How Trump's Base Sees His Rhetoric

Puffery: in law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no "reasonable person" would take literally; the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defines puffery as a "term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined"

Puff piece: an idiom for a journalistic form of puffery: an article or story of exaggerating praise that often ignores, downplays or rejects opposing viewpoints or contrary evidence or logic

Bill Maher aired an interview with Ann Coulter, a well-known Fox News political entertainer. She is a staunch Trump supporter and was given by some or many people almost exclusive credit for flogging President Trump into shutting down the government to force the border wall to be built. In this 7-minute segment, she makes it crystal clear that building a border wall will be highly effective in stopping illegal immigration. She strongly rejects any assertion to the contrary on that point.



However, what she has to say about Trump's rhetoric and the truth is arguably just as or more important.

Context: In the months before and the months after the November 2016 elections, many Trump supporters nearly everywhere, including on this channel, vehemently denied that Trump lied even once during the election and in the months thereafter. No amount of citing contrary objective fact or obvious truth budged Trump's base on this point. Some supporters were more subtle about it and made the incoherent assertion that one needed to take Trump seriously, but not literally.

The complete irrelevance of Trump's lies to his supporters was utterly baffling in view of how plentiful and obvious the lies were and still are. The apparent complete obliviousness of Trump supporters to the torrent of obvious lies to this day remained utterly baffling to this observer. Baffling, until Coulter's explanation to Maher. Now it is understandable, but still incoherent.

In the interview, Coulter claims to speak for Trump's base and is adamant on that point. Given her popularity, one can assume that is mostly true. So, how does Coulter speak by proxy for Trump's base about his endless, obvious lies?

Simple. Coulter just dismisses Trump lies as mere puffery of little or no importance or relevance. The lies are just a rejection of a bipartisan political establishment that has misled and lied about immigration control. She asserts that the only thing that is relevant to the base is that Trump deliver border control, and a wall would be highly effective.

As is the case for journalistic puff pieces (an oxymoron, marketing is what puff pieces are, not journalism), Coulter completely rejects any of the contrary evidence that Maher offered as rebuttal to her assertions. In asserting the puffery defense for Trump's lies, consciously or not, Coulter seems to use a definition of puffery that excludes the possibility that any person who sees lies is not a reasonable person. Given the logical incoherence of Coulter's argument, it is doubtful she ever bothered to look at a definition or think about it.

Incoherence aside, if Coulter really does speak for the Trump base, the base has moved from a position of 'no lies' to 'just puffery and you are unreasonable if you do not see it our way'. This is the defense of the greatest presidential liar in US history.

Is that defense persuasive? Or, is Coulter herself honestly self-deluded, or just a bald faced liar? Or, is she right that Trump is not lying, but simply puffing on us and people are being unreasonable about this?

Coulter's arguments reveal another thing about the Trump base. They want border and immigration control for economic reasons, not social or demographic reasons. That is contrary to research that suggests that perceived threats from globalization and social or demographic change, not economic reasons (job loss), was the most important reason that people voted for Trump.

No doubt, Coulter would reject that data too because it contradicts her story.

B&B orig: 1/26/19

A Defense of Democracy is Beginning in Congress

Hitler, Franco, Stalin

President Trump’s affinity for various authoritarians is well-known. He praises them for their dictatorial savagery and pines for their unfettered kleptocratic way of life. Along the way, as we all know, congressional republicans have been actively (or by their silence) aiding and abetting Trump’s moves toward some form of an anti-democratic, white Christian authoritarian, kleptocratic government. He holds truth in utter contempt, and constantly attacks and undermines anti-authoritarian democratic institutions including the professional press and news outlets, the rule of law, independent courts and independent law enforcement.

By now, none of this is new to anyone. And as we all know, Trump and his supporters completely reject all of it as a pack of lies by a vast deep state conspiracy running false flag operations to try to accomplish what it is that Trump is actually trying to do himself. The gulf in perceptions of reality between the two sides is vast and now hardened to a point such that bridging it is impossible. There is no basis for a meeting of the minds or compromise.

Americans may be unhappy about the situation, but is it certain that America’s enemies, especially Russia and China, are loving this all-American hate-fest. Especially the fact that America is under attack from within. For the last two years, neither congressional republicans nor Trump have been standing in defense of America, but instead are attacking it, either directly or by silent complicity. At present, America's enemies are winning and America is losing.

A nascent defense begins to take shape: House democrats are beginning to mount a defense. H.R. 1, the first major piece of legislation is designed to shore up democratic defenses by elevating what had been norms before Trump to the level of the rule of law. Advice from ethics officers in government were a joke and of almost no influence. Trump easily destroyed toothless norms and ethics concerns by simply ignoring them, showing just how weak and fragile our defenses of democracy really are. That failure has been massive and bipartisan, but that is a different topic.

H.R. 1 contains really interesting provisions. Vox reports:

House Democrats will unveil full details of their first bill in the new Congress on Friday — sweeping anti-corruption measures aimed at stamping out the influence of money in politics and expanding voting rights.

This is HR 1, the first thing House Democrats will tackle now that a new Congress has been sworn in. To be clear, this legislation has little to no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate or being signed by President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already bluntly stated, “That’s not going to go anywhere.”

But by making anti-corruption their No. 1 priority, House Democrats are throwing down the gauntlet for Republicans. A vast majority of Americans want to get the influence of money out of politics, and want Congress to pass laws to do so. New polling from the PAC End Citizens United found 82 percent of all voters and 84 percent of independents said they support a bill of reforms to tackle corruption.

Given how popular the issue is, and Trump’s multitude of scandals, it looks bad for Republicans to be the party opposing campaign finance reform — especially going into 2020.

In the area of campaign finance alone, these logical measures are included:

Public financing of campaigns, powered by small donations. Under Sarbanes’s vision, the federal government would provide a voluntary 6-1 match for candidates for president and Congress, which means for every dollar a candidate raises from small donations, the federal government would match it six times over. The maximum small donation that could be matched would be capped at $200. “If you give $100 to a candidate that’s meeting those requirements, then that candidate would get another $600 coming in behind them,” Sarbanes told Vox this summer. “The evidence and the modeling is that most candidates can do as well or better in terms of the dollars they raise if they step into this new system.”

Support for a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.

Passing the DISCLOSE Act, pushed by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island. This would require Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public.

Passing the Honest Ads Act, championed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Mark Warner (VA) and introduced by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) in the House, which would require Facebook and Twitter to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and share how much money was spent.

Changes to ethics rules are part of H.R. 1, including (1) requiring disclosure of 10 years of tax returns for president, vice president and candidates for president and vice president, and (2) creating a new ethical code for the US Supreme Court, ensuring all branches of government are impacted by the new law.

Changes to voting rights laws are also included, such as (1) creating a national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out, rather than opt in, and (2) ending partisan gerrymandering for federal elections and prohibiting voter roll purging, e.g., by ending use of non-forwardable mail to remove people from voter rolls.

For Trump and congressional republicans, this kind of legislation is dead on arrival. Senate majority leader McConnell calls it a power grab, which it is. It is just a power grab for voters, not his corrupt party and its corrupt, failed ideology. H.R. 1 will never pass the Senate, and probably never even be brought to the floor for a vote. And, if he had the chance, Trump would veto it without second thought. There is no way that Trump would ever willingly let his tax returns be seen.

Despite its zero chance of passage into law, H.R. 1 sets up the fight for the 2020 elections. It will be clear to everyone, and deniable by no one, where people stand in defense of America. Passage of the bill forces the republicans to let it die as quietly and opaquely as they can. For that reason, the House could pass it periodically to keep attention on the issues it addresses. That would be the same tactic the House used by passing bills to repeal Obamacare 60 or 70 times with no chance of becoming law. They made their point repeatedly. Now, it is time for democrats to make their points repeatedly.

Vox writes:

Democrats know they don’t actually have a shot of passing HR 1 through the Senate, or getting it past the president’s desk. But they recognize they need to get serious about the issue, even if Republicans won’t.

“To say to the public, from this point forward, if you give the gavel to lawmakers who are interested in being accountable to you, this is the kind of change you can expect to see,” Sarbanes said. “If you like this, give us a gavel in the Senate and give us a pen in the White House.”

The battle lines could not be clearer and the stakes probably cannot be much higher.

Mussolini

B&B orig: 2/4/19

Are the Two Parties Equally Responsible for America’s Sad State of Politics?

This is a 6-minute segment where Bill Maher pushes back on the idea that the two parties and their ideologies are basically equivalent, morally or otherwise. Is it persuasive?



B&B orig: 2/9/19

The Origins of Rising American Kleptocracy: Russian Kleptocracy

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy; an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth

A disturbing article in The Atlantic magazine, Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America, focuses on current American politics and the false image that America had about Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed in December of 1991. Washington falsely believed that Russian leaders had committed to democratic capitalism, but in fact they were dedicated authoritarian kleptocrats.

The Founding Fathers' worry: The author, Franklin Foer, points out that the Founding Fathers were very concerned with the possibility that bribery and the corruption it buys would become the norm. He is blunt on this point: “The Founders were concerned that venality would become standard procedure, and it has.” He argues that even before Trump rose to power state politicians and American elites had proved themselves to be “reliable servants of a rapacious global plutocracy.” The elites that Foer points his finger at include lawyers, lobbyists, real-estate brokers, and politicians in state capitals, all of whom enabled creation and hiding of shell companies. The financial opacity that created led to laundering of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that kleptocrats accumulate each year.

The article concludes with this: “American collusion with kleptocracy comes at a terrible cost for the rest of the world. All of the stolen money, all of those evaded tax dollars sunk into Central Park penthouses and Nevada shell companies, might otherwise fund health care and infrastructure. . . . . One bitter truth about the Russia scandal is that by the time Vladimir Putin attempted to influence the shape of our country, it was already bending in the direction of his.”

How did American get Russia so wrong?: Foer argues: “Washington had placed its faith in the new regime’s elites; it took them at their word when they professed their commitment to democratic capitalism. But Palmer [CIA station chief in the US Moscow embassy] had seen up close how the world’s growing interconnectedness—and global finance in particular—could be deployed for ill.”

That sounds much like how the US was completely deceived for years by the kleptocrats who ran and still run the government in Afghanistan. In her book, Thieves of State, Sarah Chayes describes the simple but effective technique that kleptocrats employ to facilitate systemic, massive looting of an entire nation. In essence, kleptocrats speak English and they work hard to learn the jargon and acronyms that Western minds want to hear. The poisonous lies sound true and rational because it sounds so much like us.

Although Statin Chief Palmer tried to warn congress of what was happening, congress simply could not or would not see the ugly reality he laid out for them. Maybe they were already under the spell of corruption. Foer writes: “The United States, Palmer made clear, had allowed itself to become an accomplice in this plunder. His assessment was unsparing. The West could have turned away this stolen cash; it could have stanched the outflow to shell companies and tax havens. Instead, Western banks waved Russian loot into their vaults. Palmer’s anger was intended to provoke a bout of introspection—and to fuel anxiety about the risk that rising kleptocracy posed to the West itself. . . . . This unillusioned spook was a prophet, and he spoke out at a hinge moment in the history of global corruption. America could not afford to delude itself into assuming that it would serve as the virtuous model, much less emerge as an untainted bystander.”

Morals . . . . what morals?: That speaks volumes about the utter immorality of international finance, and complicit elites and politicians who know full well exactly what they are doing. It was all about the money, nothing else. Claims of selfless patriotism or high ethical standards ring hollow. The opacity of the system they set up was intentional and necessary, not an accident or mere coincidence. There is nothing moral about this. It is all about theft and nothing more.

Claims that capitalism and business are just amoral and morality is irrelevant are completely false. There is no defense for that argument in view of the facts and the logical conclusions they lead to.

The amounts of money involved are both staggering and destabilizing. What should go into public interest spending and civilization-building go instead into bank accounts of kleptocrats and their enablers, including state governments, lawyers and the real estate industry. All kleptocrats and their enablers work very hard to hide as much of their immoral sleaze as possible, preferably all of it. If they had their way, kleptocracy would be fully legal.

The amounts of money are so great that for the enablers, they believe their own BS about their high morals.

One of history’s greatest heists is still ongoing: The scope of the theft was staggering: “In the dying days of the U.S.S.R., Palmer had watched as his old adversaries in Soviet intelligence shoveled billions from the state treasury into private accounts across Europe and the U.S. It was one of history’s greatest heists. . . . . By one estimate, more than $1 trillion now exits the world’s developing countries each year in the forms of laundered money and evaded taxes.”

An existential threat?: From time to time, B&B raises the idea that international corruption could constitute an existential threat to civilization, and maybe even the human species. Occasional articles like this reinforce that possibility. Denials by kleptocrats, including President Trump, are neither plausible nor persuasive.

The question is this: Is there still enough political honesty, will and power to turn the tide of corruption back, or is it too late, especially in view of the pro-kleptocrat, anti-rule of law Trump backed by congressional republicans?

BB orig: 2/10/19

Author: Rob Smith

This thread is not intended to argue against the value of more objectively based political decision making.Rather it assumes the positive value of such in terms of increased likelihood of progressing towards humanist goals.

I'm seeking to explore how far objectively based political decision can go and what it looks like when we get near one edge of "objectively based". I'm doing this in part because of the many examples I see of people over-estimating the lengths to which a particular approach can be effectively applied. (See D:Religion for examples of atheism and belief in scientific knowledge being pushed far beyond the reasonable boundaries.)

The issue I'm using is how we make decisions about which humanist value we prioritize when there are competing values.

Here is an article that draws attention to possible problems that can arise if we say, prioritize "happiness" over "desire". "Opinion: My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy"

The author makes a strong case for these being different things. Even opposed things in her case.

How do others here see such a contradiction being resolved using "more objectively based" political decision making approaches? Do others see any tension existing?

 B&B orig: 2/15/19

How to Rationalize, and Make More Moral, Service to the Public Interest

Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. Master propagandist Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923

We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment. Psychologist Johnathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012

We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. Political psychologist George Marcus, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013

Instrumental or practical rationality or reasoning: a belief about human reasoning where decisions, beliefs and behaviors are not influenced by psychological factors such as morals, values, ethics, ideology or identity; the only concern instrumental reasoning focuses on is what actions are needed to best reach the end an individual wants to achieve, regardless of good, bad or ambiguous impacts of the end on other people, groups of people and/or the entire society; desires and goals are not questioned as moral, immoral, rational or irrational, they just exist as givens

Values or ethical rationality or reasoning: a belief about human reasoning where decisions, beliefs and behaviors are influenced by psychological factors such as morals, values, ethics, ideology or identity, with the main concern of values reasoning being what ethics or values the end or goal represents to the individual for her-himself, other people, groups of people and/or the entire society;

Hybrid rationality or reasoning: a belief that political reasoning is influenced by an unknowable but variable combination of instrumental and values reasoning in arriving at decisions, beliefs and behaviors; for decisions, beliefs and behaviors that are relatively ethical- or values-neutral for the individual, instrumental reasoning is the only or dominant form of reasoning employed; for decisions, beliefs and behaviors that are non-trivially infused with ethical or value concerns for the individual, values reasoning is the only or dominant form of reasoning employed; most political decisions, beliefs and behaviors probably mostly arise from significantly mixed instrumental and values reasoning, but with values reasoning usually dominant and usually influenced by psychological, cognitive and social forces including biases and social institutions

How moral can politics be?: That mostly depends on what factors such as ideologies, beliefs, morals and tribes or groups a person believes in or identifies with. Many American conservatives and populists see liberals and socialists as being significantly immoral. The converse seems to be also true. Talking about what ideology is the most moral or ethical in the endless left vs right dispute is unresolvable. From an objective, neutral point of view, the debate is poisoned to the point of unresolvability by unwarranted disconnects from (a) reality, facts and truths, and (b) sound logic. Does that constitute a basis to argue that existing ideologies are significantly or mostly immoral because, e.g., they get in the way of compromise, thereby making civilization less efficient and less civil?

This discussion argues that the anti-bias ideology advocated here is more objective than existing ideologies and that makes it as moral as a political ideology can be without being just toothless or meaningless theory. A premise is that due to the nature of human reasoning, sentience and cognition, disputes in liberal democratic politics, but not authoritarian politics, can never be resolved with purely subjective or objective perfection. That also applies to anti-bias, which is not posited as perfect, but just better.

Another premise is that hybrid reasoning is valid based on modern neuroscience, and cognitive and social science research. Modern science strongly supports a conception of reasoning that most people mostly apply to most political issues as being heavily influenced by psychological factors including personal morals (or ethics or values), personal ideologies, group and tribal identities, personal identity, tolerance for dissonance or difference of opinions, and so forth. Most political reasoning arises from uncontrollable, unconscious perceptions of reality, facts and truths, true, false or otherwise, and uncontrollable, unconscious reasoning and decision-making. Those factors can lead to decisions, beliefs and behaviors that are objectively good, bad or ambiguous for the individual, while independently being bad, ambiguous or good for society.

The anti-bias ideology comprises four highest political morals, fidelity to seeing less biased reality, facts and truths, commitment to applying less biased logic to the reality, facts and truths, applying those in service to the public interest and reasonable compromise in view of relevant political, social and economic-environmental concerns. How objective those morals are look like this:

Most objective → less biased reality, facts and truths > reasonable compromise ≥ less biased logic > service to the public interest ← Least objective

Near-universal moral beliefs: At this point, the following objective facts about most people’s beliefs about politics need to be kept in mind. Most people claim that in addition to their ideology, morals, beliefs and tribe identities, their brand of politics and policy choices:
(1) mostly or completely based on unbiased reality, facts and truths;
(2) mostly or completely based on irrefutable or sound logic or reasoning;
(3) best serve the public interest;
(4) are open to reasonable compromise (this moral is in decline, which is an indicator of the rise of American anti-democratic authoritarian politics); and when asked
(5) are merits-based by claiming their morals, ideologies and beliefs win any contest in an honest competition of ideas.

All five of those are things that most people believe in. That therefore strongly implies (1) those five traits constitute some sort of nearly universal values or morals, and (2) those values or morals are independent of underlying personal ideology, other morals, beliefs, tribe identities, etc. In essence, those five beliefs, except for compromise, are the only things in politics that unite most deeply divided Americans (about 95% of adults?) probably about 95% of the time.

Service to the public interest: This moral concept is mostly subjective. Other than some kind of compromise, disputes about it are not solvable short of coercion or overt violence. Evidence and pure logic alone cannot resolve disagreements. People almost always define the public interest as (i) in accord with their own ideology, morals, beliefs, group and tribe identities, (ii) based on unbiased reality, facts and truths, (iii) based on irrefutable or sound logic or reasoning, and (iv) sometimes reasonable compromise.

That is generally the public interest concept for most adults and nearly all ideologues. In over 10 years of online dialog and exposure to over 40 years of print and broadcast media content, this observer cannot recall anyone who engages in political debate and claims (1) they rely on distorted reality, lies, false facts, false truths, or ignorance, (2) that their reasoning is flawed or partisan nonsense, (3) that what they want isn’t good for America and by implication the public interest, or assuming the question is asked, (4) that their beliefs and policy choices would lose in an honest competition of ideas. Almost no one claims any of those things about their political beliefs and policy preferences. Many routinely allege one or more of those things against the political opposition, but none of it ever applies to themselves.

In addition to those intractable problems, the concept of service to the public interest is necessarily heavily infused with essentially contested concepts. An essentially contested concept is one where there is widespread general agreement about the concept, e.g., fairness or constitutional, but not on the best definition or realization of it, e.g., by political policy. The practical use of these concepts involves endless, unresolvable disputes about their proper definitions or uses. These disputes cannot be settled by citing empirical evidence or applying sound logic. Only compromise, coercion or physical force can resolve them. Concepts such as the public interest, fairness, equality, legal, state of emergency, constitutional, patriotic, corrupt, honest, incompetent, democratic, and authoritarian are all unresolvable.

If one accepts all of the foregoing assertions of facts, reasoning and political reality as more true than false, then is it true that there is no possible way to even partially rationalize and moralize politics compared to what it is today?

How partially rationalize and moralize the public interest concept: There is a way to partially rationalize and maximally moralize the public interest concept. That way is to ask people to adopt the anti-bias ideology and its morals. That does not demand that people abandon their existing ideologies, morals and beliefs. For most people, existing ideologies and morals include the five factors stated above, facts, logic, public interest, compromise and merit-based competition of ideas. In essence, anti-bias simply asks people to have the moral courage to try to live up to what most claim they already believe in. Put another way, it asks for people to take their own professed universal moral political values seriously, instead of simply accepting it when own side employs lies, unwarranted emotional manipulation and other dark free speech tactics to convince them of their correctness.

In theory, this is simple, just be less biased and less partisan, while being more objective and open-minded about unbiased facts, sound reason, the public interest and compromise. That is the moral, more rational way to do politics. In practice, it may be impossible to move very far in that moral direction in view of existing laws, social norms and tribalism that protect lies and other forms of dark free speech. From the anti-bias point of view, the current, irrational way of doing politics is the immoral way.

The service to the public interest concept can be articulated many ways. But what is the best way to articulate it if the moral goal is to maximize rationality, efficiency, personal freedom, sustainability, liberal democracy, a vibrant economy and society, reliance on less biased facts and logic, and other major moral concerns despite all the unresolvable moral conflicts inherent in all of that? The best answer is this: Make ideas compete in a transparent, merit- and evidence-based competition, where the rules require the debate to adhere to what people already claim they believe in, namely unbiased facts, unbiased logic, what is best for the public interest, and reasonable compromise.

What would such an articulation look like? It would explicitly invoke the main concepts that most people believe are in the public interest, despite unresolvable differences about what those concepts look like. One articulation is this:

The conduct of politics and governance based on identifying a rational, optimum balance between serving public, individual and commercial interests based on a transparent fact- and logic-based analysis of competing policy choices (evidence- and reason-based politics), while
(1) being reasonably responsive to public opinion,
(2) protecting and growing the American economy,
(3) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity,
(4) defending constitutional personal freedoms,
(5) fostering improvement in the American standard of living,
(6) protecting national security,
(7) protecting the environment,
(8) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in government and commerce when possible,
(9) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, including maintaining and growing alliances with non-authoritarian democratic nations, and
(10) defending American liberal democracy and democratic norms, by replacing federal norms with laws, and (a) requiring states to maximize voter participation, making voting as easy as reasonably possible, (b) elevating opinions of ethics officials in the federal government to the status of laws or requirements that bind all members of all branches of the federal government, particularly including the President and all Executive Branch employees, (c) incentivizing voter participation by conferring a tax break on voters and a reasonable tax penalty on qualified citizens who do not vote, (d) prevent or limit corruption, unwarranted opacity, and anti-democratic actions such as gerrymandering voting districts to minimize competition or limiting voter participation, and (e) requiring allowing high level federal politicians and bureaucrats, federal judges and members of congress to show their tax returns for at least the six tax years before they take office or starting federal employment or service, all of which is constrained by (i) honest, reality-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more or no less than what is deemed needed and (ii) genuine respect for the U.S. constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution and the law.

Some important concerns are not explicit, but instead they are inherent. For example, defending equal protection, freedom of religion and gun ownership is inherent in defending constitutional personal freedoms. This conception is an attempt to shift the balance of power from wealthy individuals, special interests and the two main political parties, where it is unreasonably concentrated now, to be more favorable to the public interest and public opinion.

This conception of service to the public interest better accounts for social change by making public opinion an explicit factor in policy debates, unlike the current situation where public opinion is usually irrelevant. Most anti-government conservatives and populists will not like public opinion as a factor in governance. If so, anti-bias dictates that they must be transparent and honest about it and publicly state that they reject public opinion as a relevant guide to policy debates. Given the significant authoritarian, anti-democratic leaning of most conservatives and populists, it is very unlikely that the anti-authoritarian, pro-democratic anti-bias ideology would be acceptable to most of those people.

Obviously, that articulation will be criticized for various reasons. It is shot through with essentially contested concepts. One can argue that concerns such as protecting and growing the American economy are unsustainable and can be at odds with others such as protecting the environment. In response, it is clear that such conflicts are unavoidable. There are unavoidable internal conflicts and the way that conception of service to the public interest deals with conflicting goals is to focus on “identifying a rational, optimum balance” among competing interests. There is no other means available to resolve unresolvable disagreements short of authoritarian coercion.

The point of the ideology is to make it harder to do politics based on opacity, lies and partisan or fake logic. Those things are invariably used by powerful special interests, bad leaders, e.g., Donald Trump, and ideologues to win arguments. The point is to make politics perform the best it can within the limits of what humans can be expected to tolerate. In essence, anti-bias is a morals-, merit-, evidence- and reason-based ideology instead of an ideology that imposes visions of what the world and people should look like and believe rather than what they are.

What about bad morals and behaviors?: Some Americans hold what others would describe as bad morals, e.g., bigotry, racism support for abortion, or tolerance for conflicts of interest in politicians. Nothing can be done under anti-bias to physically coerce people into having only good or neutral morals, which is a contested concept. Some of this reflects conflicting social norms with their acceptable or unacceptable behaviors. At present, morals or beliefs such as acceptance of racism, dark free speech (lies, deceit, etc.), corruption, or anti-democratic authoritarianism, lead to intractable disagreements and there is no way to change that.

Could the anti-bias ideology and the public interest concept as articulated here be made more moral, e.g., by explicitly fostering values reasoning? Maybe. But how one might do that is not clear to this observer. The hybrid reasoning described above is a postulated mode of rationality that may not actually exist. It is proposed here based only on this observer’s (i) experiences and assessment of how people think about politics, and (ii) understanding of the neuroscience, cognitive science and social science of human reasoning and behavior. Political reasoning seems to be an intractable entanglement of emotion, morals, ideology, reason (roughly logic), self-identity, etc., all of which is constantly reacting in real time to sensory inputs that are usually complex. On top of that complexity, the influence of nature (genes) and nurture (family, society, ideology, life experience, morals, etc.) probably varies significantly from person to person. One expert, John Hibbing, author of Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, recently tentatively estimated that we are about 30-35% nature and 65-70% nurture.

How humans think about morals and politics is simply not yet understood. Thus, it is hard or impossible to know how to make the ideology both more rational and more moral. The anti-bias mindset envisions that being rational, whatever that means, is in itself a high moral value. More of it should be better, but that needs to be tested and demonstrated on a mass scale. The limited laboratory testing this observer is aware of suggests more rationality is better, at least for predicting future events, the apparent acid test for the rationality of any political ideology.

B&B orig: 2/18/19