the countless reports of his lies — which he uttered more
than Mrs. Clinton did — and the vigorous investigation of his business
and personal transgressions, bothered them far less than the perceived
national ills Mr. Trump was pointing to and promising to fix.
In
their view the government was broken, the economic system was broken,
and, we heard so often, the news media was broken, too. Well, something
surely is broken.
Ya think? That's the end of the article. The time for coyness has long passed. Why don't you grow a pair and just say what you think is broke. It hit you square in the nose and you still don't say it. Ah but then you might have to risk appearing to agree with those racist cavemen.
If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially
dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move
closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable
and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist
I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.
Whoops! I don't want to say I accidentally helped elect Trump, but I accidentally helped elect Trump.
Any objective observer of the news media’s treatment of Trump can
certainly conclude that reporters are taking a side in this election
— and they don’t have to be wearing a button that says “I’m with her”
for this to be readily apparent. The irony is that the media’s Trump
bashing may wind up having the exact opposite of its intended effect.
Polls
shows that journalism is one of the least respected professions in the
country, and with Trump calling out media organizations for their bias,
widespread slanted reporting is bound to reinforce this point — and to
backfire. Trump’s campaign is throwing down the gauntlet to the
political class. If journalists are seen as the mouthpiece of that
class, they may soon find themselves covering Trump’s inauguration.
The schadenfreude never ends. I hope Trump's presidency brings about positive change, and is otherwise uneventful, but the dark twisted part of me is cheering on for more entertainment.
The
triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality
television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection
of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the
world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on
everything from trade to immigration.
The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.
Ah
yes, the establishment. The establishment Republicans didn't want him,
nor the Democrats, nor Wall Street. I couldn't think of a better
endorsement.
5. Listen when they say the jobs have left their areas. That they
can’t afford their health insurance premiums or the penalties for not
having it. They can’t afford their tax rates. They can’t afford to take
their kids to see the doctor, can’t afford to take vacations with their
families, live in fear one-paycheck-to-the-next of missing their
mortgage payment. Listen when they say they are afraid of losing jobs to
overseas and to immigration. Listen when they say they are afraid of
terrorism inside the U.S. Listen, and don’t reflexively dismiss their
concerns as closet racism.
6. Listen when they say how seriously they take their right to own
and bear arms. Don’t reflexively dismiss them as redneck fetishists.
Don’t sneer on social media about how they must have some anatomical
shortcoming for which to compensate. Listen when they say they will die
on the hill of the Second Amendment because they are afraid of an
authoritarian leader taking control of the country.
That burning?
That’s irony.
7. Listen, as well, to why they didn’t like the other candidate. How
they feel about entrenched political dynasties who sell access to make
millions, who conspire to rig the economy for their friends in the 1%,
and do nothing while the poor and middle class fall further behind.
Is Trump authoritarian? I don't know. I hope not, but he's displayed a mildly alarming tendency to favor an authoritarian style. Will that, if it's his thing, translate into authoritarian policies? Maybe, thankfully he's not a religious zealot, nor a drug warrior, nor a hawkish warmonger. At least he wasn't more often than he was, while campaigning.
He's not a very consistent politician. He's just not a politician. He's a blank slate with a few stains.
Trump might be easily compared to a comic book villain, but that doesn't make his supporters one-dimensional minions. Ken White (Popehat), bless his heart, insultingly explains that Trump supporters aren't racist, they just have a little attention deficit problem:
... attributing a Trump victory to racism and misogyny is a quick, cheap,
easy way out. People aren't that simple. Americans didn't
conclusively reject racism by electing President Obama, and didn't
conclusively embrace it by electing President Trump. Trial lawyers know
this: people don't make decisions like computers. People don't tend
to weigh all the evidence or consider all the factors or evaluate every
counter-argument to every argument. People tend, in small decisions and
big ones, to latch on to a few main ideas, come to a conclusion, and
then stop considering contrary evidence. A man sees what he wants to
see, and disregards the rest. Obama's election didn't mean Americans
were free of racism; it meant that Obama effectively communicated big
ideas that connected and shut down the other voices whispering in our
ears. Certainly some Trump supporters are avowedly racist, but some of
them latched on to big ideas and stopped listening to the rest — like
his troubling flirtation with evil.
I get what Ken is saying; it's a lot like confirmation bias, and perhaps a little laziness. But for an eloquent lawyer, that paragraph is damning with faint psychological process explanation.
And the "Troubling flirtation with evil!" Did I miss some evil Trump speech or something? Did he say he likes to kill puppies?
I have some disagreements with protectionism, nationalism, strict immigration, and "locker-room talk," but I wouldn't go so far to call them flirtations with evil.
I honestly don't get this Trump-is-evil stuff. Everybody says it, but damn if I can find direct evidence of it. I guess I'm supposed to "latch on to [those] ideas, come to a conclusion, and then stop considering contrary evidence" regarding Trump's evilness.
A loudmouth politically incorrect dirty old man, sure. An evil man, I don't see it. Popehat continues:
Hillary Clinton won an epic, historic struggle to be the worst
Presidential candidate ever. Ultimately she won that struggle — and
thus lost the Presidency — because she did not persuade. She did not
articulate her core ideas effectively enough, and so not enough people
latched onto them and disregarded the bad things about her. Trump
dallied with racism — hell, Trump nailed racism in the coat closet and
walked out smirking — but Clinton still did worse with Latinos,
African-Americans, and Asians than Obama did. It may be that she was
doomed from the start — too much baggage, too many vulnerabilities. Or
it could be that she lacked Obama's power to persuade. She couldn't get
them to accept her simple pitch and shut everything else out. Trump
could.
It falls to realistic Trump opponents not to crush the people who
voted for him, but to persuade them. In this election the GOP showed
that it could fight back against demographic change — not just by
marshaling high percentages of white voters, but by persuading
higher-than-expected percentages of minorities. The Democrats can't
respond to that by writing 40% of the country off as irredeemable.
Hubris and Entitlement: The catastrophic polling failures of 2016 reflect the fatal pride of Clinton's team and what I'll call "the establishment."
Americans are stubborn and proud. They'll be persuaded, but they
won't be told who to vote for like you'd tell a recalcitrant child to
eat his vegetables. The media, childishly obsessed with Donald Trump
(and frankly unenthused with Hillary Clinton) promoted a us-versus-them
mentality. It was far more class-based than race-based — it was the
message "isn't it unbelievable and hilarious that those people support
Trump." The message was "of COURSE vote Clinton, you idiot" or "you're
pretty dim but at least you can see how to vote on THIS one." Generally
people can't be expected to embrace stories that demean them.
There was another way, but hardly anybody took it. There was the way
of "let me earn your vote by persuading you why these policies are
right," conveyed as part of an effective set of ideas. There were far
too few forceful and effective advocates of how free trade makes us
richer and freer. There were too few people willing to risk a genuine
discussion of the costs of frequent military intervention. Everyone was
too busy arguing what immigration policies they didn't support to debate specific policies that they did support.
The anti-Trump message was based too strongly on entitlement — based on who you are, we are entitled to your vote, by right.
You can see that in the frothing rage at third-party voters after
Clinton's defeat. You'll see it in the ugly backlashes coming at the
minority voters who didn't vote "correctly." But voting isn't a matter
of entitlement. "Vote for me because the other guy's horrific" is not
an effective method to persuade or get out the vote. It's an idea that
focuses on the other guy, not you. You've got to deserve victory.
Clinton didn't. Clinton stank of entitlement to rule, the
media conveyed that message, and that message fatally amplified
Clinton's scandals, conveying that Clinton was entitled to follow the
rules differently, to act differently, to be treated preferentially.
This is what a lot of Hillary voters don't get. Just because Trump was a terrible candidate, doesn't automatically translate to the alternative being a saint. Especially when accompanied by name-calling, silencing, and plain old bullying. I was an undecided voter right up until the last day. I didn't want to vote for Trump, nor Clinton. But everyday on my GAMING twitter feed, there was some insult lobbed toward Trump supporters, liked and retweeted several times. If they weren't racist, misogynist, homophobic, or xenophobic, then they were called idiots. Who wants to join a bunch of assholes? Keep your circlejerk of political hate.
I wanted to vote for Trump just to stick it to those guys. I ended up voting for Johnson, but it was a difficult decision. Even in a safe state where my vote didn't matter.
Before I ramble further, I really want to quote at length from John Michael Greer at Archdruid Report, hardly a Trump supporter, who wrote this a week before the election:
The talking heads insisted that handing over tax dollars to various corporate welfare queens would bring jobs back to American communities; the corporations in question pocketed the tax dollars and walked away. The talking heads insisted that if working class people went to college at their own expense and got retrained in new skills, that would bring jobs back to American communities; the academic industry profited mightily but the jobs never showed up, leaving tens of millions of people buried so deeply under student loan debt that most of them will never recover financially. The talking heads insisted that this or that or the other political candidate would bring jobs back to American communities by pursuing exactly the same policies that got rid of the jobs in the first place—essentially the same claim that the Clinton campaign is making now—and we know how that turned out. ...
We’ve got the news
articles insisting, in tones by turns glowing and shrill, that things have
never been better in the United States and anyone who says otherwise is just
plain wrong; we’ve got the economic pronouncements predicated on continuing
growth at a time when the only things growing in the US economy are its total
debt load and the number of people who are permanently unemployed; we’ve got
the overblown displays of military might and technological prowess, reminiscent
of nothing so much as the macho posturing of balding middle-aged former
athletes who are trying to pretend that they haven’t lost it; we’ve got the
tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent suburban districts
around Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco, looking forward to
their next vacation in whatever the currently fashionable spot might happen to
be, babbling on the internet about the good life under predatory
cybercapitalism.
Meanwhile millions of Americans trudge through a bleak round
of layoffs, wage cuts, part-time jobs at minimal pay, and system-wide
dysfunction. The crisis hasn’t hit yet, but those members of the political
class who think that the people who used to be rock-solid American patriots
will turn out en masse to keep today’s apparatchiks secure in their comfortable
lifestyles have, as the saying goes, another think coming. ...
Thus the grassroots movement that propelled Trump ... might best be understood as the last gasp of the American dream.
Maybe it's true people are voting for memberberries. Things were nice for them back in the day. Now everything seems to be going to shit. And it is for them. It is for me. Health insurance prices go way up every year. Roads and bridges are falling apart, jobs haven't really come back, there doesn't appear to be an end to terrorism or the war against it. And now the American dream that nearly every adult prior to 2008 could reasonably expect, is absurdly out of reach for millions. Even if you're college educated. Stick to a tiny apartment, ramen noodles, and in 40 years you too could own your own small house! Or retire. Pick one.
So some guy comes up to you and says, "I feel you. I will bring the jobs back. I will make America great again." And then this lady you know, but aren't so sure about says, "What's he talking about, America is already great. Don't be a racist."
The election was in the bag. Only fringe racists supported Trump. Who cares about some email thing, you racist!
The Future
I have to admit, I am a little bit glad to see the hubris
explode in their faces. And now I feel icky. That's another
thing. The level of vitriol and hate toward the opposition is
worse than during the Bush years, worse than either Obama election.
I’d like to suggest, furthermore, that the fixation on
personalities—or, again, malicious parodies of personalities—has played a huge
role in making politics in the United States so savage, so divisive, and so
intractably deadlocked on so many of the things that matter just now. The
issues I mentioned a few paragraphs back—US foreign policy toward a resurgent
Russia, on the one hand, and US economic policy regarding the offshoring of
jobs and the importation of foreign workers—are not only important, they’re
issues about which reasonable disagreement is possible. What’s more, they’re
issues on which negotiation, compromise, and the working out of a mutually
satisfactory modus vivendi between competing interests are also possible, at
least in theory.
In practice? Not while each side is insisting at the top of
its lungs that the other side is led by a monster of depravity and supported
only by people who hate everything good in the world. I’d like to suggest that
it’s exactly this replacement of reasoned politics with a pretty close
equivalent of the Two Minutes Hate from Orwell’s 1984 that’s among the
most important forces keeping this country from solving any of its problems or
doing anything to brace itself for the looming crises ahead. ...
I’m not sure how many people have noticed, though, that the election of
Donald Trump was not merely a rebuke to the liberal left; it was also a defeat
for the religious right. It’s worth recalling that the evangelical wing of the
Republican Party had its own favorites in the race for the GOP nomination, and
Trump was emphatically not one of them. It has not been a propitious autumn for
the movements of left and right whose stock in trade is trying to force their
own notion of virtue down the throats of the American people—and maybe, just
maybe, that points to the way ahead.
It’s time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the
traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the
overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the
people. It’s time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they’re never
going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of
moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about
the people of Massachusetts; furthermore, it’s time for government at all
levels to give up trying to impose cultural uniformity on the lively diversity
of our republic’s many nations, and settle for their proper role of ensuring
equal protection under the laws, and those other benefits that governments, by
their nature, are best suited to provide for their citizens.
It's hard for me to disagree with Greer. The "coastal elite," the liberal bubbles, all the people who don't understand flyover country--you've seen them, you know many of them have difficulty accepting political loss. When you've sufficiently defined your opponents as bigoted, then summarily dismiss them (as civility demands), your brain interprets losing to such people as totally unacceptable, virtually unconscionable, as if the Joker killed Batman, as if the world is suddenly just wrong. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"
There's a good chance they won't understand. A good chance they won't listen. A good chance they will crawl back into their bubbles and ignore and/or dismiss us. Decentralizing the federal government might well be a good idea for both sides, but power is addicting. And I doubt the "coastal elite" will willingly trade in their heroin for some weed.
Besides, it's back to business as usual, according to Kos:
If Trump wants to pass a new Voting Rights Act, or renominate Merrick
Garland, then we can work with him. Anything else, he can go fuck
himself. Infrastructure spending? Let him get the votes from his own
caucus. Anything else he might propose, even if we might agree with it?
Let him get the votes from his own caucus while we hurl metaphorical
molotov cocktails from the sideline.
They broke it, they own it.
Soon
the president will no longer be black; it'll be okay to oppose him
guys. Remember when we used the nuclear option to overcome vote hurdles
and filibusters? Remember when we used executive orders to bypass congress? Well, times change and it's not cool anymore.
Several years ago I quit consuming political news on a daily basis. With seemingly rare exceptions, political news largely consisted of partisan hacks screaming about the other partisan hacks. Then the ignorant would take their cues and proceed to yell at each other.
Having an ignorant, naive, and/or biased media report on such goings on only contributed to my despair. So I quit. Mostly. I kept a healthy distance.
As the years went by, the increasingly toxic political atmosphere only served to reinforce my decision. Things got worse. The concept of "loyal opposition" seemed to have gone out the window.
Even now, even after Hillary walked back her "deplorables" comment, you can't step foot in a political forum without Trump supporters being called racists/sexists. And as we all know, people labeled racist or sexist tend to lose their jobs, friends, social media privileges, etc. Essentially, you risk being ostracized for voicing a political opinion. Sometimes, even for not voicing the right one.
It's not Republicans vs. Democrats. It's the more extreme leftist factions (stupidly united under the big Democrat tent) vs. anyone threatening their narrative.
The parallels to oppressive authoritarian regimes aren't always hyperbole. They may not go to the same lengths as the Stasi or NKVD, but the difference is in degree, not in kind.
In a perverted way, this was kind of tolerable, at least in Western democracies. Because we Westerners don't have (by most observations) secret police. There is no significant government-sanctioned thought-policing going on. It's all social. And we all knew it was coming from the same loudmouths we try to ignore.
But I'm not sure it's going to stay that way. This social authoritarianism is growing, and I worry it may catch on as a viable strategy for other groups. Only because we're letting it work.
What am I getting at, you ask? Well, I'm still sick of political hacks yelling about each other and don't think that will change anytime soon, but this social authoritarianism is another beast. I hate it, and won't sit idly by while we are relentlessly nudged and prodded into safe-space Ingsoc chambers.
There's good news and bad news about this. The bad news is that the gains made by this newly empowered social authoritarian beast haven't gone unnoticed. Like I said, we're letting it work. Because it's working, the political hacks are allying with, co-opting, doing whatever they can to use it. Hell, maybe they invented it. But the scope of the beast is much larger than politics.
The good news is that even while most ignorant people are blind to partisan hackery, and most informed people are blind to their own side's hackery, the social authoritarianism is much harder to miss.
I've been sporadically blogging about this kind of stuff for awhile now.
The phenomenon got me consuming news and commentary on a regular basis
again.
So it's refreshing and reassuring to see more and more people take notice, re-examine their views, and wise up. Like Dave Rubin. He hosts my new favorite talk show. It surpasses the quality of any talk show on cable. He talks a lot about this kind of stuff too, including his most recent interview:
I really do not like Donald Trump. And I like Hillary Clinton even less. I will say that Trump has made the debates vastly more entertaining. If only we were voting for fake TV-show presidents.
I tend to disagree philosophically with much of the big Democratic Party positions, and have since I first started researching politics. I am theoretically open to voting for Democrats, and have liked a few of them in the past. It's just that even among the ones I like, they tend to go along with and support their caucus on everything that matters.
And that's another of many weird things about American politics. At least for the ideologically aware, even superior candidates on the other side of the isle you like are more likely to be worse than a bad candidate on your side of the isle you dislike. And when I say worse, I mean worse for the party line (or political philosophy) you tend to agree with. [This view may and will likely not hold true for small, local politics.]
Unless you're a centrist with little care or knowledge of political issues, supporting a perfect, brilliant, charismatic, and caring politician who happens to be with the Bad Guys is very difficult to justify.
I don't think most voters even think about this, let alone have put much thought into their political philosophy. So unfortunately, the point is largely moot. But I'm a nerd and nerds like to talk about stuff that barely matters.
This is why this election has been difficult for me. Not because Hillary Clinton is a perfect candidate, but because a twisted version of my point is what ideologically aware, right-leaning voters are facing.
Hillary Clinton is a bad candidate and Donald Trump is a bad candidate. Hillary Clinton is the devil we know and love to hate, but Trump is a devil we're not very sure about. He says he's on our side, but it seems that his side is how he defines "our side," at least for the times he hasn't explicitly opposed our side.
Maybe we should vote for Trump because that way, at least we have a chance of getting the things we care about, as opposed to guaranteeing getting things we don't want with Clinton--or so the thinking goes. Maybe that's enough for some. It was for me in the past. It's a gamble, but now the odds of "my side" getting what we want are the lowest ever. Trump is no conservative. Trump is definitely no libertarian. Clinton less so. In hyperbolic terms, it's like choosing Hitler or Stalin. Yea so Stalin killed more people, but he had a nicer mustache.
From there I just venture into wildly speculative questions about who would do the least damage. I can't answer that. Nobody can. We shouldn't even be in this situation. It's Douches and Turds all the way down.
But we still try. Scott Alexander suggests we support Clinton, because least variance. That makes sense, if you don't want variance. I however, am very open to variance. And I have my doubts any presidential candidate, from Jill Stein to Gary Johnson would introduce significant variance into the American equation. I guess it depends on what you think is significant, but it's all hypothetical at this point. If we were electing dictators it would be another matter (the office of the president holds enormous power, but we're still a constitutional democratic republic, or however the hell you want to label it--checks 'n balances yo). Judging by history, every new president will attempt to gain more power and will probably acquire some for the office. But short of revolution or coup, will not become a dictator.
So the implication is that the Donald will mildly shake things up just enough to allow the opportunity for things to worsen, or possibly improve. One attractive thing about Trump is that he is the FU vote. A revolution without the actual revolution. A cheap and easy signal that you're fed up. A tempting turd to vote for in that regard.
Let me collect my thoughts and summarize where I'm at after all this back and forth:
Political philosophy is out the window, there is virtually no hope for that.
Both are terrible candidates I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.
One is maybe kinda sorta more likely to change things for good or ill.
One is maybe kinda sorta more likely to keep things the same.
In either case, the power of the president will increase some.
Things will probably not change much, either way.
Third party candidates have no chance, and may actually help elect someone you don't want.
My vote is insignificantly small and won't help decide the election, so the only thing that matters is how I'll sleep at night (If you live in a swing state, this point is slightly less applicable).
In my right-leaning libertarian mind, this thinking points me in the direction of Johnson, maybe Trump, or abstention. Clinton represents no change. I want change, but I don't want to roll the dice for a low chance of getting things I want, with a moderate chance of getting things I don't want, from a person I dislike. I won't be sleeping well if I vote for either of them.
That leaves Johnson, who I agree with more than the other candidates, but believe would make a bad president. Which is a good thing since he has no chance.
He's a libertarian, I'm a libertarian. He doesn't seem crazy or corrupt. Not too smart about foreign affairs, but that's what advisors are for. Besides, the foreign policy guru candidate doesn't exactly have the best record on foreign policy. This might be a plus for Johnson.
Since he and third party candidates in general have no chance at winning, this is a luxury vote. At best, I can hope to send a message to the political powers that be that more of the country is more libertarian-oriented than they are, and nudge them to accommodate me and my interests. That's a nice thought. And even though Republicans and some Democrats seem to be tending libertarian more here and there, the trend of increasing statism is vastly more prominent.
At best, I will be able to sleep at night by hoping to send a signal to Washington by voting for Johnson, or any third party candidate. In fact, voting in any safe state your best hope for change via your vote is signalling. Strength in numbers. Does the winner have a mandate? Are the third party candidates really cutting into Pepsi and Coke's bottom line? Do we have to start paying attention to this bloc of voters?
At this point you're looking at poll numbers, thinking of how your vote could possibly have the most impact for the things you care about--strategic voting. This is all nice and nerdy except in the year 2016. Donald is the signal vote. If you're fed up, you vote for Trump. If you hate Trump, or want least variance, you vote for Clinton.
If you're both fed up and hate Trump, you still kinda have to vote for him--if "fed up" is what you're really wanting to say. Otherwise it's very likely your vote for Johnson will be interpreted as a right-leaning anti-Trump vote. In the world of Clinton v. Trump, your Johnson vote will be interpreted through that lens. Libertarian what?
I dislike Clinton enough to vote for Trump. I'm fed up enough to vote for Trump, but I'm wary of and dislike Trump enough to vote for Johnson. And yet I'm pretty sure my Johnson vote, if it even matters, will be misinterpreted.
I'm at a loss. Logic has failed me. I can't endorse anyone. I can at least endorse not voting for Clinton. Abstaining is weak, but it is there, and it's about as tempting as Trump or Johnson. Good luck deciding.
I'm reluctant to comment on this at the moment, given my current tired state, but reforming democracy, at least American democracy, has occupied my thoughts in the past. Lately, however, it just hasn't felt worth my time. Politics in general hasn't felt worth it.
Truthfully, they're not worth my time, or any one person's time (which is discussed in the links). I've thought about this tragedy-of-the-commons phenomenon in democracy too.
All of which urges me in the general direction of less centralization and more localization of politics. Of course, localizing more state power and democracy is fraught with its own problems I'm sure. But on that level at least, voters have more influence and control, more incentive to be rational and informed.
And yet a part of me is vaguely wary of localizing politics: why did Western civilization move toward centralization if localization was better? For many good reasons, like economic efficiency and war for example. Perhaps a better balance could be struck.
I've been wanting to write about most of the stories behind the following links, sometimes starting a draft, sometimes leaving my browser open for days just to avoid extending my already absurdly long list of bookmarks (sleep mode is my new friend).
Hours, days, a week goes by and I just can't force myself to write about something a week old. It's odd how something seemingly so important is considerably less so a week later. But that's the nature of blogging, and news in general (I never claimed to be a great blogger). Also, distraction.
This piece is over a month old, but I remember wanting to discuss it. I just don't remember why, exactly (obviously something to do with the ousting of the Mozilla CEO, Brenden Eich). It's still a good read however.
But if you read this blog post from Mozilla, it is maddening. What are they talking about? I'm so sick of vague language--it probably was mostly read as an apology for letting Hitler run their business. BUT, because it's so vague, it can just as easily be read to suggest that they are very sorry for their intolerance--evinced by ousting a man for having an opinion. Even though it was a very common opinion, one shared by Barrack Obama at the time.
And 'Nerds can be Bees Too,' which led me to this old post by Bryan Caplan, where he is excoriated in the comments (mainly because people freak the hell out over someone wanting open immigration--which wasn't even mentioned in that post).
I want to write a post about anonymity on the Internet, which was partly inspired by this post from the Last Psychiatrist. I will write that post one day.
So VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and White House press Secretary Jay Carney resigned. Why does everything feel like it's all heavily scripted, like a bad TV show? Probably because it is.
Is it just me, or are presidential and senatorial politics are feeling very Orwellian, almost Soviet when it comes to appearances? I know congressional politics is highly susceptible to populism, but at least it's a lot more transparent--which makes me reconsider term lengths for the other two (but that's not about to happen).
Comcast, Netflix, and data caps... If you, like me, have given up watching TV through traditional means, be afraid, be very afraid. Relatedly, I've found if you spend enough time searching for channels you like--and they probably all exist--YouTube can all but replace your entire visual entertainment diet. Some people say YouTube is a bubble about to burst; I say it's just getting warmed up.
Possible blog post spoilers (lol, like anyone cares). Stuff I found in the last day or two I kinda want to write about:
Besides the many compliments and many complaints about it I could articulate here, I'll just include a few (because lazy).
First and foremost, I'm very happy to see people much smarter than I, embrace libertarianism (to various extents), and use their not-insignificant pedestals to extol the virtues of said government philosophy. No two libertarians will pass the other's litmus test, so we are necessarily an inclusive--however critical--group. So, thank you Scott, for writing this and other articles like this.
But you're worse than HitlerTM for failing to see the shortcomings of democracy, shortcomings virtually every political junkie of every stripe complains about, especially libertarians.
Your line of reasoning concerning affirmative action for Martians for example, starts out well, but then you miss somewhat obvious potential problems:
Modern affirmative action says that given the choice between a Martian or an equally qualified Earthling, one must hire the Martian. One big obvious problem here is that “equally qualified” is a matter of opinion. It may be that a boss is prejudiced against Martians, and so tells an excellent Martian candidate that ve is underqualified for the position – the Martian may never know. Or a Martian who was genuinely underqualified may paranoidly believe ve was denied out of prejudice and start a costly lawsuit.
There are other problems as well. Some jobs may have legitimate reasons not to hire Martians – maybe Martians make lousy pilots because their single lidless eye gives them terrible depth perception. Certainly a Martian actor is unqualified to play Abraham Lincoln in a historical biopic. One could offer to let these jobs apply for exemptions, but this means a costly bureaucratic process, and is likely to end with large companies with good lawyers obtaining the exemptions, small companies with poor lawyers not obtaining the exemptions, and no concern about fairness to Martians in any case.
In the worst possible situation, a non-prejudiced boss may decide not to hire Martians because it would be harder to reprimand or dismiss a Martian when they could threaten to sue the company or start a viral Tumblr post accusing the company of speciesism.
Compare a market-informed solution: run a bunch of controlled studies in which bosses get identical Earthling and Martian resumes, find out exactly how strong the prejudice against Martians is, then levy an appropriate tax on hiring Earthlings (or give a subsidy for hiring Martians). Maybe hiring Earthlings costs 5% extra, which is funnelled into scholarships for impoverished Martian larvae. . . .
If ten years later the social scientists do some studies and find that companies are still more likely to accept Earthling resumes over identical Martian resumes, they can raise the tax until that’s no longer the case. If they find that companies are more likely to accept Martian resumes now, then prejudice has decreased and the tax can decrease as well.
I think everyone has a lot to like about this proposal.
Assuming this tax is successfully implemented and collected, you've just created another incentive for the Martians to vote for this particular (however just) form of wealth redistribution. Affirmative action doesn't take place in a political vacuum. Whole constituencies are affected by this. Unless you plan to deny voting rights to Martians and/or deny Martians from holding office (and possibly Martian sympathizers), identity poltics, quid pro quos, the new status quo and the voice of its beneficiaries haven't magically disappeared.
You might be able to increase the tax, if the non-Martians aren't too vocal about it. But the only way you will realistically and democratically decrease or eliminate the tax is if the Martians, who originally were so oppressed as to require this policy, have either transcended their want of wealth, or more likely have been politically oppressed, instead of economically. It's not as if weaning is a smooth process, especially when it involves the government and thousands, if not millions of voters.
This is why we have revolutions, because it's hard to un-ratchet government, short of drastic measures (although I concede the U.S. has had a much easier time of un-ratcheting than most, but it's still a huge problem).
That's the gist of my complaint. You're aknowledging a lot of the problems with progressive policies, which is good, but then you completely omit (or are ignorant of) the institutional (congressional, executive & bureaucratic, sometimes judicial) and environmental (democracy, culture) problems that contribute to the formation and continuance of bad policies.*
Mabye I shouldn't complain. I mean, I hate democracy but I'm not to the point where I'm willing to throw it out. The proto-conservative Burke had a point when he cautioned against replacing the Old with the New, when at least the Old didn't kill everybody. Who knows what the New will bring. But I'm getting off point.
The idea of taxing rather than banning is not an un-libertarian idea, but it is unoriginal and (for libertarians) rarely the go-to proposal. I very much like where Scott starts and following his thought processes, but in the end I'm left very disappointed. He seems to be very utilitarian/technocratic oriented so long as the goal of caring for the less-fortunate is kept conspicuously on high priority. I'm all about helping the less fortunate, but does every policy have to be about the poor? Does it always have to include a tax? More often than not, it seems it does. Which brings me back to one of my central annoyances with lefty solutions: they are boring and incessantly unoriginal.
At least the neoreactionaries are interesting, even if unoriginal.
*Maybe Scott has discussed this in his anti-neoreactionary peice (which I haven't read yet), but why overlook the significant difficulties produced by democracy here? Is it because libertarianism kind of assumes democracy? Why is nobody talking about significant reform of democracy?
