Tag Archives: News

I Cannot Exaggerate Exaggeration Enough

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Although numbers vary day to day and poll to poll, about 97% of Americans support deporting immigrants who commit violent crimes. About 52% support deporting immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes. Only 32% support deporting all immigrants who entered illegally, and a vanishingly small number support expelling legal immigrants.

News and political commentators often cite these kind of numbers to point out that people simultaneously support the deportation of criminals but not the harassment of legal immigrants. But this sheds little light on the huge disconnect in public opinion over the wholesale rounding up immigrants by the Trump Administration.

I submit that the missing puzzle piece of our understanding is the role of exaggeration. In fact I cannot exaggerate the awful power of exaggeration enough.

The fact is that undocumented immigrants are about half as likely to commit violent crimes than native-born citizens. They are 4 times less likely to commit nonviolent crimes and 2.5 times less likely to commit drug-related offenses. These numbers hold firm across all geographical boundaries.

But when Trump talks about immigrants, he hyper-exaggerates the level of crime in that population far beyond what the data supports. To hear him talk, one would think that immigrants are running amok and causing mass havoc.

This incredible level of exaggeration, well beyond anything the actual facts support, creates the essential disconnect in our brains that allows people to both conclude that while they support legal immigrants but want to see “all those criminal illegals” deported.

Look at it this way. Just to take a number for illustration purposes, let’s say 5% of illegal immigrants are criminals. Trump makes it sound like 90% are criminals. Even if we are skeptical and fair-minded and allow for some exaggeration, we conclude that let’s say 25% are criminals that should be deported.

So when the actual number is 5% and Trump skews our perception to “feel like” it’s something on the order of 25%, what happens? We naturally expect and demand to see 25% arrested and deported. But there are not 25%, so to show it is meeting expectations the government rounds up and deports a whole lot of innocent immigrants in order to demonstrate it is doing it’s job to keep us safe. It must round up a whole lot of good, honest immigrants to satisfy the false perception it has created. We expect no less.

Using gross exaggeration to create unwarranted expectations is used, particularly by Trump, in a lot of other areas as well. Take Social Security as just one other example. The actual administrative overhead of managing our Social Security program is about 0.6%. This is a fantastically low amount of overhead that private companies and even non-profit organizations cannot come anywhere close to matching.

Yet to listen to Trump, you would think, even allowing for his characteristic hyperbole, that the Social Security system is at least somewhat bloated with waste and inefficiency. So say a 5% cut to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse might seem like a reasonable, measured, and warranted cost control measure. But if one made such cuts it could in reality only come from reducing legitimate benefits.

That is the power of exaggeration and it is perhaps one of the most destructive weapons that Trump wields wantonly with complete abandon. It dramatically affects how we perceive immigration, Medicare, Medicaid, tariffs, and most everything else that Trump chooses to rail about.

We need to call out Trump more strongly and more often for exaggeration, as well as others who grossly exaggerate, and not simply accept it as a personality characteristic or a legitimate rhetorical style.

Recognizing the destructive power of exaggeration is a first necessary step toward arriving at more sane and fact-based public policy.

And THAT is no exaggeration.

What are Deficit Hawks Thinking?

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At every budgeting cycle the Republican deficit hawks work themselves into a frenzy of concern about budget deficits. To remind you, the annual deficit is the amount our government has spent beyond what it has taken in that year. Implicitly included under the umbrella of deficit is the debt, which is the credit card balance we owe for all past unpaid deficits.

Certainly debt and deficits are liabilities and it would be great if we could avoid them completely and spend only what we take in, but we realistically cannot operate without dipping into our credit card sometimes. The contention arises around how to control spending in order to avoid crippling credit card payments.

To reduce our credit burden, both parties strive to increase efficiency and reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. Beyond that, Democrats generally aim to raise revenue from the wealthy and corporations, and (to a far lesser extent) reduce military spending, while protecting and expanding social programs. Republicans mostly push for cuts to social programs, while increasing tax cuts (only for the wealthy), and opposing new taxes (only on the wealthy), while maintaining or increasing defense spending.

Democrats assert that the rich and powerful do not pay anything near their fair share and can afford to contribute far more, while Republicans assert (incorrectly) that the rich and powerful deserve even more money that will supposedly then “trickle-down” to help poorer people.

Not many appreciate that the concept of a “trickle-down” economy did not originate with Ronald Regan who put it forth as a credible economic principle. It was originally a satirical joke made by Will Rogers back in 1932 to mock then President Hoover’s response to the Great Depression in giving more money to rich people.

I’m going to forgo a lot of additional argumentation and simply skip ahead to the conclusion that Republicans are simply wrong on both the merits and the ethics of their budget logic, and rather try to understand their thinking.

I’m going to put aside sheer greed and self-interest as uninteresting. My interest is in how well-meaning people can come to support Republican policies.

First and perhaps foremost, Republicans believe incorrectly that rich people and corporations deserve (are entitled to) more money because the rich deserve it and can make the best use of it. Second, they love a strong military because either they are fearful, love having the biggest guns, love war profits, or are just afraid of looking weak on defense. Finally, they believe that regular people deserve nothing and should either get rich or die quietly without bothering anyone.

These biases result in the following internal logic. A) we must give as much as we can to rich people, and B) we must maintain or expand the military, so C) the only way we can accomplish both is to siphon away money from the 99%. This is accomplished by finding new ways to tax or increase costs for regular people, by destabilizing and pillaging the social security fund that they paid into, by compromising or withholding their healthcare, and by deregulation that shifts the cost of doing business from rich corporations to ordinary communities.

To extract wealth, they continue to perpetuate the joke of trickle-down economics. The term may be discredited, but the concept still underpins their worldview. They extract wealth by grossly downplaying the amount of money being spent on the military, and by exaggerating the cost of social service programs (see here).

And they have elucidated no limit whatsoever in just how much more the rich and powerful deserve. In fact the expressed American value is that personal wealth should be unlimited. Therefore, their goal of decreasing the debt and deficit can never be achieved no matter how much they extract, no matter how much damage they do, no matter how many people they impoverish, the rich can and will never have enough under the logical framework they have constructed.

Thus is the folly of their worldview, their rationalizations, and their policies. Their concern about the debt and deficit may or may not be genuine, as is their belief that the rich should receive even more. But to achieve both, the vast majority of people have to suffer. The end result of their thinking can only be incredibly harmful, unsustainable, and unethical budgetary policies enacted under the pretext of responsible deficit reduction.

How We Liberals Destroyed Democracy

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The title of this article is intentionally provocative. But for good reason. Democrats should at least consider their shared responsibility for destroying our democracy. I’m not trying to be fair and balanced and comprehensive here. I and others have opined ad nauseum about the flaws and dangers of conservative thinking. But in this article I wish to focus on the role of liberals.

Regardless of what we will admit to ourselves or to others, the Supreme Court immunity ruling and the subsequent reelection of Trump has effectively ended our long noble struggle to hold on to our democracy in America. I don’t believe it is hyperbole to acknowledge that we are now firmly, and probably intractably, marching along the path to becoming just like Russia, a brazen kleptocracy flaunting a thin facade of democracy.

And whether they will admit it in that way to themselves and others, half the country is effectively OK with that. It would not have been their first choice for our fate, but they would rather live in a dictatorship than continue to tolerate the excesses, real or perceived, of many democrats, at least of those driving the agenda. I predicted this based on game theory a while back (see here).

To be fair, conservatives have largely tolerated if not embraced a stunning amount of social change since the 1960’s and even before. The end of slavery was social change, women gaining the vote was social change, a sweeping host of equal rights practices was social change, interracial marriage was social change, women entering the workforce and arguably taking half the jobs in the country away from men was social change, the changing expectations of men in the home and in society was social change, accepting gay pride parades and gay marriage was social change. Those are just the broadest reminders of the incredible social change that conservatives tolerated if not always embraced.

But democrats weren’t satisfied. They pushed too hard, too aggressively, too gleefully on social, race, and gender issues mostly. I would suggest that the critical point at which their incessant pressure turned dark and counterproductive was the cancelling of Al Franken. It continued with a cancel culture that vilified everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Matt Damon. It took the form of policing gender pronouns, rallying behind gay wedding cakes, drag queen story hour, transgender surgery, bathrooms, and military service. The entire year leading up to Trumps election I watched liberal women on MSNBC fixate on women’s issues and overtly tell men they should support us or shut up. The list goes on and on and on.

So don’t tell me that democrats are purely the victims here and conservatives are the bad guys. I revile much or even most of what conservatives stand for, but democrats kept making more and more extreme demands until the point at which conservatives said, I’ve had enough of even trying to make this marriage work, I’m out.

One can continue to insist that all those demands were just and right. But even granting that, one must at least question the tactical wisdom of how we went about fighting for them. One can argue that regardless of the provocation and pressure, upending our democracy is a self-destructive and disproportionate response. True enough. But if liberals are capable of any self-examination they must consider their own hubris and lack of restraint in forcing this response.

In the media today there is a lot of coverage of democrats gleefully saying “I told you so” to conservatives in reference to the disastrous actions of Trump. But perhaps conservatives are also justified in saying “I told you so” to the democrats who have been so incessant and extreme in their long history of cattle-prodding conservatives into ever more unpalatable concessions without any apparent expectation of the extreme blowback that was virtually assured to come… and now has.

News Has Become a Geico Commercial

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cavemanGreat advertising works because the advertisers uncannily understand the psychological dynamics of the moment even before it is commonly recognized. Take for example the “Great Answer” series of Geico commercials. In these commercials, a person is put in an impossibly tough spot to which they reply that Geico can save you 15% or more on insurance. This is comically accepted by everyone as a “great answer.”

In “Objection,” faced with insurmountable evidence against him in a courtroom, a thief defends himself with the line (see here).

And in “Undercover Agent” an inept undercover agent avoids certain death at the hands of the mob using a similar line (see here).

Then in “He-Man vs Skeletor” the villain escapes amid gleeful laughter after delivering the punch line (see here).

Finally in “Meteor Crash,” when faced with the imminent destruction of the Earth, the General in charge proclaims that Geico is the answer (see here).

Silly as these are, I sometimes I feel like I’m living in a Geico commercial. When we watch news interviews, we essentially see an unending stream of farcical Geico  commercials. The Geico advertising team gets this at some level. That’s why these commercials are not merely funny but they relate, they resonate, they ring true.

Except being subjected to an endless stream of Geico-esque answers to real, important questions that affect our lives and affect the planet is not funny.

When watching news interviews during the day, the nightly news shows, or shows like Meet the Press or Face the Nation over the weekend, the hosts try to ask meaningful and important questions. But the guests invariably reply with “Geico can save you 15% or more” type answers.

Host: Given all the incontrovertible evidence that your tax plan is designed only to benefit the rich, how can you justify it?

Paul Ryan: We are giving the middle class a huge tax cut.

Host: Every independent analysis concludes that your tax plan will explode the deficit which you claimed is the biggest threat to our nation. How do you respond?

Kevin McCarthy: We are giving the middle class a huge tax cut.

Host: You claim that by giving huge tax breaks to big business and ultra-rich individuals, your tax plan will create jobs and increase wages. Yet this promise has been made many times before and it has never proved true. Why should it work this time?

Sarah Sanders: We are giving the middle class a huge tax cut.

Some people would simply call this “good messaging.” But at some point, good messaging becomes formal or informal collusion in a campaign of misinformation. We are way past the point of innocent and healthy message discipline now. We are moving into carefully crafted propaganda territory.

Here’s the thing. If the person you are interviewing has no shame, no compunction about misrepresenting and “spinning” to absurd extremes, no trace of integrity with regard to facts or truth, then you really cannot and should not talk to them. It used to be that most politicians had some baseline of integrity and self-respect, some desire to be truthful, and some capacity to be embarrassed or ashamed. But no more. While this lack of intellectual and moral integrity has been growing for a long time, particularly on the Right, Donald Trump has normalized this to such an extreme that even the most disingenuous scripted politicians can rationalize they are being relatively forthright and reasoned.

Today we are confronted by immediate and immensely important threats like climate change, wealth inequality, automation, and guns. Yet just like the General in “The Meteor” commercial, even when faced by existential challenges, all that our politicians are willing to respond with is the equivalent of “Geico can save you 15% or more.”

My message to Chuck Todd, John Dickerson, and all the rest of you news interviewers is … just give up already. Your guests have just gotten too good at avoiding answering anything fully or honestly. You are wasting your time and our time. You won’t catch them in a candid moment or a self-contradiction any more. I appreciate that you cannot push harder than you do, so you should just focus on reporting facts and providing independent analysis. Yes, independent analysis may not rate as high as partisan vollyball matches in which canned messages get knocked back and forth. Nonpartisan analysts may not draw the audiences of big-name politicians and spokespersons who cackle like Skeletor as they deflect your questions. But at least you would be using that otherwise wasted airtime with real reporting with real value for the nation and the world.

Or you can just continue to serve as the straight-men and women for those “Geico will save you 15% or more” punch lines. Just know that we are not laughing.