The Administration's Evil COVID-19 Sabotage and Lies

Where the polls are today according to the 
poll aggregation source 538

Sabotage

The Washington Post writes:

In the hours before President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, his campaign directed the removal of thousands of “Do Not Sit Here, Please!” stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event. 

The removal contradicted instructions from the management of the BOK Center, the 19,000-seat arena in downtown Tulsa where Trump held his rally on June 20.

BOK arena management bought the do-not-sit stickers for Trump’s rally to distance attendees in the arena. The stickers were meant to try to keep people distanced by leaving open seats. BOK staff put the stickers on almost every other seat in the arena, but Trump’s campaign came in and told event management to stop. Trump's goons then began removing the stickers. The WaPo article includes a sickening video showing a Trump goon removing the stickers from the seats. During the event, attendees did not leave spaces between themselves.

As would be expected from a campaign working for a chronic liar president who is expert at maintaining plausible deniability, the president's campaign lied and claimed that it was are not aware of any campaign staff asking or removing the social distancing measure.

That is evil. The president is personally responsible for very person who got infected there and for all who will suffer or die. All of that is harm and death directly on the president's hands.

Lies

The New York Times writes on the Vice President's first COVID-19 task farce briefing in about two months. The NYT writes:

The vice president falsely claimed that increased testing “is generating” more cases, among other exaggerations and inaccurate claims. 

The NYT pointed out that increased testing in other countries has not produced the increase in the infection rate now seen in the United States.

Pence claimed that “as we stand here today, all 50 states and territories across this country are opening up safely and responsibly” and “we flattened the curve”, both are a ridiculous claims the NYT labeled as false. Pence also falsely claimed that “more testing is generating more cases. To one extent or another, the volume of new cases coming in is a reflection of a great success in expanding testing across the country.”

The president is America's liar-in-chief, while the self-proclaimed "Christian" Pence is America's vice liar-in-chief. Either Pence is a fake Christian or Christianity accepts intentional lies that lead to needless suffering and deaths.

Lying through his unmasked, unchristian teeth --
note masked Fauci in the background enjoying the deception of the American people

Is it Time for Moral Condemnation?

“As soon as we develop algorithms that identify and block fake news sites, the creator of these sites will have a tremendous incentive to find creative ways to outwit the detectors. .... This framework paints a dreary picture of our hopes for defeating fake news. The better we get at detecting and stopping it, the better we should expect propagandists to get at producing and disseminating it. That said, the only solution is to keep trying. .... The idea that our search for truth in public discourse is an endless arms race between highly motivated, well-funded political and industrial forces attempting to protect or advance their interests, and a society trying to adapt to an ever-changing media and technological landscape, suggests that propagandists and others who seek to distort the facts will constantly invent new methods for doing so.” -- Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False beliefs Spread, 2019

“I develop a theory of propaganda which affects mass behavior without necessarily affecting mass beliefs. A group of citizens observe a signal of their government's performance, which is upwardly inflated by propaganda. Citizens want to support the government if it performs well and if others are supportive (i.e., to coordinate). Some citizens are unaware of the propaganda (“credulous”). Because of the coordination motive, the non-credulous still respond to propaganda, and when the coordination motive dominates they perfectly mimic the actions of the credulous. So, all can act as if they believe the government's lies even though most do not.” -- Andrew Little, Propaganda and credulity, Games and Economic Behavior, vol. 102, pages 224-232, 2017 (paper behind paywall)(free 2015 online non-peer reviewed version)

On conformity bias

People’s beliefs can sometimes be influenced by a psychological trait called conformity bias. When a group of people falsely believe something, other people in their presence sometimes come to believe the false belief by losing confidence in their own veracity and/or by simply wanting to conform to what the group believes. The phenomenon is well-documented. Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall comment in their 2019 book, The Misinformation Age: How False beliefs Spread: “While conformity seems to vary across cultures and over time, it reflects two truths about human psychology: we do not like to disagree with others, and we often trust the judgments of others over our own.”

On evil

One school of thought says it is counterproductive to use the word evil in political discourse because it is too pejorative, inflammatory, etc. It shuts down continued civil discourse. There is some truth in that line of argument. 

Another school of thought, or maybe just me, disagrees and argues that, we have descended into darkness enough that it is now time to call evil out for what it is, regardless of whether people are consciously aware or not. 

That raises the questions of (i) what the definition of evil is, and (ii) how one can rationally hold someone morally accountable for their own unconscious morality and attendant beliefs and behaviors.

Evil defined

IMO, evil is acts that are beyond mere immorality. Evil includes a conscious or unconscious element of malice or harm toward another person or group. Harm can arise from intent or lack of intent. It can arise from ignorance, or flawed or partisan reasoning. In this regard, I'm now going beyond condemning what most people*** are consciously aware of. I am no longer willing to accept or forgive unsupported beliefs that directly or indirectly cause undue harm, especially when evidence reasonably shows the errors. Ignorance of relevant of facts is no longer acceptable because the stakes are so high and facts are now available to most people. 

*** People who don't have the time or means to at least try to find real facts and non-bogus reasoning are excused. These days, there is no excuse for unwarranted ignorance or false beliefs flowing from logical nonsense. There is reliable information available online for free. People without access to information online are a different matter.

Civic duty

An argument against unwarranted ignorance is focused on both average people and on the special interests and people who use dark free speech and false beliefs for their own personal, economic, tribe or other benefit. Average people have a moral duty to at least try to not be deceived and manipulated into false beliefs and overtly irrational behaviors when those things harm important ideals including democracy, social comity and the rule of law.

People should be free to think and be nutty in private and in activities that are essentially private, e.g., church services, or in the home. But activities that affect the public and society are a different matter.

The situation for interests and people who use dark free speech is different. They bear moral responsibility for the false beliefs and resulting bad behaviors that flow from that. Arguably, when their propaganda causes people to harm themselves or others, even unintentionally, that crosses the line from immoral to evil.


Questions: Do average people have some civic duty to try to be more informed and less deceived? Is it evil to use dark free speech leads and it leads people to harm themselves or others, even unintentionally? If people fail or refuse to try to be more informed and less deceived and their false beliefs leads them to harm others, is that evil, immoral or something else, e.g., just a mistake?

At the dentist's office yesterday

Effects of Consuming and Believing Conservative Misinformation

Three recent studies have generated evidence indicating that misinformation from conservative media sources is linked to higher COVID-19 infection rates. Although there are multiple reasons for the failed US response including, a lack of a cohesive federal policy, botched testing and tracing, and a culture that emphasizes individualism, data is accumulating that indicates misinformation and false conspiracy theories are another factor in the failure. The Washington Post writes:

“The end result, according to one of the studies, is that infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.

“We are receiving an incredible number of studies and solid data showing that consuming far-right media and social media content was strongly associated with low concern about the virus at the onset of the pandemic,” said Irene Pasquetto, chief editor of the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, which published one of the studies.

A working paper posted by the National Bureau of Economic Research in May examined whether these incorrect beliefs affected real-world behavior.

The authors used anonymous location data from millions of cellphones to explore how the popularity of Fox News in a given Zip code related to social distancing practices there. By March 15, they found, a 10 percent increase in Fox News viewership within a Zip code reduced its residents’ propensity to stay home, in compliance with public health guidelines, by about 1.3 percentage points.

Given total stay-at-home behavior increased by 20 percentage points during the study period, that effect size is “pretty large,” said Andrey Simonov, the study’s lead author. It’s comparable to Fox’s persuasive effect on voting behavior, as identified in a 2017 paper[1] by a different team.”

If the show does not take the virus seriously, 
viewer behavior is affected

One of the studies focused on Fox News viewers 55 and older in areas where Sean Hannity’s show is more or less popular than Tucker Carlson’s program. Hannity viewers changed their pandemic-related behaviors like hand-washing or canceling travel plans four days later than other Fox News viewers. By contrast, Carlson’s viewership changed behaviors three days earlier. The results were that a one standard deviation increase in Hannity viewership compared to Carlson was associated with approximately 32 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14 and approximately 23 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28. The differences fade after the end of March presumably because since the middle of March, Hannity’s coverage had become quite close to Carlson’s in treating COVID-19 seriously.

Footnote: 

1. That 2017 study includes these comments:

“The largest elasticity magnitudes are on individuals from the opposite ideology of the channel. Were a viewer initially at the ideology of the median Democratic voter in 2008 to watch an additional three minutes of Fox News [FNC] per week, her likelihood of voting Republican would increase by 1.03 percentage points. Another pattern that emerges from the table is that Fox is substantially better at influencing Democrats than MSNBC is at influencing Republicans. This last feature is consistent with the regression result that the IV effect of Fox is greater and more consistent than the corresponding effect for MSNBC.

We find a persuasion rate of 58 percent in 2000, 27 percent in 2004, and 28 percent in 2008 for FNC. FNC is consistently more effective at converting viewers than is MSNBC which has corresponding estimated persuasion rates of just 16 percent, 0 percent, and 8 percent.

Our estimates imply increasing effects of FNC on the Republican vote share in presidential elections over time, from 0.46 points in 2000 to 6.34 points in 2008. Furthermore, we estimate that cable news can increase polarization and explain about two-thirds of the increase among the public in the United States, and that this increase depends on both a persuasive effect of cable news and the existence of tastes for like-minded news. Finally, we find that an influence-maximizing owner of the cable news channels could have large effects on vote shares, but would have to sacrifice some levels of viewership to maximize influence.”

She Wanted to Be a Republican President. She’s Voting for Biden.

The former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina tells The Ticket that she plans to vote for Joe Biden.

Republicans who say Donald Trump should lose in November but insist they won’t vote for Joe Biden aren’t being honest, Carly Fiorina argues.

Fiorina was a Republican candidate for president just four years ago, and was briefly Ted Cruz’s prospective running mate. Trump needs to go, she says—and that means she’s voting for Biden.

Fiorina is not going to keep quiet, write in another candidate, or vote third-party. “I’ve been very clear that I can’t support Donald Trump,” she told me, in an interview that can be heard in full on the latest episode of The Ticket. “And elections are binary choices.” She struggled with the decision, and whether to go public. But she said that this struggle is one Republicans need to have—including those who have rationalized supporting Trump despite their disagreements, because of some of his policies or judicial appointments.

“As citizens, our vote is more than a check on a box. You know, it’s a statement about where we want to go, and I think what we need now actually is real leadership that can unify the country,” she said. “I am encouraged that Joe Biden is a person of humility and empathy and character. I think he’s demonstrated that through his life. And I think we need humility and empathy everywhere in public life right now. And I think character counts.”

Of course, Trump diehards will dismiss her. She has said over the years that Trump isn’t a real businessman, that he lacks character, that he is the definition of an autocrat, that impeachment was “vital.” But she’s not the stereotype of a Republican squish: Before her 2016 run, she was a Tea Party–type candidate for Senate in 2010 and the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Four years ago, she voted for Trump—even after he’d been caught saying about her, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who said she agrees with former Defense Secretary James Mattis that Trump is a threat to the Constitution, but is “struggling” with whether to vote for him, is putting politics over principle, Fiorina told me. John Bolton, who has said he hopes for America’s sake that Trump loses but that he’ll write in a conservative Republican, looks to Fiorina like he’s “desperately trying to preserve some position in the Republican Party as a conservative Republican.” As for Cruz, who’s turned into an avid Trump defender—she said she hasn’t spoken with him in years. And Trump, she told me, can tweet whatever he wants about her.

It hasn’t been an easy journey to backing a Democrat, especially when she thinks about issues that she cares deeply about, such as limiting government spending and restricting abortion. But as she’s been working with her Unlocking Potential Foundation, which focuses on increasing diversity among corporate leadership, she’s also been watching how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed inequality in America. She needed to speak up, too. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are right, she said: The structures of power have been bent too far toward corporate control. But if conservatives really want to do anything about it, she said, they need to start by standing up for their principles.

What follows is an edited and condensed transcript:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/carly-fiorina-vote-biden/613474/

Democracy's Institutions are Falling to the Demagogue

Department of Justice lawyer Erica Newland

An article published in April in The Atlantic, The President Is Winning His War on American Institutions, lays out the status of the president's attacks on institutions that were supposed to stand in defense of democracy and the rule of law. This is very ugly. If the president is re-elected, he could very well push this country into a downward corrupt, authoritarian trajectory that it cannot recover from. The Atlantic writes:

“After three years, the adults have all left the room—saying just about nothing on their way out to alert the country to the peril—while Trump is still there. 

James Baker, the former general counsel of the FBI, and a target of Trump’s rage against the state, acknowledges that many government officials, not excluding himself, went into the administration convinced “that they are either smarter than the president, or that they can hold their own against the president, or that they can protect the institution against the president because they understand the rules and regulations and how it’s supposed to work, and that they will be able to defend the institution that they love or served in previously against what they perceive to be, I will say neutrally, the inappropriate actions of the president. And I think they are fooling themselves. They’re fooling themselves. He’s light-years ahead of them.” 

The adults were too sophisticated to see Trump’s special political talents—his instinct for every adversary’s weakness, his fanatical devotion to himself, his knack for imposing his will, his sheer staying power. They also failed to appreciate the advanced decay of the Republican Party, which by 2016 was far gone in a nihilistic pursuit of power at all costs. They didn’t grasp the readiness of large numbers of Americans to accept, even relish, Trump’s contempt for democratic norms and basic decency. It took the arrival of such a leader to reveal how many things that had always seemed engraved in monumental stone turned out to depend on those flimsy norms, and how much the norms depended on public opinion. Their vanishing exposed the real power of the presidency. Legal precedent could be deleted with a keystroke; law enforcement’s independence from the White House was optional; the separation of powers turned out to be a gentleman’s agreement; transparent lies were more potent than solid facts. None of this was clear to the political class until Trump became president. 

When Trump came to power, he believed that the regime was his, property he’d rightfully acquired, and that the 2 million civilians working under him, most of them in obscurity, owed him their total loyalty. He harbored a deep suspicion that some of them were plotting in secret to destroy him. He had to bring them to heel before he could be secure in his power. This wouldn’t be easy—the permanent government had defied other leaders and outlasted them. In his inexperience and rashness—the very qualities his supporters loved—he made early mistakes. He placed unreliable or inept commissars in charge of the bureaucracy, and it kept running on its own. 

But a simple intuition had propelled Trump throughout his life: Human beings are weak. They have their illusions, appetites, vanities, fears. They can be cowed, corrupted, or crushed. A government is composed of human beings. This was the flaw in the brilliant design of the Framers, and Trump learned how to exploit it. The wreckage began to pile up. He needed only a few years to warp his administration into a tool for his own benefit. If he’s given a few more years, the damage to American democracy will be irreversible.

[Department of Justice lawyer Erica] Newland and her colleagues were saving Trump from his own lies. They were using their legal skills to launder his false statements and jury-rig arguments so that presidential orders would pass constitutional muster. When she read that producers of The Apprentice had had to edit episodes in order to make Trump’s decisions seem coherent, she realized that the attorneys in the Office of Legal Counsel were doing something similar. Loyalty to the president was equated with legality. ‘There was hardly any respect for the other departments of government—not for the lower courts, not for Congress, and certainly not for the bureaucracy, for professionalism, for facts or the truth,’ she told me. ‘Corruption is the right word for this. It doesn’t have to be pay-to-play to be corrupt. It’s a departure from the oath.’” (emphasis added)

Despicable John Bolton

In a recent interview, John Bolton said that he would not vote for the president or Joe Biden. Instead, he will find what he considers to be an acceptable conservative and write that person in as his vote for president. For all the good that tactic will do, Bolton should just write in himself or Mickey Mouse or anyone else real or imagined. It will be just another vote for the president that he so bitterly criticizes. Given Bolton’s insider knowledge and experience, his write-in tactic is idiotic and unpatriotic. He knows far better than most of us. Bolton’s lunacy is just another example of how incoherent, authoritarian and tribal the GOP and its radical ideology have become among GOP elites and probably many of the rank and file. Despite his first-hand knowledge, he still doesn’t have the moral courage to bring himself to defend the country against a demagogue tyrant-wannabe.

The irrational John Bolton

Coronavirus Déjà Vu All Over Again

The New York Times is reporting that COVID-19 is out of control most everywhere south of the US border. The NYT writes:

“Inequality, densely packed cities, legions of informal workers and weak health care systems have undermined efforts to fight the pandemic, as some governments have fumbled the response. 

The coronavirus was always going to hit Latin America hard. Even before it arrived, experts warned that the region’s combustible blend of inequality, densely packed cities, legions of informal workers living day-to-day and health care systems starved of resources could undermine even the best attempts to curb the pandemic. 

But by brushing off the dangers, fumbling the response, dismissing scientific or expert guidance, withholding data and simply denying the extent of the outbreak altogether, some governments have made matters even worse. 

In many ways, the faltering, scattershot approach to the pandemic in parts of Latin America resembles the disorganized approach in the United States — with some presidents in the region questioning how dangerous the virus is, championing unproven, baseless or even dangerous remedies, clashing bitterly with state governors and refusing to wear face masks in public. 

And as the virus storms through Latin America, corruption has flourished, the already intense political polarization in some countries has deepened, and some governments have curtailed civil rights. In El Salvador, thousands of people have been rounded up, many for violating stay-at-home orders, despite the Supreme Court’s demands that the detentions end. 

Economies already stretched thin before the virus lie on the precipice of ruin. Millions are out of work, with millions more at risk. The United Nations has said the pandemic could result in a drop of 5.3 percent in the regional economy — the worst in a century — forcing some 16 million people into extreme poverty.

In Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro spent months downplaying the threat of the virus — calling it a “measly flu” and railing against shutdowns imposed by governors — ....

In Mexico, where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has suggested that a clean conscience helps ward off infection — ‘no lying, no stealing, no betraying, that helps a lot to not get coronavirus,’”

Does that sound like déjà vu or what? As the old saying goes, what goes around in the US comes around south of the border. Well, at least for bad stuff. Not so sure about good stuff.

Obrador: no lying, no stealing, no betraying

Trump: it's a democratic hoax, it will go away like magic, drink some bleach

Hm. Is Obrador is ahead of the president regarding COVID? Or, are they tied? Since the president is the world’s best negotiator and smartest stable genius with the best vocabulary, how could he not be ahead?