Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
Bloomberg will be appointed to serve as a Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions.
Bloomberg will work with governments, businesses, cities and financial institutions to secure new pledges to significantly reduce emissions over the next several decades.
The former New York City Mayor previously held roles as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action in 2018 and UN Special Envoy on Cities and Climate Change in 2014.
The United Nations has tapped former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg for a top climate post geared toward engaging governments and businesses to take action on climate change.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday announced Bloomberg will be appointed to serve as his Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions, a role in which Bloomberg will “mobilize stronger and more ambitious climate action” ahead of the COP 26 climate summit set to take place in Scotland later this year. The summit is seen as a key moment in the global effort to curb global warming six years after the Paris climate agreement was created.
The UN said Bloomberg will work with governments, businesses, cities and financial institutions to secure new pledges to significantly reduce emissions over the next several decades.
He will also work with high-emitting nations and industries to accelerate the phase out of coal and a transition to a clean energy economy.
Bloomberg, who has campaigned on the issue of climate change, previously held roles as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action in 2018 and UN Special Envoy on Cities and Climate Change in 2014.
“Fighting climate change is a global challenge that requires strong global collaboration. I’m honored to be returning as Special Envoy to the UN Secretary-General to help drive the fight forward and secure a greener, healthier future for generations to come,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
The appointment comes as the Biden administration has moved forward to rejoin the Paris climate accord, reversing former President Trump’s withdrawal from the pact aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
Personality traits: Stable over time, maybe due more to
genes (inheritance) than nurture (non-genetic effects)
Heritability vs. inheritability of traits
Heredity refers to the likelihood or probability of traits running in families or groups. A trait can arise from genetics (nature), environment (nurture), or usually some combination of both. Environmental or nurturing influences include habits, behaviors, and various physical, emotional and psychological experiences. Families often demonstrate similar habits and behavior because they tend to share at least some experiences. Heritable traits are not necessarily genetic.
On the other hand, inherited traits are due only to genes. Eye and hair color and blood type are inherited as a gene(s) from each parent. Body shape is both inherited (genetic) and heritable (nurture influenced), but probably mostly influenced by inheritance (genes). Body shape can be affected to some extent by exercise and eating habits, which can arise from heredity, e.g., family habits. In the case of eye and hair color and blood type, nurture effects do not influence those traits. Being a good cook can run in families and that trait might be significantly or nearly all a heritable (nurture) trait with little or no known inheritance (genes) effects.
In a 2016 research paper, The Heritability Fallacy, two researchers wrote about the confusion that commonly plagues the concept of heritability vs. inheritability:
Contrary to popular belief, the measurable heritability of a trait does not tell us how ‘genetically inheritable’ that trait is. Further, it does not inform us about what causes a trait, the relative influence of genes in the development of a trait, or the relative influence of the environment in the development of a trait. Because we already know that genetic factors have significant influence on the development of all human traits, measures of heritability are of little value, except in very rare cases. (emphasis added)
My read of the data is that most human behavior traits arise from a variable combination of nature and nurture and are thus both inherited and heritable. One expert estimated that in terms of political beliefs and behaviors, the average person's politics is is about 35% nature or genes and about 65% nurture. Another estimated it was about 50:50. Clearly, this is not a precise science.
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism:a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of a strong central power to preserve a political or social status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting; authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic in nature and may be based on the rule of a party or the military, limited plurality, political legitimacy based on appeals to emotion and characterization of the regime as necessary to combat threats, which are often ill-defined, suppression of political opposition, etc.
Declining respect for democracy
Some portion of all populations appear to include people with an authoritarian mindset or susceptible to authoritarian appeals (which seem to be usually heavily grounded in dark free speech). In the 1950s and until recently, authoritarianism was generally considered to be a personality trait. recent research suggested that authoritarianism is not stable enough to be a personality trait and instead is a personal adaptation or a trait that is variable.
Authoritarianism has long been conceived of as a highly stable personality trait (Adorno et al., 1950; Altemeyer, 1981), though recent accounts have argued that authoritarianism is too malleable to justify this conception. We provided a test of the trait conception of authoritarianism by measuring its stability in a community sample of twins over a 15 year period, and by identifying the source of any stability with biometric modeling. Our results showed that authoritarianism exhibited a high degree of rank-order stability (r = .74). Biometric analyses indicated that this stability derived primarily from genetic influences, with changes in authoritarianism due to the unique experiences of the individual. In both of these respects, our results were highly comparable to those reported for other personality traits in previous work, indicating support for the trait conception of authoritarianism. .... Our results were consistent with the conception of authoritarianism as a highly stable personality trait. .... This stability was particularly pronounced among the more educated segment of the sample. Among those with 14 or more years of education (N = 285), the correlation between Time 1 and Time 2 scores was .78, significantly higher than the correlation of .64 among those with 13 or fewer years of education (N = 240; p < .001). (emphasis added)
By now it seems clear that the ex-president, most of the GOP leadership and most rank and file republicans are significantly or dominantly authoritarian and that will probably be very hard to change without significant social violence in America, unless more effective non-violent means to address the problem are applied, e.g., maybe pragmatic rationalism, social trust building efforts, etc. If the 2013 data is fundamentally sound, it is reasonable to believe that the authoritarianism the now fascist GOP and ex-president have unleashed cannot easily be tamped down.
Decades of radical right lies and polarizing anti-democratic rhetoric (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.) plowed and fertilized the ground for the rise of fascism in modern America. The ex-president was the toxic seed that thrived in that ground and acted as a force for authoritarian minds to coalesce around. It took American involvement in World War II to tamp American fascism down. Unfortunately, the radical right has finally succeeded in resurrecting it and bringing it into mainstream political acceptance by the political right,
The data in the 2013 paper is consistent with data analyzing the 2016 election indicating that the single most important factor in driving support for the ex-president was (probably still is) unease over social and demographic changes. Economic complaints and fears were the other co-mingled primary influencer. In view of all the data, one can begin to clearly see how a demagogic authoritarian could have and did overwhelm the old order in the GOP. That old order was replaced with the anti-democratic fascism that now arguably dominates the GOP. It was a smaller step than I thought from authoritarian GOP radical right authoritarianism to full-blown fascist cult authoritarianism.
Maybe it really does matter if authoritarianism and fascism are inherited.
Footnote:
1. Although authoritarianism is likely to be a significantly or mostly genetic problem, that does not mean the only solution is ethnic cleansing or violence. IMO, social means and institutions, e.g., building social trust, critical thinking and defenses against propaganda, worked in the past to keep it in check and that is what will probably be needed in the future to restore a stable status quo. My brand of politics always looks for non-violent, minimally oppressive-discriminatory means to achieve good political, economic, social and environmental outcomes.
To make this completely clear: I am not explicitly or implicitly advocating ethnic, ideological or social cleansing by force, coercion or any other non-democratic mean. That is how authoritarians and fascists operate. Pragmatic rationalists like me advocate non-violent, respectful social means to address social problems, including the rise of GOP authoritarianism and fascism.
Research is into personality and authoritarianism is ongoing and seems to be in a fairly early state of knowledge. A 2020 paper commented:
Philosophers have long speculated that authoritarianism and belief in determinism are functionally related. .... Authoritarianism and allied variables manifested moderate to large positive correlations with both fatalistic and genetic determinism beliefs. .... openness was negatively related to fatalistic determinism beliefs and agreeableness was negatively related to genetic determinism beliefs. Taken together, our findings clarify the nature of relations between authoritarianism and general personality, on the one hand, and free will/determinism beliefs, on the other, and suggest intriguing intersections between worldviews and personality traits. .... Scholarly recognition of potential links between deterministic beliefs and authoritarian attitudes can be traced to the origins of modern social science. Fromm (1941), a pioneering scholar of the psychology of totalitarianism, posited that individuals seek to “escape from freedom” via authoritarianism in times of uncertainty and threat. Similarly, Adorno and colleagues’ The Authoritarian Personality (1950) highlighted belief in fate, a variant of determinism, as one of 9 personality facets underlying susceptibility to fascist ideology. .... few authors have examined the more basic hypothesis that authoritarianism is related to belief in determinism writ large, the notion that “all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined.” (emphasis added)
Fromm may have arrived at a critically important insight in 1941, years before the full savagery and misery of German and Russian authoritarianism had been fully unleashed on the world. What Fromm seems to have intuited is that authoritarians can't handle changing reality and in their moral cowardice, they regress into force to protect their weak egos.
Last evening, I see that Rep. Liz Cheney voted along with all but
one of her fellow Republicans (see link above) to NOT remove/strip Rep. Marjory Taylor Greene from her House committees (education and budget).
What are we to make of the fact that, while Cheney unapologetically voted to impeach
Trump (and got a lot of GOP political flak for it), she did not seem to have a
problem with keeping MTG on these important influential committees?It should be noted that yesterday, Cheney herself, in a secret ballot, escaped removal from her prestigious "third in line" Republican Leadership role, by a vote of 145-she should stay, 61-she should be removed.
So, what happened to Liz’s "principles" spine?
-Was it a case of her being sympathetic to MTG plight, seeing’s
how Cheney herself came close to being an outcast?(I.e., didn’t want to play with fire and get burned again?)
-Did Cheney believe MTG’s mea culpa speech (for which half the GOP caucus gave it a
standing ovation) and that had no apologies in it; only so-called explanations,
regarding her “previous” beliefs in QAnon?
-Other?
Finally, do you predict MTG will revert back to her old ways, maybe
in a sense of revenge, now that she has been outcast from committees?
The $600 billion fascist calls its GOP COVID relief proposal a sincere attempt at bipartisanship. That is a cynical partisan lie. Their rationale is based on the tried and true radical right complaintb that we cannot afford Biden's $1.9 trillion proposal. When it comes to the fascist GOP doing mass deficit spending, e.g., the monster 2017 tax cut for rich people law, there are no complaints from republicans in leadership roles. But when democrats want domestic spending, the GOP hypocrites howl in sanctimonious outrage about the debt and that tactic has been in place at least since the 1980s. At least, that was my take on this matter.
Salon published a more comprehensive look at just how purely partisan the faux bipartisan claim really is. There's more to it. Salon writes:
Ten Senate Republican have proposed a COVID relief bill of about $600 billion. That's less than a third of Biden's plan. They promise "bipartisan support" if he agrees.
Their proposal isn't a compromise. It would be a total surrender. It trims direct payments and unemployment aid that Americans desperately need. Biden should reject it out of hand.
Republicans say America can't afford Biden's plan. "We just passed a program with over $900 billion in it," groused Senator Mitt Romney.
Rubbish. We can't afford not to. Millions of people are hurting.
Beyond COVID relief, Biden has other proposals waiting in the wings, such as repairing aging infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one. These would make the economy grow even faster over the long term – further reducing the debt's share.
There's no chance that public spending will "crowd out" private investment. If you hadn't noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world in search of borrowers.
It's hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.
If they really don't want to add to the debt, they have another alternative: A tax on super-wealthy Americans.
The total wealth of America's 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic, a 40 percent increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden's COVID relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency COVID wealth tax?
Let's be honest. The real reason Republicans don't want Biden's plan is they fear it will work.
This would be the Republican's worst nightmare: All the anti-government claptrap they've been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.
Government isn't the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden's success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans' utter failures on COVID and jobs.
Trumpian Republicans in Congress have an even more diabolical motive for blocking Biden. They figure if Americans remain in perpetual crises and ever-deepening fear, they'll lose faith in democracy itself.
This would open the way for another strongman demagogue in 2024 – if not Trump, a Trump-impersonator like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, or Trump Junior.
If Biden is successful, though, Americans' faith in democracy might begin to rebound – marking the end of the nation's flirtation with fascism. If he helps build a new economy of green jobs with good wages, even Trump's angry white working-class base might come around.
My worry is Biden may want so much to demonstrate bipartisanship that his plans get diluted to the point where Republicans get what they want: Failure.
Forget bipartisanship. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans didn't give a hoot about bipartisanship when they and Trump were in power.
The multiple crises engulfing America are huge. The window of opportunity for addressing them is small. If ever there was a time for boldness, it is now. (emphasis added)
That presents a more complete picture of the fascist's false claim of motivation by bipartisanship. I find that reasoning and in view of the underlying facts to be persuasive. The fascist GOP really does want government to fail. They want faith in democracy and the rule of law to fade so some form of a corrupt, incompetent, white Christian autocracy-theocracy can take its place.
Another aspect of the false bipartisanship claim that has come up recently relates to the bailout after the 2008 financial disaster. The GOP reduce the size of it in the name of fiscal conservatism and they promised cooperation with Obama. Experts now think the bailout was too small and that significantly slowed the recovery. On top of that, Obama never got much or any bipartisanship after that. In retrospect, probably the only reason the republicans allowed a relief bill under Obama was because all the spending went to rich people and corporations, not to regular Americans.
We've seen this radical right Trojan House before and let it in. Doing that again would be a huge, maybe fatal, mistake.
There’s an old joke about a patient who visits the doctor and says to him, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” And the physician responds, “Don’t do that.”
Similarly, attempting to cure stupidity in today’s world can be a frustrating, eternal quest. If you let it.
So, don’t do that, advises a West Chandler man, who has made it his business to address perceived moronic behavior – and there seems to be no shortage of that in these politically charged, pandemic-stressed times.
Don’t judge. Don’t presume. Take a step back, draw a deep breath and try to see another point of view, Eric Bailey recommends.
And what is stupid, really? As we’ve seen in recent times, “stupid” is something about which people may disagree.
“Everyone at some point in their life will think of someone as an idiot or stupid,” Bailey said. “That sentence, ‘You’re an idiot,’ completely shuts down communication. It shuts down connection. If you need to find ways to reconnect with one another, putting that judgement out there between us is going to prevent us from actually connecting.”
Bailey, 38, and his wife, Jamie, 37, who live in the Ray Road/McClintock Drive area of West Chandler, operate Bailey Strategic Innovation Group, which has morphed into a consulting agency that does conferences and workshops for organizations, government entities, retreats, strategic planning and leadership development for more than 200 clients around the world. They deliver authentic takes on life by using brain science to address irrational behavior and drawing from their own relationship to help people improve theirs so they can have a civil conversation with those with whom they disagree, or vice versa.
They do not do it by wearing shirts that proclaim, “I’m with stupid.”
Bailey is a voracious reader of psychological research. He has written a book, mirthfully titled The Cure for Stupidity, an exploration of real life in relationships and parenting. Together, they recently started a podcast, also named The Cure for Stupidity, which is available on Apple, Spotify and Google podcasts. Video versions are accessible on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Bailey said. “One of the things we see a lot is how easy it is for people to see someone else as stupid or an idiot. We try to show people how to see beyond that and how to see the human on the other side.”
Among the Baileys’ clients are Association for Change Management Professionals-Europe, Zell, Google, U.S. Air Force, Los Angeles County, St. Louis and Phoenix Police Department.
This is a guy who has helped likely NFL Hall-of-Famer Larry Fitzgerald pet a rhinoceros, taught dozens of young children to ski, changed the strategic course of cities across the country, jumped out of an airplane with his wife, flown an F-16 and chatted with LL Cool J on the campus of Harvard University.
“What we find is that every single organization is dealing with the same things,” Bailey said. “Every single person we coach, from executives to front-line staff, is dealing with exactly the same things, about communication, understanding and empathy.”
Bailey’s experiences have taught him that no matter what life puts in your path, there are lessons to be learned or stories to be told. Among them is that “stupidity” comes from the natural tendency to judge another person, he said.
“All of this work is based in psychology and brain science,” said Bailey, who holds a master’s degree in Leadership and Organizational Development from Saint Louis University. “We try to help people realize that if they remove that natural tendency to judge, then those around us aren’t as quote-unquote stupid any longer, they’re just seeing the world from a different point of view.
“In everything that’s happening with politics and division, everyone tends to sit in place and point to the other side and say, ‘How are you this stupid?’ If we took the time to look at the other side and find the rationality of their position, all of a sudden, it’s, ‘Oh, you’re not stupid, you’re just seeing things in a way other than the way I see them.’”
According to Jaime Bailey, reflecting inward and seeing things from an alternate perspective is a good basis for finding common ground “as opposed to us vs. them.”
“In marriage, in friendships, with your parents, in the workplace with your manager or employees, it’s so easy to take an us-versus-them perspective as opposed to understanding and figuring out the best way together,” she said.
As Eric Bailey points out, it’s easy to say, “Don’t be judgmental,” but how do you get somebody to stop it?
“I encourage people to ask themselves: What do I truly want out of this?” he said. “Do I want to strengthen a relationship or do I want to win? Do I want to understand them better or am I trying to prove how smart I am? When you ask yourself that, it changes the way the brain functions, from a more animalistic fight-or-flight to a more human curiosity.
“Then, the follow-up question is: If that’s what you truly want, then how would you behave? If you want to strengthen a relationship, then you would show up differently in this conversation. You would stop trying to force your opinion and start trying to learn more.”
The most important question in these difficult conversations, Bailey said, is: Why are you so passionate about your position?
“That’s a very important question because, one, it acknowledges that we are on different positions but, two, it acknowledges strong emotion,” he said. “So, we’re not actually talking about why did you vote for this guy, but why are you so passionate about your position? It sort of gets at something underneath that is based on strong emotion.”
The COVID-19 pandemic also has influenced human behavior as a result of the stress, according to Bailey.
“Many are dealing with bouts of depression,” he said. “Uncertainty tends to do that. The same part of the brain is stimulated when we have uncertainty, when we face change, and when we experience physical pain. When you think about that, it makes sense why we are having such a hard time.”
There is trauma research called Toxic Positivity or Toxic Optimism, which suggests that if people always are looking for an optimistic outcome and then are frequently let down because it is not attained they can develop despair.
“Think how we entered this COVID time,” Bailey said. “Last February, we were all saying too bad for China. In March, we were saying, oh, too bad for New York and Seattle. That will never happen here. By late March, we were like, OK, we can shut down for a week. Then in April, we can shut down for a month. It’s just a month and then we can go back to normal.
“We kept pushing this finish line – to the end of May, then into July, then to now. Each time we missed it, many started to develop despair. You hear people say it will go back to normal soon. That starts to build this toxic optimism, where we’re continually let down when it doesn’t happen the way we hope it will.”
COVID-19 angst, uncivil political discourse and most issues within relationships can be dealt with effectively through understanding, Bailey said.
“I keep thinking about a scene in Apollo 13,” he said. “The ship is not going to reach the moon. Ground control is afraid we’re going to lose the astronauts. All of the people in Houston are sitting around a table trying to figure out how we are going to do this. How are we going to get a square peg in a round hole and save them?
“Then someone walks up and dumps a boxful of essentially garbage on the table and says, ‘This is what we have to work with. How are we going to get them home?’ That’s what I think 2020 was. We got a box of garbage dumped on us, and we’ve got to do our best with it.”
A Washington Post opinion piece discusses grim news from North Korea and how tyrants hate information they do not control. WaPo writes:
Last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did something none of his predecessors dared to do: He admitted that his country is in crisis. A grim reality may have left him little choice. The hermit kingdom is reeling from sanctions, natural disasters, famine and the covid-19 pandemic. And since life in North Korea looks likely to get even worse in the months ahead, the regime is doubling down on its efforts to prevent the flow of outside information into the country.
At the end of 2020, North Korea passed a slew of new laws to rein in what it calls “reactionary ideology and culture.” Key details of these laws, set to go into effect last month, recently emerged. They inadvertently reveal one of North Korea’s chief concerns: an influx of South Korean media. Reportedly, the new measures threaten anything from up to 15 years of hard labor for possessing South Korean books or movies to up to two years for just speaking with a South Korean accent. The laws even plan to hold parents accountable, calling for fines of roughly $111 to $222 for fathers and mothers who “failed to raise their children properly.” (One estimate puts the average monthly salary for North Koreans at about $4.) Distribution of foreign materials may warrant the worst punishment of all: death.
The regime has cause for concern. A 2019 study of 200 defectors showed that more than 90 percent had watched foreign or South Korean media before they defected. South Korean dramas pose a particular problem. Not only do they depict life in a wealthier, freer country, but also they threaten the fabric of state-sponsored culture. Even South Korean accents and slang have become more common as a result of the popularity of dramas in North Korea.
Of note is the South Korean 2019 hit rom-com, “Crash Landing on You,” a drama popular among defectors and North Koreans alike. The film partially takes place in North Korea and has been praised for its honest depictions of North Korean life. A sarcastic phrase from the drama, “You think you’re the general or something?” has reportedly become commonplace, angering North Korean authorities, who believe it is used to mock Kim (often known in the North simply as “the General”). While some criticize the drama for romanticizing life in North Korea, the regime is not too keen on the portrayals of its corrupt leadership, referring to the work as an “atrocious provocation.”
Northerners’ demand for products and information from the South appears to be growing. Some estimate as many as a quarter of North Koreans have mobile phones, many of which were illegally smuggled over the Sino-Korean border. This past October, authorities began a renewed crackdown on foreign cellphone usage by promising forgiveness if citizens and brokers “voluntarily” turned in their phones.
Before covid-19, North Koreans gained access to bootleg dramas via smuggled USBs sold in the jangmadang (private markets at times tolerated by the authorities). And South Korean media consumption has fueled demand for other illicit South Korean imports such as cosmetics, with some women using South Korean beauty products as a silent protest against the regime.
Well there you have it. Another example of a murdering tyrant trying to control and obliterate inconvenient information to suit their self-serving purposes. It is a major part of how they rise to power or maintain it. Once again, dark free speech is a core tool that most political, religious and economic authoritarians rely heavily on.
