The Populist Election Strategy for 2020

A number of sources argue that the President is intentionally being insulting, divisive and racist in his rhetoric as a campaign strategy. His bad rhetoric inflames the opposition and leads to endless reactions in the press and other media. That helps keep political opposition distracted from Trump's corruption, lies, propaganda and failures. Sometimes it actually divides and weakens the opposition.

In 2017, The Hill wrote this:

White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon condemned white nationalist "clowns" in an interview Wednesday but continued to hit Democrats over "identity politics," saying if they talked about race every day he could ensure Republican election victories.

“The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em," the former head of Breitbart News told The American Prospect in an interview. "I want them to talk about racism every day."

"If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats,” he added.

In the wake of Trump's racist remarks about Baltimore, reactions are pouring out. The Washington Post reports: “Better to have a few rats than to be one,” the Baltimore Sun’s editorial declared in its headline . . . . The Sun’s scathing piece, which drew responses across the country and even as far as Senegal, highlights Baltimore’s strengths and accuses Trump of deploying “the most emotional and bigoted of arguments” against a Democratic African American congressman from a majority-black district.”

A political analysis piece in yesterday's Washington Post comments:

President Trump launched another broadside Saturday on a Democratic political opponent, calling a prominent black congressman’s Baltimore district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and saying “no human being would want to live there.”

“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” Trump continued in another tweet. “No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!”

That Twitter attack on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) plunged the nation into yet another anguished debate over the president’s divisive rhetoric. And it came just two weeks after Trump called out four minority congresswomen with a racist go-back-to-your-country taunt.

The assault on Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, prompted immediate condemnations from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. Young and several other top Democrats.

But Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.

This has prompted them to find ways to fuse Trump’s nativist rhetoric with a love-it-or-leave-it appeal to patriotism ahead of the 2020 election, while seeking to avoid the overtly racist language the president used in his tweets about the four congresswomen.

Campaign advisers and party officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that an appeal targeted at Trump’s white working-class base will not necessarily cost him moderate voters.

“The general assumption with everything Squad-related is this helps shore up our base. It definitely helps with white working-class voters,” said one person close to the campaign, using the term that refers to the four congresswomen. “I think that shows that this can be turned into a positive, in terms of a very political viewpoint.”

Publicly, campaign aides and advisers have sought to shift the conversation away from race and toward the less explosive territory of ideology. But they have also pushed back aggressively against charges of racism, seeking to make common cause with supporters who also feel they are too quickly branded as bigots.

“Usually, when they are faced with charges of racism, Republicans hide a little bit. And the president’s not hiding,” he said. “And I think that’s what the Republican voters like about him.”

“Republicans, for as long as I can remember in politics, we’ve all been called racists just because of our policy ideas,” said Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman at America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC. “The Republicans who have been struggling with these criticisms want somebody to fight back. And the president now is reversing the game on the Democrats.”

Some Republican moderates have warned that Trump’s red-meat attacks and divisive rhetoric could turn off those voters, but party leaders point to polls showing Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal lawmakers as toxic among Republican voters.

Whether one considers the President's supporters as racist or not, it is clear they vehemently reject the label. Even if his rhetoric is racist it seems that in the minds of some people that by calling Trump's rhetoric racist amounts to calling his supporters racist.

And, some Trump opponents do openly call his supporters racist. That is a huge mistake. Trump opponents have to figure out a non-alienating way to deal with Trump's insulting, divisive rhetoric. Without wanting to downplay racism, which does exist in the US, it seems that the opposition needs to ramp up the sophistication of its messaging and responses to Trump's campaign strategy.

If the opposition fails to rise to this challenge, the incumbent might be re-elected in 2020.

B&B orig: 7/28/19

Presidential Hypocrisy

This 1½ minute video explains the President's self-professed attitude in the 2016 election about a US President leaving the White House or playing golf while in office. His argument was that there's just too much work to do to leave the White House for golf or other play time. https://youtu.be/f0NZt_-eB9o This summarizes the situation to date. So far, the President's daytime visits to golf clubs since the inauguration have cost taxpayers about $106 million, with evidence of him playing golf on at least 92 visits.





 Does this make Trump a liar, a hypocrite, both, neither and/or something else, e.g., insulting of people's intelligence or a tax dollar spendthrift?

B&B orig: 7/28/19

How Much Tolerance Should One Have?

Over the last month or two a number of radical right Trump supporters have been commenting here with increasing frequency. I had to ban one for name calling and insulting people. That came after two warnings not to do that.

But there's other concerns. One is the smug arrogance of some Trump supporters that manifests as complete disregard for how other people may feel about the president's rhetoric and actions. It appears that, at least for online interactions, most of his supporters (~97% ?) revel in trying to provoke emotional responses from people who oppose the president. To me, that amounts to open contempt for people in disagreement. In my opinion, it is offensive and more importantly, socially damaging.

The attitude of open contempt to the political opposition is exactly the attitude that America's enemies are now working full time to foment among Americans. Based on what I have read about how democracies fall to tyrants, fomenting the kind of disrespect and contempt we now see among most Trump supporters is exactly what America's enemies want to achieve. Like Trump, our enemies hate transparency, a free press, political opposition (Trump's ally and mentor Putin poisons and murders his opposition), democracy and the rule of law and want to destroy both and replace that with corrupt tyranny. Under that kind of tyranny, the law is whatever the tyrant says it is at the time the tyrant says it.

Another concern about the president's supporters is their almost complete rejection of facts that show his failures, lies, hypocrisy, corruption, bigotry, divisiveness and contempt for the rule of law and free press. Even the most obvious facts are either deflected, rejected or downplayed into irrelevance, e.g., "well, if Obama or Hillary did it, Trump can do it too," or "Trump doesn't lie," or "that lie isn't important." Defenses of Trump are usually not based on facts. When there is some fact basis, the logic that the president's supporters apply is usually incoherent and indefensible. Rarely is a logically solid, fact-based argument brought to bear in the president's defense.

Should it be tolerated?: The question is obvious, why tolerate this kind of disrespectful treatment? What value, if any, does it add to public discourse? America's enemies, including Russia and China, very much want Americans to be so distrustful and angry at each other that they stop talking. That makes dehumanizing the opposition easier. That makes it easier for the tyrant to rise to power and kill our fragile democracy and its necessary rule of law.

It is now obvious and undeniable that many of the president's supporters are gleeful at the distress and fear that both Trump and the smug arrogance and insulting attitudes that many or most of his supporters display. They rejoice in the distress and concerns of political opposition. What the hell good does it it to tolerate that kind of closed-minded poison?

On the other hand, I do not want to play into the hands of America's enemies. That includes the president. In one survey of experts, he is ranked as the most polarizing US president ever in addition to also ranking as the least great of all US presidents. In my opinion, those things make him an enemy of America and its values, democracy and laws. Concern about not playing into the hands of our enemies is what has driven my tolerance so far.

What is the best course of action? Continued tolerance of what is increasingly intolerable? Or, in the face of incoherent logic, denial of facts and/or refusal to show fact sources, less tolerance? Most support for the president comes in the form of unsupported, usually irrational opinion. There is no rational basis to discuss an opinion when the opinion holder refuses to divulge their fact sources or their logic. Why tolerate that level of intentional intellectual disengagement?

Or, do I misread the situation and there is much I misunderstand? Or, am I too intolerant as it is now? Is our democracy and the rule of law under attack from the inside and the outside?

Any thoughts?

B&B orig: 7/29/19

Some Observations On Propaganda

These quotes are from Hannah Arendt's 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Her observations came from her research into the nature and origins of murderous 20th century totalitarianism in its savage 19th century anti-Semitic and imperialist roots. These sentiments remain generally relevant to American politics today.

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

“Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”

“True goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion, but organization of the polity. ... What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.”

B&B orig: 5/17/19

Truth Decay

Over the last couple of years, the RAND Corporation has been doing a deep dive into the political-social phenomenon they call truth decay. The study is part of an effort to "restore the role of facts and analysis in public life."

That sounds much like the anti-biasing anti-ideology, pragmatic rationalism, ideology that is advocated here at B&B. Two of the four core moral values that pragmatic rationalism is built on are (i) fidelity to trying to see objective facts and truths, to the extent they can be objectively based, with less bias and distortion, and (ii) fidelity to trying to apply less biased conscious reason (roughly, logic) to the facts one thinks one sees. Apparently, RAND and B&B are significantly on the same page.

RAND's 326 page 2018 book, Truth Decay, can be downloaded for free here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html [1]

In a summary post, RAND comments:

There are four trends that characterize Truth Decay:

1. increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data 2. a blurring of the line between opinion and fact 3. the increasing relative volume and resulting influence of opinion and personal experience over fact 4. declining trust in formerly respected sources of facts.

Most of these trends are not unprecedented in American history. But today's level of disagreement over objective facts is a new phenomenon.

RAND's findings so far point to the main drivers of truth decay as being (i) cognitive biases, (ii) the rise of social media and other changes to the information environment, (iii) demands on the educational system that limit its ability to keep up with changes in the information ecosystem, and (iv) political and social polarization. Political and social polarization can reasonably be seen as political and social tribalism that tends to be significantly fact- and logic-destroying or distorting for most people (~95% ?) most of the time.

A prior discussion about a survey of experts of President Trump noted that he was ranked as the most polarizing President in US history, significantly out ranking Abe Lincoln, who came in a fairly distant second. Both RAND's sources of truth decay and its drivers seem be generally in accord with the political reality of at least the last 15 years or so, maybe the last 30 years or so.

An existential threat?: Over at his happy blog, Neurologica, Steven Novella posited RAND's truth decay observations as possibly constituting an existential threat, presumably at least to modern civilization, and maybe to the human species itself. Novella writes:

What is the greatest threat facing human civilization? This question is obviously meant to be provocative, and is probably inherently unanswerable. But I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that perhaps the greatest threat is the deterioration of fact-based political and social discussion. The argument is that this is a meta-problem that keeps us from effectively addressing all other problems.

But of course we don’t want to assume anything, which would ironically be part of the very problem itself. We first need to ask – are these trends actually happening or are they just illusion and confirmation bias? Also, can we put these trends into historical context? RAND recently conducted a study looking at item #3 – the relative volume of opinion vs fact-based reporting in the media over the last 28 years.

They identified several trends, which may contribute to Truth Decay. The first is that prior to 2000 broadcast news tended to be more academic and fact-based. After 2000 the news became more narrative based – presented more as simplistic stories, with less complexity and nuance.

Over this same time there was a shift in viewership from broadcast to cable networks. The cable networks contained much more opinion-based reporting, and far less fact-based reporting. They were more likely to have people discussing the news rather than giving a prepared factual report of the news. So essentially we went from watching Walter Cronkite to The View.

In print they saw a similar pattern. Print newspapers have changed the least, but also have shifted toward a more narrative style (just not as much). Meanwhile there was a shift to digital print news, which is more personal and anecdote-based.

All of these trends verify the concern that the overall volume of information being consumed by Americans has shifted from fact-based reporting to personal stories, narratives, discussions and opinions. We are no longer content to have a talking head give us a prepared digested form of “Just the facts, Ma’am” (which is, ironically, itself a bit of false reporting). We want to be entertained with a story, we want our emotional buttons pressed.

The short chain of moral logic: Cognitive and social science both strongly argue that the human mind is inherently susceptible to truth decay or dark free speech such as lies, deceit, and unwarranted emotional manipulation, especially fomented negative emotions such as fear, anger, hate, distrust, intolerance and bigotry or racism, all of which are usually intentionally associated with a person's tribal identity. Use of truth decay to deceive and manipulate the public is common among people with low or essentially no decent moral values because it works. The purveyors of truth decay either don't care about the morality if it, or they believe the usually immoral proposition that the ends justify the means and is thus moral, at least when they do it (but it's not when the other side does it).

The limited grasp of history I have says that social and international conflicts are usually (≥ ~95% of the time?) seeded by shrewd purveyors of truth decay to whip an up antagonistic us vs. them social mentality. That appears to be so common that one can argues there is a chain of logic with two necessary links in it. The first link is heavy seeding of the social milieu with vast quantities of truth decay or dark free speech. That seeding of the public with lies, deceit and irrational emotion is the necessary prelude to unnecessary violent conflict, at least by aggressors.

If that logic is sound, then from a moral point of view, one can argue that use of truth decay to deceive, mislead and foment the negative emotions needed for social acceptance of violence is the moral equivalent of the actual violence itself. One could even see truth decay as a form of violence because it relies on coerces minds into false and/or irrational beliefs.

When viewed in that way, fidelity to objective facts and truths, to the extent they can be ascertained (and they often cannot be fully ascertained, leaving some degree of ambiguity), can bee seen as one of the highest, most important moral values a human can hold. The same applies to the moral value of trying to be less biased in one's conscious reasoning about the facts and truths one thinks one sees.

So, the question is this: Is using truth decay or dark free speech to deceive and emotionally poison minds as immoral as actual unwarranted violence?

Footnote:
1. The first paragraph and a half of the book says this: "Much has been written about the growing disregard for facts, data, and analysis in political and civil discourse in the United States. Increasingly, it seems that important policy debates, both within the federal government and across the electorate, are as likely to hinge on opinion or anecdote as they are on objective facts or rigorous analysis. However, policy decisions made primarily on the basis of opinion or anecdote can have deleterious effects on American democracy and might impose significant costs on the public.

The current discourse about the diminishing role of, trust in, and respect for facts, data, and analysis is often hamstrung by the use of conflicting language and unclear or undefined terms. Without a common language with which to discuss the problem—which we are calling Truth Decay—the search for solutions becomes more difficult. This report seeks to address this gap by offering a clear definition of Truth Decay and an examination of its drivers and consequences—all with the aim of creating a foundation for more-meaningful discussion of the challenges to U.S. political and civil discourse."

B&B orig: 5/16/19

The Power of Irrational Emotion to Make People Irrational

An article in the Independent says this about the power of hate and bigotry to lead people into irrational beliefs.

Seventy-two per cent of Republicans oppose Western world's standard numeric system, according to research designed to 'tease out prejudice among those who didn't understand the question'.

Fifty-six per cent of people say the numerals should not part of the curriculum for US pupils, according to research designed to explore the bias and prejudice of poll respondents.

The digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are referred to as Arabic numerals.

The system was first developed by Indian mathematicians before spreading through the Arab world to Europe and becoming popularised around the globe.

A survey by Civic Science, an American market research company, asked 3,624 respondents: “Should schools in America teach Arabic numerals as part of their curriculum?” The poll did not explain what the term “Arabic numerals” meant.

Some 2,020 people answered “no”. Twenty-nine per cent of respondents said the numerals should be taught in US schools, and 15 per cent had no opinion.

John Dick, chief executive of Civic Science, said the results were “the saddest and funniest testament to American bigotry we’ve ever seen in our data”.

That shows the power of irrational bigotry and hate to shut down logical thinking. This is why ideologues, demagogues and tyrants routinely resort to dark free speech (lies, deceit, unwarranted opacity to hide truths, unwarranted emotional manipulation to foment negative emotions, especially fear, anger, hate, intolerance, bigotry, racism, distrust, etc.). By fomenting an irrational, emotion-dominated mindset, ideologues, demagogues and tyrants can better create false realities as they make their run for ideological dominance, power and wealth.

Does that mean such people are stupid? No. It does mean they have been deceived and used in service to the agenda of others who don't care about adverse consequences to the deceived and used people. That is what divisive dark free speech-driven politics is doing to American society today. We all know who is doing this to us.

Do we need to rename Arabic numerals as American numerals?

B&B orig: 5/18/19