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.
This is a juicy one coming at us from the enraged Christian nationalist zealots, theocrats & kleptocrats:
Ohio Republicans Say It’s Their ‘God Given Right’
to Restrict Abortion Access
Republicans in Ohio want to undermine the will of voters who approved a measure enshrining reproductive freedom into the state’s constitution
Ohio Republicans are claiming a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, which was approved by voters in Tuesday’s election, doesn’t actually do that — and they’re promising to take steps to prevent the legal protection of reproductive freedom in the state.
“No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born,” state Rep. Beth Lear (R-Galena) added in the Republican’s statement. Another representative, Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester), claimed the referendum had only passed due to “foreign election interference.”
Rep. Bill Dean (R-Xenia) said the amendment “doesn’t repeal a single Ohio law,” and that its language is “dangerously vague and unconstrained, and can be weaponized to attack parental rights or defend rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers.”
Well, there you have it. One cannot argue with God Almighty. Darn those rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers, you know, nasty people like Trump.
Hose speaker Mike Johnson is a hard core Christian nationalist. He supports Christian Sharia law over the secular US Constitution. The New Republic reports:
A new report confirmed that the House speaker is displaying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his door
The flag is white with a green evergreen tree in the middle and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. A report published Friday by Rolling Stone confirmed that the flag is outside his district office in Washington.
The flag was originally used as a banner during the Revolutionary War, but over the past decade, it has been embraced by a sect of Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.
Apparently, most of ARRRP (authoritarian radical right Repub Party) elites do not see anti-abortion laws issue as unpopular. Instead, anti-abortion laws are popular but just the messaging and strategy are not quite right. A WaPo article reports about the ARRRP's thinking and evolving anti-abortion rights tactics:
Voters defended abortion rights and Issue 1 in Ohio lost
(he's not celebrating)
Opposing abortion rights -- it is a matter of
protecting parent's rights or children or something else?
Republicans still struggle to find a winning strategy on abortion
Many say the problem is messaging or strategy, while Democrats and some Republicans say the GOP is stubbornly sticking with deeply unpopular policies
Republicans still have no clear strategy on how to talk about abortion, how stringent limits on the procedure should be or how to cope with the ongoing political backlash that Democrats plan to capitalize on next year, according GOP lawmakers, activists and consultants.
In interviews and public statements, Republicans were all over the map on how to address the abortion issue heading into 2024. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told NBC News last week that Republicans should campaign more aggressively on the issue, calling for a “consensus as a country” that abortion should be banned with exceptions after “around 15 weeks.” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a memo suggesting that the GOP needs to “define where it stands on the issue nationally,” “put real advertising dollars behind it” and paint Democrats as extreme. Others have argued that Republicans need to emphasize support for exceptions, demonstrate more sensitivity when talking about abortion and use phrases such as “limitations” and “late-term” abortions as opposed to bans.
Given how disciplined, focused and effective ARRRP propaganda has been over the last 40-50 years, it is surprising that their dark free speech Leviathan has failed to settle on a two, three or four-word catch phrase to tip the propaganda war to their advantage. Simple, short slogans tend to be effective. Death tax. Compassionate conservative. Pro-life. MAGA. Deep state. Pedophiles. Stolen election. Legitimate political discourse. Etc.
Maybe they could pick something catchy like Baby Killer, Murdering Butcher or Satanic monster for abortion rights supporters. That ought to fire up the base.
Regardless, ARRRP elites are not going to give up. They will never admit that most Americans simply support abortion rights, whether they believe or know it or not.
Believing in something bigger than yourself can be good for your mental health.
Spirituality doesn’t have to mean religion—it also encompasses an array of other belief systems and practices.
A Gallup study found that "religious" people tended to score higher on well-being indexes.
Science can also lead to feelings of awe and transcendence not unlike a spiritual experience.
In fact, spirituality has been linked not only to lower rates of anxiety and depression but also to a reduction in other concerns, such as addiction.
Spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean adhering to a religion (although it can); it also encompasses an array of other belief systems and practices.
The Gallup study found that "religious" people tended to score higher than others on well-being indexes measuring five factors: positive coping and sense of purpose in life, faith-based social connections, community and civic engagement, structural stability, and workplace support of holistic well-being.
But fret not, ye atheists and agnostics: You can still partake in some faith-based well-being, albeit from a different source.
Researchers at Warwick University recently discovered that science can also lead to feelings of awe and transcendence not unlike those in spiritual experiences.
In the study, "Spirituality of Science: Implications for Meaning, Well-Being, and Learning," the authors found that meaning in life could be predicted in a group of atheists and agnostics via scientific sources, with the science providing similar psychological benefits as religion and spirituality.
It doesn’t matter whether you believe in a single god or a pantheon of gods and goddesses, or if you have devoted yourself to nature or science, or if you simply like to meditate once or twice a day—having faith in something larger than yourself is definitely good for you.
In more evidence that corrupt, authoritarian radical right (CARR) Repubs could not care less what majority opinion wants when it goes against what CARR Repubs want, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports:
Ohio GOP lawmakers propose stripping judges of power to
"To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative," according to a Thursday night news release with quotes from four GOP House representatives. "The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides."
The news release from Reps. Jennifer Gross, R-West Chester; Bill Dean, R-Xenia; Melanie Miller, R-Miller; and Beth Lear, R-Galena and was titled: "DECEPTIVE OHIO ISSUE 1 MISLED THE PUBLIC BUT DOESN'T REPEAL OUR LAWS." Ohio Value Voters, an anti-abortion organization, shared the same quotes in a Friday news release.
“We will withdraw jurisdiction from the courts so that they cannot misapply Issue 1 for the benefit of the abortion industry,” Gross said in the Ohio Value Voters' release.
This is what tyranny looks like. It is also what the CARR Republican Party looks like because that’s what it is. CARR Repub elites are solidly pro-tyranny. Tyrants don't accept the will of the voters or the people, unless they are forced to accept it. Period.
We're in a war over wealth and power for the elites vs. the rest of us. It really is just that simple.
Hillary Clinton compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler this week as she warned about the dangers of a second Trump presidency.
"I think it would be the end of our country as we know it, and I don't say that lightly," the former first lady and U.S. secretary of state said on daytime talk show The View on Wednesday.
During the interview, Clinton, 76, recalled her tenure as U.S. secretary of state and said she used to refer to the concept of elected leaders who were "one and done," meaning they would be democratically elected, and then do away with the electoral system and an independent press.
"And you could see it in countries where — well, Hitler was duly elected, right?" said Clinton, who is a Democrat.
"And so all of a sudden, somebody with those tendencies, those dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like, 'OK, we're going to shut this down. We're going to throw these people in jail,' and they didn't usually telegraph that.
"Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word. The man means to throw people in jail who disagree with him, shut down legitimate press outlets, do what he can to literally undermine the rule of law and our country's values."
Hm, that sounds somewhat familiar. Think . . . . think . . . . . think . . . . . oh yeah, now I remember. Russian journalist Masha Gesson. She reported on the fall of Russian Democracy to Putin. She wrote this after Hillary made her concession speech to DJT the day after the 2016 election. This is from Autocracy: Rules for Survival, that Gessen wrote for the New York Review of Books, in November 2016 (my 2020 post about it is here):
“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”
That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday [in her concession speech to Trump].
That speaks for itself. Hillary did not speak up in Nov. 2016. But now she is in 2023. Good for her. Another mind was gone woke about the threat of American kleptocratic tyranny from the CARR Repub Party and its undisputed, morally rotted leader and dictator wannabe.
Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability
and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. — Ayn Rand (normally I would not quote Rand because she was a deranged lunatic and a monster, but this bit makes sense)
It is a puzzle why humans tend toward unrealistic optimism, as it can lead to excessively risky behavior and a failure to take precautionary action. Using data from a large nationally representative U.K. sample (N = 36,312), our claim is that optimism bias is partly a consequence of low cognition—as measured by a broad range of cognitive skills, including memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning. We operationalize unrealistic optimism as the difference between a person’s financial expectation and the financial realization that follows, measured annually over a decade. All else being equal, those highest on cognitive ability experience a 22% (53.2%) increase in the probability of realism (pessimism) and a 34.8% reduction in optimism compared with those lowest on cognitive ability. This suggests that the negative consequences of an excessively optimistic mindset may, in part, be a side product of the true driver, low cognitive ability.
Unrealistic optimism or optimism bias—the tendency for individuals to overestimate the chance of favorable outcomes occurring and underestimate the chance of bad (Weinstein, 1980)—has been found to be one of the most pervasive human traits across many domains (Sharot, 2011). For instance, research has shown that individuals tend to underestimate the likelihood of developing a drinking problem or getting divorced (Weinstein, 1980) and to overestimate their future earnings (Dawson, 2017) and how long they are going to live (Puri & Robinson, 2007). Our established tendency toward unrealistic optimism poses an evolutionary puzzle as normative models of human judgment, like expected utility theory, suggest unbiased assessments of probabilities are advantageous. Like any other judgmental bias, optimism bias distorts the decision-making process, leading to systematic decision errors, increased rash and risky behavior (de Meza et al., 2019) and a failure to take precautionary measures (Dillard et al., 2009).
Below is a 3 minute video montage that shows some of what various experts (lawyers, scholars, UN officials I discuss below ) now consider to be very good evidence of genocidal intent-- which is usually the hardest part of genocide to establish. Following that is an op ed piece the NYT published on 11/10 by the renowned Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, Omer Bartov. The video montage gives a 3 minute slice of some of the evidence Bartov cites in the article reprinted below
Bartov's views are of great value, I think, because he has both deep personal and academic knowledge of all the issues in play here. He served in the IDF, worked in an occupied territory, is sympathetic to Israel yet highly critical of its policies in recent decades, and was affected by loss personally on October 7 (as he explains in an extended interview with Amy Goodman elsewhere). Educated in Tel Aviv and then Oxford, he later moved to the US and is considered one of the leading historians of the Holocaust. His 2018 book Anatomy of a Genocide won the National Jewish Book Award that year. He discusses the concepts of genocide, genocidal intent (required to prove it), ethnic cleansing and war crimes (e.g. disproportionate attacks on civilians, forced evacuations, attacks on functioning hospitals and others as outlined in the Geneva Convention of 1948 and The Rome Statute).
Accusations of war crimes and genocide are now being made in lawsuits against Israel brought before the ICC which will be evaluated by its lead prosecutor, Karim Khan. He, in turn, wrote an article in The Guardian warning Israel that:
"They will need to demonstrate that any attack that
harms innocent civilians or protected objects is conducted in
accordance with the laws and customs of armed conflict. They will need
to demonstrate the proper application of the principles of distinction,
precaution and proportionality.
For those
responsible for targeting and firing missiles, I wish to be clear on
three points in particular. One: in relation to every dwelling house, in
relation to any school, any hospital, any church, any mosque – those
places are protected, unless the protective status has been lost because
they are being used for military purposes. Two: if there is a doubt
that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must
assume that it is protected. Three: the burden of demonstrating that
this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the
missile, or the rocket in question."
In a dramatic statement made this week by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Volker Turk accused Israel of several war crimes after visiting the Rafah Gate. Among other things, the UN chief said:
"The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts
also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of
civilians. The massive bombardments by Israel have killed, maimed and
injured in particular women and children. The latest death toll from the
Gaza Ministry of Health is in excess of 10,500 people, including over
4,300 children and 2,800 women. All of this has an unbearable toll on
civilians....We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue."
A week earlier, on October 28, the Director of the New York Department of the UN Office of Human Rights wrote his boss Volker Turk, in Geneva, a letter of resignation in which he stated:
"This will be my last communication to
you... We are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organisation that we serve appears powerless to stop it."
On 11/9/23, three Rights groups filed am International Criminal Court lawsuit against Israel with accusations of genocide and various war crimes. The PM of Belgium cut ties with Israel this week. President Macron of France pressured Israel to stop the bombing and implement a ceasefire yesterday, to which Netanyahu replied:
"While Israel is doing everything to refrain from harming civilians and
calling on them to leave areas of fighting, Hamas-Isis is doing
everything to prevent them from leaving for safe areas and is using them
as human shields." (Guardian live updates 11/10/23)
He continued by saying that Hamas and not Israel is responsible for the civilian deaths-- a non-starter both legally and morally in which Israel literally denies its own agency in pulling the triggers. The "Hamas uses human shields" defense is not a blank check. As the top UN and ICC officials have stated, the burden will be on Israel to show that each and every school, hospital, mosque, residential building was being used by the enemy to launch attacks-- and that's a LOT of buildings, as the UNDP reports that 50% of Gaza's residential buildings have now been destroyed. Further, the loss of life incurred in such attacks must not be indiscriminate or disproportionate. It is doubtful that anything close to all these bombardments are precision strikes based on actionable intel on enemy positions in buildings, hospitals et al. Right from the start, Adm. Daniel Hagari, head of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, said that "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."
Blinken and Biden have begun to change their tune from "no red lines" for Israel to stipulating "red lines" which include "humanitarian pauses," "fewer civilian deaths," and the "ruling out of reoccupation of Gaza"-- though Netanyahu's latest word on that is his plan for "indefinite occupation" of Gaza until things can be "stabilized."
With all of this in mind, here is the video montage of official statements taken by many to be evidence of genocidal intent, followed by historian, Omer Bartov's op ed.
Israeli
military operations have created an untenable humanitarian crisis,
which will only worsen over time. But are Israel’s actions — as the
nation’s opponents argue — verging on ethnic cleansing or, most
explosively, genocide?
As a historian
of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently
taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and
even crimes against humanity, are happening. That means two important
things: First, we need to define what it is that we are seeing, and
second, we have the chance to stop the situation before it gets worse.
We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for
genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has
taken place. I think we still have that time.
It
is clear that the daily violence being unleashed on Gaza is both
unbearable and untenable. Since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas — itself a
war crime and a crime against humanity — Israel’s military air and
ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 10,500 Palestinians,
according to the Gaza Health Ministry, a number that includes thousands
of children. That’s well over five times as many people as the more than
1,400 people in Israel murdered by Hamas. In justifying the assault,
Israeli leaders and generals have made terrifying pronouncements that
indicate a genocidal intent.
Still,
the collective horror of what we are watching does not mean that a
genocide, according to the international legal definition of the term,
is already underway. Because genocide, sometimes called “the crime of all crimes,”
is perceived by many to be the most extreme of all crimes, there is
often an impulse to describe any instance of mass murder and massacre as
genocide. But this urge to label all atrocious events as genocide tends
to obfuscate reality rather than explain it.
International humanitarian law identifies several grave crimes in armed conflict. War crimes are defined
in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and subsequent protocols as serious
violations of the laws and customs of war in international armed
conflict against both combatants and civilians. The Rome Statute, which
established the International Criminal Court, defines crimes against humanity as extermination of, or other mass crimes against, any civilian population. The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
So
in order to prove that genocide is taking place, we need to show both
that there is the intent to destroy and that destructive action is
taking place against a particular group. Genocide as a legal concept
differs from ethnic cleansing
in that the latter, which has not been recognized as its own crime
under international law, aims to remove a population from a territory,
often violently, whereas genocide aims at destroying that population
wherever it is. In reality, any of these situations — and especially
ethnic cleansing — may escalate into genocide, as happened in the
Holocaust, which began with an intention to remove the Jews from
German-controlled territories and transformed into the intention of
their physical extermination.
My greatest concern watching the
Israel-Gaza war unfold is that there is genocidal intent, which can
easily tip into genocidal action. On Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay a “huge price”
for the actions of Hamas and that the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F.,
would turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble.” On Oct. 28, he added,
citing Deuteronomy, “You must remember what Amalek did to you.” As many
Israelis know, in revenge for the attack by Amalek, the Bible calls to
“kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings.”
The deeply alarming language does not end there. On Oct. 9, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said,
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” a
statement indicating dehumanization, which has genocidal echoes. The
next day, the head of the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government
activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed the
population of Gaza in Arabic: “Human animals must be treated as such,”
he said, adding: “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
The same day, retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland wrote
in the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, “The State of Israel has no
choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently
impossible to live in.” He added, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis
in Gaza is a necessary means to achieving the goal.” In another article,
he wrote that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can
exist.” Apparently, no army representative or politician denounced this
statement.
I could quote many more.
Taken
together, these statements could easily be construed as indicating a
genocidal intent. But is genocide actually occurring? Israeli military
commanders insist
that they are trying to limit civilian casualties, and they attribute
the large numbers of dead and wounded Palestinians to Hamas tactics of
using civilians as human shields and placing their command centers under
humanitarian structures like hospitals.
But on Oct. 13, the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence reportedly issued a proposal
to move the entire population of the Gaza Strip to the Egyptian-ruled
Sinai Peninsula (Mr. Netanyahu’s office said it was a “concept paper”).
Extreme right-wing elements in the government — also represented in the
I.D.F. — celebrate the war as an opportunity to be rid of Palestinians
altogether. This month, a videotape emerged
on social media of Capt. Amichai Friedman, a rabbi in the Nahal
Brigade, saying to a group of soldiers that it was now clear that “this
land is ours, the whole land, including Gaza, including Lebanon.” The
troops cheered enthusiastically; the military said that his conduct
“does not align” with its values and directives.
And
so, while we cannot say that the military is explicitly targeting
Palestinian civilians, functionally and rhetorically we may be watching
an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly devolve into genocide,
as has happened more than once in the past.
None
of this happened in a vacuum. Over the past several months I have
agonized greatly over the unfolding of events in Israel. On Aug. 4,
several colleagues and I circulated a petition
warning that the attempted judicial coup by the Netanyahu government
was intended to perpetuate the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
It was signed by close to 2,500 scholars, clergy members and public
figures who were disgusted with the racist rhetoric of members of the
government, its anti-democratic efforts and the growing violence by
settlers, seemingly supported by the I.D.F., against Palestinians in the
occupied West Bank.
What we had
warned about — that it would be impossible to ignore the occupation and
oppression of millions for 56 years, and the siege of Gaza for 16 years,
without consequences — exploded in our faces on Oct. 7. Following
Hamas’s massacre of innocent Jewish civilians, our same group issued a
second petition
denouncing the crimes committed by Hamas and calling upon the Israeli
government to desist from perpetrating mass violence and killings upon
innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza in response to the crisis. We
wrote that the only way to put an end to these cycles of violence is to
seek a political compromise with the Palestinians and end the
occupation.
It is time for leaders and
senior scholars of institutions dedicated to researching and
commemorating the Holocaust to publicly warn against the rage- and
vengeance-filled rhetoric that dehumanizes the population of Gaza and
calls for its extinction. It is time to speak out against the escalating
violence on the West Bank, perpetrated by Israeli settlers and I.D.F.
troops, which now appears to also be sliding toward ethnic cleansing
under the cover of war in Gaza; several Palestinian villages have reportedly self-evacuated under threats from settlers.
I
urge such venerable institutions as the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to step
in now and stand at the forefront of those warning against war crimes,
crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and the crime of all crimes,
genocide.
If we truly believe that the
Holocaust taught us a lesson about the need — or really, the duty — to
preserve our own humanity and dignity by protecting those of others,
this is the time to stand up and raise our voices, before Israel’s
leadership plunges it and its neighbors into the abyss.
There is still time to stop Israel from letting its actions become a genocide. We cannot wait a moment longer.
