Trump Won - Natasha Owens

 

Natasha Owens is an award-winning Christian music artist who’s performed with superstars from Michael W. Smith to Toby Keith. Her new album is called “American Patriot,” and the first single is “Stand For Life.” Check it out here: https://ffm.to/patriot

Random thoughts: Classifying cognitive biases; Dragging fairness into radical right legal reasoning

Cognitive bias update

There are about 190 unconscious human biases identified so far. In politics and religion, perceptions of reality, human thinking (data processing) and belief formation/emotional/intuitive reaction are often or usually driven significantly or mostly by one or more unconscious biases. We are not aware of this until after the unconscious mind does its initial processing and then alerts the conscious mind of what it sees and has decided. The conscious mind then usually accepts the unconscious mind's perceptions and opinions, and then we consciously act accordingly. Some people are better attuned to stopping and consciously reconsidering the prior decision before acting on it in terms of observable behavior. Sometimes, maybe more often than not in some situations, we act before we are consciously aware or are in conscious control.

Cognitive bias research has reached a point where it is time to consider how to classify biases into groups and subgroups. The point being to try to discover underlying or bedrock cognitive or psychological sources of bias, belief and behavior. A recent paper, Toward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases, discusses this. The paper hypothesizes that groups of bases are linked by, or flow from, fundamental beliefs such as me or my group is reasonable or that I am good.

The paper notes that people’s information processing is influenced by empirically observed biases. Biases were found by various lines of research, but that tends to obscure shared neurological or psychological causes for the biases. Thus, some unrelated biases such as bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias and outcome bias, appear to come from some combination of fundamental prior belief and the human trait toward belief-consistent information processing. Humans really dislike the cognitive dissonance that arises from disconnects between reality and personal beliefs, group or tribe membership, personal morals and the like. But as we all know by now, what is consistent with personal moral or belief can be, and often is, partly, mostly or completely inconsistent with real facts, true truths and/or sound reasoning.

In other words, specific beliefs tend to guide information processing in the unconscious mind. The paper proposes that influence of different biases can arise from a common underlying belief. The output of bias in terms of behavior reflects the unconscious mind doing its thing, i.e., information processing. By trying to classify groups of apparently linked biases, researchers hope that will point to hypotheses about underlying biological/social/psychological sources for groups of apparently linked biases. In turn, those hypotheses can be tested for their validity. If valid, that will lead to more confirmatory research. If invalid, that will lead to different hypotheses that need to be tested for validity.

Obviously, bias research is still struggling to understand the nature of biases, unconsciousness, consciousness, the mind generally and how they work. But this is why issues and beliefs in politics and even facts are often or usually so messed up, irrational and/or bitterly contested.

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Fairness in the law

To me and some other observers, the concept of fairness is generally antithetical to radical right legal reasoning, politics and policy. It just never comes up and isn't a concern. But in view of its unprincipled reasoning the radical right Supreme Court, finds the concept useful to get a radical right decision when the other bases to decide a case look flimsy or are non-existent. 

This is about the lawsuit that some radial right state Attorney Generals have filed to block Biden's attempt at student loan forgiveness. For a refreshing change, the law is crystal clear. The law allows Biden or his administration to engage in student loan forgiveness for those affected by a national emergency. In this case a COVID national emergency was declared by both Trump and Biden.  

So the law is clear, Biden's student loan forgiveness program is legal. Instead of calling it illegal as apparently most experts expected[1], the six brass knuckles capitalist Republicans on the Supreme Court also complain that loan forgiveness is unfair. Unfair? What is fair, just like what is unfair, is an essentially contested concept.[2] There is rarely, if ever, any rational way to resolve a dispute about what is fair and what isn't. B&S writes about this bizarre situation:

Caring About “Fairness” Is a Political Choice

The Supreme Court’s conservatives have spent their careers disclaiming the relevance of “fairness” in legal analysis. Now, though, a Democratic president is trying to do something they don’t like.

Last year, President Joe Biden announced a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for some 43 million borrowers whose lives and livelihoods were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

.... the conservative legal movement has coalesced around what I would describe as a jurisprudence of fuck-your-feelings. In this conception of the constitutional order, judges are not to behave as “activists” who concern themselves with fuzzy concepts like “equity” (whatever that means) or doing “justice” (same). Instead, they are to set aside their policy preferences and apply the law as written, no matter where the analysis takes them.  

“Textualism means you are governed by the text. That’s the only thing that is relevant to your decision,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia told Fox News’s Chris Wallace in 2012. “Not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.”

For this reason, it was more than a little startling to hear conservative justices spend their time on Tuesday fixated on a point that will be familiar to anyone with children who are old enough to talk. The legal authority for Biden’s plan is a 20-year-old federal statute that allows the Secretary of Education to “waive or modify” student debt obligations for borrowers affected by a national emergency. The statute’s text is neither complicated nor ambiguous. To anyone without a terminal case of Federalist Society brain, its relevance to an economic crisis stemming from a global health disaster that has dragged on for three years and counting does not require detailed explanation.

And yet, the conservative justices argued, there remains a fundamental problem with Biden’s plan: It just isn’t fair to those who would not benefit from it.

“I think it’s appropriate to consider some of the fairness arguments,” announced Chief Justice John Roberts, who posed an elaborate hypothetical about two high school graduates: one who borrows money to go to college, and the other who borrows money to start a lawn care business. The Biden plan, he argued, provides nothing to the businessman and yet forces him to subsidize the student. “Why isn’t that a factor that should enter into our consideration?” asked Roberts, apparently unable to fathom a more sympathetic debt-saddled person in America in 2023 than a guy who owns a business.

Set aside whether Biden's loan forgiveness plan is good, bad or ambiguous policy. Ignore it. Instead, just consider how utterly unprincipled the radical right Republicans on the Supreme Court are. They want radical right decisions, no matter how they get them. 

What are radical right decisions? Ones that radical Christian nationalist theocrats and/or brass knuckles capitalists would want, regardless of what the law is. For this particular case, the elite Supreme Court  Republican radicals appear to be mostly wearing their brass knuckles capitalist hats. But who knows, maybe most Christian nationalist theocrats would also approve. A lot of the students are minorities. Most elite Christian nationalists appear to be race and ethnic bigots at best, virulent bigots or racists at worst.

Footnotes: 

1. Salon writes about the radical right legal tactic that will probably mostly decide the case against Biden's loan forgiveness program:

But most of the conservative justices have devised a tool to wriggle out from under the text of a law: the “major questions doctrine,” a dubious and ill-defined rule that courts can use to strike down any policy that presents a “major question” if Congress has not authorized it explicitly enough. (How major? Nobody knows.) Chief Justice John Roberts involved the major questions doctrine in an early colloquy with Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was there representing the Biden administration to defend the program. He asked Prelogar if she “would recognize at least that this is a case that presents extraordinarily serious, important issues,” requiring the court to look at it “a little more strictly than we might have otherwise to make sure that this was something that Congress would have contemplated.” Kavanaugh connected the doctrine with the notion that courts should look skeptically at policies justified by emergencies, implicitly invoking decisions that upheld Japanese internment and other wartime civil liberties violations as a (questionable) comparison.

Because it is ill-defined and mostly subjective, the major questions doctrine tactic will be used to knock down a lot of laws the radical right dislikes, maybe hundreds or thousands. This is a major tool that radical right authoritarians and theocrats will use to completely remake the law and constitution in their program to kill, among other things, democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, secularism and inconvenient facts and history.

2. Wikipedia writes: 

Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof. They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users", and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone".

Israel: Overview of the Current Political Crisis

The following article appeared in today's online edition of World Politics Review, and was written by Avner  Inbar (academic director of Molad, a liberal think-tank in Jerusalem) Inbar's interpretation of events, like any other, partly reflects his own positions; but it strikes me as a fair description and analysis that provides more context than almost all coverage in MSM, especially in the US. 

It places the conflict over the fate of the Judiciary in a context of competing and irreconcilable ideologies and visions of Israel. Broadly, there are 2 factions on the Right he describes; "Bibism" and "Religious Zionism." The former often accommodates the latter but is not the same as it, and ultimately incompatible with it. The liberals in Israel, who Avner claims have been largely silent in recent years under "Bibi,"constitute a large segment of the population of Israel, and their relative complacency, says Inbar, has given way to outright alarm as they see democratic institutions under threat and ever more power going to a Right  that accommodates radical Zionists once considered fringe, and in some cases illegitimate or illegal as explained below. I share it because it strikes me as a reasoable and thoughtful piece that backs up from the merely momentary news, and reflects on this as a crossroads for Israel as it reckons with its history while struggling to define its future.

Briefing Middle East & North Africa

Israel’s Protests Are a Battle Over the Meaning of a Jewish State

Avner Inbar

The so-called judicial reform launched by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has roiled Israeli society, setting off massive protests that possibly constitute the largest social unrest the country has ever seen. Whole swaths of Israeli society that were previously proudly apolitical have taken to the streets, including the business sector—most notably, the booming high-tech industry—and military reservists. Start-up companies are withdrawing their funds from Israeli banks, and air force pilots are withdrawing from active service.

The energetic and resolute reaction by a liberal public that had been considered politically moribund for years likely took Netanyahu by surprise. Netanyahu expected smooth sailing, having secured a robust majority in the  Knesset  with a new coalition that finally delivered on his promise of a government that is “fully right-wing.”

The election that brought Netanyahu back as prime minister in November—Israel’s seventh in 10 years—was called when the previous government fell apart under relentless pressure from the right. The coalition of then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett comprised parties from the right, center and left that were united only in their determination to keep Netanyahu from power.

In addition to having little in common on a policy level, the coalition was assailed by Netanyahu and other elements of the Israeli right as treasonous for having included Ra’am, the first Arab party to ever enter a government in Israel. The gist of the attacks against Bennet’s coalition was that a legitimate government of the Jewish state cannot rest on the support of an Arab party, and possibly not even include one. Ultimately, the coalition collapsed after several members of Bennet’s own right-wing party defected, leaving him short of a majority in the Knesset.

But the question of what, exactly, being a Jewish state means looms even larger these days, as Israelis are realizing what the “fully right-wing” version entails. With the electoral collapse in November of the anti-Netanyahu elements represented by Bennet, the Israeli right is now divided into two camps.

The first and most dominant camp in terms of political representation is the personality cult around Netanyahu—called “Bibism,” after Netanyahu’s nickname. It can be roughly described as a populist movement completely devoid of any political content, held together by a shared resentment toward the left and purported cultural elites as well as animosity toward Palestinians. It remains to be seen what will become of Bibism after Netanyahu’s eventual departure from political life. What is clear, however, is that it does not represent a substantive ideology.

The right’s second faction is a highly ideological movement espousing a clear vision of Israel—in short, everything that Bibism is not. Over the past three decades, this faction—the national-religious movement, or religious Zionism—has become the most dynamic and, in ideologically terms, the dominant political force in Israel.

Two processes enabled its rise to power: the left’s cultural and ideological implosion following then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination and the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and the secular right’s embrace of the vacuity of Bibism. While Bibi’s supporters vastly outnumber adherents of religious Zionism, the latter deftly positioned themselves as a political vanguard that shapes and steers the right as a whole, including Netanyahu himself. While the current judicial reform has been portrayed in part as a way for Netanyahu to neuter the judiciary at a time when he faces multiple criminal proceedings for corruption, it is spearheaded by the religious Zionists, who see an independent judiciary—especially a Supreme Court that can overturn laws passed by the Knesset—as an obstacle to their goals.

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Religious Zionism as currently constituted emerged in 1967, when Israel’s occupation of the West Bank after the Six-Day War ignited the messianic aspirations of a previously moderate and marginal national-religious community. Their political theology allegedly vindicated by the unexpected triumph in the war, religious Zionists began to view themselves as the true heirs to the secular pioneers who established Israel, summoned, as it were, to assume leadership of the Jewish state.

Over the course of its political and cultural accension over the past generation, the national-religious movement radicalized even further, with the most stringently religious element—known as  Hardal, or national-haredi—becoming internally hegemonic. The current political alliance between the national-religious party, currently called simply Religious Zionism, and the Jewish Power Party [ Otzma Yehudit - ed]—a nationalist party descended from the Kahanist movement movement, which was outlawed in Israel as a terrorist organization—would have been unimaginable in the past and is a testimony to religious Zionism’s descent into overt racism and fanaticism.    

Until now, the national-religious movement’s chief undertaking since 1967 had been promoting settlements in the occupied West Bank. The settlements are a tremendous tactical achievement, matched only by the magnitude of their strategic failure. More than half a century after the first Jewish settlers moved into Hebron, their ultimate goal—annexation of the West Bank—is not close to being realized, despite widespread concerns that it is unavoidable.

This is because the earthly realization of religious Zionism’s messianic ambitions requires the absorption and, eventually, naturalization of millions of Palestinians into the Israeli body politic, an endeavor that is entirely inconsistent with the modern Zionist idea of the Jewish state. Though the settlers sometimes elide this issue by suggesting that Palestinians could be forcibly removed from the West Bank or denied full citizenship rights under annexation, the former is unrealistic and the latter unsustainable. The settlement project is much likelier to bring the modern Jewish state to ruin than to extend its sovereignty to the entirety of what the religious Zionists consider to be the Holy Land, or Greater Israel.

As a result, religious Zionism is at odds with mainstream Zionism, which has always viewed the Jewish state as a vehicle for the realization of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination. This commitment rested on the assumption that Jews will one day be a sufficient majority in their state to enact their self-determination through democratic institutions. It furthermore relied on the essential Zionist belief that Judaism is not only or even mainly a religion, but is first and foremost a nationality. To be a Jewish state, therefore, Israel need not have any necessary relationship to the Jewish faith.

Such a Jewish state is democratic in two crucial ways. First, it is committed to the self-determination of Jews through democratic institutions. Second, it promotes their freedom to define their collective “Jewishness” as they please. Zionism, in short, was always committed to the resolution of the “Jewish problem” by the establishment of a modern, democratic, free state.

Religious Zionism rejects this essential Zionist belief that Judaism primarily denotes a national rather than a religious kinship. Consequently, it rejects the modern conception of the Jewish state as essentially democratic and free. It doesn’t view the Jewish state as a vehicle for the realization of Jews’ right to self-determination, but as a vehicle for the Jewish people’s divine calling. For the national-religious movement, Israel is not a normal state but, in the words of Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, “the foundation of God’s throne on earth.” This is a profoundly undemocratic conception, since it means that the Jewish citizens of Israel—let alone its non-Jewish citizens—are not free to conduct their affairs as they please. They must, rather, play their predetermined role in what religious Zionists perceive as a divine drama set in motion by the Jewish people’s reintroduction to political power.

The irreconcilable difference between these two conceptions of the Jewish state is the source of the social strife that is currently unfolding in Israel. It is also the reason that a compromise between the two sides is unlikely. After nearly three decades of political dormancy, the liberal public in Israel is waking up to the inherent consequences of the rise of the religious right.

The protests are currently focused on the right’s attack on the independence of the judiciary. But if they lead to a real reckoning with the underlying theological-political doctrine of religious Zionism and its connection to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, they may bring an end to the rise of the religious right. Beyond the crucial battle on democratic values and checks and balances lies a fundamental disagreement about the very meaning of a Jewish state.

News bits: Climate change update; Israel's toxic version of America's toxic Federalist Society

The WaPo reports on another update from climate experts:

Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming.

The report released Monday from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme people cannot adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end.  

Decades of delay have denied the world any hope of an easy and gradual transition to a more sustainable economy, the panel says. Now, only “deep, rapid and … immediate” efforts across all aspects of society — combined with still-unproven technologies to pull carbon from the atmosphere — will be able to stave off catastrophe.

At this point, it's reasonable to think that the human species probably cannot proact effectively. In the US, the radical right Republican Party remains firmly opposed to doing anything and firmly committed to fighting coordinated federal and commercial efforts to even try. In that case, we will react only after disasters hit, or we won't react much and just let species go extinct and people die or live disrupted lives.

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Israel's democracy is on the verge of falling to some form of a a corrupt authoritarian theocratic fascism. Democracy there could fall within months. The NYT writes about Kohelet, a powerful secretive society that, like America's Federalist Society, quietly operates to replace democracy with corrupt, bigoted, racist fascist theocracy/autocracy/plutocracy:

Who’s Behind the Judicial Overhaul Now Dividing Israel? Two New Yorkers

Kohelet, the once-obscure think tank that conceived and now champions a revamped court system, is an American import

As part of a recent “national day of resistance,” a group of army reservists wearing masks converged at the Jerusalem office of a think tank and blocked its front door with sandbags and coils of barbed wire. Outside, protesters led a noisy rally on the street, waving dozens of placards and sharing a microphone for a series of furious speeches.

“The Kohelet Policy Forum has been hiding in the shadows,” shouted one speaker, standing atop a car. “But we are onto them and we will not let them win!”

For years, Kohelet quietly churned out position papers, trying to nudge government policy in a more libertarian direction. Then, starting in January, it became more widely known as one of the principal architects of the judicial overhaul proposal that has plunged Israel into a crisis over the future of its democracy. 

If the plan succeeds, it would be a stunning victory not only for the think tank, but also for the people behind it: two guys from Queens.

Like America's radical anti-democracy, authoritarian Federalist Society, Kohelet works to hide as much about itself as possible, at least regarding money. The NYT points out that Kohelet is not required to disclose the names of individual donors. For years the group "has artfully deflected questions about funding." One source of money is New Yorker Arthur Dantchik, a 65-year-old multibillionaire. 

Not surprisingly, Dantchik refused to comment for the NYT article. All modern authoritarians working to overthrow democracy and install dictatorship and/or radical authoritarian theocracy, like the Federalist Society and Kohelet are expert at the KYMS tactic in the face of inconvenient questions. The anti-democracy forces of the world are watching each other. Under the right circumstances, they adopt tactics that might work to overcome local pro-democracy, pro-secular and anti-bigotry/racist opposition, while avoiding the ones that probably would not work under local circumstances.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut

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Lunacy on cable TV: Yesterday on her weekly MSNBC program, Rachael Maddow discussed the impending Georgia law that gives power to state legislators to simply remove prosecutors from investigations that they don't like. Short of establishing a full-blown American dictatorship-theocracy, that is about as anti-democracy and anti-rule of law as the political situation in America can get.

The Georgia law has passed the legislature and the governor has said he supports it. So, this authoritarian (fascist IMO) law will be in effect soon. The point of radical right Republicans in passing this law is to protect Trump from prosecution for his illegal attempts to commit mass election fraud in Georgia after the 2020 election. The lead prosecutor there is Fulton County district attorney Fanni Willis, a black woman.

Oddly and inexplicably, one of Maddow's guest commentators, a Georgia prosecutor characterized the pending law not as authoritarian or fascist, but as racist because Willis is a black woman. Maybe I'm way off base here, but that allegation of racism instead of fascism struck me as shockingly stupid and about as counterproductive as possible. I understand that racism very likely is involved in what the radical right in Georgia is trying to do to the rule of law in Georgia. But by citing racism as his basis for opposing the law, Rachael's idiot guest hands the radical right an excuse to accuse him of racism. That fool gave the radical right a perfect foil to deflect from the fact that the fascist Republican Party in Georgia is going to gut the rule of law in that state.  

Given how idiotic and damaging the guest's racism comments were, is reasonable to believe that Maddow's guest intended to sabotage the story while appearing to be on the side of democracy.

Raw Story commented on the Maddow broadcast:

Currently, Georgia lawmakers are working to fast-track legislation that would remove any prosecutors that they don't like. It's a target on Fulton County Fani Willis, who is close to indicting Donald Trump for his attempt to overthrow the Georgia election. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has pledged to sign it. At the same time that Trump is facing charges, the Georgia lieutenant governor is facing potential charges in the same investigation, Maddow said.

"So Republicans will have the power to remove prosecutors in the middle of their investigations and in the middle of prosecuting any particular case Republicans might not like for any reason," explained Maddow. "And to be clear, this has now passed the Georgia legislature as of tonight. A version of the bill passed the state Senate, and the House just passed it tonight. And the Republican governor there says he will sign it. He's a strong supporter of this. So, they're doing it. ...."

Maddow said about Trump being indicted or withdrawing, "Maybe he will, maybe he won't. None of us know. But in the one place where he is under criminal investigation, and his party is in full control of the state government, they've just decided for the first time in the state's history, that it is within their own power to remove prosecutors in the middle of their duties on their own say so. And, yes, this is a story about Georgia, and yes, this is a story about Trump and the potential charges he's facing. But this is a whole new step for us as a country."

If that isn't some form of fascism,** maybe neo-fascism or maybe American fascism or Christofascism, what is it? Girl Scouts singing kumbaya around the camp fire?

** For several months, I've refrained from calling what the radical right is doing fascism because it is soooo naughty and pejorative that the label is counterproductive. Maybe so, but what the dictator-plutocrat-Christian theocrat radical right is doing in Georgia is clearly some form of fascism. In my firm opinion, democracy has fallen in Georgia. It is now a single party state ruled by radical elites, not the rule of law. I am just calling what is obviously and undeniably a spade, a spade.