Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive biology, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass. Most people are good.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
Since everyone else is thinking of expanding their empire.............
I started musing, and the more I mused, the more I wondered ......... WHY NOT THE U.S. ?
Just a thought, but what I was musing about was - why isn't the U.S. invading Cuba and Venezuela and Brazil? The first two are NOT Ukraine and easily conquered. Brazil might be a fight but I suspect Jair Bolsonarocould easily be overthrown, as he is not even popular in his own country.
SO WHY NOT?
Because the U.S. isn't Russia? Because we don't want to get into invading other countries? Because we are stretched too thin around the world as it is? Because we respect borders?
YEAH OK.
We don't need no hardline Righties like Bolsonaro or Commies like Cuba and Venezuela polluting up the Americas, do we?
Anyone with me on this one?
OK OK, on further reflection, forget Brazil, the US has to stop the migration of countries like
Elsavador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Better to invade that threesome!
The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs. -- Republican Senators Rick Scott’s only mention of the environment or climate change in his March 2022 radical right plan for America; Reasonable interpretation: Essentially all federal government policies to deal with climate change or pollution are nutty and must be opposed
This post is just a short reminder that the Republican Party is staunchly anti-climate science and pro-profit from pollution capitalist.
Over the last four years, the Trump administration has taken on a massive deregulatory effort. With the issuance of Executive Order 13771, the administration’s two-for-one rule, federal agencies were directed to eliminate two regulations for each new rule issued. Much of this effort has focused on scaling back previous Obama-era regulations and weakening agencies’ statutory authority. Notably, environmental regulation has proven a prominent and easy target, as many existing policies and regulations had never been enshrined into law. The Trump administration has replaced the Clean Power Plan, redefined critical terms under the Endangered Species Act, liftedoil and natural gasextraction bans, weakened the Coal Ash Rule, which regulates the disposal of toxic coal waste, and revised Mercury and Air Toxic Standards–just to name a few[1].
Over the past few months, various federal agencies have finalized major environmental deregulations marking the end of, in some cases, years-long processes. The rules vary in consequence, from walking back pesticide bans to encouraging fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, weakening emissions standards, and even countering previous Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) findings.
The article goes on to point out that T**** and his pro-pollution Republican Party enablers eliminated or weakened regulations on toxic pesticides, greenhouse gas emissions and mercury and toxic air pollution, while expanding the scope of waterways and wetlands that could be polluted and/or bulldozed into non-existence.
The failure to enshrine into law environmental policies and regulations constitutes a massive bipartisan failure. Democrats has chances to put real teeth into environmental regulations, but they failed to do so. Now, it is too late. Republicans have publicly made it crystal clear that the only sense in which the GOP takes the environment and climate change seriously, is when environmental or climate policies and regulations need to be opposed and blocked or eliminated. That allows the private sector to profit from pollution with minimal government interference and no concern for climate change. In other words, Republican Party policy rewards pollution for profit. Some of that profit flows into Republican Party coffers. For Republicans and major polluters, it’s a gigantic win-win. For the public interest and the environment, it’s a gigantic lose-lose.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Just Drew for linking to the Brookings article about the Executive Order.
Only two weeks after Sweden's Social Democratic Prime Minister, Magdalena Andersson, conceded defeat as a Far-Right party which began as part of the Neo-Nazi movement in the 80s rose to prominence in a Right Wing coalition, Italy's next Prime Minister (based on current exit polls) is poised to be Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, whose roots lie in Italy's fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). Meloni joined the pro-Mussolini MSI at the age of 17, later co-founding a party-- National Alliance-- with other MSI members. In 2012, after cutting her teeth working with well known Right Wing populists like Matteo Salvini and Burlosconi ( both of whom are part of her new Right coalition) , she started her own party, Brothers of Italy (FDl) which, after today's general election, will now form a coalition government that she will lead as PM
She has tried hard to sell herself and her party as "moderate conservatives," likening them to Tories in one speech. But that's false advertising. Here is a clip of a short speech from only a few years ago (December of 2018) well worth watching, as she will soon be PM of an important Western European economy (Europe's 3rd largest) and a G7 country. In this short clip of her addressing her peers in Parliament, the topic is UN and EU policies regarding migrants, especially refugees from the global south. But she speaks with similar vitriol and self-righteous anger on a variety of topics including European identity, traditional family, the "perversions" of the "LGBT Lobby," abortions, atheism and loss of Christian identity et al. The common thread is that Europe and Italy are in political, social and cultural decline due to the rootless cosmopolitans, global elites, evil agents of George Soros, etc. This being the case, the evil and decadence must be decisively beaten back, and "real European-ness" asserted as basis for civilizational greatness for Italy, just as, in her mind, Orban is doing for Hungary and Kaczynski for Poland (among others). At about the 3 minute mark in the vid, she states that the EU and UN "have used illegal immigration in recent decades to complete the Grand Plan of financial speculation to deprive nations and people of their identity. Because without roots you're a slave, and when you're a slave you serve the interests of Soros." Note the anger she channels on behalf of her many devoted followers as she says this. It is a nod to both replacement theory, Soros conspiracy theories (which she and Orban never tire of employing) and it highlights her mission to liberate the 'real people' of Italy/Europe who are currently "enslaved" by their evil globalist keepers.
In her campaign this summer, Meloni has been careful to *say* she approves of the EU, or at least a less centralized version of it. She claims to support the EU position on the Ukraine War, but Burlosconi and Matteo have well established Putin-friendly stances. She also likens her own support of the EU to that of Viktor Orban who has just been rebuked officially by the EU as leading Hungary down a non-democratic path https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-rule-of-law-european-parliament-brands-hungary-as-no-longer-a-democracy/ . She also expresses admiration for Poland's authoritarian Law and Justice Party. She has also spoken at the Republican organization CPAC-- currently ground zero of the MAGA movement. Further, while denying any lingering fascism in her party or herself, Meloni has refused to denounce Musolini, and consistently deflects questions about the infamous tri-color flame which remains the logo of her party, as it was for the pro-Musolini MSI which she joined in her teens. Her standard line is "that was a long time ago" and "fascism has been consigned to the past by history." (In a Vice Report below, you can see her immediately change the topic when asked by the reporter about the fascist tri-color flame logo she has refused to abandon; likely to keep the old faithful on board). In a classic moment of damage control last week, Meloni suspended a party member when some of his comments from 2014 from Facebook surfaced. The fellow Brothers of Italy member "praised" Meloni in the comments, likening her to Hitler ( referred to as "a great German statesman of 70 years ago"). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62971802
Yet many who feel desperate in Italy in the wake of the Covid crisis as
well as economic and political problems that seem intractable, take her
on her word-- or at least are willing to "give her a chance." As a
charismatic rhetorician practiced in the "politics of resentment," she
is able to tap into the anger and despair of many citizens, not all of
whom are well informed. Since Italian governments come and go with some frequency (72 since WW2) one can only hope this one is particularly short-lived. But we see desperate and confused Europeans in the aftermath of economic displacement, a refugee crisis, and the covid pandemic-- all in the space of a decade-- turning increasingly to Right Wing alternatives, as they feel the status quo of liberalism has failed them.
Below is a link to a 15 min. Vice Report on Meloni's campaign which provides further context and contains interesting interviews, followed by 1 or 2 articles on this major development.
Deutsche Welle Video Report on Victory of Far Right Sweden Democrats (also descendants of a fascist party, in this case of Neo-Nazis from the 80s) who will be prominent members of Right Wing Coalition gov't that just defeated the Social Democrats 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpDQ6r-jHRc
Q: Why do you think we are seeing so many elections in liberal democracies rejecting the status quo and embracing hard-line far right parties-- some with very dubious roots in the Neo-Fascist movements of 20th century Europe?
A New York Times article reports that online hate speech in Germany is being prosecuted, with fines and sometimes jail time being part of the penalties. This touches on what I see as one of the most complex but important issues in modern politics.
Americans are untrained and defenseless
American society is clearly not able to defend itself. We are overwhelmed by a vast online onslaught of divisive lies, slanders, flawed motivated reasoning, crackpot conspiracies, irrational emotional manipulation, slanders and all the other filth and moral rot that is protected free speech in the US. Social media companies claim to police it, but it is clear by now that such a claim is mostly window dressing (~95% ?). That is just a fig leaf that allows social media companies to claim that hate and lies are being policed. Profit prevents the companies from getting serious about hate speech.
On top of that, hate speech cannot be policed in public places and platforms. Only private sources and police and censor it.
In my firm opinion, decades of dark free speech in America has been and is the single most potent and effective tool that radical right conservatives used to tear American society apart and subvert both politics and democracy. Decades of dark free speech has pushed conservative politics into normalization and acceptance of, a shocking degree of mendacity, authoritarianism, corruption and radical Christian theocracy that comes straight out of the Dark Ages. That is now accepted politics by tens of millions of conservative American adults.
At that exact moment in March, a similar scene was playing out at about 100 other homes across Germany, part of a coordinated nationwide crackdown that continues to this day. After sharing images circulating on Facebook that carried a fake statement, the perpetrators had devices confiscated and some were fined.
“We are making it clear that anyone who posts hate messages must expect the police to be at the front door afterward,” Holger Münch, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said after the March raids.
Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. But the people behind the most toxic online behavior typically avoid any personal major real-world consequences. Most Western democracies like the United States have avoided policing the internet because of free speech rights, leaving a sea of slurs, targeted harassment and tweets telling public figures they’d be better off dead. At most, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter remove a post or suspend their account.
But over the past several years, Germany has forged another path, criminally prosecuting people for online hate speech.
German authorities have brought charges for insults, threats and harassment. The police have raided homes, confiscated electronics and brought people in for questioning. Judges have enforced fines worth thousands of dollars each and, in some cases, sent offenders to jail. The threat of prosecution, they believe, will not eradicate hate online, but push some of the worst behavior back into the shadows.
In doing so, they have flipped inside out what, to American ears, it means to protect free speech. The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.
“There has to be a line you cannot cross,” said Svenja Meininghaus, a state prosecutor who attended the raid of the father’s house. “There has to be consequences.”
But even in Germany, a country where the stain of Nazism drives a belief that free speech is not absolute, the crackdown is generating fierce debate:
How far is too far?
Is it going too far to censor actual, provable lies, which are usually a non-trivial component of crackpot conspiracy theories? What about slanders? Essentially all of the liars, conspiracy crackpots and slanderers claim to speak truth. They vehemently deny that they are liars, crackpots and/or slanderers. By doing that they implicitly but undeniably point to truth, honesty and non-slander as something good.[1]
What about flawed motivated reasoning? That is more complicated and subtle, but nonetheless a critically important consideration. The human mind is susceptible to it and we are usually completely unaware that it is in operation. Wikipedia:
Motivated reasoning is the phenomenon in cognitive science and social psychology in which emotional biases lead to justifications or decisions based on their desirability rather than an accurate reflection of the evidence. It is the “tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe.” People can therefore draw self-serving conclusions not just because they want to but because the conclusions seemed more plausible given their beliefs and expectancies.
When I listen to most Republican politicians and partisans speak, motivated reasoning is usually a non-trivial or dominant part of what is being asserted. Usually, the reasoning is based on one or more provable lies that are folded into the argument being asserted. That is one objective basis to censor motivated reasoning. It seems that one or more lies or falsehoods cut through most dark free speech (~80% ?).
What about motivated reasoning that is not based heavily on lies or falsehoods? Some arguments based on logic flaws can be like that. For example, relying on a circular or strawman argument or by positing a false dilemma. Many people, especially most partisans and ideologues, do that fairly regularly. They firmly believe their argument and reject allegations of any error in their reasoning.
Questions of censorship are complicated but important. For years it seemed best to leave dark free speech free and untouched. Then it became clear that it is divisive, deadly and corrosive to society, respect for truth, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.
The stakes of leaving dark free speech untouched are very high. The stakes of touching it might be just as high. That is because, if autocrats, theocrats and/or kleptocrats (ATKs) rise to power, they could and probably would impose limits on free speech. Their limits would related to squelching criticism and inconvenient truth. That’s what the ATKs in places like China, Russia and North Korea have done.
Yes, ATKs would try to subvert laws that censor some or most dark free speech that are intended to defend truth and democracy. That is an ever-present risk of censorship.
Q: What runs the higher risk to truth and democracy, trying to censor some or most dark free speech or leaving it all alone and letting the ATK chips fall where they will?
Footnote:
1. That strikes me as being akin to Putin holding an election “referendum” in occupied Ukraine and then telling the World the people there, who were forced at gunpoint to vote as they were told, want to be part of Russia. Even a murdering thug like Putin must see at least propaganda value in elections, even if they are an obvious farce.