Category Archives: Social Justice

We are Townsfolk in a Spaghetti Western

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ClintAre you old enough to have watched those wonderful old Spaghetti Westerns? The typical story went something like this…

When the townsfolk people of some poor dust bowl are abused and impoverished by a gang of ruthless cutthroats, they elect an unsavory drifter as “sheriff” to protect them. A bloody shootout ensues, involving lots of gratuitous gunfire and dynamite explosions.  When the smoke finally clears, it never ends all that well for the townsfolk. Most of them are dead or wounded and their ramshackle town is pretty much reduced to a smoldering wood-heap. Their “sheriff,” having done what they asked of him, rides away from the dead bodies and the smoking rubble with saddlebags overflowing with their life savings.

None of those townsfolk were crazy extremists. They were just regular folk, farmers and shop owners, out of options and fearful for their futures. They were driven by desperation and circumstance to put their faith in the toughest, meanest, bad-ass Alpha male they could find.

Many of us lament that we vote so many arguably dangerous people into high office. Not only into the Presidency, but into the Congress and the Senate and even into the Supreme Court. Too many of these office holders hold frankly crazy views on science, on climate change, and on evolution. They advocate for policies rooted in their faith in the twin religions of capitalism and god. They take extreme positions on guns and militarization. They hold crazy Libertarian and Free-Market views on health care and social programs and racism and sexism and sexuality and abortion and deregulation. They seem to have no scruples whatsoever and will make any ridiculous argument, propagate any lie, to pursue their self-interest and ideology.

No wonder chaos ensues.

We generally blame the crazy extreme of our population for this situation. We argue that our lunatic fringe, driven by their zealous energy and amplified by Gerrymandering, have disproportionate power over electoral outcomes. If only we moderates could take charge, then we’d elect sane, reasonable, and compassionate leaders!

But I want to suggest that moderates are culpable as well. It’s human nature, or at least American nature. Even moderates, like the townsfolk in a Spaghetti Western, turn to crazy and dangerous individuals when they are looking for someone who can make a difference in their lives.

Look at it this way. Most of us are understandably concerned about our physical security and economic self-interest. When we’re worried about home security, we don’t hire someone like ourselves to protect us. We hire a bad-ass body guard, or maybe we adopt a vicious pit bull and buy a deadly semi-automatic pistol. If we are worried about going to jail, we don’t want the most reasonable and knowledgeable lawyer to represent us. We rather want the most aggressive and unscrupulous lawyer possible. We want a lawyer who is willing to say or do whatever it takes to protect our interests, law be damned.

Similarly, to protect our physical and economic security, we elect representatives that are far more extreme than we are. We find the nastiest, most crazy representative we can to fight for us and defend our interests. Even if our head tells us to hire someone smart and reasonable, we are overwhelmingly attracted to the brutal, unreasoning Alpha male (or female).

Part of our decision process is our calculation that no leader can be fully successful. So for example if we believe it would be good to eliminate fat from social programs, we elect a leader who says he wants to dismantle all social programs. We figure that maybe at least he’ll be successful in getting rid of that waste and abuse we are so outraged by. When our elected leader ACTUALLY dismantles vital social programs that we value, we are shocked and outraged. Even though the crazy candidate campaigned on throwing out the baby, we figured he would really just get rid of that dirty bathwater.

So when extremists vote, they tend to vote in someone much more extreme than they are whom they believe will fight hardest for them. They make extreme demands that they don’t necessarily hope to achieve. And then even those same extremists express shock and anger when that representative they worked so hard to elect actually does succeed in achieving what they demanded. I don’t think it is so much about voting against our own self-interest as it is about adopting a pit bull to protect our baby.

But moderates do the essentially same thing. Even moderates in large numbers buy guns as “reasonable” protection, then lament when they are used to shoot up a school-full of kids. Even moderates vote for the Alpha male to keep our country safe, then express outrage when he lies us into an unnecessary war. Even moderates vote for extreme “strongmen” (or strong-women) whom they foolishly believe will become reasonable and restrained and diplomatic upon taking office.

Just like in those Spaghetti Westerns, we moderates and lunatic fringe alike, have elected President Trump and a dirty dozen of tough, extreme bad boys to save us. One has to wonder what will be left of America when they get done protecting it. Or will Trump and the corporatist elite around him merely ride into the sunset of America with saddlebags packed full of our life savings?

 

 

Out of Context

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Charles MurrayIn the Grey Matter section of the Sunday Review in the New York Times, Cornell Professors Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci published an article entitled “Charles Murray’s ‘Provocative’ Talk.” In it, they described a small ad hoc study that they conducted to test whether the words of Charles Murray are objectively offensive and thus deserving of the level of resistance to his lecture at Middlebury College (see here).

In their study, the authors took a transcript of Murray’s actual talk and sent it without attribution to 70 college professors with a request to rate the words on a 9 point scale from very conservative to very liberal. They found that although “American college professors are overwhelmingly liberal,” those surveyed found Murray’s words to be “middle of the road” with an average score of about 5. Williams and Ceci interpret this finding as indicating that the protest over Murray’s invitation to speak was objectively ill-informed and unjustified.

This argument is deeply and fundamentally flawed. We often see similar tricks played when someone reads an excerpt from the Constitution or Mein Kampf and asks for an opinion about it – before the gotcha reveal when they identify the authorship.

One major study flaw is the premise that words stand alone. Context matters and the meaning and intent of words can only be fully assessed with due consideration of the person making the statement. Authorship is an essential part of that greater context. If PT Barnum claimed he had a Yeti in his house, I would have received it with tremendous skepticism. If Carl Sagan made the exact same claim, I would have been very excited about the potential of an important new anthropological discovery.

The reality is that Charles Murray has a long history of promoting what many consider to be highly destructive public policy research and analysis that has undermined valuable social programs and has attacked and divided us along gender and racial differences. For example, his statement that “We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government,” may sound perfectly reasonable to 70 of our professional contacts if unattributed. Coming from a known liberal speaker, this could be meant to affirm that we should not be forced to live in an overly-policed state. However, coming from Charles Murray it is clear that his intent is to promote the dismantling of social assistance programs. The same statement might mean something even more extreme if David Duke had said it.

Based on the work of Williams and Ceci one might argue that we should remove all bias in approving speakers by using a blinded, unidentified process in which presenters are approved or rejected based solely on the text of their planned presentation. That would be extremely foolish. The reality is that the larger views and history of any speaker plays an essential role in how we should interpret their statements. Reasonable but isolated statements can conceal a larger and very different agenda that is only apparent if we know the source.

I have no doubt that the authors would respond by saying that intellectually unbiased people should be willing to hear any reasonable speaker and make this assessment for themselves, without forced censorship. However, surely they would also agree that there is some limit beyond which a speaker would not be acceptable even to them. But reasonable people can reasonably disagree about where this fuzzy boundary should lie – and that boundary must consider not only the message but the messenger as well.

Clearly a determinative number of alumni, faculty, and students at Middlebury judged that the lifetime body of work by Charles Murray, as well as his very clear lifelong mission, crossed that fuzzy line for them. Williams and Ceci may disagree on their placement of this line and that is legitimate and fair debate. But it is not legitimate and fair to conduct what amounts to a gotcha stunt under the guise of objective science to prove that these people’s determination in this instance is illegitimate and irrational.

All that Williams and Ceci may have actually shown is that, without attribution, college professors don’t assume the worst or the best. They may merely fill the void with their own middle-of-the-road interpretation of unattributed quotations.

Taking Stock-Well

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john-stockwellSome of us are lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to stumble into a pivotal event in our lives that reshapes us, blows our minds, opens our eyes, changes our perspective, forever and irrevocably. I stumbled into mine back in college in the 1980’s when I blundered into a lecture by former CIA bureau chief Major John Stockwell (see here). I walked into the event as a relatively naïve and oblivious college kid, and walked out a stunned and shell-shocked cynic with regard to official motivations and storylines. Never again could I accept any official news story without some degree of skepticism and doubt, or for that matter dismiss any “conspiracy theory” out of hand simply because it questioned the official narrative.

Stockwell walked the audience through his recruitment as a young CIA officer in Vietnam and his rapid rise through the ranks, eventually attaining one of the highest positions in the bureau. He told how, during his career, he was repeatedly asked to perform actions that seemed not only immoral but counterproductive. Each time that he asked for some rationale to justify the actions requested of him, his superiors would tell him “if you only knew what we know you’d understand why this is necessary.” He believed that line, over and over, because he had to. Working under that assurance, he was personally aware of or responsible for operations to bomb infrastructure in other nations, disrupt business transactions to destabilize economies,  plant rumors to spread discord in legitimate governments, assassinate key leaders, and foment war. He detailed one of his most shameful accomplishments, how he personally orchestrated his totally contrived build up to the otherwise improbable war in Angola.

His own moment of realization finally came when reached one of the highest levels in the bureau, the level of a world chief. When he got close to the pinnacle of his career ladder, it became obvious that there was no actual reason, no secret justification, for the terrible things he did. It was painful to watch him in the lecture, almost vomiting out his pained confession like an act of penance. In a period of despair, he met for drinks with the few other world chiefs at his peer level in the CIA. They asked each other for just one example of anything they had ever done that was good for the world. None of them could justify even one thing.

That was when he “came out” and wrote his exposé “In Search of Enemies” which the CIA litigated and suppressed for many years. For most of my life it was essentially impossible to find, but I see that it is now finally available on Amazon (see here). In it, Stockwell answers the question “if they CIA accomplishes nothing, why do they do what they do?” His analysis is that the CIA is a bureaucracy that was formed to gather intelligence and take covert action during a time of war. Post-war, they have had to justify their continued existence and their obscene undisclosed budget. How do they prove their worth? They can only do this by finding enemies of the State. They are constantly “In Search of Enemies.” And since they cannot find enough enemies, they create them. They manufacture enemies so that they can then expand operations to combat them. In this way, their self-justification and self-preservation synergizes with an industrial-military complex in which the rich profit from every new or expanded conflict and war.

Stockwell spoke about the “tricks” the CIA uses to destabilize governments, ruin economies, and foment war. One of the most reliable excuses was the old “Russian Arms!” ploy. They would plant and then brilliantly discover Russian arms in a country. They would go back and report this to Kissinger of this who would then order a modest increase in their activities in that nation to counter “Russian Aggression.” It was always an increase. The Russians would see these increased activities (the CIA in fact ensured that they would) and counter, which the CIA would then report back to Kissinger to obtain the go-ahead for even further escalation… And so it goes, the game is repeated over and over and replicated all across the globe.

Unsurprisingly, his obviously heartfelt and first-hand account was NOT well-received by that college audience. They asked very tough and skeptical and even hostile questions. This is natural. No one wants to admit even to themselves that they live in a nation that does terrible things. No one wants to admit that they, by virtue of citizenship, are partially responsible and culpable for those terrible things. So we reject everything. To admit anything is to open the door on all of it. So we simply don’t want to hear it, we dismiss it all as conspiracy theory, we call it hating America and unpatriotic, we excuse it as unfortunate but necessary, we claim “they do it too.” Worst perhaps are those that tell themselves that by being avid readers of the New York Times, they would have been informed if there was anything to this stuff.

But for my part, after Stockwell’s lecture I never again accepted news reports of government accounts with the same level of trust I had earlier. When Ronald Reagan inexplicably invaded Granada, he got on television and fended off questions from the press by assuring them “If only you knew what I know.” That didn’t quite satisfy the press because they continued to ask tough questions. The next night he came out and announced that “Russian arms have been found in Granada,” and suddenly most of the press corps said, oh ok then.

When the first Iraq war came along I was similarly skeptical, but had no alternate theory of the action. I had maintained some personal contact with John Stockwell since that lecture and spoke to him occasionally. So I gave him a phone call and asked for his take on the war. He shared that Bush Senior had used back channels to assure Saddam that the US would not interfere if Iraq took action against Kuwait for their slant drilling into their oil fields. This was just a set-up by Bush who needed a war partially to boost his historically low ratings. This was later confirmed to be largely if not completely true by many corroborating reports.

When Bush Junior initiated the second Iraq war, my Stockman-esque skepticism resurged. Bush put forth – by one accounting – over 40 discrete falsehoods to lie us into that war (see here). When Bush first announced that Iraq was seeking “aluminum tubes” to refine uranium for a nuclear bomb I did an immediate Internet search and found a large number of credible experts already shouting that these tubes were not the type that would be needed for that purpose. Yet the Bush Administration kept citing this false “evidence” and the media kept reporting it, the whole while scoffing at “conspiracy theories” that called this evidence into question. It was almost a year later, after the war was inextricably committed, and after the truth about these tubes was everywhere to be seen except in the mainstream press, that they finally “broke” this revelation with their crack and bold investigative reporting.

And now today we are still hearing stories about why we must – regrettably – launch attacks against a large number of countries. We just launched missiles into Syria. One has to at least wonder if “Chemical Attack!” is the new “Russian Arms!” ploy. It works every time. And overt attacks such as this are only a very small part of our effort to ensure that there are plenty of permanent wars to feed the insatiable machine.

Look, I’m not asking you to believe every seemingly crazy story out there – you shouldn’t. But a healthy skeptic questions both sides – including what their government tells them. If you are only skeptical of the alternative view, then you are NOT a healthy skeptic, you are a Kool-Aid drinker. In fact, I argue that it is better to err on the side of skepticism of our self-perpetuating war-making machine, and force them to provide extreme evidence for their operations, rather than continuing to drink the official Kool-Aid and placing rigorous burdens of proof only on the whistle-blowers while the government merely has to appeal to their own authority as proof of their claims.

This alternate perspective used to be terribly hard to research, but today it is easy. Stockwell was hardly a lone voice but he was one of the bravest and most credentialed voices. Heck, in his 1989 lecture, Stockwell referenced over 120 books out of the thousands available at that time. Today there are innumerably more. So there is no longer any excuse for ignorance and the only ignorance possible is willful. You can start with this YouTube video of John Stockwell speaking at American University, broadcast on C-SPAN in 1989 (see here). It is still relevant today. The lecture part takes up the first hour and the remainder is questions. That hour only scratches the surface exposing the filthy and disgusting rats nest that is American Intelligence.

I urge you to give this video a fair look and consider it in the light of today’s current events. Hey, it’s only an hour and I know you find way more time than that to browse adorable cat videos. Be brave and crack the door open and peek inside. The truth will not destroy you, it will set you free. Becoming aware of and acknowledging the extent of our intelligence operations will not fix anything in and of itself, but we certainly can’t begin to fix anything until we are all willing to take that first crucial step.

 

 

 

Competition Improves Healthcare?

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MedicalMoneyI really, really wanted to get to my backlog of scientific blog topics today, but was distracted once again by Shawn Spicer at his daily press briefing. In defending “Trump/Ryan Care,” he repeated perhaps a hundred times that “It is an economic certainty that increased competition unquestionably brings down costs.”

(Note that he uses the word “costs” but he presumably intends this to mean “prices.” Cost is really the cost of manufacturing a product. Price is the cost to the consumer. Price minus cost equals profit. I will use these words consistently in this way to eliminate ambiguity and confusion.)

Shawn’s assertion is a meme that is almost universally accepted in America as a fundamental principle, a given, but it is simply untrue. It is part of the falsely simplistic “Economics 101” nonsense that has been repeated so often that it feels like perfectly sound common sense (see here).

Our acceptance of false arguments like this manipulates us into adopting “free market” solutions that harm our own self-interest and shovels money from poor Americans to rich Corporations.

The reality is that the “free market” does not give a hoot about low costs or even about high quality and there is nothing inherently forcing it to provide the highest possible quality at the lowest possible price. Quite the opposite. Businesses in unregulated free markets will minimize cost (quality) and maximize price to realize the highest possible profit.

If their manufacturing costs are reduced through deregulation, they will not lower their prices to the consumer, they will enjoy higher profits. If they are forced to lower prices through regulation, they will lower their costs (quality) before lowering their profits.

But wait you say. Of course that is true and that is why competition works! If there is competition then if a business wants to survive they must deliver higher quality at lower prices than their competitors. Eventually we reach an optimum for the consumer.

Except that rarely works in the real world, and works least well in providing essential services that really matter, things we must have to live and work and even survive.

The example that is invariably given in idiotic Economics 101 courses is the lemonade stand. If Sally sets up a stand in her yard and charges $1 per cup, but then Billy across the street sees her making money and sets up his own competing stand charging $.95 for the same lemonade, then Sally must either increase her quality or lower her prices or accept less profit if she wishes to stay in business.

But in the real world, Sally and Billy would both quickly understand that getting into a price war is a lose-lose scenario in game theory. If they both just keep their prices the same, they both enjoy higher profits than if they compete. If Jimmy were to open up a stand in his yard and sell lemonade for $.50 at no profit, Sally and Billy would quickly buy him out and return prices to $1. Further, they would both lower the quality of their lemonade, thereby increasing their profits, right up to the point at which they lose sufficient customers to cause a net loss.

In reality, the free market optimizes for the lowest quality at the highest price the market will bear to maximize profits.

When I lived in India, I often had to use a rickshaw to get around. The rickshaw wallahs would see that I was a Westerner and smarmily quote me exorbitant prices for a ride. Now, there were at least 100 wallahs waiting around with nothing to do, all perfectly able to take me. But if I went from one to another they would all give me the same inflated prices. Even if I simply left and walked the 5 miles, none would budge. In that free market, like most, businessmen would rather lose customers than lower their prices. The wallahs all knew as big corporations well know, that I would eventually have to pay their high fees to someone and that benefitted them all much more than undercutting each other.

The last people who should be fooled into believing that competition lowers prices are Walmart customers.  Walmart literally destroys all competition and then, as essentially monopolies in their markets, they provide the lowest prices to their customers. Where is the “free market competition” argument here? Monopolies clearly can do way better. They have huge purchasing power and don’t have to pay advertising overhead.

So it is with essential services like healthcare in America. Free market competition will not force healthcare companies to lower their prices, improve their quality, and sacrifice any of their profits. Competition inherently segregates risk pools which particularly damages this industry. Deregulation will only allow insurers to work together to maximize profits by lowering their costs and raising prices to the highest level the market will bear, which in the case of essential healthcare is cripplingly high.

What we need in healthcare is not deceitful free-market snake oil, but a healthcare monopoly like Walmart. We need public healthcare that can create the largest possible nation-wide risk pool, negotiate the best costs, and take all profit out of the equation. Our free-market system has a vested interest in maximizing profits over patient health. These interests are simply not compatible and never can be (further reading).

 

 

 

Swarm the Trumpephant

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You are hopefully wondering what you can do, if anything, to push back against the unfolding tin-pot dictatorship of Donald Trump (see here). The good news is that this President is particularly vulnerable in two critical areas. The first is his wallet. Money is all he cares about. The second is his brand, because that is what brings him his money.

trumpephantBoth of these vulnerabilities are at the mercy of us, the public. If we work individually but in sufficient numbers we can bring him to his knees like an army of ants swarming to bring down an elephant – the Trumpephant.

Trump is not really a great businessman. He doesn’t build or produce much of anything. The Trump hotels he pretends to own are mostly owned by others who just license his brand name. He is essentially just a brand marketer and his brand is his only real product.

For example, his newest hotel, The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver was actually built by a Malaysian businessman named Joo Kim Tiah (see here). Although Trump pretends to build and own these hotels, he does not. Mr. Tiah simply licensed the Trump name for branding and marketing. The Trump Hotel Collection just manages the hotel portion of the tower.

Reportedly, Mr. Tiah attempted to cancel the licensing deal as soon as Donald Trump ran for President but was unable to get out of his contract with the Trump Organization. This should show you just how vulnerable Trump is. All he has to sell is his brand and if that gold tarnishes, he has nothing left to sell to his major partners.

All we need to do is to taint his brand name. We, you and I, can do that. We just need to take the Trump name that he has worked so hard to make synonymous with luxury and quality, and instead make it inextricably linked with corruption, lies, and excess.

So, make “Trump” a part of your everyday language. Every time you wish to ridicule something or point out a poser or liar or charlatan or cheap excess, refer to it as a Trump.

“Wow, check out that pathetic Trump over there.”

“That guy was a pretentious idiot, I’m talking Trump grade.

“The Congressman must think we are complete morons, he tried to pull a Trump on us.”

“Wow he really messed up, an epic Trump up.”

“You she looked absurdly tacky in that dress, a total Trump.“

“I wouldn’t be caught dead going in there. It’s so… Trump!”

You get the idea. Be imaginative, wicked, relentless, and merciless. We need to take away Trump’s only real asset by turning it into an overused joke – a derogatory expression that will endure for generations as a cautionary tale to those who would follow his example. We need to make sure that the next Joo Kim Tiah does not even consider signing a deal with the Trumps.

YOU can ninja this Trump brand anti-marketing every day. But you can also take direct action as well by boycotting companies that peddle his ridiculous Trump crap. Boycotting DOES work. We know that. And boycotting in this case is easy. Just keep track of companies that sell Trump shit. Simply search their site for “Trump” or check this spreadsheet (see here). There is even an app for that (see here).

For example, Amazon was petitioned for nearly a year to stop promoting Trump merchandise. They continue to do so. Now, I know you probably cannot stop using Amazon entirely, but you can still pressure them. On occasion, just go to their feedback page and send them an email saying that I am NOT buying my new <fill in the blank> from you because you continue to promote Trump. Do this for all the retailers you can.

Even if you only do this occasionally, it is still huge when enough people do it together. One ant nibbling on the Trumpephant does nothing, but together we can reduce it to a zombie skeleton in minutes.

Now I know are probably rationalizing that it’s unfair to punish retailers. But you’re wrong. Now that Trump is President, these retailers are no longer non-political when they continue to sell his crap. Amazon (as the largest example) is potentially currying favor with the White House by continuing to offer his junk. They also implicitly condone his activities by hawking his garbage. Don’t feel sorry for them, this is part of the territory.

And are you thinking that boycotting is unfair because Trump cannot extricate himself from his businesses? Too bad! That would be like saying that it’s ok if Melania were a Slovenian spy because, well, he can’t really just be expected to divorce her! But that’s exactly what he would need to do, or step down as President. Our President simply cannot make policy that impacts Amazon and other retailers without concern about a conflict of interest, any more than he could remain free of legitimate concern if Melania were a known Slovenian spy. If retailers sell his products, will he favor them? If they do not might he punish them? Do companies favor him simply out of fear that he might punish them? He is after all known to be singularly petty and vindictive. We cannot ever know for sure and every decision he makes has this inherent uncertainty. That is why his particular conflict of interest situation is deeply unacceptable and just one reason why Donald Trump is entirely unacceptable as President.

Yes maybe 50% of Americans voted for Trump knowing that he would have business conflicts while in office. So what? If 50% of America voted for a candidate with a spy-wife, we should not simply accept that situation either. If 50% of Americans voted for a slave owner, well that is why we have checks and balances – including direct action by the other 50%.

So, tarnish the brand as much as you can. Turn it into a sad cliché of a joke. At the same time boycott not only Trump crap, but all companies that carry Trump crap. Make association with his brand a “loser” for business partners and retailers and elected officials and for voters.

Oh yes, and keep organizing, protesting,  and pestering your representatives. Call them out and embarrass them for aligning with Trump. We can bring down this lumbering Trumpephant that is trampling all over all our great nation – if we all relentlessly piranha his thin orange hide at every opportunity.

 

The Traits that Spawn Conservatism

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There are a large number of important personal and social policy issues upon which liberals and conservatives completely disagree. I have to consider whether all of these seemingly unrelated positions are merely symptomatic of more fundamental underlying personality differences.

I submit that conservative worldviews arise from three primary character traits: dogmatism, selfishness, and fearfulness.

The first basic personality trait is the degree to which you are a situational or a dogmatic thinker. Liberals tend to be situational, weighing and balancing the nuanced competing ethics of a given situation. Conservatives tend to be dogmatic, enforcing strict, simplistic rules in accordance with their moral beliefs. Liberals are frightened by what they regard as mindless dogmatism, while conservatives view situational ethics as a dangerous lack of moral principles.

The second fundamental trait that influences our worldview is selfishness. Conservatives are essentially selfish in putting their self-interest and their beliefs first, whereas liberals tend to more strongly respect differences and emphasize the public good with the view that “it takes a village.”

Their third important trait is fearfulness. It is fearfulness that drives the conservative need for guns, for an insanely large military arm, and fear of immigrants and those unlike them.

Since the real motivations for conservative positions (dogmatism, selfishness, and fear) are not things that conservatives can acknowledge in themselves, they must come up with other rationales for their positions. This causes conservatives to vilify intellectualism and ridicule facts. It forces smart conservatives to defend their dogmatic, selfish, and fearful positions with stupid arguments. Smart people put forth stupid arguments to defend a selfish, anti-social culture of guns. Smart people put forth stupid arguments to defend a belief in god, to defend pro-life legislation, rampant militarism, economic Darwinism, and trickle-down economics.

Smart Christians like Ken Ham make stupid arguments to support their creationist beliefs. Ham insists that everything in the bible he agrees with is literal, while everything he disagrees with is figurative only (see here). Similarly, smart conservative supreme court justices claim that the Constitution must be interpreted literally when it supports them, but when it doesn’t support them they insist in an “original intent” interpretation that always happens to support their conservative views (see here).

The result is that we hear a lot of falsehoods and specious arguments in defense of a wide range of conservative positions that are all really rationalizations of dogmatism, selfishness, and fear.

Now wait a second, you may say. While conservatives may disagree with us liberals, they are simply good, well-intentioned people with sincere differences of opinion as to what is best for everyone. They sincerely believe their pro-life activism saves lives, that more guns are the solution to gun violence, and that a strong military prevents wars. You shouldn’t disparage them with negative characterizations of dogmatism, selfishness, and fear.

I would be inclined to believe that as well. However, we have a disturbing “tell” that suggests otherwise. The fact that conservatives deny global climate changes signals to us that they have not simply reached a differing conclusion on this issue. The facts are so overwhelming on this, that their denial can only be driven by strong underlying traits, particularly selfishness. They simply care more about being able to burn all the fossil fuels they want, make all the money they want today, and heck with tomorrow for the entire world. Since few are willing to claim that CO2 is actually good for the planet, the others simply deny, deny, deny.

The fact that conservatives can deny facts and rationalize their denial of climate change makes it likely that all their other arguments are similarly driven by underlying traits including dogmatism, selfishness, and fear. Their denial of climate change suggests that conservatives do not merely reach different conclusions given the information they are exposed to, rather they limit their information and formulate rationalizations to defend their dogmatism, selfishness, and fear. Climate change tells us that these traits are strong in conservatives, and those traits cannot help but drive their positions on other important issues as well.

If we liberals wish to push back on these critical issues, we need to stop debating specious and shifting secondary arguments and start to deal more directly with these fundamental character drivers.

 

Why Wall Street Loves Trump

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I hear that Wall Street is all excited about a Trump Presidency. They should be. I’d like to comment on this, but first let me admit that I have absolutely no qualifications to offer any sort of informed analysis. In fact I’m probably the least qualified financial analyst possible. As amazing as it may seem, I am literally an Economics 101 drop out.

How is it possible to fail one of the easiest undergrad filler classes you ask? Well back in Econ 101, the professor instructed us that we had to “play the game.” We were explicitly told not to consider any common sense, logic, or real-world experience while participating in his discussion sessions. We were admonished to simply play along and accept his premises as presented, however absurd they they may seem.

I had trouble participating in these discussions. In fact, at one point the professor called on me to select either option A or option B for some hypothetical scenario. I told him that I could not choose either one because they were both ridiculous. As this was not my first uncooperative infraction, he told me that I should either “play the game” or drop his course. I stood up, gathered up my books slowly, and announced that I chose option C, dropping the course. Then I took a long walk up the lecture hall steps and across to the back door to give my fellow students as much time as possible to consider what they hell they were learning in this idiotic class.

Although I never did “play the game” to the end to see how it all came together, I suspect that the professor never actually got around to showing how all of his ridiculous economic scenarios applied to the real world. I suspect that all of my former classmates came away only with the expected understanding of our crazy capitalist system, and with absolutely no recollection of the sanity that they were required to abandon in order to accept it.

Now most of us do accept as we are constantly led to believe by the media, that when the Dow and the Nasdaq are excited, we should all be excited. And here I am, without the insight gained by completing even Econ 101, epically unprepared to understand why we should all be excited by Wall Street’s enthusiasm for Donald Trump.

Yet it seems to me that Wall Street gets excited over one thing and one thing only, higher profits for shareholders. Profits are not increased by the things most of us want like more jobs, higher wages, better benefits, a cleaner and safer environment, or greater consumer protections. In fact profits go up most dramatically when these things can be reduced, circumvented, or eliminated completely.

Wall Street gets excited when businesses can replace jobs with machines or cheap overseas labor. They get excited when they can lower wages or benefits to increase profits for shareholders. They get excited when they can be shielded from corporate malfeasance or pollute our environment or bankrupt retirement funds to hand out executive bonuses. The markets go up and down all the time. Usually when they go up it means nothing good for the workers or for the consumer.

These are all things that Wall Street expects Donald Trump to help them do as President. Is it any wonder they are all excited?

wallstreetOne thing that Wall Street loves most of all are disasters. Disasters make bankers salivate. Life is full of its little ironies, and as it turns out I just moved away from New York City after 10 years of living literally on Wall Street. In another strange twist of fate, I worked on Church Street (I’m a devout atheist). Anyway, back on point. I used to meet lots of financial types. I remember after a tornado leveled some towns in the South, these guys were like kids in a candy store. They could hardly contain their enthusiasm over this disaster and all the new loans and sales it would create.

Make no mistake. The election of Donald Trump was a huge, mega-disaster. No wonder my former Wall Street neighbors are getting erections. Disasters create opportunities for massive profits for the already wealthy. But for all the rest of us? Well they are still just disasters. Maybe we all just need to forget reality and simply “play the game” when CNN Money and The Economist reassure us that Wall Street is bullish over a Trump Administration.

 

 

 

 

Shades of Gray

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themonkeesFor those of you under 50, The Monkees were a band that was big in the 1960’s. Though they started out as a marketing contrivance by record producers hoping to compete with the Beatles, they quickly asserted their independence and sang out with their own unique voice to help define the times we lived in. For many pre-teens like me growing up then, The Monkees were incredibly influential in shaping our worldview.

It is difficult to analyze what made them so influential for so many. Attempts to do so only diminish their uniqueness, like describing a frog by dissecting it. Perhaps it was partly the innocent seriousness of their music and lyrics. Perhaps it was partly their counterculture attitude and their defiant questioning of establishment norms. But it was also the damned catchy way they did it, with unfailing musicality and uplifting positivity underpinning their protest messages, so pop and so unlike the relatively somber dirges of Dylan and many other folk era voices.

Their influence manifested in little ways like a Daydream Believer posing the question “how much baby do we really need?” It inhabited their observations about suburban life in Pleasant Valley Sunday. And it was reflected in the angry backlash of mainstream culture shouted out in Randy Souce Git.

Why don’t you be like me?
Why don’t you stop and see?
Why don’t you hate who I hate,
Kill who I kill to be free?
Why don’t you cut your hair?
Why don’t you live up there?
Why don’t you do what I do,
See what I feel when I care?

No where was their magic more deeply felt by me than in the music and lyrics of a song called “Shades of Gray.” Like the soft murmurs of a siren song, this unassuming little ballad draws the listener deep into heart of the human condition. This magical spell permanently transformed many of us kids from the dogmatic, religious worldview of black and white morality into a generation cursed evermore to perceive a world revealed as an ever shifting kaleidoscope of greys.

When the world and I were young
Just yesterday
Life was such a simple game
A child could play
It was easy then to tell right from wrong
Easy then to tell weak from strong
When a man should stand and fight
Or just go along
But today there is no day or night
Today there is no dark or light
Today there is no black or white
Only shades of gray
I remember when the answers seemed so clear
We had never lived with doubt or tasted fear
It was easy then to tell truth from lies
Selling out from compromise
Who to love and who to hate
The foolish from the wise
But today there is no day or night
Today there is no dark or light
Today there is no black or white
Only shades of gray
[Instrumental interlude]
It was easy then to know what was fair
When to keep and when to share
How much to protect your heart
And how much to care
But today there is no day or night
Today there is no dark or light
Today there is no black or white
Only shades of gray
Only shades of gray

 

Those lyrics were immensely powerful in 1966, and they are just as relevant and meaningful today, 50 years later- especially so after our last election.

But please don’t just read the lyrics. The music and the harmonies are so gorgeous, you really have to just listen… really listen.

 

Leaving Men Behind

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I recently read an interesting article in the New York Times called “The Men Feminists Left Behind” by Jill Filipovic (see here). You should read it in entirety, but here is a synopsis:

Women have evolved, men have not. While women have soared, men have remained stuck in the past. Donald Trump is representative of far too many men, and they are a threat to our country. Women cannot reach their full potential unless men change. If men feel left behind, disrespected, and ignored, they need to follow the example of women and move forward into a new and more flexible gender role.

womanvsmanA lot of what is says is well-taken tough love, but it does generalize too much. It paints all men as Dodo Birds, and all women by implication as enlightened beings. Certainly there are far too many men, largely Trump voters, who absolutely need to go extinct as quickly as possible for the good of all humanity. But huge numbers of men vehemently reject Trump and all he stands for.

Conversely, the author seems blind to the fact that far, far too many women support Trump the candidate and the hateful rhetoric he spews. Kellyanne Conway, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin and his army of female surrogates are not anomalies, but are examples of a disturbingly large number of female Trump supporters. These are hardly luminous beings of exemplary wisdom. Their support is particularly inexplicable and disturbing given how much of his rhetoric ought to be especially horrifying to women.

Here’s another thing. The author is correct that men do need to adjust. We had been driving in our station wagon together as families for many generations. The man driving, the woman knitting while occasionally checking the map for directions. Recently, the woman has demanded to drive and the man has had to relinquish the steering wheel. But he loved driving, doesn’t know how to knit, and is constitutionally and philosophically opposed to maps. So what does he do now? Maybe he sits in his passenger seat and reminisces about the good old days when he got to drive as he drinks lots of beer.

Back when I was in the Peace Corps, I used to walk by construction sites in my village. Each one was “manned” exclusively by female construction workers doing heavy labor. I knew full well that the corner bar was filled with men sitting around drinking. I was infuriated by this. It offended my sensibilities in every possible way. What was the matter with these lazy, good-for-nothing men? Unfortunately, my ire couldn’t have been more myopic. It turned out that, in a well-intentioned effort to encourage equal opportunity, the government provided generous incentives for these companies to hire women. Almost over night, that put men out of work with absolutely nothing to do, no prospects, no opportunities, and no self-respect.

I tell you this story to suggest to you that situations are seldom simple. Yes, women have made great strides and that is good. In fact, to the extent it is a competition, they have clearly won. Jill’s article could only be written by someone that has internalized the fact that women have won. They are on top now, if not in every measure, in every measure that portends future trends and prospects. She knows women are driving the train moving forward, and feels confident enough to warn men that they need to get on-board or get left behind.

Let’s be clear, there has been a strong element of competition here for a largely fixed pie. Women flocked into previously male jobs and these well-paying jobs have not doubled over this period, rather the number of these jobs has shrunk dramatically over this same period. So you do the math. To tell men in America that they simply need to “get with the program” is as naïve as my thinking that those African men simply need to “get out there and work.” It is as short-sighted and callous and indifferent as it is when we tell impoverished Blacks to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or immigrants to stop just complaining and get to work, or displaced coal workers to just evolve.

These social upheavals, while good and necessary, do cause real pain. Major social transitions to create greater equity do cause localized inequity and in this case men have been the losers. When feminists like Jill ignore this and chide men into “just get over it,” they ignore the systemic and emotional challenges involved. It is not that simple or easy. Necessary, yes of course. Easy? No way. Men are not Neanderthals. They are actual people with feelings who are trying their best to adjust to real loss and change. Sometimes part of that adjustment includes clinging to the past or getting belligerent. But these things are normal stages of adjustment. Women have had generations to adapt and grow. Men need and deserve some time.

Despite the fact that men have been hit hard, they have adjusted a great deal. You seldom hear sexist language in most workplaces. Many men find that they are suddenly a minority in largely female workplaces and many report to women. Lots of men are thriving house-moms today.

So women, you deserve to celebrate but try not to gloat. Refrain from telling men they are Neanderthals or treating them that way. Try not to discount the unprecedented social barriers and challenges that men have been adapting to. Maybe try to give them some support and encouragement rather than getting impatient with them, demeaning them, and issuing Conservative-sounding “get on the train or get left behind” ultimatums.

And as you give your men the time and understanding they need to adjust, maybe you can work on evolving the many women who have adopted all the worst traits associated with the old school males you deride as Neanderthals. I, as do many males, desperately want to see female compassion and sensibilities provide real leadership to help to save this planet, not merely share equally with men in exploiting and plundering it.

Aborting the Lies

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Is it any surprise that there are many more fake pro-life “abortion clinics” than there are actual abortion clinics? Is it any surprise that if you try to Google anything related to abortion services, you will get many, many more hits for fake pro-life Trojan-Horse sites than actual legitimate abortion service sites?

Frankly this should come as no surprise to anyone. This is what these fanatical pro-life activists do. As documented in the excellent HBO film “12th and Delaware” (see here) and others, Christians set up fake abortion clinics to lure in distressed, vulnerable pregnant women under false pretenses. Like any good confidence operation, they are warm and welcoming and sprinkle in as many facts as they can so that they can manipulate these women.

However, once lured into these “abortion counseling services,” the women find that the pressure on them will build and build, becoming more manipulative as these pro-life fanatics try to persuade or coerce or even trick the woman into delivering her baby. This manipulation is not merely limited to appeals to emotion, but includes many outright distortions and lies. One such tactic is to intentionally under-report the gestational age of the baby to make the client believe she has much more time than she actually has to perform the abortion. They outright lie to trick the women into delaying their abortion until it is too late. In fact, they feel justified to lie about anything and everything necessary to “save” the baby.

Clinics and web sites make the women watch “informational videos” to help in this coercion. Many are produced by an infamous anti-abortion doctor named Dr. Anthony Levitano. He has one such propaganda video on medical abortion (see here), which is an extremely safe and effective procedure. I encourage you to watch this because it provides a great crash course in how to manipulate others and what to watch for to avoid being manipulated. It starts out for the first minute or so as a fairly straight-forward description of medical abortion. The manipulation kicks in by pointing out that the medical abortion can be “reversed.” This is factually inaccurate, but pro-life advocates like to say it anyway to plant the seed of doubt – the doubt that many women “come to their senses” too late to save their baby.

At about a 90 seconds in, the video starts to turn palpably darker, emphasizing ominous words like “severe” and “heavy” and introducing phrases intended to appeal to emotion like “force the dead baby out.” Notice that they intentionally call it a baby, not a fetus or embryo, because they use every possible ploy to make the mother feel emotionally connected. After that, Levitano proceeds to up the temperature by warning that the process can be “very intense and painful.” From there it gets quickly worse, gratuitously pointing out that the woman could “loose her baby” at any time, then following up with images of a woman on a toilet “expelling her baby down the toilet which she will then flush.” The repulsive imagery that Levitano fully intends to invoke is masked under a transparently thin veil of clinical detachment.

And this is only half-way through the thing! The video goes on to repulse the viewer with increasingly horrific and increasingly blatant appeals to fear, guilt, and revulsion. He points out, for example, how [if the woman were to sift through the tissue in the toilet] she might be able to detect fingers and toes. Levitano claims that 1% of women require hospitalization after a medical abortion, but this is at least a hundred-fold exaggeration and in the extremely rare case when there is hospitalization, it is rarely serious or even the result of the abortion drug. Levitano closes his manipulation by sharing his own personal realization that “all abortions are wrong.”

Let me be perfectly clear. This is factual and emotional manipulation with no tactic too subtle or too blatant. Whatever true facts are presented are only included to establish enough credibility to sell the big lies and manipulations to come. It is sad that so many women fall prey to this kind of hateful and harmful manipulation dressed up and rationalized as Christian morality and charity. Whether they are in front of abortion clinics or hosting their Trojan-Horse web sites, in their minds no tactic is out of bounds, no lie is a lie to them if it advances their cause.

liesBut this should come as no surprise. After all, all of religion is nothing but selling lies. It can be nothing else because it has nothing but lies to offer. Scriptures, angels, salvation, afterlife, god, devils… its all lies and Christians spend all their energy believing or convincing others to believe these lies. Is it any wonder then that Christians should have no trouble believing and spreading lies about abortion as well? Religion is not benign. Becoming comfortable rationalizing religious nonsense directly impacts our capacity to rationalize equally crazy thinking in consequential matters like abortion.

And as with religious fantasy, it is immaterial whether they sincerely, devoutly, fervently believe the nonsense they spread about abortion or how selfless their intentions might be. Their lies, deceits, manipulations, misinformation, and misguided efforts do great harm to a great many people regardless of their motivation – harm to the women directly affected as well as to the men and families in their lives.

If you are seeking an abortion, ask the clinic early and directly if they provide abortions on their premises. If you do not receive a clear and unambiguous yes, hang up. Ask again the minute you walk in the door. If they begin to use any of these tactics on you, leave immediately because their only goal is to do whatever it takes to prevent you from obtaining a legal and safe abortion.