Dissident Politics

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.

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Psychology 101?

Let me hit you with this general psychology question:

Do people (the bulk of the masses) need led?

Merriam-Webster

Led: a: to guide on a way especially by going in advance; b: to direct on a course or in a direction)

Granted, there are many who are the diligent types, who know how to (and take the time to) verify and evaluate data and make a judgment on such. But for the general public, is such diligence mostly true or mostly false?

It’s true that life in general gives us personal experiences to build on, and others can’t help but be involved in such experiences. IOW, “No man is an island; entire of itself.” But do we, as a people, mostly take our cues from/directions from/are followers of others (e.g., the clergy, the school system, the politicians, celebrity figures, family figures, friends' influence)? Or, more from ourselves? Are we mostly followers or leaders?

-If yes, mostly led by others (followers), what percentage of us? What do you think are the causes (e.g., shifts responsibility, too much work, gullibility, etc.).

-If no, mostly self-directed, self-made (leaders), make your case for that kind of independent thinking. How does it happen? What are the “keys?”

Monday, January 30, 2023

How culture wars work: The example of the gas stove battle

Demagoguery: political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument; the term is formally applied to just democracies, but I apply it to all kinds of political regimes including autocracies, theocracies, plutocracies, kleptocracies and the like

Virtue signaling demagoguery

Summery: How culture war works

This, or fairly close variants, is how America’s radical right political, religious, commercial and social culture war works.

Find an issue that can be weaponized, preferably on moral grounds, e.g., climate change, gun safety laws, abortion or gas stoves
Demagogue it to appeal to emotion like bigotry and irrational fear to maximize public disinformation, confusion, distrust, polarization, irrational fear, anger and other emotion-driven irrationality
Find and quietly fund experts to publicly lend credibility to the demagogues (or liars-deceivers-dividers)
Unleash the conspiracy theory crackpots and fund their divisive free speech to pollute as many minds as possible with their cynical dark free speech
Use free speech (campaign contributions) to buy sympathetic politicians and powerful bureaucrats by pandering to their ideologies and their self-interest
Let already sympathetic anti-democratic politicians demagogue[1] the issue on their own, with or without special interest input
Maintain a well-funded torrent of demagoguery, lies, slanders and the like for as many years or decades as needed to kill the threat, or to delay it as long as possible

That is how it works every time. That’s probably how it has worked for decades or centuries. The NYT describes the current gas stove culture war:

When Multnomah County in Oregon convened a recent public hearing on the health hazards posed by pollution from gas stoves, a toxicologist named Julie Goodman was the first to testify.

Studies linking gas stoves to childhood asthma, which have prompted talk of gas-stove bans in recent weeks and months, were “missing important context,” she said. Levels of pollutants in the kitchen, particularly a well-ventilated one, were negligible, Dr. Goodman told people at the November meeting. In fact, she said, the simple act of cooking itself, “baking, frying and sautéing,” also released emissions that had nothing to do with gas.

What Dr. Goodman didn’t tell the crowd was that she was paid to testify by a local gas provider. Dr. Goodman is a toxicologist who works for Gradient, a consulting firm that provides environmental reviews for corporations. She appeared at the county hearing on behalf of NW Natural, the local utility that is heavily reliant on gas, an affiliation she didn’t state during her testimony.

In recent months, Dr. Goodman has also worked with the American Gas Association, the industry’s main lobby group, to help it counter health concerns linked to gas.

In an interview, Dr. Goodman said she was transparent about the approach and processes she followed in her research, including disclosing the funding she receives. She said that it had been an oversight not to have mentioned that she had been paid to testify at the Multnomah hearing on behalf of the gas utility, and she said that the opinions she expressed represented her own, not necessarily the utility’s.

She said she wasn’t saying that the epidemiological studies showed that gas cooking doesn’t cause asthma. Still, “when considering the entire body of literature, the available epidemiology evidence is not adequate to support causation with respect to gas stoves and adverse health effects,” she said.

Whether many Americans will continue to cook and warm their homes with gas, or instead switch to electricity, has become one of the most divisive issues in public health, as well as the fight over climate action.

The gas industry has fought back. In at least 20 mostly Republican-led states, gas utilities have persuaded lawmakers to pass bills that forbid cities from pursuing prohibitions on gas, calling them too restrictive and costly.

In the quoted parts of the NYT article, one can see some of the prominent traits in culture war tactics. The expert attacks the evidence of adverse health effects as inadequate. Both the cigarette and oil industries argued for decades that the evidence was inadequate and more research was needed. Both of those industries still argue that the evidence is inadequate for (1) the second hand cigarette smoke issue, and (2) the climate change issue. That is standard culture war delay, deceive and confuse tactics.

Also note the crackpottery and lies that Goodman spews. She claims that her opinions were her own, not the utility’s. That is a bald-faced lie. No utility is ever going to pay any expert to publicly say anything that they believe is threatening to their revenues and profits. This is standard culture war quiet deceit tactics.

It is also worth noting that Goodman is a public relations consultant, not a practicing scientist. She is a hired gun. Consultants will say just about whatever her clients pay her to say, otherwise they would have few or no clients.

Also note that corrupted radical right Republican politicians are in the mix. Focusing on and corrupting rigid ideologues is also a standard culture war tactic. Ideologues are usually much easier to corrupt and manipulate than realists because their ideology is right and everything contradictory or inconvenient is despicable garbage and lies.

Finally, NPR commented on how fast and easily the culture war gas stove front opened up:

Gas stoves became part of the culture war in less than a week. Here’s why.

At the beginning of January 2023, the health and climate effects of gas cooking stoves in homes was an issue policy makers and academics were studying.

Then, on Jan. 9, Bloomberg News published an interview with Richard Trumka, Jr., a commissioner on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, who suggested that the government might consider stricter regulation of new gas stoves in response to health concerns about indoor air quality.

Within days, those stoves had become fodder for partisan influencers and campaign merchandise.

“God. Guns. Gas Stoves,” wrote U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, (R-Ohio) on Twitter.

Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ political organization quickly came out with aprons for sale in the style of a yellow Gadsden flag, once an icon of the Tea Party, but with a gas stove where the rattlesnake usually sits.

“Not only is Biden coming for your paycheck, he is coming for your stove. You heard me right. The White House is now attempting to ban all gas ovens and burners,” said Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Each of these pro-stove declarations came after Trumka had already clarified that the agency “isn't coming for anyone's gas stoves.”

Footnote:

1. In my firm opinion, demagoguery is inherently anti-democratic because it takes power from citizens to form beliefs and act on the basis of facts, truths and sound reasoning. By definition, demagoguery relies on denying, distorting or downplaying inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. Control of power is why dictators, theocrats, plutocrats, kleptocrats and the like are almost always hard core demagogues. For average citizens, knowledge is power, while ignorance and false belief is weakness. Dictators, theocrats and the rest want that power for themselves and they always rely on serious demagoguery to get it .

Critically endangered horse cloned; Finland is propaganda-resistant; etc.

Horse cloned using 42 year old frozen sperm: A bit of good news. A California zoo announced the birth of a critically endangered horse, a clone created with DNA preserved for 42 years. Named Kurt, the foal was born to a surrogate mother, a domestic quarter horse. Almost all surviving Przewalski's horses are related to 12 born in native habitats. Kurt was born through a breeding program to boost genetic variation in the species. The horse — also known as the Mongolian wild horse or the takhi — is shorter than domestic horses, and often has distinctive markings. The article has a 1 minute video showing the foal and mom doing their horse things.

Kurt

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Finland is propaganda-resistant:

Finland is the European country that is least susceptible to "fake news," with other Nordic countries trailing close behind, according to a recent analysis of media literacy. The United States and much of Western Europe – including the United Kingdom, France and Germany – ranked in a lower tier with countries such as Latvia and Lithuania in an expanded version of the analysis, which measures countries’ susceptibility to false news reports.

According to the report, the “dangers of fake news and related phenomena for democracy are hard to underestimate.” The countries where media literacy is at its lowest have the greatest restrictions on press freedom and low levels of education and personal trust.

This is notable because it is a source other than me who is warning about the now-grave danger to democracy, truth and civil liberties from divisive fake news, lies, slanders and crackpottery. The radical right propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, has been putting this kind of anti-democracy poison out for decades.

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The radical right Republican concept of a social safety net: Truthout writes:

Republicans Want to Raise Retirement Age to 70 as Life Expectancy Is Falling

This would shorten the retirement window to a mere six years, if the latest life expectancy average holds.

House Republicans have been working out the details of their deeply unpopular plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to deepen poverty and shackle people to the labor force further into old age.

What radical right authoritarian government and citizen welfare haters don't seem to realize is that if they do nothing at all, the safety net will continue to slowly melt away. About 41% of Americans say it's 'going to take a miracle' to be ready for retirement and ~59% of Americans say they will have to keep working longer. About 36% believe that they will never have enough money to be able to retire. Apparently, the shift of Americans into poverty isn't going fast enough for the Republican Party's taste.

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RRRRDS strikes in Connecticut (radical right reason-reality derangement syndrome): The WaPo writes on the kind of baseless crackpottery that drives the radical right's deranged but enraged culture war:

She named her breakfast cafe Woke.
A conservative backlash followed.

When Carmen Quiroga named her new breakfast restaurant, she wanted people to associate the cafe with waking up in the morning. She settled on Woke Breakfast & Coffee and spent six months renovating a building and developing a logo. Quiroga moved to Coventry, Conn., a few weeks before the restaurant’s opening this month. While finalizing the permits at town hall, another resident advised her to check Facebook. There, Quiroga saw several town residents criticizing her restaurant’s name, suggesting she’d chosen Woke to make a political statement. That was false, Quiroga told The Washington Post. ....
After Quiroga put up a sign with the logo on the building in September, residents began condemning the restaurant’s name.

The town divided along the usual political line, crackpot radical right vs reactionary left. Those radical right anti-woke folks are antsy to say the least. If there is nothing to get in a froth about, they just make up some crackpottery and let all their mindless rage and hate gush out. What a bunch of WWS (whining, wuss snowflakes (sorry SNOWFLAKE)). Some folks just need to get a real, adult life.