The cognitive biology of morality and authoritarianism

Morality is an aspect of human cognitive biology.[1] A fascinating NYT opinion by David French discusses one of my favorite (but mostly ignored) topics, morality in politics (not paywalled):

“When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins.”

Benjamin Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor and writer who is based in Idaho, posted that thought last year. I saw it last week and immediately forwarded it to some of my close friends with a note that said that this sentence captures our political moment. It helps describe America’s moral divide.

Over the last decade, I’ve watched many of my friends and neighbors make a remarkable transformation. They’ve gone from supporting Donald Trump in spite of his hatefulness to reveling in his aggression.

This isn’t a new observation. In fact, it’s so obvious as to verge on the banal. The far more interesting question is why. How is it that so many Americans seem to have abandoned any commitment to personal virtue — at least in their political lives — and have instead embraced merciless political combat so enthusiastically that they believe you’re immoral if you don’t join their crusade or even if you don’t mimic their methods?

It’s a question with a multifaceted answer. In December, I wrote a column examining the question through a specifically religious lens. When a person believes that he or she possesses eternal truth, there’s a temptation to believe that he or she is entitled to rule.

There’s a difference, however, between yielding to temptation and developing an alternative morality. And what we’ve been witnessing in the last decade is millions of Americans constructing a different moral superstructure. And while it is certainly notable and powerful in Trumpism, it is not exclusive to Trumpism.

A good way to understand this terrible political morality is to read Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist who joined the Nazi Party after Hitler became chancellor. I want to be careful here — I am not arguing that millions of Americans are suddenly Schmittians, acolytes of one of the fascist regime’s favorite political theorists. The vast majority of Americans have no idea who he is. Nor would they accept all of his ideas.

One of his ideas, however, is almost perfectly salient to the moment: his description, in a 1932 book called “The Concept of the Political,” of the “friend-enemy distinction.” The political sphere, according to Schmitt, is distinct from the personal sphere, and it has its own distinct contrasts.

“Let us assume,” Schmitt wrote, “that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable.” Politics, however, has “its own ultimate distinctions.” In that realm, “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”

One of liberalism’s deficiencies, according to Schmitt, is a reluctance to draw the friend-enemy distinction. Failing to draw it is a fool’s errand. An enduring political community can exist only when it draws this distinction. It is this contrast with outsiders that creates the community.

Schmitt was being both descriptive and prescriptive here. If the friend-enemy distinction is necessary to the creation and preservation of a political community, then it can be destructive to seek accommodation with your political opponents. This is human nature, and it’s naïve not to yield to our essential character.

Schmitt was partly right. The friend-enemy distinction is an aspect of human nature, and we are constantly tempted to yield to it, to rationalize it and to indulge it. Rather than resist it, we want to find some way to make it right, often simply to preserve our self-conception that we are moral and decent people.

He was also right that the friend-enemy distinction is ultimately incompatible with the liberal democratic project. Pluralism seeks to create a community in which historical enemies can live in peace and flourish side by side. If the friend-enemy distinction is an essential feature of human nature, how can pluralism survive?

No one was more aware than the founders that the American experiment contradicts our base natures. A century before Schmitt was born, they understood that reality intimately.

Our government is constructed with the understanding that, as James Madison famously put it in Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

The Constitution tries to ameliorate the will to power as best it can — as Madison said in the same essay, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” — but the founders also knew that even our elaborate system of checks and balances is insufficient. To make our system work, virtue is a necessity.

“We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion,” John Adams wrote in his 1798 Letter to the Massachusetts Militia, “Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.”

Adams’s New England metaphor is perfect (his readers would absolutely know what a whale would do to a net): Pluralism requires both law and ethics to function, and without ethics the law will fail.

We forget how much the founders — for all their faults — were focused not just on the forms of American government, but also on personal virtue. One of my favorite books from last year was “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center.

The book describes how the founders envisioned the pursuit of happiness not as the pursuit of pleasure or wealth, but rather as “the pursuit of virtue — as being good, rather than feeling good.” Benjamin Franklin, for example, listed temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility as indispensable elements of virtue.

You can immediately see the contrast with Schmitt’s friend-enemy politics. Virtue ethics certainly recognizes the existence of enemies, but it still imposes moral obligations on our treatment of our foes. The virtues Franklin listed are not simply the way you love your own political tribe; they are universal moral obligations that apply to our treatment of everyone.

Demonstrate these virtues, and your enemies can live with dignity and freedom even when they lose a political battle. When your enemies show the same virtues, you can still enjoy a good life even when you lose. That’s the social compact of pluralism. In a decent society, no defeat is ultimate defeat, and no victory is ultimate victory. And in all circumstances, your fundamental human rights must be preserved.

Dive too deeply into the friend-enemy distinction, by contrast, and it can become immoral to treat your enemies with kindness if kindness weakens the community in its struggle against a mortal foe. In the world of the friend-enemy distinction, your ultimate virtue is found in your willingness to fight. Your ultimate vice is betraying your side by refusing the call to political war.

The friend-enemy distinction explains why so many Republicans are particularly furious at anti-Trump dissenters — especially when those dissenters hold conservative values. In the friend-enemy distinction, ideology is secondary to loyalty.

You see this principle at work in Trump’s decision to pardon or commute the sentences of the Jan. 6 rioters and to revoke secret service protection from one of his former national security advisers, John Bolton, and from one of his former secretarys of state, Mike Pompeo. Friends can get away with violent crimes. Bolton and Pompeo publicly criticized Trump, and now they’re enemies who have to pay the price.

While Trumpists are among the most vicious voices in the public square, merciless aggression is sadly common across the political spectrum, especially at the extremes. I’ve seen far-left activists utterly demonize their opponents. Any deviation from orthodoxy is perceived as evil, and evil must be utterly eradicated.

And there’s no humility in cancel culture — regardless of whether it comes from left or right.

Because our civics depends on our ethics, we should be teaching ethics right alongside civics. Sadly, we’re failing at both tasks, and our baser nature is telling millions of Americans that cruelty is good, if it helps us win, and kindness is evil, if it weakens our cause. That is the path of destruction. As the prophet Isaiah said, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”

Woe to them, yes, but as friend-enemy politics dominates our discourse, tears our families and communities to shreds and reshapes our national morality, a darker thought crosses my mind.

Woe to us all.

That speaks for itself. We are so terribly broken. Can we self-repair and keep our democracy and its rule of law? I do not know.

Footnote:

1. Morality and cognitive biology:

Q: Is morality an aspect of human cognitive biology?

A: Morality, often considered a cornerstone of human social interaction, has been increasingly recognized as an intrinsic aspect of human cognitive biology. This perspective is supported by a convergence of findings from cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology, which collectively suggest that moral judgment and behavior are deeply rooted in our biological makeup.

The dual-process theory of moral judgment posits that moral decisions involve both intuitive emotional responses and controlled cognitive processes. Utilitarian judgments, which favor the greater good, are associated with cognitive control, while deontological judgments, which prioritize individual rights, are driven by emotional intuition 6 10.

Climate science update

DJT makes up outrageous lies about wind and solar energy all over the place. For example, he claims solar farms are 100 sq mi, but the worlds largest solar farm is 21.9 sq mi. It is in India, not the US. DJT is not only anti-climate science and pro-global warming, he is a lying kleptocratic, autocratic demagogue.

Shutting down the flow of information and “re-educating” federal research funding

KILLING AND WHITEWASHING INCONVENIENT INFORMATION

Chronicling the ongoing authoritarian kleptocrat assault on American democracy and rule of law is getting very interesting. The tactics that past tyrants and other kinds of authoritarians typically use to kill democracy or gain power generally are being applied here and now. One of the normal tactics that authoritarians routinely employ is shutting down as much inconvenient or threatening information as possible. Since DJT now controls the executive branch, he is going to shut off all inconvenient communications to the public. Everything of importance coming out of the executive branch will be vetted and sanitized before release to the public. 

In a recent major authoritarian move, DJT has ordered HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) to temporarily halt most external communications, including public health information and research updates, until at least February 1, 2025 (also reported here). DJT's order affects agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The pause includes regulations, guidance documents, announcements, press releases, social media posts, website updates, and any public communications not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health. To create an illusion of open communications about critical public matters, all communications essential for public health and safety require review and approval by a presidential appointee before release. That way, DJT can whitewash, deny or downplay serious problems. From here on out, we will be lied to or distracted whenever DJT feels the need to distract or lie to us. Expect a torrent of lies and deceit.

RE-EDUCATING INCONVENIENT RESEARCH

Another anticipated authoritarian move by DJT gets rid of inconvenient federally funded research. This authoritarian goal was made explicit in Project 2025. To start the re-education of science process, DJT has ordered a complete halt of research-grant reviews at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's largest public funder of biomedical research. Funding for travel to research meetings and training of scientists is also blocked. All of this is for an indefinite time. This puts a temporary freeze on ~80% of the NIH's $47-billion budget that funds research across the country and elsewhere.

Project 2025 focuses on ensuring that federally funded research aligns with conservative principles. Funding for research that might generate data not conforming to radical right authoritarian ideologies will be limited or completely cut off. what ideologies? Mostly brass knuckles capitalism, Christian theocracy and dictatorship. 

There is a strong emphasis on scaling back or completely eliminating climate science research. EPA research activities would also be realigned with authoritarian political goals (brass knuckles capitalism and dictatorship[1]). In addition, Project 2025 proposes banning certain words and phrases from government documents, including terms related to diversity, gender (Christian theocracy), and climate change. That would indirectly influence the direction of federally funded research by imposing an ideological framework on policy and programs.

Not surprisingly, scientists are aghast because they have not read Project 2025, or if they did, they didn't take it seriously. Now that the cash flow is stopped, they are taking it damned seriously. Dumb fucks. Did they really think that DJT and Project 2025 were kidding? Idiots. A Nature article comments:

‘Never seen anything like this’: Trump’s team halts NIH meetings and travel

Confusion and anxiety is rippling through the US health-research community this week following Donald Trump taking office as the 47th US president. His administration has abruptly cancelled research-grant reviews, travel and trainings for scientists inside and outside the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public biomedical funder. Adding to the worry: the Trump team appears to have deleted entire webpages about diversity programs and diversity-related grants from the agency’s site.

Without advisory-committee meetings, the NIH cannot issue research grants, temporarily freezing 80% of the agency’s US$47-billion budget that funds research across the country and beyond.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” says Carole LaBonne, a developmental biologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who has received funding from the agency for more than 20 years. The uncertainty caused by the pause will be “devastating for the scientific community”, particularly for early-career researchers, LaBonne adds.

The pause includes “mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health”, according to an NIH spokesperson. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization.”

Once the new team is set for review and prioritization, we can expect a torrent of lies and deceit to flow from the NIH. I bet MAGA yahoos will restart research on eugenics! If nothing else, increased MAGA oversight will ensure ideological conformity in federally funded science, or else YOU’RE FIRED!!

There, DJT has already fixed science. MAGA!!

Footnote (for the wonks):

1. Yes indeed ladies 'n germs, there is a lot of social science research on the ill-effects of dictatorship and kleptocracy on societies. Hold on to your butts, here we go: 

Q: Is there social science research into the effects of dictatorship on societies under dictators or kleptocrats?

A: Yes, there is extensive social science research examining the effects of dictatorships and kleptocracies on societies. 

Political Beliefs and Preferences: Research indicates that exposure to dictatorships during youth can significantly influence individuals' political beliefs and preferences later in life. For instance, studies have shown that past exposure to non-democratic regimes can reduce current satisfaction with democracy, preference for democracy, and confidence in institutions. Individuals exposed to dictatorships tend to lean more towards the left of the political spectrum, suggesting a lasting impact on their political orientation 1.

Economic Policies and Social Mobility: Dictatorships, particularly kleptocracies, often implement highly inefficient economic policies that favor the ruler's personal enrichment over societal welfare. A study on Chile under Pinochet's dictatorship highlighted how the regime's conservative ideology and technocratic approach led to a contraction in higher education, disproportionately affecting less affluent backgrounds. This contraction hindered social mobility, contributing to increased inequality 3.

Repression and Propaganda: Dictatorships use a combination of repression and propaganda to maintain control. Research suggests that repression can make citizens more amenable to propaganda, as it removes the most disloyal elements, allowing for more effective manipulation of the remaining population. This dynamic creates a cycle where repression and propaganda reinforce each other, ensuring the regime's stability 9.

Mental Health: The mental health implications of living under a dictatorship are profound. There's evidence of increased posttraumatic stress disorders due to state violence and repression, leading to intergenerational trauma. Additionally, dictatorships can foster internalized oppression, where individuals believe in their own inferiority and mistrust their own thinking, which can have long-lasting psychological effects 7.

Public Good Provision: Dictatorships can excel at solving specific problems, like health outcomes, through centralized planning and coercion. However, this often comes at the expense of political freedoms. For example, in Cuba and the former Soviet Union, improvements in health outcomes were partly a by-product of the regime's efforts to monitor and repress potential opponents 10.

Kleptocracy and Authoritarianism: The relationship between kleptocracy and authoritarianism is complex. Kleptocrats use their control over state resources for personal enrichment while also cultivating international ties to secure allies and enhance their global reputation. This dual strategy involves both inward-looking control over resources and outward-looking efforts to influence international perceptions 5.

Divide-and-Rule Strategy: Kleptocratic rulers often employ a divide-and-rule strategy to maintain power. By exploiting the collective action problem, they can bribe or punish pivotal groups, ensuring that no effective coalition forms against them. This strategy not only helps in maintaining power but also in implementing highly distortionary economic policies without significant opposition 2.

Authoritarian Attitudinal Effects: There's evidence that authoritarian regimes can produce lasting attitudinal effects, where individuals internalize the regime's ideology. This internalization can lead to a lack of correlation between authoritarian ideology and mass attitudes or even resistance, but in many cases, it aligns with the regime's goals, producing a populace more in line with the dictator's vision 4.

Q2: Does the NIH fund any research like this?

A2: Yes, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does fund research related to the effects of dictatorship and kleptocracy on societies. 

Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR): The NIH's OBSSR supports research that examines the behavioral and social aspects of health, which can include the impacts of political systems like dictatorships and kleptocracies on health outcomes. While the OBSSR itself does not directly fund research, it coordinates and promotes behavioral and social sciences research across the NIH, which can encompass studies on how political environments influence health behaviors, mental health, and public health outcomes 9.

Health Outcomes under Dictatorships: Research funded by the NIH has explored how dictatorships can influence health outcomes. For instance, studies have shown that dictatorships can improve health outcomes through centralized planning and coercion, but this often comes at the expense of political freedoms. This research highlights the complex relationship between authoritarian governance and health, where improvements in health can be a by-product of efforts to monitor and repress potential opponents 4.

Kleptocracy and Health: While not explicitly mentioned in the search results, the NIH's broad research portfolio includes studies on corruption, governance, and their impacts on health systems, which can be directly related to kleptocracies. The effects of kleptocracy on health can be inferred from research on how corruption undermines public health infrastructure, diverts resources, and affects the quality of healthcare services.

In summary, while the NIH does not have a specific program dedicated solely to the study of dictatorships or kleptocracies, its funding supports research that intersects with these themes, particularly in understanding how political systems influence health outcomes, governance, and societal well-being.

Regarding allegations of a rigged 2024 election

CONTEXT

The EAC (Elections Assistance Commission), something I never heard of before, is an independent, bipartisan federal agency established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 in response to the voting equipment and election administration issues highlighted by the 2000 Presidential Election. The EAC's primary mission is to help Americans participate in the voting process and assist election officials in improving the administration of elections. It serves as a national clearinghouse and resource for information on election administration.

The EAC is composed of four commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Advisory Bodies include a Board of Advisors, a Standards Board, a Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), and the Local Leadership Council (LLC). EAC staff is led by an executive director and general counsel, with its own Office of Inspector General (that IG is apparently not yet fired by DJT in his purge of inspector generals).

A rigged election? Maybe

Investigative journalist Greg Palast who has a reputation as a credible reporter about election irregularities claims that he analyzed EAC and other data from various public records. He concludes that (1) Harris lost the 2024 election due to massive voter suppression, and (2) absent that, she would have won the election. Palast's reporting alleges these data points and conclusions:

Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won.

Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Here are key numbers:

• 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
• By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
• No less than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
• At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
• 1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
• 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

If the purges, challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.

Palast gets his numbers in part by extrapolating data from past election irregularities and projects that onto the 2024 election. He shows a map of states that passed voter restriction laws from 2021 until just before the 2024 election, based on data the Brennan Center collected, which is at this link. 

I checked Palast's credibility with Perplexity:

Q: Is investigative reporter Greg Palast credible when he alleges that the Elections Assistance Committee found suppression of over 4.7 million votes in the 2024 elections? I cannot find a public report by the EAC with this data in it, can you?

A: Background: Greg Palast is a well-known investigative journalist with a history of reporting on election irregularities and voter suppression. He has worked for reputable outlets like the BBC and The Guardian, and his work has often focused on exposing systemic issues in electoral processes.

Conclusion:

Credibility: Greg Palast's credibility as an investigative journalist in the realm of election integrity is well-established. His claims are often backed by detailed analysis and investigation, though they might not always align perfectly with publicly available data due to the complexity of election data and the timing of official reports.

Data Availability: While the EAC does provide extensive data on election administration, the specific figure of 4.7 million votes suppressed might not be found in a single public report. Palast's number could be a synthesis of various data points, possibly including data not yet released or detailed in public reports.

In summary, while Greg Palast's claims are credible based on his history and expertise, the specific data he references might not be directly available in public EAC reports due to the timing of data release and the complexity of election data aggregation. His assertions should be viewed as part of a broader investigation into voter suppression, requiring further scrutiny and cross-referencing with official data when it becomes available.

Is Palast right about this? I don't know. Maybe. Based on reporting from several sources just after the election, I got the feeling something was seriously wrong. Several analysts were voicing concerns about vote irregularities they found. I think Palast was one of them, but if I recall right he wasn't the only one.

One thing that was clear to me was that Republicans in red state governments wanted to rig the 2024 election. Evidence of that was that they acted to do so by passing restrictive laws. Passing laws is fact, not opinion. Another thing that was clear, Republicans in red state governments where chronic liars, just like DJT. I considered their assertions of "election integrity" to be lies.  

Because I had no trust in elections in states with Republican legislatures, I wrote to both of my Senators, my representative in the House, and on 3 occasions, the Harris campaign. I asked for a detailed analysis of voter and election data in at least several battleground states to confirm either that there were no significant irregularities, or that there was solid evidence of significant irregularities. Not surprisingly, none of my requests for an aggressive inquiry were acted on. 

Democrats don't fight for democracy, they just talk the talk, sort of. Sometimes. And the Dems wonder why they lost the election? Maybe they lost because they didn't want to win bad enough. Seems plausible to me.

Q: Basedd on his deranged public health crackpottery and enraged revenge lust (he hates Fauci, and literally wants him murdered), DJT has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (NIH, CDC, etc.) to basically stop communication with the public about important public health matters. So the question is, about how long will it be before he orders the EAC to shup up, remove its publicly available data and fire its inspector general? 

My guess, EAC data will disappear and its IG fired within the next two weeks. But that's speculative, just a personal assessment.