More Evidence that Inconvenient Truth Is Irrelevant to the Tribe

The Washington Post article, Doctored images have become a fact of life for political campaigns: When they’re disproved, believers ‘just don’t care’, adds to evidence that dark free speech[1] continues to poison the minds of Americans. The WaPo observes that we are experiencing an explosion of online disinformation from politicians. Despite the immorality of deceit, politicians know that deceit works and there’s not enough social repercussion to deter the tactic.

The brazenness of politicians called out for asserting lies to the public is evidence of how far morality has fallen in American politics. A key goal of even blatantly obvious lies is to reinforce existing beliefs, not necessarily convincing anyone of the asserted truth of the lie. That tends to make compromise with political opposition impossible. The deceiver’s audience already believes or feels a certain way about a politician and their tribe. When they discover the lie many people don’t care. Their rationalization tends to be along the lines of ‘people say it could have been true’ or ‘that actually reflects who the attacked person really is.’ In some cases tribe members just do not care at all that they were lied to because it was their lie and thus morally neutral or good.

The WaPo writes:

To back his assertion that President Barack Obama had coddled the world’s top sponsor of terrorists, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.), cited an unusual source: a clumsily altered image of a nonexistent handshake between Obama and the Iranian president. The doctored photo, once used in TV ads supporting Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, had been repeatedly debunked since it first surfaced on an Egyptian Islamist political website in 2013. 

But when critics last week chided Gosar for showing hundreds of thousands of people a faked image of an imaginary event, the fifth-term congressman said they, the “dim witted” ones, were in the wrong. “No one said this wasn’t photoshopped,” he declared. “The point remains … The world is better without Obama as president." 

For ginning up political resentment and accentuating your rivals’ flaws, nothing quite compares to a doctored image. It can help anyone turn a political opponent into a caricature — inventing gaffes, undercutting wins and erasing nuance — leaving only the emotion behind. 

On Monday, Trump, who has more than 70 million Twitter followers, retweeted a fake image of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) cartoonishly altered to show them in a turban and hijab. The tweet, which falsely claims that the two most powerful Democrats in Congress have “come to the Ayatollah’s rescue,” has been retweeted more than 17,000 times.

Clearly, the GOP leadership sees lies, deceit and irrational emotional manipulation as acceptable tactics. There is no obvious resistance from America's political right to being lied to, deceived and emotionally manipulated. The ends, maybe a republican-populist utopia of some sort, justify the means. The degree to which democratic politicians have sunk to this new low level of immorality isn't clear.

Does immorality ever fade into evil?

In her book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, moral philosopher Sissela Bok argued that lies and deceit are usually immoral to some extent. Some circumstances may exist that some people see as justifying politicians who deceive the public for its own good. However, she convincingly argues that those are rare situations. Other writers point to the standard use of dark free speech against societies as a powerful, necessary tool in the rise to power of tyrants, oligarchs, murderers and kleptocrats. The path and tactics the modern GOP is following fits the standard pattern in the rise of authoritarianism and corruption and the fall of democracy and the rule of law.

Does the current intensity and quantity of dark free speech the GOP leadership uses against American society, in particular the president, rise to evil or something close to it? Do the ends that the president and his party aim for justify means that rely heavily on a constant stream of lies, deceit and irrational manipulation?


Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)

Food Stamps: Do Unemployed Workers Deserve to Live Hungry?

Work requirement changes to the Food Stamp program will lead about 700,000 people to lose food stamps. Some data from states that imposed a work requirement several years ago is now available. GOP lawmakers who imposed a work requirement in West Virginia claim the change has been a success. People who run shelters and food pantries in the state claim it has been a failure.

The New York Times writes: “While around 5,410 people lost food stamps in the nine counties, the growth in the labor force in these counties over the ensuing three years significantly lagged the rest of the state. Average monthly employment growth in the counties actually slowed, while it nearly doubled in the rest of West Virginia.

‘We can prove it from the data that this does not work,’ said Seth DiStefano, policy outreach director at the center. The state Department of Health and Human Resources initially acknowledged as much. ‘Our best data,’ it reported in 2017, ‘does not indicate that the program has had a significant impact on employment figures.’

One of the first signs of the change came in the dining hall of the Huntington City Mission, about half an hour’s drive from little Milton. Suddenly, the hall was packed. ‘It was just like, ‘Boom, what’s going on here?’ said Mitch Webb, the director of the 81-year-old mission. In early 2016, the mission served an average of around 8,700 meals a month. After the new food stamp policy went into full effect, that jumped to over 12,300 meals a month. ‘It never renormalized,’ Mr. Webb said.

[A GOP lawmaker comments:] “The information I have is that there’s been significant savings over all,” he said, coupling that with a low unemployment rate as evidence that the policy was working.

‘If a person just chooses not to work, which those are the people that were targeted, they’re not going to get a free ride,’ he said. Of people who are facing concrete obstacles to steady work, like a lack of transportation, he added: ‘If there’s a will, there’s a way.’”

A 2018 federal study came to the conclusion that work force participation didn't change much after the work requirement was imposed:

We perform a regression discontinuity analysis of the impact of work requirements for able bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) on labor supply and participation, exploiting the fact that the work requirement applies only to individuals under 50 years old. Using a novel dataset containing ABAWD work requirement waiver information merged with SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] administrative records and American Community Survey (ACS) data, we find the work requirements have no impact on labor force participation and the number of hours worked. We do find that the work requirements reduce participation in SNAP. There is some evidence that those with worse job prospects are especially less likely to participate in SNAP as a result of the work requirements.

It’s their own fault

A common human trait to shut compassion down is to blame shift. People deserve their unhappy situation. The data indicates that even when there is a will to work, there isn't always a way to do so. If there aren’t jobs, there just aren’t jobs. Nonetheless, blaming people for laziness or whatever else works nicely to justify work requirements and the increase in hunger that can lead to. Even people receiving food assistance fall back on this tactic.

The NYT writes: “At dinnertime at the city mission, men complained about people who were too lazy to work, who were sponging off the system. ‘Not giving people food stamps because they don’t work is probably the best course of action,’ said Zach Tate, who had been at the mission before, but now, with a place to stay, was just back for a meal. ‘It’s like training a puppy.’ He returned to his turkey Alfredo for a few moments and then clarified. ‘But taking it away indefinitely doesn’t work either,’ he said. ‘It creates a sense of despair.’”

Even poor people without enough income to feed themselves attack food stamps as undeserved. It doesn't matter that most working-age adults on food stamps have a job or are between jobs, and often don't even have transportation to get to a job. Realities like that just don't intrude on the blaming mindset. One man lost his job when his employer checked and found he had a bad credit rating. he wound up on food stamps. Some disabled adults are dependent on relatives but are still not considered dependents for food stamps. It’s all their own fault. Let ’em starve because they deserve it.

Human compassion is a fragile, very easy thing to shut down. All it takes is some rigid ideology or a little ignorance of the logistics of poverty and, poof! Like magic, compassion is gone. Contrary data be damned.

A Brief History of Trans Smearing

Aren't you glad Baptists don't influence pop culture? I sure am.

Outside of political blogs and TV bobbleheads the only people that really give them the time of day are the screwballs, including the occasional nut that graces the oval orifice.

Thank heaven for that, otherwise people might still think of trans women and trans femmes as the diseased, drug addled hapless lying prostitutes we've been regularly painted to be.

Bu then wasn't it Jerry Springer (Democrat, former mayor, TV celebrity) who chose to capitalize on those stereotypes for his daily TV program?

Didn't Jared Leto trot those stereotypes out again to weasel his way into an award by way of Dallas Buyer's Club?

Let's remember that the people that kill us don't typically read the bible. They aren't usually voters. They do however, watch TV, they talk to their friends. They wallow in base pop culture stereotypes about trans people.

Those come from somewhere.

It's not the baptists. Not for lack of trying, but they're just not that good at propaganda.

ONE MILLION MOMS

• The conservative advocacy group One Million Moms launched an online petition telling Burger King to edit or remove an Impossible Whopper ad.
• The ad features the reactions of Burger King customers eating an Impossible Whopper, with one man saying “Damn, that’s good.”
• The profanity earned backlash from One Million Moms, who also campaigned against the LGBTQ+ ad on the Hallmark Channel.
• Burger King is the latest target of One Million Moms, a conservative activist group that focuses on stopping “the exploitation of our children, especially by the entertainment media,” according to its website.
• https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/lgbtq/477945-conservative-group-calls-for-burger-king-to-remove-impossible
• Mom, are you fed up with the filth many segments of our society, especially the entertainment media, are throwing at our children? Are you tired of all the negative influences our children are forced to contend with? If so, we urge you to become a member of OneMillionMoms.com.
• https://onemillionmoms.com/about-us/
• This summer, the world was convulsing over climate change, hurricanes, terrorism, and Trump. Meanwhile, the far-right group One Million Moms was clutching its pearls over ... Toy Story 4.
  In one of its numerous calls to action, One Million Moms asked its followers to sign a petition objecting to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment with a female couple in Toy Story 4. It was just the latest effort for the furtive group, which agitates against positive LGBTQ representations as its cause célèbre. 
• https://www.advocate.com/media/2019/10/21/one-million-moms-secretive-antigay-group-cant-stop-failing
• 
  
  
• That number, 4,525, was about 0.45 percent of one million. On Facebook, the page had a far bigger following than it did on Twitter. In fact, 98,649 people liked the page as of December 17 2019; a lower 93,533 followed the page for updates. The larger number was 9.8 percent of one million:
• https://www.truthorfiction.com/how-many-moms-are-in-one-million-moms/

• One Million Moms: Intolerance of Biblical Proportions

  How a fundamentalist Christian group markets intolerance of gays and lesbians.

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/you-it/201305/one-million-moms-intolerance-biblical-proportions
• 
  

Civilized Democratic Politics: Looking for Overlapping Consensus

Context

“. . . . Cornyn spoke in favor of the Republican Party fighting its way back to victory by broadening its appeal to a broader swath of voters, including moderates. . . . . the former aide explained . . . . ‘He believes in making the party a big tent. You can't win unless you get more votes.’ In contrast, DeMint portrayed compromise as surrender. He had little patience for the slow-moving process of constitutional government. He regarded many of his Senate colleagues as timid and self-serving. The federal government posed such a dire threat to the dynamism of the American economy, in his view, that anything less than all-out war on regulations and spending was a cop-out. . . . . Rather than compromising on their principles and working with the new administration, DeMint argued, Republicans needed to take a firm stand against Obama, waging a campaign of massive resistance and obstruction, regardless of the 2008 election outcome.” -- Investigative journalist Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, 2017

“James McGill Buchanan [chairman of the economics department at University of Virginia] was not a member of the Virginia elite. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that for a white southerner of his day he was uniquely racist or insensitive to the concept of equal treatment. And yet, somehow, all he saw in the [2nd 1955 Supreme Court] Brown decision was coercion. And not just in the abstract. what the court ruling represented to him was personal. Northern liberals -- the very people who looked down on southern whites like him -- were now going to tell his people how to run their society. And to add insult to injury, he and people like him with property were no doubt going to be taxed to pay for all of the improvements that were now deemed necessary and proper for the state to make. What about his rights? Where did the federal government get the authority to engineer society to its liking and then send him and those like him the bill? Who represented their interests in all of this? I can fight this, he concluded. I want to fight this.

Find the resources, he proposed to Darden [President of the University of Virginia], for me to create a new center on the campus of the University of Virginia, and I will use this center to create a new school of political economy and social philosophy. It would be an academic center, rigorously so, but one with a quiet political agenda: to defeat the ‘perverted form’ of liberalism that sought to destroy their way of life, ‘a social order,’ as he described it, ‘built on individual liberty,’ a term with its own coded meaning but one that Darden surely understood. The center, Buchanan promised, would train a ‘new line of thinkers’ in how to argue against those seeking to impose an ‘increasing role of government in economic and social life.’ He could win this war, and he would do it with ideas.” Historian Nancy MacLean, Democracy In Chains: The Deep History Of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America, 2017

The ‘perverted form’ of liberalism included opposition to racial segregation, support of racial and gender discrimination and oppression, bitter opposition to organized labor and bitter opposition to a central government that stood for defense of equality and individual civil liberties in schools, churches, commerce, the courts and everywhere else. That was the hated form of perverted politics that Buchanan envisioned, Darden blessed, and eventually the Koch Brothers funded. Later, other GOP billionaires heavily funded and still fund today a softer variant of this radical libertarian ideology. According to MacLean, that 1955 Supreme Court public school desegregation decision was the beginning for the rise of radical right libertarianism in America based on the previously undiscovered historical records she found and wrote about.

Overlapping consensus

In her 2013 book, Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, political philosopher Martha Nussbaum describes her vision of how societies can try to approach the best that humans can hope to attain in terms of a diverse, democratic civil society, civil liberties, justice and equality. One aspect of her vision of civil society looks for overlapping consensus among all the various interests, moral and religious beliefs, innate human urges and perceived reasons to be uncivilized. There are a lot of reasons to be uncivilized, ranging from trivial to justified and grounded in reality and sound reason to fantasy and flawed reason. She argues that such a civil society and political liberalism can be built on a consensus.

“.... equal respect for citizens requires that a nation not build its political principles on any particular comprehensive doctrine of the meaning and basis of life, whether religious or secular. Political principles ought to be such as to be, potentially, objects of an overlapping consensus among all reasonable citizens -- those, that is, who are respectful of their fellow citizens as equals and ready to abide by fair terms of cooperation. .... The consensus may not exist at present, but it ought to be a plausible possibility for the future, and we should be able to envision a plausible trajectory from where we are to such a consensus.”

Nussbaum goes on to identify two characteristics of such political principles. The first is narrowness in scope to cover only political entitlements and matters of political structure. The second is having a shallow basis or foundation that is focused on ethical notions central to the core political principles such as equality and equal justice. The idea is that over time most citizens will come to accept the political principles because they respect both secular and religious values and they are also respectful of freedom and equality for people holding such diverse values.

Some of the moral content from such political principles flows from equal respect and tolerance of diverse but mutually respectful beliefs. The point of the political principles is not to establish a single doctrine, but instead to provide a basis for social glue or cohesion with as little coercion as possible, e.g., enforcement of racial anti-discrimination laws.

Instead of drawing on religious or metaphysical traditions, Nussbaum looks to sources such as empirical psychology, sociology, human development science and history to inform political principles. Those empirical sources are used for insight about how to reinforce positive emotions while discouraging negative emotions that can easily derail political liberalism and lead to intolerant tribalism and tyranny. In essence, Nussbaum looks to the science of what humans are and why they think and behave as they do. and then applies that knowledge to building a liberal political framework that is stable, compassionate and dedicated to equality and equal justice. Inherent in those beliefs is deep social moral value.

Nussbaum argues that science has made it clear that despite the human tendency for radical evil, society and culture are universal influences that can blunt its impact. Although radical evil, is inherent in the human condition from birth, society and culture and reign it in and negate most of its tendency to divide and degrade societies and how they mistreat various groups.

Can that work?

It isn't clear if Nussbaum’s vision of tolerant, just political liberalism can take hold at present. The ideology she professes is somewhat abstract, so the strength of the social glue it might afford may not be enough to do the job. Also, the power of dark free speech, lies, deceit, and emotional manipulation, to divide and corrupt morality and behaviors is painfully obvious in current American politics. It may be the case that social divisions and intolerance constitute unsuitable conditions to even try this experiment. On the other hand, there probably will never be optimal social conditions. It is hard to imagine that the new ferocity of dark free speech will lessen any time soon.

40% of Americans Believe in Creationism

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. However, more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years -- either with God's guidance (33%) or, increasingly, without God's involvement at all (22%).

The latest findings, from a June 3-16 Gallup poll, have not changed significantly from the last reading in 2017. However, the 22% of Americans today who do not believe God had any role in human evolution marks a record high dating back to 1982. This figure has changed more than the other two have over the years and coincides with an increasing number of Americans saying they have no religious identification.

As many as 47% and as few as 38% of Americans have taken a creationist view of human origins throughout Gallup's 37-year trend. Likewise, between 31% and 40% of U.S. adults have attributed humans' development to a combination of evolution and divine intervention over the same period.

Sharp Differences by Religious Preference and Education

As has been the case historically, Americans' views on evolution and creationism vary sharply based on their religious identification, how often they attend church and their education level.

Majorities of Protestants (56%) and those who attend church at least once a week (68%) believe that God created humans in their present form. Meanwhile, 59% of those who do not identify with any religion believe in evolution without any intervention from God.

Those with a college degree are much more likely to believe in evolution than creationism, while the opposite is true of those without a college degree. 

However, even among adults with a college degree, more believe God had a role in evolution than say it occurred without God.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx