Musing about facts, evidence, opinions and subject matter

Arrogance

We are experiencing a rising tide of radical right (fascist IMO) political and religious crackpottery, irrational fear and rage-mongering, lies, slanders and the like. While watching this train wreck unfold, differences between religion and politics on the one hand, and other kinds of subject matter on the other come to mind. 

Subject matter like computer science and engineering are heavily grounded in facts and empirical evidence. Logic matters. If a product fails to work properly, the people who built, use or own it usually know about the failure about the time it occurs. There is usually no argument about it. Failure is failure. In that evidence-based world, facts are usually mostly accepted. 

On the other extreme, we have politics and religion. There, facts and logic usually do not matter much or at all. Despite that, most people claim their politics is based on facts and sound reasoning. Social science research indicates that such beliefs are mostly false most of the time for most people. Human biases, emotions, morals, interests, loyalties and so forth usually push aside facts, true truths and/or sound reasoning when they are inconvenient or threatening. That's just how we evolved. Human intelligence is limited by evolution.

There are some people who are exceptionally smart in dealing with science and engineering. Elon Musk is one. In his business dealings, he usually knows what works and what fails. When some product or idea he works with fails or is false, he knows. There usually is not much to bicker about, maybe other than how to fix the problem fastest and at lowest cost.

But what happens to all that intelligence when it enters the realm of politics and/or religion? It usually decreases a hell of a lot. People like Musk aren’t much or any better than the rest of us. They revert to the mean. They can arguably be worse than average people when things such as rigid ideology, arrogance, fame and/or wealth leads them to false beliefs and rejection of what is inconvenient but true. 

It just feels so good to believe what feels good that most people cannot resist, even when what feels good is false. Two researchers described the human condition in politics like this:

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

That applies to Elon Musk. Recently, Musk fell for a false crackpot conspiracy theory related to the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. It was put out by a known source of crackpot conspiracy theories and lies. The lie was that the attack on Pelosi’s husband was a false flag operation and involved a male prostitute. Not one shred of evidence existed. No facts were involved. Just pure comforting lies. 

Musk has 100 million followers on Twitter. He tweeted that lie, but hours later deleted it. He wanted to pretend he did not make the amateur mistake he made. The damage his Tweet caused cannot be undone. He was no better than most of us. His hate of government, taxes, Democrats and love of brass knuckles capitalism made him believe lies and slanders that were obviously false but deeply comforting and satisfying.  

That is not fact or logic at work. For most people (~90% ?), that is standard human mental performance in politics. Religion is the same.[1] The other people who try to set aside the allure of deeply comforting and satisfying mirages and lies are the ones with moral courage and a solid work ethic. Politics isn’t a game or entertainment. In a democracy, it is complex, hard work. In tyrannies and theocracies, politics is a nasty game. Lazy, arrogant jackasses like Musk are clueless when they play their toxic brand of self-centered anti-democratic politics. They really think they know it all and we should listen to them. They are so wrong it is pathetic.

Footnote: 

1. To me, discussing matters of theology never made any sense. It is just not subject matter for rational discourse. It is a matter of faith, not fact or logic. Religious beliefs are mostly whatever a person, church or denomination needs them to be. What the sacred texts say to the contrary just doesn’t exist or matter for the most part. 

Conspiracy theories are a mental health crisis

No one's talking about the complex relationship between disinformation and mental health. That changes now.

(Admittedly a bit dated, 2021 article, but still relevant)


Every day, people who spend time online face a deluge of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation. Plenty of them move along, clicking past outlandish or false content that's designed to lure them in. Some, however, become ensnared for reasons experts don't fully understand. Thanks to algorithms, like the ones that drew many into QAnon, people quickly slip into dark corners of the internet and find a community of believers, or even zealots, who swear they've discovered hidden truths and forbidden knowledge.

These people might rightfully distrust government authorities, find political polarization invigorating, and search for information that confirms their own views, all of which could make them more vulnerable to falsehoods. Conventional wisdom says media literacy, fact-checking, and critical thinking skills are the best weapons against those impulses. Yet this approach rests on the dangerous assumption that people's emotional and psychological well-being has little bearing on their vulnerability to far-fetched ideas, elaborate lies, and cunning propaganda. In fact, recent research suggests that their mental health can influence what they're willing to believe.

Studies have shown that conspiracy theories appeal to people with unmet psychological needs. They crave knowledge, desire safety and security, and need to maintain positive self-esteem. Conspiracy theories, which may sometimes be true, help explain the unknown, giving people a deep sense of satisfaction. That relief, however, can be temporary. Past research shows conspiracy theories are associated with anxiety, social isolation, and negative emotions. Now a new wave of research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests a plausible connection between uncertainty, anxiety, and depression and an increased likelihood of believing conspiracy theories.

Perhaps with so much beyond understanding, people looked for answers wherever such revelations might be found. Insight was plentiful on YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter, and other media platforms where grifters, hucksters, and conspiracy theorists peddled the truth as they saw it to people who wanted what few could offer: certainty. That confidence became an antidote to the misery of not knowing what might come next.

Many of those drawn into communities that trafficked in conspiracy theories also found misinformation and disinformation. The former is shared without malicious intent. The latter, according to disinformation scholar Dr. Alice Marwick, Ph.D., comprises false information, distorted stereotypes, and mischaracterizations as part of a campaign of persuasion. Disinformation can include conspiracy theories presented as fact, and those who share disinformation typically refuse to admit when they're wrong.

People who immerse themselves in this swamp of "polluted information," particularly those with a deep attachment to QAnon, have anecdotally expressed preoccupation with and distress over solving riddles and clues, waiting anxiously for predictions to come true, fractured relationships with loved ones over their beliefs, and increased isolation. If their mental health hadn't been poor prior to their involvement in these online communities, it seemed to decline the deeper they got. Their friends and family have noticed. In one subreddit dedicated to people who've lost a friend or family member to QAnon, posters frequently despair over losing their loved one to what they often describe as a cult.

MORE:

https://mashable.com/article/mental-health-disinformation-conspiracy-theories-depression

Halloween monsters! 👹☠️👻

Those pesky churches: The rule of law has fallen

ProPublica writes:

Churches Are Breaking the Law by Endorsing in Elections, Experts Say. 

The IRS Looks the Other Way.

Six days before a local runoff election last year in Frisco, a prosperous and growing suburb of Dallas, Brandon Burden paced the stage of KingdomLife Church. The pastor told congregants that demonic spirits were operating through members of the City Council.

Grasping his Bible with both hands, Burden said God was working through his North Texas congregation to take the country back to its Christian roots. He lamented that he lacked jurisdiction over the state Capitol, where he had gone during the 2021 Texas legislative session to lobby for conservative priorities like expanded gun rights and a ban on abortion.

“But you know what I got jurisdiction over this morning is an election coming up on Saturday,” Burden told parishioners. “I got a candidate that God wants to win. I got a mayor that God wants to unseat. God wants to undo. God wants to shift the balance of power in our city. And I have jurisdiction over that this morning.”

What Burden said that day in May 2021 was a violation of a long-standing federal law barring churches and nonprofits from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, tax law experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Although the provision was mostly uncontroversial for decades after it passed in 1954, it has become a target for both evangelical churches and former President Donald Trump, who vowed to eliminate it.

Burden’s sermon is among those at 18 churches identified by the news organizations over the past two years that appeared to violate the Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Some pastors have gone so far as to paint candidates they oppose as demonic.

It does not take an expert to see that churches are breaking the law. There is no “appearance” of law breaking. And, it is a hell of a lot more than just 18 churches doing this. I know that and I don't even go to church. There is actual law breaking by churches with the blessing of church leadership and God himself. As usual for law breakers like this, no law enforcement effort exists and the law breaking is thus condoned by whoever is in charge of defending the rule of law. 

What, us innocent, peace-loving Republicans 

promote violence? Never!

The NYT writes:

Pelosi, Vilified by Republicans for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats

The attack on the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which appeared to target her, came after more than a decade of Republican efforts to demonize and dehumanize the most powerful woman in Washington.

In 2006, as Nancy Pelosi was poised to become the first female speaker of the House, Republicans made a film spoof that portrayed an evil Democratic empire led by “Darth Nancy.”

In 2009, the Republican National Committee ran an advertisement featuring Ms. Pelosi’s face framed by the barrel of a gun — complete with the sound of a bullet firing as red bled down the screen — a takeoff on the James Bond film “Goldfinger” in which the woman second in line to the presidency was cast as Pussy Galore.

This year, a Republican running in the primary for Senate in Arizona aired an ad showing him in a spaghetti western-style duel with Democrats, in which he shoots at a knife-wielding, mask-wearing, bug-eyed woman labeled “Crazyface Pelosi.”

Darth Nancy? Gun points at her face? Arizona Republican freak runs ad shooting her? 

As thug, liar RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel complained about Republicans being blamed for inciting violence “I think that’s unfair. .... It’s just unfair.” It’s a miracle Pelosi wasn’t murdered years ago by some enraged Republican freak.

Oh yeah, those innocent, peace-loving Republicans would never, ever foment violence against anyone. What a lie. It’s a whopper.

Musk’s Twitter Hellscape v. 2.0 is erupting --

Chief Twit spews crackpot conspiracy theory

then tries to hide it

WaPo writes: 

Elon Musk, who has more than 100 million followers, had owned Twitter for less than three full days when he shared a post containing misinformation — then hours later deleted it.

On Sunday, he posted a response to Hillary Clinton that “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story” behind the attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco, linking to an opinion article in the Santa Monica Observer, a site described by fact-checkers as a low-credibility source favoring the extreme right.

The article claimed without evidence that Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” The article, which was amplified by several right-wing figures, cited no sources and attributes its contents to IMHO — internet shorthand for “in my humble opinion.”  

One commenter, Yael Eisenstat, a vice president of the Anti Defamation League and former Facebook executive, noted on Twitter that Musk seemed to be violating his own pledge to advertisers last week that the site would not become a “hellscape” under his ownership.

When the world’s richest man/owner of this very site himself traffics in conspiracy theories days after claiming to advertisers that he’s going to be a responsible leader, all I can say is: I’m not overreacting by expressing my concerns. Actions always speak louder than words. pic.twitter.com/00RhlJa4rh

— Yael Eisenstat (@YaelEisenstat) October 30, 2022

WaPo writes again:

Elon Musk and a wide range of right-wing personalities cobbled together misreporting, innuendo and outright falsehoods to amplify misinformation about last week’s violent assault on Paul Pelosi to their millions of online followers.

A forum devoted to former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s right-wing radio show alerted its 78,000 subscribers to “very strange new details on Paul Pelosi attack.” Roger Stone, a longtime political consigliere to former president Donald Trump, took to the fast-growing messaging app Telegram to call the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband an “alleged attack,” telling his followers that a “stench” surrounded mainstream reporting about the Friday break-in that left Pelosi, 82, hospitalized with a skull fracture and other serious injuries.

The skepticism didn’t stay in right-wing echo chambers but seeped also into the feeds of popular online personalities, including Musk, Twitter’s new owner.

These merchants of misinformation, said Carl Cameron, a former longtime Fox News political correspondent, deceive their massive audiences using rumors and lies about everything from the integrity of elections to the details of a police report.

“They are creating a dystopia wherein lying and physical violence become part of our politics,” he said.

Dinesh D’Souza, whose recent film “2000 Mules” burnished his right-wing bona fides by pushing Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, aired falsehoods and innuendo in a viral Twitter thread suggesting the attack on Paul Pelosi was a form of intentional misrepresentation sometimes referred to as a “false flag.”

No doubt about it, Twitter was Hellscape v. 1.0. Musk is turning it into Hellscape v. 2.0. Prepare for a tidal wave of enraged Christofascist Republican lies, slanders, crackpottery and violence the likes of which decent people have not yet experienced.

There’s the roundup of some of the Halloween monsters on the loose this time around.  

News bits: Crossing the line, or already crossed?, etc.

Crossing the line?

In recent years, it seemed reasonable to think that elite Republicans would start openly attacking things like inconvenient truth, sound reasoning, democracy and civil liberties that God and/or the GOP disapproves of. Republican elites claimed they did no such thing, despite plenty of contrary evidence. That day has undeniably arrived, if it already hasn’t some years ago. Salon writes:

Michigan GOP candidate Tudor Dixon wants a new book ban: No divorced characters

With so many radical Republicans running for office across the country, there's been relatively little coverage of Tudor Dixon, the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for governor in Michigan, who’s running against incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. .... She has described working women as having "lonely lives," declared a 14-year-old incest victim to be a "perfect" candidate for forced childbirth, and, unsurprisingly, backs Trump's Big Lie. During her debate with Whitmer on Tuesday night, Dixon accused Michigan schools of distributing "pornographic" books.

.... a Democratic PAC called American Bridge 21st Century dug up an audio clip demonstrating how expansive Dixon's views are when it comes to controlling what students are allowed to read. In it, she proposes that books featuring divorced characters are just too spicy for most kids.

Dixon complained that her daughter had checked out a book about having “two different homes” and how the very idea of divorce “caused an unnecessary anxiety.”

“Why was this something she was just able to pick up off the shelf?” Dixon inquired. She allowed that a kid whose parents are divorcing might find some use-value in such a book, but evidently believes all other kids should be kept blissfully unaware about this widespread social reality.  

Tudor Dixon’s unwillingness to explain the reality of divorce to her daughter sounds like it’s about Dixon’s own discomfort, not about her child's best interests. Unfortunately, she’s not alone.

It’s unfair to criticize Republicans or the Republican Party

After the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband by an enraged, deranged radical right freak, RNC chairperson Ronna McDaniel complained about blaming Republicans: “I think that's unfair. I think this is a deranged individual, you can’t see people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair.”

Unfair? No, it is not unfair. It is what one would expect. The Republican Party elites and their propaganda Leviathan have been openly arguing for violence against political opposition at least since Trump took over. Republican rhetoric goes way beyond let’s fire Pelosi or let’s take back the House. Ronna is a liar. Once again we are looking at shameless Republican lies, crackpottery and 

News digest

Republicans tone down talk of impeaching Biden

We all know that once they retake the House, Republicans want to impeach, impeach, and impeach some more. Democrats of course, not their own. The NYT writes: 

With Majority in Sight, Republicans Hush Talk of Impeaching Biden

Since the day President Biden took office, Republicans have publicly called for his impeachment, introducing more than a dozen resolutions accusing him and his top officials of high crimes and misdemeanors and running campaign ads and fund-raising appeals vowing to remove the president from office at the first opportunity.

But in the homestretch of a campaign that has brought the party tantalizingly close to winning control of Congress, top Republicans are seeking to downplay the chances that they will impeach Mr. Biden, distancing themselves from a polarizing issue that could alienate voters just as polls show the midterm elections breaking their way.  

“Joe Biden is guilty of committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, wrote in a recent fund-raising email. “And it’s time for Congress to IMPEACH, CONVICT, and REMOVE Biden from office.”

Ms. Greene has already introduced five articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, including one the day he took office, when she accused him of abusing his power while serving as vice president to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Those sneaky Repubs. They tone down their crackpot anti-democracy and hyper-radicalism just in time for the elections to deceive as many voters as possible about what they really stand for. Moral cowards.

From the radicalization of politics files

The WaPo writes:

Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her

In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker.

Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.

And this year, Pelosi — who Republicans have long demonized as the face of progressive policies and who was a target of rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — emerged as the top member of Congress maligned in political ads, with Republicans spending nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi in the final stretch of the campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks television and digital ad spending.  

The years of vilification culminated Friday when Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer during an early-morning break-in at the couple’s home in San Francisco by a man searching for the speaker and shouting “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to someone briefed on the assault.

This blind, unwarranted rage, hate and deranged violence is the new normal. The radical right Republican Party and its propaganda Leviathan mostly created it. They get ~90% of the credit if you like it, or ~90% of the blame if you don’t like it. Repubs and the radical right love it. I hate it. 

Tyranny of the minority?

Your friend and mine, Fareed Zakaria, writes in an op-ed for the WaPo:

America is now a tyranny of the minority

 

History and current polling both tell us that the House of Representatives will likely flip over to Republican control in the November midterms. What happens then? Actual governance will come to a standstill. There will be a flurry of investigations on everything from the Justice Department to Hunter Biden to the border crisis. The Jan. 6 committee will almost certainly be disbanded. And it’s not implausible to imagine that President Biden will be impeached.

The primary system American parties use to choose their candidates is extremely unusual; no other major democracy has one quite like it. Primaries ensure that the candidates chosen are selected by slivers of the parties — around 20 percent of all eligible voters. And this selection is not at all representative — these are the most intense, agitated activists, often far more extreme in their views than run-of-the-mill registered Republicans or Democrats. Add to this decades of sophisticated, computer-enabled gerrymandering, and you get extreme candidates who run in safe districts where the only threat to them is a primary candidate who is even more extreme.  

While the problem is far worse and much more dangerous on the Republican side, these pressures also affect Democrats.

It is not an accident that Germany and France have both been run largely by solid centrists in a time of populism. They have chosen to keep to the old system of democracy based on the principle of majority rule. In the United States, and to an extent in Britain, democracy has become minority rule, and the minority holding power is unrepresentative, angry and increasingly radical.

Fareed argues that democracy has become minority rule with an unrepresentative, angry and radical minority holding power. As time passes, it is now almost certain that the minority rule will be even more unrepresentative, angry and radical than it is now. The anger and radicalism have been encouraged and are now freely welling up and manifesting as violent rhetoric and sometimes behavior. 

Two common rural American delusions

Delusion 1 - Democrats hate rural America

A WaPo opinion piece comments: 

There’s a story Republicans tell about the politics of rural America, one aimed at both rural people and the rest of us. It goes like this: Those coastal urban elitist Democrats look down their noses at you, but the GOP has got your back. They hate you; we love you. They ignore you; we’re working for you. Whatever you do, don’t even think about voting for a Democrat.

That story pervades our discussion of the rural-urban divide in U.S. politics. But it’s fundamentally false. The reality is complex, but one thing you absolutely cannot say is that Democrats don’t try to help rural America. In fact, they probably work harder at it than Republicans do.

Let’s talk about just one area that has been of particular interest to Democrats, and to rural people themselves: high-speed internet access, a problem that’s addressed by hundreds of millions of dollars in funding that the Biden administration announced this week.

The problem is straightforward: The less dense an area is, the harder it is for private companies to make a profit providing internet service. Laying a mile of fiber-optic cable to reach a hundred apartment buildings is a lot more efficient than laying a mile of cable to reach one family farm.

The opinion goes on to argue that government is needed to fill the gaps. Lack of high-speed service makes it harder to start and sustain many kinds of businesses, have schools access the information students need, and so forth. Republicans are hell bent on letting regulated free markets fill the gaps. By now, it is clear that regulated free markets refuse to fill gaps unless there is enough profit in it. 

Social conscience is not part of free markets. Only profit is.

The Biden administration has a $759 million plan for new grants and loans to build rural broadband. This money comes from the infrastructure bill, but the other big spending bills President Biden signed, the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, also had a wealth of money and programs specifically targeted to rural areas. If Republican elites were in charge, that plan would not exist. They hate government. People in rural areas would just have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Delusion 2 - All the rural problems are the Democrats’ fault

In 2016, conservative commentator Kevin Williamson wrote his intensely bitter (but in my opinion mostly accurate) analysis about the rural American situation and its radicalization. He references a once-prosperous but now poverty-stricken rural town, Garbutt NY where gypsum was once mined. His National Review article opined:  

[Williamson's friend Michael Brendan Dougherty argues that] Garbutt is Trump Country, and Dougherty, while not a wild-eyed Trumpkin, is generally sympathetic to Trump’s critique of current American economic policy, namely that international trade and immigration are dispossessing the white working class. There is not, in fact, very much evidence for those claims: Immigration does put some downward pressure on wages, but it also puts downward pressure on prices. Native-born low-skilled workers’ money income may have stagnated, but their real income — what they can buy with the money they earn — has continued to improve modestly. The main effect of new immigrants’ wage competition is felt in the wages of earlier immigrants. But the effects of immigration overall are tiny compared with the effects of factors such as health-care expenses.

Dougherty cites the work of the conservative polemicist Sam Francis, one of those old capitalism-hating conservatives who very much embraced the paterfamilias model of government. His analysis, like mine, finds emotional and policy links between the Trump movement and its earlier incarnation, the Pat Buchanan movement.

It is therefore strange to me that Dougherty so fundamentally misdiagnoses the conservative reaction to Trump: “A Trump win,” he writes in another piece, “at least temporarily threatens the conservative movement, because it threatens to expose how inessential its ideas are to holding together the party.” (Dougherty also equates the fundraising engaged in by conservative organizations with the Social Security fraud that sustains his fictional Mike, a characterization that indicates the emotional temperament at work here.) Of course there is careerism in the conservative movement, but to proceed as though it were impossible to imagine that conservatives oppose a man running (knowingly or not) on a Sam Francis platform because we oppose the loopy crackpot racist ideas of Sam Francis is to perform an intellectual disservice.

It is also immoral.

It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

Qs:

1. Is most of rural America mostly in the thrall of delusions, lies and/or slanders, or are the two posited delusions themselves delusions, lies and/or slanders?

2. Is there such a thing as empirically provable facts, true truths and sound reasoning, or is all of that just vaporware nonsense?

3. Is Williamson’s argument that dysfunctional, downscale rural communities deserve to die because they are economically, negative assets economically, morally and/or otherwise defensible? (That is be a hard core capitalist argument -- but there is subtlety in it -- this is not a no-brainer [hint: consider what is destroying respect for democracy and truth, and tearing American society, government and religion apart these days])

How the Catholic church sees the threat to Christianity

 America Magazine, a Jesuit publication, wrote: 

Archbishop Gomez: The church must confront ‘woke’ social justice movements that aim to ‘cancel’ Christian beliefs 

The church needs to understand these movements “as pseudo-religions, and even replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs,” he said, because “they claim to offer what religion provides.” 

“With the breakdown of the Judeo-Christian worldview and the rise of secularism, political belief systems based on social justice or personal identity have come to fill the space that Christian belief and practice once occupied,” he said.

“We all know that while there are unique conditions in the United States, similar broad patterns of aggressive secularization have long been at work in Spain and elsewhere in Europe,” he said.

The church needs to understand these movements “as pseudo-religions, and even replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs,” he said.  

The Catholic Church must proclaim Christ “boldly” in the face of new secular movements that promote “social justice,” and “wokeness” as the answer to all of society’s ills.

There is a lot to criticize in that. For example, where has the infallible Catholic church been for the last few centuries when social injustice and unwokness dominated America, Europe and everywhere else the church was present? Social injustice and unwokness is precisely what drives pleas for social justice and wokness. 

What was the church doing all those centuries? It was defending and actively participating in social injustice and unwokness. One example, by protecting pedophile priests. Other examples of what the Catholic church provided includes (i) support for hyper-aggressive anti-democratic American theocracy, (ii) taking away women’s reproductive rights, (iii) imposing overpopulation with attendant social and environmental harm on an already over populated, environmentally damaged planet. That is just some of the poisonous fun the Catholic church has given us over the centuries.

Who or what is the Catholic church to have one shred of moral authority about what the church, secularism or anything else can or cannot provide? It has zero moral authority. 

The infallible Catholic church failed dismally in multiple ways but still retains its sanctimonious arrogance about being the only source of aid, comfort and support to people. Why doesn’t the church pay for all the children it forced into existence against women’s will? Why doesn’t the church pay for social security, Medicare, Medicaid and other needed social programs? Why doesn’t the church pay taxes instead of adding tens of billions per year to a staggering federal debt of ~$31 trillion? Why did the church actively participate in the abuse, harsh oppression and slaughter of millions of indigenous people, including children, in North and South America?[1]

Why? Why? Why? Inconvenient questions about inconvenient truths come fast and easy. But the infallible church has no answers. 

Who is cancelling whom? Christianity is aggressively canceling secularism, not the other way around. The list below indicates where most political, social and commercial power in America lies. The church needs to keep this in mind before it goes off attacking secular society and secular social or environmental justice movements the church itself did not help much or at all with.  

The point is this: Catholic church elites and policy in America today are focused on (i) accumulating power and wealth, (ii) establishing fundamentalist White Christian Sharia law, and (iii) demolishing secularism, democracy and civil liberties that God disapproves of, e.g., abortion, voting rights, same sex marriage, protection of God-disapproved people and groups from discrimination. God-disapproved people and groups non-White people, non-heterosexuals, etc. There is absolutely no serious threat to Christianity in America. Asserting that is a blatant lie. Secularism arose naturally because the Catholic church and Christianity generally failed to serve people’s needs.

Qs: What is the threat(s) to Christianity in America? Is it social or environmental justice movements, or is the assertion a Christian lie? 

Why can’t a secular movement or effort serve people’s needs? Is God and religion the only way to do good? If so, does that necessarily mean that all atheists and agnostics are bad?

Footnote: 

1. The Catholic church actively participated in the abuse, harsh oppression and slaughter of millions of indigenous people under a God-sanctioned dogma called the Discovery Doctrine. That Doctrine freed priests to sexually and physically abuse and sometimes kill natives, including children, and not feel bad about themselves. After all, it was God’s sacred work. 

Where most power in the US is concentrated with

religious people, mostly Christians, Jews and Mormons

The White House

US Senate

House of Representatives

US military

Federal courts, especially including the all-powerful radical Christian Supreme Court

Federal law enforcement

Federal agencies

Rock solid constitutional law that protects freedom of religion

State governorships

State legislatures

State courts

State law enforcement

State laws that protects freedom of religion

County and city legislatures, law enforcement and courts

Public schools

Religious schools

Banks and financial institutions

Churches, synagogues and temples

Religious businesses

Religious charities

Media outlets, especially radical right sources

The entertainment industry

A few examples of openly religious companies 

Chick-fil-A

Forever 21

Tyson Foods

Alaska Airlines

Marriott (Mormon)

Jet Blue (Mormon)

Interstate Batteries

Hobby Lobby
ServiceMaster (Merry Maids, Terminix, American Home Shield, etc.)

Mary Kay

Tom’s of Maine

Timberland (Jewish)

Carl’s Jr.

Anschutz Entertainment Group (sports teams, oil companies, etc.)

eHarmony

Wendy’s

An initial update on the coming Twitter hyper-hellscape

The AP writes:

Confusion, concern, conspiracies, celebration.

In the hours after Elon Musk took control of Twitter, reaction on the platform ranged from triumph to despair.

While no immediate policy changes had been announced by Friday afternoon, that didn’t stop users from cheering — or criticizing — what they expected to be a quick embrace of Musk’s pledges to cut back on moderation in what he has said is an effort to promote free speech.

Conservative personalities on the site began recirculating long-debunked conspiracy theories, including about COVID-19 and the 2020 election, in a tongue-in-cheek attempt to “test” whether Twitter’s policies on misinformation were still being enforced.

Popular right-wing pundits tweeted buzzwords such as “ivermectin,” and “Trump won” to see whether they’d be penalized for content they suggested would previously have been flagged. Ivermectin, a cheap drug that kills parasites in humans and animals, has been promoted by some Republican lawmakers and conservative talk show hosts as an effective way to treat COVID-19. But health experts have been pushing back, warning there’s scant evidence to support the belief that it works.

Welp, that is exactly what expert Dissident Politics analyses indicated what would happen. DP expects that next, most (~90%) of the crackpottery, lies and slanders will be allowed in the name of free speech. It's dark free speech, but free speech nonetheless.

DP will update the inquiring minds at DP whether Twitter's Chief Twat, Elon Musk, will do squat about all the lies and bullshittery that he unleashed. So far, the betting is that he won't do much about it. Maybe a fig leaf or two will be put on the gaping wounds in truth and civility, but that's probably gonna be about it.

Daily news digest

Rut rho! Conservatism kills people

A group of sociologists at the Department of Sociology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, wrote this in a recently published research paper:

The rise in working-age mortality rates in the United States in recent decades largely reflects stalled declines in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality alongside rising mortality from alcohol-induced causes, suicide, and drug poisoning; and it has been especially severe in some U.S. states. .... More conservative marijuana policies and more liberal policies on the environment, gun safety, labor, economic taxes, and tobacco taxes in a state were associated with lower mortality in that state. Especially strong associations were observed between certain domains and specific causes of death: between the gun safety domain and suicide mortality among men, between the labor domain and alcohol-induced mortality, and between both the economic tax and tobacco tax domains and CVD mortality. Simulations indicate that changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019, while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives.

Factors considered in the research

(Note: All existing firearm safety laws are

likely to be held unconstitutional in view of

a recent radical right Supreme Court ruling) 

There you have it. Those darned sociologists are once again caught red-handed tossing sand in the finely honed gears of morally superior, God-endorsed conservative capitalist politics. (sarcasm)

But rest assured, America’s fire breathing radical right knows well how to respond to inconvenient truth. Radical right ideologues, Christian fundamentalists and brass knuckles capitalists will, as usual, reject the data and attack the researchers. For example, they will claim the data is based on flawed simulations, and/or is a pack of socialist lies from pedophile socialist liars. 

Or, better yet, they will just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. That KYMS propaganda tactic (keep your mouth shut) is 100% effective in preventing FIMPI (foot in mouth public inconvenience). In the face of inconvenient truth, KYMS is the single most effective dark free speech tool the radical right has to minimize its impact on the public. That is why it’s so incredibly common and popular with radical right elites.

Rut roh! Guns kill people

In 1993, researchers studied the question of whether gun ownership was a factor in mortality. The data they generated indicated that gun ownership was a risk factor for mortality. The risk was being shot dead in the home. They wrote in their paper, Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home:

The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the home are important risk factors for homicide in the home. Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance. .... Our data indicate that keeping a gun in the home is independently associated with an increase in the risk of homicide in the home. The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the home are also important risk factors.

The reaction by the NRA, gun nuts, gun makers and the Republican Party was intense. In 1996, congress passed a ban of federal funding for gun violence research. That ban to this day continues to limit research on gun violence. 

The radical right reaction to that research paper exemplifies another popular propaganda tactic that radical right ideologues, Christian fundamentalists and brass knuckles capitalists enjoy using, specifically the BRBCMRIN technique (block research but claim more research is needed). By claiming more research into sources of inconvenient truth, e.g., gun violence, the radical right has discovered it can block and delay effective legislation for at least decades, maybe forever if they get full power. 

BRBCMRIN was and still effectively used by the cigarette industry to ward off second hand smoke regulations. Use of BRBCMRIN by the carbon energy sector has also been highly effective for warding off legislation to deal with climate change. Ronald Reagan was a big fan of BRBCMRIN. He used it to limit federal research into areas the radical right knew would generate inconvenient truth, e.g., climate change research.

So, when radical right flamers attack inconvenient research and data, claiming it is not enough, it is fair and reasonable to tell them they are full of crap. In view of its history of hiding and blocking inconvenient truth, the burden of proof is on the radical right, not anyone or anything else.

Aggressive Christian nationalist theocracy

Alternet writes in an opinion piece:

‘God’s gonna cut you down’: 

How Republicans conspire with churches for power

For Republicans, the purpose of religion is — as it has been for authoritarians since Old Testament days — political and social control. It’s not about spirituality: it’s all about raw, naked, taxpayer-subsidized power and the wealth associated with it.

A Michigan county Republican Party just posted a video showing picture after picture of that state’s Democratic politicians, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who right-wing terrorists have already tried to kidnap and murder.

Under each picture — including a picture of George Soros representing, presumably, the “International Jews” who Republican politicians suggest wield space lasers and secretly are trying to control the world — reads the death threat, in bold, all-caps:

“GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN!”

The wealthy pastors of at least four Republican-aligned megachurches in Georgia have invited Hershel Walker to campaign, in clear violation of their tax-exempt status.

Across the nation, white evangelical churches brazenly push their parishioners to vote for Republican candidates: they’ve been getting away with breaking the law since the 1980s and don’t show any inclination to stop now.  

Back during Trump’s second impeachment trial, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and heir to the multimillion-dollar Graham fortune, publicly said that the 10 Republicans voting to impeach Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives were like Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

“And these ten, from [Trump’s] own party, joined in the feeding frenzy,” he wrote. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

Franklin Graham is a multimillionaire in large part because neither he nor his family have to pay any taxes on their family’s business’ income or even pay property taxes on the land and buildings their business owns and in which they live.

In a news article, AlterNet writes:

Former Vice President Mike Pence claimed during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not protect Americans from having other people's faiths forced upon them.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it states.

In fact, there are no references to a supreme being anywhere in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers were adamantly opposed to centralized religious power as well as requiring individuals to subscribe to any particular denomination. 

“These lefties want to scrap religion, Mike Pence, and I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Kudlow griped.

“Well, the radical left believes that the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion. But it's nothing the American founders ever thought of or generations of Americans fought to defend,” Pence said.

These are more warnings that the Christian nationalist wing of the Republican Party intends to establish Christian fundamentalism as controlling US law and society. The intent could not much be clearer. Republican Party fundamentalist Christian elites will obliterate secularism, secular education and secular law. That will be replaced with Christian Sharia law. It will be administered by an enraged, vengeful Christian Taliban right out of the Dark Ages. To get what they want, those elites are openly lying and slandering the left. Even worse, they openly break laws. 

Apparently no one in law enforcement is trying to stop this Christian illegality. Christian nationalist reasoning in defense of lawbreaking is that God’s sacred ends justify all means. That includes law breaking. Law enforcement appears to accept that as OK. Most rank and file Republicans seem to be fine with all of this. In view of their open support or silence, essentially all Republican elites accept Christian theocracy and want to replace secular law and society by force.

More news bits

The hellscape will get worse

Elon Musk has to close the deal to buy Twitter by Friday, i.e., tomorrow. That's pretty soon. He publicly stated he would lay lots of Twitter employees off, get rid of content moderation, re-open Trump's account and more or less, let free speech run free, wild and butt naked. Axios writes:

Elon Musk: Twitter won't become a "free-for-all hellscape"

Elon Musk said in a note Thursday that Twitter must be "warm and welcoming to all" and not a "free-for-all hellscape" in order for it to reach its full potential.

Why it matters: In an overture to advertisers, Musk seemed to walk back the idea of total free speech on Twitter and promoted it as a digital town square with some limitations.

What he's saying: Musk wrote in a tweeted note to advertisers that Twitter should be "a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence."

"Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!"

Here comes the a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences. Public discourse and civility are going to get even uglier than they are now. The chart below shows how to prepare for the barbaric hell that Musk is going to unleash on all of us. If you don't already have a scimitar, Wall Mart has them on sale in anticipation of the worsening hellscape to come soon.

The Republican plan for the economy

Various sources are reporting that once the GOP takes control of congress after the upcoming elections, they will push hard for (i) geting rid of as much of the federal government as they can, e.g., the IRS, EPA and Dept. of Education, (ii) tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses, gutting domestic spending for social security, Medicare and etc., and (iii) total attacks on all future elections, especially ones that republicans do not win. Republicans have already filed dozens of lawsuits attacking all aspects of the upcoming election in various states. This is just the beginning of an endless radical right Republican Christofascist and capitalist war against elections.  

In essence, the autocrat-theocrat GOP is once again pushing hard for horse and sparrow economics, with wealth gushing up to the elites (the horses) and the masses (the sparrows) desperately looking for scraps ejected from the elites.

Election update

The Guardian writes:

‘A madness has taken hold’ ahead of US midterms: 

local election officials fear for safety

In two rural California counties, voters are showing increasing hostility and aggression toward election workers

In California, officials in small, rural and underresourced counties such as Shasta say they are encountering hostility and aggressive bullying from residents who believe there is widespread voter fraud – many are inundating local elections offices with public records requests as part of a relentless quest to try to prove their claims.  

Residents in Shasta county have tried to intimidate election workers while acting as observers, crowding around Allen during a tense election night confrontation in June, and visiting voters’ homes while claiming to be a part of an “official taskforce”. In north-eastern California’s Nevada county, the registrar-elect had to take out a restraining order against residents who harassed her and pushed their way into her office, assaulting a staffer, she said.

Our democracy is slipping quietly under relentless waves of autocratic Republican Party demagoguery, dark free speech, rage, hate and lies. The American experiment is probably going to end in a corrupt autocratic-Christian theocratic failure.

Fetterman's debate performance has Democrats on edge in crucial Pennsylvania Senate race

HARRISBURG, Pa. — After getting their first long look at John Fetterman in Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate, fellow Democrats are second-guessing his decision to appear on stage five months after a stroke — and some question whether he should have remained on the ballot at all.

(Snowy's opinion: I wish Democrats would shut the f..k up. This is their candidate, back him! Questioning and 2nd guessing only feeds the other side)

But by Wednesday morning, many Democrats were in a panic over his performance. And there were fresh questions about how transparent Fetterman has been through a months-long recovery that continues to present communication challenges less than two weeks before Election Day.

(Snowy's opinion: Just what the Dems need in the home stretch, panic 😕)

He has little room for error: The FiveThirtyEight's review of recent polls suggests he holds a 2.3 percentage point lead over Republican Mehmet Oz, a margin that has narrowed appreciably since Labor Day.

(YES it has narrowed, but even despite a poor performance, Fetterman is still leading, time to put a MORE positive spin on this instead of hand wringing)

Fetterman 47.2%Oz 44.9%

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/pennsylvania/

Similarly, some Democrats maintained optimism. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/fetterman-debate-performance-democrats-edge-pa-senate-race-rcna54158

Snowy was listening to a call in show yesterday, day after the debate, and it featured a lot of Pennsylvania voters, and the vast majority who called in - and this was NOT on a partisan leftwing show either - had the same message:

"Fetterman is one of us, no way we are going to fall for a fake from out of state."

Whatchallthink? Time for the Democrat panic button pushers to stop eating their own??

After all, the Repubs are backing Hershel Walker ALL THE WAY. 

An opinion from across the pond about the UK and conservative politics

An opinion piece from the Guardian opines:

Oh, Britain: the chasm between myth and reality keeps on growing

So it’s tempting to see the fall of the hapless Liz Truss and the rise of the guileless Rishi Sunak as a contrasting tale of character and plot.

One was plainly incompetent and spontaneously combusted in an inferno of their own lies and trickledown economics. So is the other.

But British politics are not quite so simple – not since the country ripped off its reputation for common sense and streaked on to the global stage claiming it was too sexy for its own continent.

There has long been a yawning chasm between what British people admire in the mirror and what the rest of the world observes.

But over the last six years, that gap between myth and reality has become unbridgeable.

Sunak, for all his earnest schoolboy affect, is heading for the same fate as all four of his predecessors, because you can only fool all of the people some of the time.

Of course, some of the people can be fooled all of the time. We call those people Conservative party members who are – like their American Republican counterparts – no longer conservative at all.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the monster raving loony right has glugged down a radical cocktail of conspiracy theories, free-market fever dreams, and a corrosive taste for cultural victimhood.

Six years into Brexit, it’s obvious that the world is not in fact hankering after glorious new trade deals that will make Britain ludicrous amounts of loot. It’s also obvious that erecting trade barriers to the largest economy on your doorstep did not in fact punish the foreigners on the other side.

As the former governor of the Bank of England points out, before Brexit the British economy was 90% the size of Germany’s. Today it is less than 70%. Well done, chaps.

The new prime minister is faced with the same dire choices as his predecessor – and proudly proposes the same dire policies.

He cannot increase trade with Europe, without admitting that Brexit was batshit. He cannot raise taxes to spend more on public services, without admitting that his version of Thatcherism was reckless nonsense.

So all he can do is to cut public spending at a time when interest rates are rising sharply. The next two years, before the next general election, will be miserable for everyone.

To be fair, other countries will also need to hack back after years of cheap money as the world’s central banks crack down on inflation.

But Britain has indulged in something worse, and there are clear lessons for other countries that are tempted to go down the same mirage-filled road.

Today’s rightwingnuts idolize the notion of a long-lost greatness that somehow proves their own exceptionalism.

In Britain’s case, that is clearly rooted in memories of empire that have never been revisited with any seriousness. British children can pass through an entire schooling without an honest discussion about the white supremacist enterprise that built their own country.

In a country that likes to look down on racial politics in the United States, there is little to feel smug about. Around one third of Brits think the empire is something to be proud of. That’s not much different from the number of Americans who think the US government has no responsibility to address the historic effects of slavery today.

If we can’t be honest about our past, it’s easy to lie about our future.  

British prime ministers used to come and go like vintage wines. Every few years there might be a classic. Now they come and go like utility bills: painful and entirely forgettable.

Gosh, that sounds a lot like British right wing politics is about like radical right deceive and divide politics in the US. There's lots of illusions of grandeur, false beliefs, lies and crackpottery, with plenty of slanders to go all around. 

At least the toxic reality of Brexit is dawning on some of the Brits. One question is whether a significant awakening will make any difference. Probably not.

News bits

Russia demands desatanization of Ukraine

Russian propagandists are learning fast from American Christian nationalist propaganda techniques and creative QAnon style crackpottery. Ukrainska Pravda writes:

Russia's Security Council claims there are "hundreds of sects" in Ukraine

and demands "desatanisation"

Aleksey Pavlov, assistant secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has said that Ukraine should be "desatanised".

Details: Pavlov claims that Ukraine has turned into a "totalitarian hypersect" where citizens have abandoned Orthodox values, and therefore "desatanisation" is becoming an urgent issue. Pavlov admits that the exact number of sects in Ukraine is unknown, but "the number is in the hundreds."

Quote: "Using internet-based manipulations and psychotechnology, the new government [formed after 2014 - ed.] has turned Ukraine from a state into a totalitarian hypersect. Moreover, the authorities in Kyiv were the first to turn into militant fanatics whose views are directly opposite to those of normal people.

Not disclosed, is what "internet-based manipulations" and "psychotechnology" are. One European observer of this Russian intelligence mused out loud in the comments section of a reposted version of this article, I wonder what desatanized means from a metrics viewpoint? One commenter hypothesized, from what I have seen from the Russians, it means you invade a country with a Jewish president and bomb the holocaust memorial. . . . . They appear to be going full Ghandi on this.

Dissident Politics will be keeping a close eye on how Russia's desatanization pogrom is going and make discreet inquiries into what internet-based manipulations, psychotechnology and a totalitarian hypersect might be.

Disclaimer: I think the quoted reporting is not sarcasm or humor. The site it comes from is credible and has a good fact accuracy rating.

From the well duh files: Pledged climate change efforts are failing

The NYT writes:

Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing Earth toward a future marked by more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction, according to a report issued Wednesday by the United Nations.

Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their climate actions have followed through with more ambitious plans. The world’s top two polluters, China and the United States, have taken some action but have not pledged more this year, and climate negotiations between the two have been frozen for months.

Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100.

All indicators remain the same: Party hardy (formerly party hearty) while the lights are still on.

From the advances in dirty tricks files

The NYT writes:

Two right-wing political operatives have pleaded guilty in Ohio to a telecommunications fraud charge for arranging thousands of robocalls that falsely claimed that the information voters included with mail ballots could be used by law enforcement and debt collectors, prosecutors said.

The operatives, Jacob Wohl, 24, of Los Angeles, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Va., entered their pleas on Monday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland, prosecutors said.

The men were indicted in 2020 after they were accused of using the robocalls to intimidate residents in minority neighborhoods to refrain from voting by mail at a time when many voters were reluctant to cast ballots in person because of the coronavirus pandemic. The calls also claimed that the government could use mail-in voting information to track people for mandatory vaccination programs, prosecutors said.  

They face up to a year in prison and a fine of $2,500 when they are sentenced on Nov. 29, he said.

Up to a year and up to a $2,500 fine? Pffft! They will probably get probation for a couple of months and a $50 fine for being just playful, but naughty boys. 

Accumulating evidence continues to point to voter fraud efforts being committed by Republicans, not Democrats. Republican claims of serious vote fraud are just projections of what they desperately want to do themselves, i.e., cheat and steal elections. Just more shameless hypocrisy.

Racketeering Catholic church style 

The NYT writes:

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has agreed to submit to sweeping government oversight of its operations in a legal settlement reached on Tuesday with the New York attorney general, Letitia James, resolving a lawsuit that accused the church and its officials of a yearslong cover-up of sexual abuse.

Those monitors will be overseen by Kathleen McChesney, a former high-ranking F.B.I. official who also led the child protection office at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. As part of the settlement, two former Buffalo bishops, Richard Malone and Edward Grosz, will also be banned for life from holding any fiduciary role in a charity registered in New York.

According to the suit, the two former bishops shielded more than two dozen accused priests from investigation by the Vatican, and allowed them to either retire or go on medical leave.  

Instead of following church policy and referring the accused priests to a Vatican investigation that might result in their expulsion from the priesthood, the bishops classified the men as “unassignable,” a category that allowed them to retire with benefits or go on medical leave.

That kept the priests on the diocesan balance sheet, which prosecutors said constituted a misuse of charitable funds and an abrogation of fiduciary duty.

Us dumb taxpayers. We are forced by law to support the criminal Catholic church organization with massive tax breaks. And this is how the arrogant, criminal Catholic church shows its gratitude for what it is generously given. As the ex-president might say, while praising Catholic racketeering operations and for its stand against, and abuse of, the rule of law, taxpayers are suckers and losers. He would be right about that.

The Red State crime problem

In this election, as usual, Republicans are demagoguing the crime issue by fear mongering it. All the propaganda is that Democrats are weak on crime, especially murder, and crime is raging out of control. Much (most?) of the public is, as usual, is buying this false narrative. For most people, the raging out of control is somewhere else. The Third Way writes:

Takeaways

• The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
• In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
• 8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.

Every news outlet from FOX to CNN to The New York Times to local newspapers has a story with attention-grabbing headlines like “US cities hit all-time murder records.” Fox News and Republicans have jumped on this and framed it as a “Democrat” problem. They blame it on Democrat’s “soft-on-crime” approach and have even referred to a New York District Attorney’s approach as “hug-a-thug.” Many news stories outside of Fox have also purported that police reform is responsible for this rise in murder and have pointed to cities like New York and Los Angeles.

There is a measure of truth to these stories. The US saw an alarming 30% increase in murder in 2020. While 2021 data is not yet complete, murder was on the rise again this past year. Some “blue” cities, like Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have seen real and persistent increases in homicides. These cities—along with others like Los Angeles, New York, and Minneapolis—are also in places with wall-to-wall media coverage and national media interest.

But there is a large piece of the homicide story that is missing and calls into question the veracity of the right-wing obsession over homicides in Democratic cities: murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.

For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations. In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry, over the stunning levels of murders in these and other places.

The Atlantic writes:

These [Republican] attacks assume that the changes in criminal-justice policies that some states and many cities have pursued over the past few years are undermining public safety and fueling higher crime rates.

But an exhaustive new study released today by the Center for American Progress refutes that allegation. Conducted by a team of seven academic researchers, the study compares cities that have elected so-called progressive prosecutors with places whose district attorneys continue to pursue more traditional approaches.

Countering conventional wisdom, the study found that homicides over recent years increased less rapidly in cities with progressive prosecutors than in those with more traditional district attorneys. It also found no meaningful differences between cities with progressive or traditional DAs in the trends for larceny and robbery. “I think it’s really important to emphasize the extent to which we looked for a relationship and found none” between a prosecutors’ commitment to reform and crime rates, Todd Foglesong, a fellow in residence at the University of Toronto and one of the co-authors, told me.

It is good to counter false narratives with inconvenient truth. Too bad that inconvenient truth is often (usually?) not as persuasive as comforting false narratives. Bummer.