Cognitive and social science research shows that political and other ideologies often foster distortion of perceptions of reality and truths and conscious reasoning about what is perceived, true, false or ambiguous. That can and often does generate irrational politics and policy. The problem is generally more pronounced for hard core ideologues and authoritarians, neither of which can tolerate the cognitive dissonance between what unbiased reality, truth and reason lead to compared to what the ideology or authoritarian mind needs these things to be. For most of those people, fact, truth and reason fall to ideological beliefs and authoritarian goals when they are at odds.
Living in a society that is awash in lies, deceit and irrational emotional manipulation makes matters worse, but that cannot be avoided in a liberal democracy. That often makes what is false and irrational seem real and acceptable. That reflects the mental workings that evolution conferred on the human species. We can't help being what we are. The best that can be done is to acknowledge our 'flawed' biological traits and try to deal with them as rationally as our minds allow.
The other pragmatic rationalisms: At least two pragmatic rationalism (PR) ideologies appear to exist. One is posited as a general theory of the human world that is grounded in (i) physics; (ii) mathematics; (iii) philosophy; and (iv) the algorithmic part of human knowledge, which could be computerised, whatever that means. The author describes his all-encompassing theory of everything in abstract terms. It doesn't seem to have much to do with mass politics.
The other PR looks to be much more relevant to mass politics. That one is posited as an inquiry into understanding how scientific knowledge variably influences formulating and implementing political policies depending on the policy at issue. That PR is getting close to the PR this discussion is focused on.
This pragmatic rationalism: The PR political ideology posited here is intended to work as an anti-bias, anti-ideology ideology. It is built on is built on four, easy to understand, core or highest moral political values. The moral values are (1) fidelity to try to see relevant objective facts and truths, to the extent they can be ascertained (they are often not fully ascertainable) with less bias, (2) application of less biased conscious reasoning (roughly, logic) to the facts and truths, (3) applying the facts and reasoning in service to the public interest, and (4) willingness to engage in reasonable compromises in view of political, social and other relevant factors. Service to the public interest is envisioned to constitute a transparent competition of fact- and reason-based ideas.
This PR attempts to account for sources of bias and irrationality in politics by (i) forcing a larger role for more objective, less biased, less distorted fact, truth and logic in politics, (ii) ignoring standard ideologies, making them of secondary importance, (iii) induce some power and influence to flow from powerful special interests to the public interest, and (iv) forcing compromise onto the process as a bulwark against the rise of both single party rule and authoritarianism.
This variant of PR is thus an ideology that is more constrained by facts, truths and logic than all other ideologies, which tend to promote distortion of facts, truths and logic to fit the needs of the ideology. This amounts to an effort to build a mindset open to politics based more on objectivity, to the extent it can be ascertained, and less on subjective factors such as personal morals and identification with irrational tribalism.
Whether nations or whole societies can accept and/or adopt such a PR mindset is an open question. It asks a lot of people to set aside their prejudices and sacred beliefs when they are at odds with objective reality and reason. Maybe the human species cannot rise to a higher level of mental performance because the cognitive load is just too high. It is an experiment that needs to be tried to know if it would lead to more rational and efficient, but less conflict-prone politics and outcomes.
B&B orig: 5/20/19
Monday, June 3, 2019
Are Rural Areas In Unavoidable Economic Decline?
In 2103, the New York Times published an article, The Russia Left Behind: A journey through a heartland on the slow road to ruin. The article noted that there were hundreds of towns shrinking into villages and villages decaying into forest. That was intentional Soviet Union policy. The Soviets cut off support during efficiency drives in the 1960s and ’70s. Towns and villages were categorized as “promising” or “unpromising.” The unpromising ones were cut off from support and left to shrink or revert to primeval forests with roving packs of wolves.
In 2017, the New York Times published a related article, Russia’s Villages, and Their Way of Life, Are ‘Melting Away’, indicating that Russia's population is declining. Many small towns and villages are simply going extinct in terms of people living there. After restrictions on movement relaxed after the fall of the Soviet Union, many young people fled resource-starved parts of the countryside for big cities. Researchers estimated that out of 8,300 area villages in 1910, 2,000 no longer have permanent residents.
In 2016, the National Review published an article by Kevin Williamson that ferociously attacked the allegedly self-inflicted misery, immorality and self-deceit about life in rural areas slowly dying from lack of economic activity. Williamson's article pointed to the immorality of belief in Trump's campaign promises because it masked reality:
It may be that unfavorable economic trends make it impossible to sustain many rural populations in the US and elsewhere. Rural decline is underway in Canada. Agriculture continues to automate, so that is probably not a major source of rural job growth.
The political ramifications aren't clear. Rural population loss suggests there could be a decline in republican party affiliation as urban areas tend to be more democratic and independent than rural areas. How to deal with economic decline is not clear either. Some evidence shows that urban areas tend to subsidize rural areas, although most conservatives vigorously dispute that. Regardless, rural economic decline seems to be real and it seems to be a major source of social and political antagonism. This problem just might not be fixable by anyone. Economic trends have a way of going where economic forces make them go, politics and ideology be damned.
B&B orig: 5/22/19
In 2017, the New York Times published a related article, Russia’s Villages, and Their Way of Life, Are ‘Melting Away’, indicating that Russia's population is declining. Many small towns and villages are simply going extinct in terms of people living there. After restrictions on movement relaxed after the fall of the Soviet Union, many young people fled resource-starved parts of the countryside for big cities. Researchers estimated that out of 8,300 area villages in 1910, 2,000 no longer have permanent residents.
In 2016, the National Review published an article by Kevin Williamson that ferociously attacked the allegedly self-inflicted misery, immorality and self-deceit about life in rural areas slowly dying from lack of economic activity. Williamson's article pointed to the immorality of belief in Trump's campaign promises because it masked reality:
It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.In 2018, the New York Times published an article, The Hard Truths of Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy, that asked if economic rural decline is inevitable. The NYT wrote: "There are 60 million people, almost one in five Americans, living on farms, in hamlets and in small towns across the landscape. For the last quarter century the story of these places has been one of relentless economic decline. ... the United States has grown by 75 million people since 1990, but this has mostly occurred in cities and suburbs. Rural areas have lost some 3 million people. Since the 1990s, problems such as crime and opioid abuse, once associated with urban areas, are increasingly rural phenomena."
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.
Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.
If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.
It may be that unfavorable economic trends make it impossible to sustain many rural populations in the US and elsewhere. Rural decline is underway in Canada. Agriculture continues to automate, so that is probably not a major source of rural job growth.
The political ramifications aren't clear. Rural population loss suggests there could be a decline in republican party affiliation as urban areas tend to be more democratic and independent than rural areas. How to deal with economic decline is not clear either. Some evidence shows that urban areas tend to subsidize rural areas, although most conservatives vigorously dispute that. Regardless, rural economic decline seems to be real and it seems to be a major source of social and political antagonism. This problem just might not be fixable by anyone. Economic trends have a way of going where economic forces make them go, politics and ideology be damned.
B&B orig: 5/22/19
The US Constitution: A Source of Urban-Rural Polarization
Analysis by the New York Times indicates that the US Constitution itself is a significant source of urban-rural polarization. The NYT writes:
The articles goes on to point out that European elections often allow for proportional representation and the urban-rural divide is softened by making geography less important than it is in the US. Underrepresentation of urban voters is a feature of any democracy that draws winner-take-all districts where the urban voters are concentrated in cities and at odds with rural voters. That is what happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won only three of eight congressional districts in Minnesota despite winning the whole state.
US rural areas will oppose constitutional and other changes to reduce the power imbalance. It looks as if American politics will stay unequally tipped in favor of conservative rural areas for quite some time. This is of concern for the US Senate. It is starting to seem unlikely that democrats will be able to retake the Senate in 2020. Given the way the polarization has destroyed normal functioning, it is reasonable to believe that any democratic president will have some or all nominations that require Senate consent blocked for all four years.
Flaws in the Constitution are becoming clear. Those flaws are leading the US from a liberal democracy to an anti-democratic, authoritarian system dominated by a minority conservative ideology. The rejection by President Trump of congressional authority to investigate him and his associates is undeniable evidence of America's slide toward a corrupt authoritarian system. Unless democrats step up their messaging and outreach, we just might be witnessing the beginning of the end for American liberal democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law.
B&B orig: 5/22/19
But urban-rural polarization has become particularly acute in America: particularly entrenched, particularly hostile, particularly lopsided in its consequences. Urban voters, and the party that has come to represent them, now routinely lose elections and power even when they win more votes.
Democrats have blamed the Senate, the Electoral College and gerrymandering for their disadvantage. But the problem runs deeper, according to Jonathan Rodden, a Stanford political scientist: The American form of government is uniquely structured to exacerbate the urban-rural divide — and to translate it into enduring bias against the Democratic voters, clustered at the left of the accompanying chart.
Yes, the Senate gives rural areas (and small states) disproportionate strength. “That’s an obvious problem for Democrats,” Mr. Rodden said. “This other problem is a lot less obvious.”
In the United States, where a party’s voters live matters immensely. That’s because most representatives are elected from single-member districts where the candidate with the most votes wins, as opposed to a system of proportional representation, as some democracies have.
Democrats tend to be concentrated in cities and Republicans to be more spread out across suburbs and rural areas. The distribution of all of the precincts in the 2016 election shows that while many tilt heavily Democratic, fewer lean as far in the other direction.
As a result, Democrats have overwhelming power to elect representatives in a relatively small number of districts — whether for state house seats, the State Senate or Congress — while Republicans have at least enough power to elect representatives in a larger number of districts.
Republicans, in short, are more efficiently distributed in a system that rewards spreading voters across space
The articles goes on to point out that European elections often allow for proportional representation and the urban-rural divide is softened by making geography less important than it is in the US. Underrepresentation of urban voters is a feature of any democracy that draws winner-take-all districts where the urban voters are concentrated in cities and at odds with rural voters. That is what happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won only three of eight congressional districts in Minnesota despite winning the whole state.
US rural areas will oppose constitutional and other changes to reduce the power imbalance. It looks as if American politics will stay unequally tipped in favor of conservative rural areas for quite some time. This is of concern for the US Senate. It is starting to seem unlikely that democrats will be able to retake the Senate in 2020. Given the way the polarization has destroyed normal functioning, it is reasonable to believe that any democratic president will have some or all nominations that require Senate consent blocked for all four years.
Flaws in the Constitution are becoming clear. Those flaws are leading the US from a liberal democracy to an anti-democratic, authoritarian system dominated by a minority conservative ideology. The rejection by President Trump of congressional authority to investigate him and his associates is undeniable evidence of America's slide toward a corrupt authoritarian system. Unless democrats step up their messaging and outreach, we just might be witnessing the beginning of the end for American liberal democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law.
B&B orig: 5/22/19
Evidence of Trump's Obstruction in the Mueller Report
Writing for Lawfare blog, Quinta Jurecic published a great analysis of evidence of President Trump's obstruction of justice in the Mueller report. The analysis looks to be sufficient to support at least indictment of Trump for obstruction of justice on four different occasions. Since impeachment is a political process, not a legal process, the level of evidence needed is possibly lower. Here's Jurecic's analysis:
Ms. Jurecic writes on Trump's effort to fire Mueller, item E in the table above:
If these analyses are reasonably reliable, Trump actually tried to obstruct justice on multiple occasions. Only the adults in the room, e.g., his counsel Don McGahn, kept him from stopping Mueller's investigation.
B&B orig: 5/22/19
Ms. Jurecic writes on Trump's effort to fire Mueller, item E in the table above:
Obstructive act (p. 87): Former White House Counsel Don McGahn is a “credible witness” in providing evidence that Trump indeed attempted to fire Mueller. This “would qualify as an obstructive act” if the firing “would naturally obstruct the investigation and any grand jury proceedings that might flow from the inquiry.”She also points to a similar analysis by another expert another legal expert, Richard Hoeg.
Nexus (p. 89): “Substantial evidence” indicates that, at this point, Trump was aware that “his conduct was under investigation by a federal prosecutor who could present any evidence of federal crimes to a grand jury.”
Intent (p. 89): “Substantial evidence indicates that the President’s attempts to remove the Special Counsel were linked to the Special Counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the President’s conduct[.]”
If these analyses are reasonably reliable, Trump actually tried to obstruct justice on multiple occasions. Only the adults in the room, e.g., his counsel Don McGahn, kept him from stopping Mueller's investigation.
B&B orig: 5/22/19
An Explanation: Constitutional Crisis vs. Constitutional Rot
Uncle Fester: Dementia, what a beautiful name.
Dementia: It means "insanity."
Uncle Fester: My name is Fester. It means "to rot."
Constitutional scholar Jack Balkin (Professor, Yale Law School) wrote a short chapter for the 2018 book Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?, edited by Mark A, Graber et al. Balkin's chapter 2, Constitutional Crisis and Constitutional Rot, explains the difference between the two concepts. The topic is timely because many people are concerned that the US is in or near a constitutional crisis in view of President Trump's divisive rhetoric and actions. Constitutional rot is a concept that most people are not aware of, while constitutional crisis is mostly misunderstood. Knowing the difference helps put America's political situation in much better context.
Constitutional crisis defined: Balkin and another scholar Sanford Levinson, have described what a constitutional crisis (CC) is and is not in a constitutional democracy. That is summarized in Balkin's chapter 2. There are three different kinds of CC. The Type One CC occurs when politicians and/or military officials announce they will not obey the constitution any more. That can happen when politicians and/or military officials refuse to obey a court order. Once refusal to adhere to constitutional rules has occurred, the constitution has failed.
The Type Two CC occurs when the constitution prevents political actors from trying to prevent an impending disaster. This is rare because the courts tend to find ways to allow political actors to avoid disasters. The Type Three CC occurs when many people refuse to obey the constitution. In these scenarios, there can be street riots, or, states or regions try to secede from the nation. This involves "situations where publicly articulated disagreements about the constitution lead political actors to engage in extraordinary forms of protest beyond mere legal disagreements and political protests: people take to the streets, armies mobilize, and brute force is used or threatened in order to prevail."
Balkin goes on to argue that most time when the term CC is used, it is hyperbole. Constitutions rarely break down.
Constitutional rot (CR): By contrast with a CC, CR arises when norms that held power in check fall, partisans play constitutional hardball and fair political competition comes under attack. We are seeing this now. For example, it was constitutional hardball by the Mitch McConnell to ignore President Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland. In CR, politicians favor short-term political gains over long-term damage to the constitutional system. As CR progresses, the political system becomes less democratic. State power becomes less accountable and less responsive to the public, while politicians become more beholden to backers who keep them in power. In essence, the country drifts into oligarchy.
While that is happening, the public loses trust in government and the political system because they have been abandoned: "When constitutional rot becomes advanced, and the public's trust in government is thoroughly undermined, people turn to demagogues who flatter the public and who stoke division, anger and resentment. Demagogues promise they will restore lost glories and make everything right again. They divert the public's attention to enemies and scapegoats within and without the republic. They divide the public in order to conquer it. They play on people's fears of loss of status. They use divisive rhetoric to distract attention, maintain a loyal set of followers, and keep themselves in power. There are always potential demagogues in a republic, but healthy republics restrain their emergence and ascension. When demagogues manage to take power and lead the nation, however, CR has become serious indeed."
Does any of that sound familiar?
The four horsemen of CR: Belkin describes the four horsemen of CR as (1) loss of trust in government and fellow citizens, (2) polarization that leads to people seeing fellow citizens as enemies of the state, (3) increasing economic inequality which foments anger, resentment and a search for scapegoats, and (4) policy disasters such as the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis, which undermine public trust in political leadership and constitutional governance. He argues that each one of these tends to feed into the one or more of the other factors. For example, polarization deflects public attention to symbolic and zero-sum conflicts, which allows wealthy interests to entrench their power and foster oligarchy. In turn, that tends to undermine public faith in a government that is drifting away from them and their interests. Rot begets more rot.
Belkin sees hardball politics and attendant destruction of norms of fair politics as leading to "a gradual descent into authoritarian or autocratic politics."
Regarding our current situation, Belkin sees it like this: "The United States is not currently in a period of constitutional crisis. But for some time--at least since the 1990s--it has been in a period of increasing constitutional rot. The election of a demagogue such as Trump is further evidence that our institutions have decayed, and judging by his presidential campaign and his first year in office, Trump promises to accelerate the corruption."
Sounds definitely like we're in for more CR and a descent into authoritarian, autocratic politics. How gradual the process may be is a matter open for debate.
B&B orig: 5/24/19
Dementia: It means "insanity."
Uncle Fester: My name is Fester. It means "to rot."
Constitutional scholar Jack Balkin (Professor, Yale Law School) wrote a short chapter for the 2018 book Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?, edited by Mark A, Graber et al. Balkin's chapter 2, Constitutional Crisis and Constitutional Rot, explains the difference between the two concepts. The topic is timely because many people are concerned that the US is in or near a constitutional crisis in view of President Trump's divisive rhetoric and actions. Constitutional rot is a concept that most people are not aware of, while constitutional crisis is mostly misunderstood. Knowing the difference helps put America's political situation in much better context.
Constitutional crisis defined: Balkin and another scholar Sanford Levinson, have described what a constitutional crisis (CC) is and is not in a constitutional democracy. That is summarized in Balkin's chapter 2. There are three different kinds of CC. The Type One CC occurs when politicians and/or military officials announce they will not obey the constitution any more. That can happen when politicians and/or military officials refuse to obey a court order. Once refusal to adhere to constitutional rules has occurred, the constitution has failed.
The Type Two CC occurs when the constitution prevents political actors from trying to prevent an impending disaster. This is rare because the courts tend to find ways to allow political actors to avoid disasters. The Type Three CC occurs when many people refuse to obey the constitution. In these scenarios, there can be street riots, or, states or regions try to secede from the nation. This involves "situations where publicly articulated disagreements about the constitution lead political actors to engage in extraordinary forms of protest beyond mere legal disagreements and political protests: people take to the streets, armies mobilize, and brute force is used or threatened in order to prevail."
Balkin goes on to argue that most time when the term CC is used, it is hyperbole. Constitutions rarely break down.
Constitutional rot (CR): By contrast with a CC, CR arises when norms that held power in check fall, partisans play constitutional hardball and fair political competition comes under attack. We are seeing this now. For example, it was constitutional hardball by the Mitch McConnell to ignore President Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland. In CR, politicians favor short-term political gains over long-term damage to the constitutional system. As CR progresses, the political system becomes less democratic. State power becomes less accountable and less responsive to the public, while politicians become more beholden to backers who keep them in power. In essence, the country drifts into oligarchy.
While that is happening, the public loses trust in government and the political system because they have been abandoned: "When constitutional rot becomes advanced, and the public's trust in government is thoroughly undermined, people turn to demagogues who flatter the public and who stoke division, anger and resentment. Demagogues promise they will restore lost glories and make everything right again. They divert the public's attention to enemies and scapegoats within and without the republic. They divide the public in order to conquer it. They play on people's fears of loss of status. They use divisive rhetoric to distract attention, maintain a loyal set of followers, and keep themselves in power. There are always potential demagogues in a republic, but healthy republics restrain their emergence and ascension. When demagogues manage to take power and lead the nation, however, CR has become serious indeed."
Does any of that sound familiar?
The four horsemen of CR: Belkin describes the four horsemen of CR as (1) loss of trust in government and fellow citizens, (2) polarization that leads to people seeing fellow citizens as enemies of the state, (3) increasing economic inequality which foments anger, resentment and a search for scapegoats, and (4) policy disasters such as the Iraq war and the 2008 financial crisis, which undermine public trust in political leadership and constitutional governance. He argues that each one of these tends to feed into the one or more of the other factors. For example, polarization deflects public attention to symbolic and zero-sum conflicts, which allows wealthy interests to entrench their power and foster oligarchy. In turn, that tends to undermine public faith in a government that is drifting away from them and their interests. Rot begets more rot.
Belkin sees hardball politics and attendant destruction of norms of fair politics as leading to "a gradual descent into authoritarian or autocratic politics."
Regarding our current situation, Belkin sees it like this: "The United States is not currently in a period of constitutional crisis. But for some time--at least since the 1990s--it has been in a period of increasing constitutional rot. The election of a demagogue such as Trump is further evidence that our institutions have decayed, and judging by his presidential campaign and his first year in office, Trump promises to accelerate the corruption."
Sounds definitely like we're in for more CR and a descent into authoritarian, autocratic politics. How gradual the process may be is a matter open for debate.
B&B orig: 5/24/19
Trump Threatens Journalism
The New York Times reports that new charges the Department of Justice has filed against Julian Assange verge on making it illegal for journalists to gather information for news stories. The NYT writes:
*** Dark free speech: lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity to hide corruption, relevant truths and facts, unwarranted emotional manipulation to foment irrational, reason-killing emotions, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, and all kinds of bigotry including racism
B&B orig: 5/24/19
Journalists and press freedom groups reacted with alarm on Thursday after the Trump administration announced new charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, for publishing classified information, in a case that legal experts say takes direct aim at previously sacrosanct protections for the news media.Given the obvious run at some form of tyranny-oligarchy that President Trump is making, and his openly expressed hate toward the free press, this is reasonably seen as a direct attack on the press. Trump and the GOP can reasonably be seen as against free speech for the press, but unlimited speech, especially dark free speech***, for themselves.
In indicting Mr. Assange for obtaining, accepting and disseminating classified materials, the Department of Justice opened a new front in its campaign against illegal leaks. While past cases involved government employees who provided material to journalists, the Assange indictment could amount to the pursuit of a publisher for making that material available to the public.
“It’s not criminal to encourage someone to leak classified information to you as a journalist — that’s called news gathering, and there are First Amendment protections for news gathering,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer who frequently represents media organizations like CNN. “The ramifications of this are so potentially dangerous and serious for the ability of journalists to gather and disseminate information that the American people have a right to know.”
The charges against Mr. Assange are likely to face a challenge on First Amendment grounds. And journalists’ use of illegally obtained materials has been upheld in Supreme Court cases. But Mr. Miller said prosecutors had now skated to the edge of criminalizing journalistic practices.
“The Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and nonjournalists,” Mr. Miller said, referring to the law that Mr. Assange is accused of violating. “If you can charge Julian Assange under the law with publishing classified information, there is nothing under the law that prevents the Justice Department from charging a journalist.”
“The calculation by the Department of Justice is that here’s someone who people don’t like,” Mr. Boutrous said. “There’s a real element of picking the weakest of the herd, or the most unpopular figure, to try to blunt the outcry.”
*** Dark free speech: lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity to hide corruption, relevant truths and facts, unwarranted emotional manipulation to foment irrational, reason-killing emotions, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, and all kinds of bigotry including racism
B&B orig: 5/24/19
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)