Idle musings about politics, democracy and pragmatic rationalism

The news is rather uninspiring today. Various polls seem to indicate that Harris is now about even with DJT. Her public approval seems to be real. Maybe she can beat back the authoritarian kleptocratic threat that DJT and the Republican Party constitute. 

I haven't posted anything about PR (pragmatic rationalism) recently, e.g.,  post 1, post 2, post 3, etc.  Maybe a revisit is called for. This is a stream of consciousness post, maybe too boring and/or wonky for most people.

We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. -- Political psychologist George Marcus, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013 (PR probably is one of those high-minded, out-of-reach ideals)

PR is designed to be an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology (or mindset) that reveres (i) facts, evidence and reason-based politics, and (ii) defense of the public interest, democracy, transparency, civil liberties and the rule of law. Those are the core moral values. Those moral values all stand in opposition to what DJT and the Republican Party stand for, regardless of how vehemently they might deny it.

The main idea is to focus on tamping down the aspects of human nature, primarily cognitive biology, social behavior and moral beliefs, that lead to things like the irrationality, bigotry, false beliefs and sometimes violence that often prominently characterizes politics and political rhetoric. That asks an awful lot of most people. More than they can deliver.

Under current polarized social, commercial, religious and political circumstances, PR cannot gain much traction. It asks more than can reasonably be expected, e.g., because facts and sound reasoning often generate unpleasant cognitive dissonance and/or threats to self-esteem. Worse, it is in opposition to more powerful and much more pervasive authoritarian dark free speech. Cognitively heavy facts, truths and conscious reasoning are usually significantly less appealing than fast, cognitively light, and fun (self-affirming) lies, slanders, crackpot conspiracy theories, irrational partisan emotional manipulation, etc. (dark free speech - DFS). DFS is designed to minimize or avoid cognitive dissonance that often accompanies unspun reality and sound reasoning. PR doesn't really stand a chance against DFS under current circumstances.

One thought by a commenter about the human condition posited this: Our human psyche is simultaneously organic and social in nature.

I've constantly cited human cognitive biology (organic) and social behavior, to help explain the human condition doing politics and probably most everything else. PR is in synch with that idea.

Another thought: A key question about humans asks, can I live with others?

A key point of PR is to foster a mindset that lives with and tolerates others, especially including others who are different politically. It is usually easy to tolerate people like oneself politically. But it is usually a lot harder to tolerate those who significantly differ. That has been the case since the polarization US has undergone since the 1960s, and especially since the rise of MAGA. Serious polarization makes it harder, often impossible, to live with or at least tolerate others.  

At least two factors seem to be dominant in the weakening of Americans being able to live with others. One is personal bias, the other is ideology (political, religious, economic, political, philosophical, etc.), both of which have cognitive (organic) and social origins. PR is designed to tamp down the inherently divisive and distrust-fomenting effects of bias and ideology. That ought to make it a little easier to live with others in a tolerant, liberal democracy.  

“One cannot fully grasp the political world unless one understands it as a confidence game, or the stratification system unless one sees it as a costume party. . . . . Finally, there is a peculiar human value in the sociologist’s responsibility for evaluating his findings, as far as he is psychologically able, without regard to his own prejudices likes or dislikes, hopes or fears. . . . . To be motivated by human needs rather than by grandiose political programs, to commit oneself selectively and economically rather than to consecrate oneself to a totalitarian faith, to be skeptical and compassionate at the same time, to seek to understand without bias, all these are existential possibilities of the sociological enterprise that can hardly be overrated in many situations in the contemporary world. In this way, sociology can attain to the dignity of political relevance, not because it has a particular political ideology to offer, but just because it has not.” -- Sociologist Peter Berger in his 1963 masterpiece, Invitation to Sociology, commenting on the poison that ideology typically is for most people most of the time, which modern cognitive and social science has now shown to be basically true (See why PR is an anti-ideology ideology?)

Of course, it is possible to force people to live with each other in a non-democracy society, e.g., a dictatorship or theocracy. But PR rejects authoritarianism and force as deeply immoral (often evil). Free will and choice is the best and most moral possible way for societies to live in peace. 

Societies under authoritarian regimes are power-concentrated, usually also wealth-concentrated. If power and wealth concentration is a reasonable indicator, the US arguably is well on its way to some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism, e.g., a deeply corrupt DJT-dominated MAGA dictatorship. In essence, PR is a moral framework that fosters ethical understanding among people, which tends to have a humanizing effect among people locked in disagreement. If one has no understanding of the "other", it is a heck of a lot harder to have some trust and respect. 

Instead of changing minds, trying to reach stasis, the point at which people in disagreement can state why they disagree is a far more realistic goal than shooting for a change of mind about something. I posted on the importance of stasis in political disagreement a few yeas ago.  

Understanding why people disagree with each other in an online forum like this has at least three significant pro-democracy effects. One is that mutual understanding tends to humanize the one who is understood, which tends to rationalize how we think about others.  The second is onlookers who are not part of the discussion can asses for themselves what, if anything to believe about what the two in conflict are saying and whether the basis for their beliefs is credible or not.  The third is that by laying out one's facts and reasoning for personal political beliefs and behaviors, bias and ideology are directly tested against actual reality far more than discussions that rely only on opinions, personal biases, personal morals and ideology. In other words, trying for stasis is inherently anti-biasing and anti-ideology.  

But getting to stasis is unusual very likely because it forces scrutiny of unpleasant things, especially things that contradict belief or undermine self-esteem or identity. Most people are uncomfortable having that scrutinized. But as unusual as getting to stasis is, changing minds is nonetheless a lot less common. 

In my experience, trolls and political ideologues usually refuse to state why they believe what they believe. The reason is that either (1) they don't care and are just playing nasty games (trolls), or (2) they unconsciously know that they cannot support their beliefs very well or at all (ideologues). I use the quest for stasis to suss out trolls. I banned a troll a several days ago because he/she refused to state their facts. They had their chances but refused, so I whacked 'em. Ideologues are harder to deal with because they tend to conflate opinion with fact, while rejecting inconvenient fact and reasoning as lies and crackpottery (a function of cognitive bias and tribe social loyalty). 

“Time as cyclical, especially when married to the idea of fate and destiny, is inherently conservative, protective of the established social order, established political authority, and dominant traditions. .... In addition, with time as cyclical, the debate between advocates of democracy, such as Aristotle, and those who advocated aristocratic rule, such as Plato, is stable. Nothing new will alter that debate as human nature is fixed and our natures either suit us for democracy, as some have it, or for aristocracy as others have it.” -- Psychologist George Marcus, chapter 3 of his 2013 text book, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics and Politics, about the difficulty of mindset change -- this hints at why pragmatic rationalism has been such a difficult concept for me to explain and why it can't gain public acceptance in the face of an ocean of normalized and accepted authoritarian radical right DFS (whether it admits it or not, America's mainstream media has also significantly contributed to normalizing and social acceptance of radical right DFS that has poisoned America and torn its society apart)