Some thoughts on the human condition

People don't want to BE informed. 

They want to FEEL informed. -- Roger Ailes

There is great truth in that simple but astute observation. When reality is inconvenient, as it often is, the human mind seeks ways to reduce or eliminate the discomfort somehow. For better or worse, the human mind is very adept and fast at rationalizing uncomfortable or self-disaffirming information. The mind unconsciously converts bad reality into something less bad, non-existent (denial) or even good (illusion creation). Ailes really understands people, i.e., he understands this aspect of human cognitive biology. 

He also came up with the Orchestra Pit Theory, among some other observations. According to Ailes, if there are two politicians on stage, one announcing a significant policy like a solution to the Middle East problem, and the other falling into the orchestra pit, the media would focus on the latter event due to its sensational nature. This underscores Ailes' belief that the media's preference for covering gaffes, scandals, and dramatic events over policy substance shapes public discourse and political campaigns. 

Ailes transformed cable news by giving it a hard, radicalizing partisan edge. He used television news as an ideological weapon to appeal to conservative audiences and build rock solid belief in false realities, lies and slanders. He provided confirmation (self-affirmation) to his audience rather than information, understanding that much of the American public wanted to feel informed rather than be informed. Hence Faux News is a great source of pleasant faux news.

In the social sciences, a lot of research is going on about what to do with this aspect of human nature. Nobody has a perfect answer to the disinformation/dark free speech problem so far. The problem has been known and discussed for millennia. In the US, it will probably stay mostly unsolved for a very long time because there is no simple answer. And there is lots of resentment of efforts to combat demagoguery and partisan deceit by America's radical right authoritarians, i.e., MAGA. 

Only hard, slow social engineering solutions that take generations to build and implement seem to have a detectable positive effect. Finland, Estonia and some other countries near Russia have put the social engineering in place to train their populations to resist disinformation. Those are the best examples of the possibility of training societies to at least partly resist the alluring comforts of dark free speech.

Dark blue - fairly disinformation-resistant

Dark red - not very resistant

Q: How resistant is the US public to demagoguery and disinformation compared to countries like Finland, Denmark and Estonia?

A: The United States exhibits a lower level of resilience to demagoguery and disinformation compared to countries like Finland, Denmark, and Estonia. 

The U.S. faces significant political polarization, which has been exacerbated by the use of social media by demagogues. This polarization contributes to the spread of disinformation, as individuals are more likely to share information that aligns with their beliefs, regardless of its accuracy.

Trust in traditional media sources in the U.S. is notably low, with only 7% of respondents fully trusting these sources to report information accurately and fairly in 2022. This lack of trust makes the public more susceptible to disinformation.

Media literacy in the U.S. is not as systematically integrated into the national curriculum as it is in Finland or Estonia. It is often taught as a special seminar or class for older students, rather than being part of the core curriculum from an early age.

Finland and Estonia have integrated media literacy into their education systems from an early age, fostering critical thinking and fact-checking skills. The U.S. lags in this aspect, with media literacy often being an elective or special course.

One can see the problem for the US. Authoritarian MAGA demagogue's efforts to combat disinformation are demagogued and vilified as things like liberal authoritarian censorship or a major burden on free speech. MAGA wants unfettered freedom to demagogue, lie, slander and disinform to its black little heart's content.

Personal opinion: Two kinds of minds 

Speaking of freedom, there are two basic kinds of minds in terms of demagoguery and dark free speech, in my opinion. Type 1 minds are relatively demagoguery and irrationality resistant, while type 2 are more demagoguery and irrationality trapped. The odd, frustrating thing about those two mindsets is that the type 1 minds are a lot more limited or unfree because they tend to be a lot more tethered to facts, true truths and sound reasoning. By contrast, the type 2 folks are generally not so limited. The type 2s have more or less full access to the power of their unconscious mind's capacity to soften or deny reality and reasoning that is inconvenient or self-disaffirming. 

Sadly, those poor type 1s have to more acutely feel the unpleasant feelings that inconvenient or self-disaffirming reality and reasoning can generate. It's no wonder that demagoguery and dark free speech generally tend to be more attractive and persuasive than the stinky reality and reason-tethered world.

The simple joy of being low-information

The visa thing gets seriously worse; Update: Abortion in Texas; Judges - last line of defense

Tales from the MAGA crypt

The sheer bizarreness of MAGA spreading it wings and extending its talons is an amazing, horrible thing to watch. Elon Musk is insane and enraged about work visas for foreign tech workers. One staunchly pro-Musk MAGA loyalist criticized the H-1B visa program on X as “something that should not exist” and Musk lashed out at that:  “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and F--- YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” 

After that cannon blast, the H-1B critic maintained his love of and loyalty to Musk. Mackey, the original target of Musk’s ire, responded, “I personally am fine with reforming H-1B, and as I’ve stated multiple times today, I am incredibly grateful you and many others are in the country because of H-1B.” Talk about a freaking cult, this has got to be one of ’em.

Then our good friend, “Flood the Zone With Shit”, Steve Bannon jumped in with his deep wisdom: “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’—need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler.” 

Interestingly, DJT himself got off the dime and came down on Musk’s side. That is really gonna tick off a lot of MAGA’s white supremacist cadre. As one source put it, “Trump Knifes MAGA Loyalists to Back Sidekick Musk on H-1B Visas.” Musk got real blunt about his view of the white supremacist cadre of MAGA: Musk says ‘hateful unrepentant racists’ must be removed from Republican Party as visa feud deepens. ‘They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed,’

Hateful unrepentant racists? Whoa Nelly!! Wait a minnit!! The Dems were viciously attacked by some MAGA elites as something far worse than horrible socialist pedophiles after they raised the possibility of racism in the MAGA ranks. Vivek Ramaswamy refused to denounce white supremacy, calling it a “farce” and an “infinitesimally small fringe” issue. The Dems themselves were in a state of at least modest confusion over the issue. A Perplexity response suggests the racism issue runs deep and broad in the MAGA movement, prompting various dark free speech tactics to defuse it. Now Musk is at least implying that racism is more than a small fringe thing.

It is possible that DJT wants to foment discord in the MAGA movement to help him stay at the center of power. He intentionally fomented internal discord in his business operations. This kerfuffle over work visas just might flush out a serious weakness in the MAGA monstrosity. Time will tell.

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The MAGA wealth and power movement in Texas is leading the way in crushing civil liberties. One source writes:

‘Baby in a dumpster.’ A spate of abandoned newborns unsettles Texas.

“It didn’t specify alive or dead,” Patrick Pequet remembers.

He and fellow firefighters arrived within minutes, pulling into the rear parking lot of an apartment complex in the southwest quadrant of this sprawling city. Police were already there, as were the several residents who had frantically summoned them, standing near a blue dumpster crowded by discarded boxes, scattered trash and garbage bags.

In one of those bags, a baby had been crying. Now, only silence. 

“We were probably the first people to hold the baby with any kind of good intentions,” Pequet said later.

The infant, whom officials named Gabriel after the archangel protector, would live.

Statewide, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, at least 18 babies have been abandoned this year. The latest occurred just before Christmas at a Whataburger in San Antonio. A decade ago, the number was seven.

Whether there’s a pattern or common link in these tragedies is not clear. But they’re happening in a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans — with no exceptions for rape or incest — and one of the highest birth rates.  

So maybe this abandoned baby phenomenon has nothing to do with forced birth laws in Texas. But maybe it does. But why give MAGA the benefit of a doubt?

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A NYT opinion asserts that judges are the last line of defense for the rule of law. Of course, that may not apply to some or most Trump judges. But, who else is left to defend the rule of law? Not the US supreme court, that’s for sure.

President-elect Trump recently threatened to lock up political foes, like Liz Cheney, as well as members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack. “For what they did,” he said, “honestly, they should go to jail.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that he would encourage the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to go after his enemies. His picks for attorney general (Pam Bondi) and F.B.I. director (Kash Patel) have echoed these remarks. Mr. Patel even compiled an enemies list, which includes Christopher Wray and retired Gen. Mark Milley.

This impulse could reach beyond leadership and may well trickle down in significant part to the 94 federal district courts around the nation. Each United States attorney will have been appointed by Mr. Trump and will be subject to his whim — meaning their potential firing if he does not approve of their performance.

If these confirmed public servants can’t stand up to the pressure from above to serve not an individual person but justice as a principle, who will? It will have to be the judges.

Judges simply can’t be blind to what Mr. Trump, Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel have said. They can’t ignore their words if the Justice Department under Mr. Trump or the F.B.I. goes after those on an enemies list who have committed no crime beyond opposing the president-elect.

The oil-train USSC case; The MAGA explosion over H-1B visas; Re: The insurrection

The "oil-train case" now pending in the USSC (US supreme court) could have a major impact on environmental and health regulations. As usual, the business community wants to gut environmental regulations. This case could wind up doing the job pretty well. A decision will probably come down late next June, or maybe a month or two before then.

The lawsuit, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, directly challenges the scope of environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Supreme Court's decision could limit how federal agencies evaluate the environmental impacts of projects, thereby reducing the depth and breadth of analysis required for projects like oil trains, pipelines, and other infrastructure developments. The case could limit the federal government’s power to study indirect climate impacts of projects like highways, transmission lines and dams.

The proposed railway in Utah would significantly increase oil production in the Uinta Basin, potentially quadrupling output. This expansion would lead to normally expected increases in environmental and health risks, including air pollution, oil spills, and contributions to climate change.

The outcome of this lawsuit would likely set a precedent for how NEPA is applied to future projects, potentially weakening environmental protections across various sectors, not just oil and gas. The five Republicans on the bench (Gorsuch recused for conflict of interest) are openly hostile to environmental laws and regulations. A win for industry in this case would probably lead to less study and consideration of indirect and cumulative environmental effects of new infrastructure projects. Those regulatory studies are crucial for understanding the full impact of infrastructure projects. 

Detailed analyses under NEPA currently consider the “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” of proposed projects. That includes (1) direct effects, such as cutting down trees to build a highway or rail line, (2) indirect effects that occur later in time or farther away, such as development spurred by building the highway, and (3) cumulative effects of the action when added to the effects of other past, present and reasonably foreseeable actions, such as building multiple highways in a region.

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TNR writes about the explosion: Steve Bannon Joins War Against Elon Musk as MAGA Implodes -- Donald Trump’s biggest fans are at each other’s throats over immigration, and H-1B visas in particular. Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday. “H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily.

Each year, about 85,000 H-1B visas are issued by lottery. More foreign workers than that usually apply for the visas so lottery is how they are picked. 20,000 of those visas are for workers with at least a MS degree, some of whom are highly valued, i.e., low wage, workers in high tech. The visas last 3 years and can be extended for another 3 assuming the worker has not gotten into legal trouble. Overstaying the 3 or 6 year limit confers "unlawful presence" status on the worker, in essence making them an illegal immigrant. When a foreign national overstays their authorized period of stay, the visa stamped in their passport by the U.S. Consulate is automatically voided. U.S. immigration law is strict in the application of this provision

Despite those apparent limits, 😕, in FY 2023, 755,020 people were admitted to the U.S. in H-1B status. That is possible because institutions of higher education, nonprofit entities related or affiliated to such institutions, nonprofit research organizations, and governmental research organizations are exempt from the cap. H-1B visas are a significant part of both legal and illegal immigration. Hence the MAGA explosion.

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Two legal scholars, Evan A. Davis and David M. Schulte, wrote an opinion arguing that Dems can and should block DJT from taking office. They argue that DJT's 1/6  insurrection bars him from holding office. They argue that Dems can block certification on grounds of "an oath-breaking insurrection" that makes Trump "ineligible to be president." The basis for that simple legal reasoning is the 14th Amendment, which reads in part:

"No person shall ... hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

For what it is worth, i.e., nothing at all, the Colorado Supreme Court had determined that there was "clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection as those terms are used" in the 14th Amendment, but the U.S. Supreme Court protected DJT arguing that states lack the power to disqualify candidates for federal office. Davis and Schulte cited that as evidence of DJT's disqualification for office.

That legal theory and the factual evidence look rock solid to me. 1/6 really was an insurrection against the Constitution and DJT really was its deeply involved leader. 

However by now I know that I know absolutely nothing about the rule of law when it applies to the elites and especially to DJT 'The Insurrectionist'. At that high and mighty level, the law has become opaque, sacred theology with witches brewing something smelly in the cauldron. 

The Dems doing sacred law stuff

Fire burn

Cauldron bubble

Rule of law is lot of trouble

(spoken in thick Russki accent)

I am crappy at theology. We in the unwashed masses must leave these weighty vaporous law things to sanctified high priests like Joe Biden 'The AWOL' and Merrick Garland 'The Complicit'. As expected based on past history, Dem party leaders reject any effort to block the The Insurrectionist from taking office. Their analysis says he is qualified and good to go.

Dem Party legal scholars at work

Also as expected MAGAlandia is in furious crazy-go-nuts mode over this tiny whisp of old timey law & order reasoning. Hm, on reflection, MAGAlandia is in its usual mode of operation. 

MAGA in standard SNAFU 

operations mode

Dang, doing the research for that insurrection thing was a lot more fun than I expected!

American authoritarianism update

TNR published a long interview with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the Harvard scholars who were co-authors of the 2018 bestseller How Democracies Die. Here are two small parts of the interview:

Dire Days: What if Trump Does Everything He’s 

Promised and People Don’t Care?

INTERVIEWER: Can we talk for a minute about Project 2025? We have now Russ Vought, who’s going to run the Office of Management and Budget, assuming he’s confirmed by the Senate, and he was a key author of Project 2025. What parts of that should be most concerning to people, Steven?

LEVITSKY: There are many, many, many policies in there that I dislike and fear. But I think the core problem is the Project 2025 initiative reflects a much broader thinking in the Republican Party, and among the right, which is that not only state institutions, but a number of private institutions like universities, have been penetrated by pernicious forces of the left and need to be purged and packed for the good of society. And again, that’s just classic authoritarian thinking, right? There’s no liberal democratic way to respond to this problem. If you believe that the state is packed by your enemies, there’s no liberal democratic way of resolving that. It is a fundamentally authoritarian attitude that you saw, for example, in right-wing militaries in Latin America in the 1970s. The idea was that the left was kind of a cancer, that it pervaded the state and society and needed to be rooted out. This is a less violent variant of that.

ZIBLATT: Project 2025 includes these proposals to essentially circumvent the Senate confirmation process for Cabinet secretaries and to have acting officials and so on. And I think the most worrying thing is that we’re already seeing discussion of this within a week or two of the election victory. So we’ve seen the first steps already being discussed. Also, this idea that the Insurrection Act can be used on day one certainly is also worrying. Equally distressing is the plan to reimpose the Schedule F to allow for the manning of the state with loyalists. What’s worrying overall is that parts of Project 2025 lay out in very concrete steps exactly all the things we’ve been talking about for years.

INTERVIEWER: [Asks about why the election turned out as it did]

LEVITSKY: I think it’s a combination of a couple of things. I don’t think you can ever depend on voters to vote for democracy. ....

ZIBLATT: A second issue, though, is that one can imagine a scenario in which voters might have understood the risk a little bit more. But I don’t blame voters here. I blame elites again—in particular, social elites. I have in mind the relative silence over the past year of too many business leaders, too many religious leaders, and too many important labor unions—in particular, the Teamsters. When discussions were made public of the plans to round up migrants in an undifferentiated way that doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal migrants, the failure of so many religious leaders, for example, to publicly and loudly condemn this and raise the stakes of what was involved, meant that many voters didn’t fully understand the stakes of these plans.

You can never depend on voters to vote for democracy. That is a very interesting assertion. The 2024 elections is evidence it is mostly true, even though many MAGA voters claim they voted to protect democracy. In one large poll, about one-third of Trump supporters identified democracy as the most important factor in their voting choice. Apparently, their irrational fears mostly centered on illegal immigration and alleged Democratic Party authoritarianism. 

But what about not blaming rank and file voters who didn’t see the risk, and instead blaming elites for failure to warn them? That absolves American adults of all responsibility their failure to see reality and authoritarian threat for what it is. Instead of reality they relied on a dark free speech illusion to vote against democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. I’m not that forgiving. In my assessment, all of the adult American public eligible to vote who did not vote for Harris gets ~45% of the blame, maybe ~50%. They were warned over, and over and over. 

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A lot of other news today is worse than just plain nuts. Well-known crackpot and blithering weirdo Marianne Williamson is making a bid for Democratic National Committee chair. I’m getting palpitations just thinking about it.

MAGA freak Laura Loomer is causing mayhem in MAGAland after insulting and attacking Elon Musk over alleged corruption and supporting more immigration of foreign engineers and scientists. Musk says that Americans are too lazy and too chill. Another MAGA elite joined the worker-bashing fun: Vivek Ramaswamy got criticized after posting a wild rant about how bad American workers suck. 

And then there’s some Christians in a snit: 15,000 people signed a petition accusing DJT of violating Christian values. Quick! Somebody tell Merrick Garland to prosecute DJT for violating Christian values! That will put the fear of God in him! 🤪

We’re is sooo much trouble. Or, are we just having fun?

WTF??

Wheee!