Tag Archives: Democrats

Bias or Good Sense?

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Now that I’ve finished going through all but the philosophy books, I can get back to exercising my fingers and your patience here at WOCS.

So Vox has an article about the increasing animosity between Democrats and Republicans. According to opinion polls, most Americans used to be relatively tolerant toward other political beliefs. For example, back in 1960, only 4 or 5% of us said we’d care if our child married a member of that other (obviously misguided) party.

Then, beginning around 1980 (wasn’t there a Presidential election that year?), politics started getting more personal (why, as a matter of fact, there was!). In fact, by 2010, 33% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats admitted that such a marriage would make them uncomfortable. I bet the percentages have gone up since then.

Data like this suggests that our politics is becoming a bigger part of our personal identity. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat defines what kind of person you are. It particular, it defines you as the bad kind or the good kind.  

The Vox article implies that the degree of animosity one feels toward supporters of that other party reflects one’s bias. The more upset you would be if your child married a Democrat or a damn Republican, the more biased you are. 

Vox even allows you to take a little test to measure your bias. It’s one of those “implied bias” exercises that measures how quickly you associate something (in this case, a political party) with words like “good” and “bad”. Quick responses are said to indicate strong associations and fundamental beliefs; slow responses indicate the opposite. (I’ll wait here if you want to take the test. It’s right after the article’s third paragraph.)

I took the test myself and even accept the results. In fact, I was pleased by the results. I wear my “bias” as a badge of honor!

Here’s my score:

test 1

That’s me way over on the very far left. I’m basically off the chart in my animosity toward Republicans. But whether this demonstrates bias or good sense is a matter of opinion. (I lean toward “good sense”.)

Anyway, it seems as if we Americans are dividing into increasingly distinct political tribes, which will lead to more paralysis, discord and even discrimination. Unless, of course, a threat from a common enemy brings us together. That’s what happened in 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, as discussed in an interesting book called Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh and America’s Fight Over World War II. 

The level of animosity between the “isolationists” (who desperately wanted us to avoid another war in Europe) and the “interventionists” (who wanted us to do whatever we could to stop Hitler) is amazing. Organizations were formed; mass meetings were held; national radio broadcasts were delivered. Insults were hurled. Friendships were destroyed. And suddenly, we all had somebody else to be angry with. When President Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war, even the isolationist Republicans in Congress gave him a standing ovation.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we could even agree on what constitutes a paramount common enemy. Violent Muslim fundamentalists? Not dangerous enough. Global warming? Not quick enough. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Earth will be attacked by space ants or the rulers of Omicron Persei 8. But even that might not work

Automatic Weapons Again

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A statistic from Vox:  More Americans have been killed with guns since 1968 than have died in all of our wars going back to 1776. 

Now, we all know that the purpose of “automatic” weapons is to disable or kill many people very quickly. Rational Americans understand that no private citizen should legally possess powerful weapons of this kind or the ammunition that goes with them. The Constitution doesn’t give us the right to bear any kind of “arms” no matter how dangerous. Making these weapons illegal does not require going down the slippery slope to banning all firearms. The United States isn’t going to invade Texas and even Texas isn’t the Wild West. More guns and more powerful guns means more innocent people being maimed and killed.  

But if law-abiding citizens don’t own such weapons, only criminals will! That’s exactly right. Police and the armed forces will have access to these weapons in case they’re needed. Anybody else who has an automatic weapon will be and should be a criminal.

From New York Times op-ed writer Timothy Egan’s article about our latest massacre:

A day after the California carnage, the Senate decided to do nothing, again, voting down a measure that would have made it more difficult for people on the terror watch list, felons and the mentally ill to buy guns.

Well, it wasn’t as if the whole Senate made that decision:

YEAs (Do Something) — 45
Baldwin (D-WI)
Bennet (D-CO)
Blumenthal (D-CT)
Booker (D-NJ)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Coons (D-DE)
Donnelly (D-IN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Franken (D-MN)		 Gillibrand (D-NY)
Heinrich (D-NM)
Hirono (D-HI)
Kaine (D-VA)
King (I-ME)
Kirk (R-IL)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Leahy (D-VT)
Manchin (D-WV)
Markey (D-MA)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murphy (D-CT)		 Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Peters (D-MI)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schatz (D-HI)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-NM)
Warren (D-MA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
NAYs (Do Nothing) — 54
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Capito (R-WV)
Cassidy (R-LA)
Coats (R-IN)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Cotton (R-AR)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Daines (R-MT)
Enzi (R-WY)		 Ernst (R-IA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Flake (R-AZ)
Gardner (R-CO)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (R-WI)
Lankford (R-OK)
Lee (R-UT)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)		 Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Perdue (R-GA)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rounds (R-SD)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sasse (R-NE)
Scott (R-SC)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD)
Tillis (R-NC)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

So, I have two recommendations. The first is for Democrats (D) and Independents (I): 

Support rational gun control, do what you can to make your position known and always vote, but never, ever vote for a Republican. 

The second is for Republicans (R):

Seek treatment from a qualified mental health professional. 

~~~~~

Times columnist Gail Collins describes some of the rationalizations offered by Republican politicians in support of doing nothing.

One of These Characters Could Become President

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Summer is almost over in this hemisphere, so we have 4 1/2 months until a small number of voters, in a few lightly-populated, semi-rural states, start letting the rest of us know who America’s 2016 Presidential candidates will be. As of now, however, I’m still trying to follow my own advice and ignore political coverage as much as possible.

That’s even though, in retrospect, it wasn’t great advice. The Democratic contest became much more interesting when Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic (small “d”) socialist from the state of Vermont, received such a warm welcome. One might even grant that the Republican contest became more interesting as it became even weirder than expected.

The Republican struggle to choose a Presidential candidate is like a terrible movie you’re being forced to watch. It’s not funny enough to be comedy and isn’t serious enough to be tragedy. It certainly isn’t a musical. Let’s say it’s a fantasy with both comedic and tragic themes, kind of like a scarier version of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

To me, the funniest part of the Republican race is how observers keep trying to explain why Trump is popular among Republican voters (remember, these are the voters who helped elect George W. Bush not once but twice). The saddest part is that millions of Americans would be pleased if one of these Republicans became President. But maybe it will work out for the best. If the Republicans pick an extraordinarily terrible candidate, the Democrats should do well, even in the Congressional races. That could happen, even in 21st century America.

I wasn’t going to write about any of this (I’m still trying to follow my advice, if only because it’s still 2015), but there was a nice Salon article today. The author, Chauncey Devega, is a black American who loved Rambo, Reagan and Rush Limbaugh when he was too young to know any better. He also read “Soldier of Fortune” magazine and hoped to be our first black President. He doesn’t explain what made him reconsider his right-wing views, either for lack of space or because it’s obvious – he grew up and looked around.

An excerpt from the article:

…what if [a political party’s] “base” consists of people who live in an alternate world where facts, empirical reality, and scientific reason and truth operate according to a different set of rules? What happens to a supposedly mainstream political party’s internal dynamics when the most extreme elements are given control over it? And what if these voters have been socialized into a bizarro reality by a media machine that has created a literal and virtual bubble of information for its viewers and listeners, one where the “news” actually misinforms, thus leaving its public less knowledgeable about current affairs than before?

This alternate reality is the world in which the Republican Party and its candidates for president in 2016 exist. It is utterly impenetrable to outsiders. “Normal” politics do not exist there. This cult-like world is vexing, confusing, headache inducing, disorientating, and enraging for those in the “reality based community” who try to process the 2016 Republican debates. Ultimately, if one is not initiated into the right-wing movement’s rites and rituals, you will not be able to translate its political acts of magic and speaking in tongues that masquerade as serious political discourse.

As a political cult, today’s Republican Party uses faith, a belief in that which cannot be proven by ordinary means, to create a coherent worldview for its public. In this world there are no verifiable truth-claims that can be confirmed or rejected based on empirical evidence. Here, something is “true” because a trusted source, elder, elite, or media personality tells you so. Opinion is transformed into a substitute for facts.

Shorter version: Lies are made into truths for those in the cult and disbelievers are cast out as enemies and heretics.

The only modification I’d make to this is that the word “cult” usually refers to a relatively small group. When a cult gets big enough, it’s no longer a cult. At that point, it’s a movement or, as with the specimen under discussion, a political party that’s gone haywire.

PS – Paul Krugman had some things to say about the most recent Republican “debate”. Basically, he’s terrified.

Bernie, Hillary, Emails, Decisions, Decisions

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New Jersey will hold its Presidential primary election nine months and fifteen days from now. By that time, we will almost certainly know who the Democratic nominee and the next President of the United States will be (she used to be Secretary of State). June of 2016 might sound like a long way off, but we in New Jersey, along with our friends in California and a few other states, always wait for everyone else to hold their primary elections first.

Aside from the fact that we’re naturally considerate (“Please, I insist.” “No, no, after you.”), this means we don’t have to spend much time deciding which Democrat or Republican should be President. Unlike Iowa, Vermont and South Carolina, we have more important things to do.

Anyway, if I had the opportunity to vote sooner than next June, like maybe tomorrow, I’m not sure who I’d choose. From a policy perspective, I’d go with Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist Senator from Vermont. Voting for Sanders would make me feel good. I even think he could beat a Republican in the general election, because most Americans, whether they realize it or not, agree with his positions. (See “How Mainstream Is Bernie Sanders?” and “Why Surprising Numbers of Republicans Have Been Voting for Sanders in Vermont”).

Despite the popular appeal of Sanders’s positions, however, Clinton might do better in a general election. It would be harder for the Republicans to falsely portray her as a wild-eyed radical. And despite some of her hawkish views on foreign policy and military spending, Hillary Clinton might end up being a very progressive President. She seems more aware of our country’s increasing inequality and more likely to do something about it than she used to be. Further, she might be able to get more done than Sanders, since the politicians, bureaucrats and plutocrats she’d have to work with would be more likely to consider her “one of them”. 

(Every time I imagine President Sanders taking office, I’m reminded of A Very British Coup, in which the election of a proud Labor Party socialist as Prime Minister leads to army helicopters descending on Downing Street and Parliament. See also Seven Days in May. All fiction, of course.) 

But since I’m a proud resident of New Jersey, I don’t have to make a decision about this any time soon. Meanwhile, our national nightmare (i.e. our Presidential campaign) will continue.

That brings me to a perceptive article by Heather Digby Parton called “Anatomy of a Hillary Clinton Pseudo-Scandal”. She writes:

… the press can pass judgement about anything once it’s “out there” regardless of whether or not what’s “out there” is true. This allows them to skip doing boring rebuttals of the facts at hand and instead hold forth at length about how it bears on the subject’s “judgement” and the “appearance” of wrongdoing without ever proving that what they did was wrong.

You see, if the person being discussed were “competent,” it wouldn’t be “out there” in the first place, so even if it is based upon entirely specious speculation, it’s his or her own fault for inspiring people to speculate so speciously. It all goes back to their “character”… 

And even if the charges are patently false, they are always far too complicated to rebut in detail; and, anyway, the other side says something different, so who’s really to say what’s true and what isn’t?  [Note: that’s what Paul Krugman calls “Shape of Earth: Views Differ” journalism.]

It’s still the responsibility of the target of those charges because he or she shouldn’t have allowed him or herself to be in a position where someone could make false charges in the first place.

From this perspective, it’s irrelevant whether any of those famous emails were classified at the time (apparently they weren’t, besides which lots of stuff the government classifies shouldn’t be). It’s also irrelevant whether it was forbidden to use a private computer then (apparently it wasn’t). 

I agree about the irrelevance in one sense. It’s irrelevant as to whether Clinton or Sanders or some other Democrat should be our next President.

We Shouldn’t Completely Ignore the Next 15 Months

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Three months ago, I wrote We Can All Ignore the Next 18 Months, because no sensible person would support a Republican in the presidential race. It was also clear that Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. That was before Senator Bernie Sanders and you know who showed up. Since Sanders is worth paying attention to, even if he doesn’t get the nomination, I stand corrected. By the way, did you know the tycoon with the orange hair is 69 years old?

While we’re on the subject of our national nightmare, here’s Paul Krugman again:

The point is that while media puff pieces have portrayed Mr. Trump’s rivals as serious men — Jeb the moderate, Rand the original thinker, Marco the face of a new generation — their supposed seriousness is all surface. Judge them by positions as opposed to image, and what you have is a lineup of cranks…. 

It has long been obvious that the conventions of political reporting and political commentary make it almost impossible to say the obvious — namely, that one of our two major parties has gone off the deep end. Or as the political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it in their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become an “insurgent outlier … unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.” It’s a party that has no room for rational positions on many major issues.

Or to put it another way, modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume.

Until now, however, leading Republicans have generally tried to preserve a facade of respectability, helping the news media to maintain the pretense that it was dealing with a normal political party. What distinguishes Mr. Trump is not so much his positions as it is his lack of interest in maintaining appearances. 

The professor’s entire column is here.