Book Review: A Lot Of People Are Saying

The 2019 book, Book Review: A Lot Of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, is an explanation of the rise of a new kind of conspiracy thinking that falls short of being conspiracy theory. The book is short (176 pages, paperback version) and easy to read. The authors are Russell Muirhead, Professor of Democracy and Politics, Dartmouth College, and Nancy L. Rosenblum, Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government, Harvard University.

The book was published before the 1/6 coup attempt and how the now fascist GOP responded to it so far. The authors were thus not influenced by those watershed events in American politics. Those anti-democratic events directly negate a few of the assertions the book's arguments are based on. Nonetheless, the overall analysis and arguments that Muirhead and Rosenblum make remain mostly untouched. This book offers a reasoned vision of what is happening right now and just how damaging and dangerous this species of dark free speech is.

What is new conspiracism?

Classical conspiracy theory, which can be true or false, attempts to make sense of political events by positing evidence, reasoning and a theory that explains the events. There is some proportionality between evidence and the explanation. There is an honest attempt to find evidence to fit the theory or to make evidence fit a theory. Conspiracy theories (i) are typically attached to an ideology or political theory, and (ii) provide an explanation. Sometimes the investigation is flawed by external factors such as partisanship, confirmation bias and/or motivated reasoning, but at least there is an attempt to offer explanations that better fit the facts. Classical conspiracy theories include ones to explain the 9/11 attacks. The drafting and content of the Declaration of Independence arose from a conspiracy theory among Americans about the evil, tyrannical intentions of the British government toward America. 

“The incendiary purpose of the conspiracy theory in the Declaration remains. On July 4, 2017, National Public Radio issued one hundred tweets that together contained the full text. Twitter followers identified as Donald Trump supporters were confused. They read the Tweets as inciting violence against the administration. ‘So NPR is calling for revolution. Interesting way to condone violence while trying to sound patriotic.’  ‘Your implications are clear.’ ‘Glad you are being defunded. You never had been balanced on your show.’ And the omnipresent charge: ‘Fake news.’”

By contrast, new conspiracism dispenses with an explanation and a political theory. Bare assertions are legitimized by online repetition and affirmation or ‘likes’. That is the thin oxygen that gives new conspiracism its life and power. 

“Yet the new conspiracism discards this defining purpose [of explaining an event]. Not only does the new conspiracism fail to offer explanations, there is often nothing to explain. .... The typical form of the new conspiracism is bare assertion .... Another example of sheer allegation is ‘birtherism’. .... Today, ‘fake’ is the most familiar example of bare assertion: fake news, fake FBI reports .... Fakeness is not a matter of error, after all, but of malignant intent. .... In addition to shedding explanation, the new conspiracism sheds political theory. It does not offer an account of what is threatened. It does not offer an account of the constructive political change that should follow from exposing the danger. .... The new conspiracism is not defending ultimate values; often the stakes are low, of the moment, and no values are articulated at all.”

Bare assertions typically come by way of one or both of two rhetorical tactics, the ominous question and innuendo. The ominous question, e.g., did the authorities test for this or do that in their investigation of the allegedly mysterious death of Antonin Scalia in Texas: “‘My gut tells me there is something fishy going on in Texas.’ No specific accusations are made, and no falsifiable assertions are ventured. The ‘just asking questions’ tactic substitutes for argument, evidence and explanation.” 

In the 2016 election, the ex-president used innuendo against Ted Cruz by repeating a National Enquirer article that suggested without evidence that there was a connection between Cruz’s father and Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s assassin. The ex-president said “Even if it isn’t totally true, there’s something there.” 

New conspiracism is often mixed with classical conspiracy theory, making it more difficult to understand and deal with. In that regard, it constitutes some of the very best dark free speech that mixes some facts and/or truths with lies and/or motivated reasoning. 

A lot of people are saying

New conspiracism relied heavily on repetition, forwarding and liking Tweets and public affirmation such as ‘a lot of people are saying’.

“What Trump, for instance, wants is not the architecture of an organized political party or even an organized movement but a throng that assents to his account of reality. ‘You know what’s important’, he said about his fantasy of illegal Clinton votes, ‘millions of people agree with me when I say that.’ Affirmation of his reality is the key act .... This helps us understand just how the internet is vital for the new conspiracists and how their use of it is different from classical conspiracists’. .... Repetition is the new conspiracist’s oxygen, and it sometimes seems, its whole purpose.”

The goal of new conspiracism: delegitimation

The authors argue that delegitimation of democracy, government officials, the press and other democratic institutions is the main goal. By constantly asserting false realities and crackpot motivated reasoning, the new conspiracists disorient people and imposes a constant burden on them to keep rejecting the attacks. This is not the same as reasonable mistrust, which is healthy for a democracy.  

“Where mistrust is a necessary element of democratic accountability and widespread mistrust is a sign of democratic failing, delegitimation is an active assault on democracy. Delegitimation exists when a political opposition that is mistrusted is come to be seen as a public enemy, for example. We are learning what delegitimation looks like. Authorities are cast as hostile elements .... Officials are ‘so-called’ officials .... They are demeaned and undermined, threatened, and declared criminal or traitorous.”

How to fight against it

The authors here are like some or most others who have written on the topic of political dark free speech. People and politicians have to constantly speak truth to the lies and nonsense. Politicians have to be more transparent to reduce the size of targets for conspiracism. Politicians have to be more assertive about “enacting democracy,” which they define as both acknowledging concerns there may be in conspiracism but firmly pointing out that the beliefs are false and democratic government is not out to enslave the American people. They admit that some republican politicians (1) acknowledge the public concerns, but fail to defend democracy, or (2) say nothing at all. Both of which are inherently anti-democratic. 

Interestingly, the authors concede that closed minds cannot be reached. Instead, open minds are the target for the difficult task of trying relegitimize and repair what has been delegitimized and damaged.

The weakness that runs through this book has to be made clear. The 1/6 coup attempt and how the GOP responded thereafter directly contradicts some of what the authors were thinking and arguing. They did not foresee in 2019 what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. In my mind, the 1/6 coup attempt changed the new conspiracism the authors articulated to a newer and more virulent form. That virus mutated on 1/6 and it got a lot nastier than the original strain. We really need a new and better vaccine.

Oops! I accidently took a "nasty" pill this morning :-O

Let's play "What's wrong with this picture?"

(Hint: See arrow) 😉

Is Spirituality Hard Wired or Something Else?

Is God in there somewhere?

Scientists have been trying for decades to answer the question of whether spirituality or religious belief arises among humans solely in the brain or both in and out of the brain. Either way, there is a postulated role for hard wiring or neural pathways as a necessary component. It is therefore reasonable to think that spiritual and religious experiences are hard wired to some extent, but that culture and life experiences can affect those perceptions. 

The nature vs nurture contribution is unknown and probably very hard to assess. Studies with twins indicate some role for nature (genes and inherited innate hard wiring). What culture and life experience can do is alter hard wiring to some unknown extent. The brain partially rewires itself all the time in response to life experiences.

The following shows some of the struggles that science is having in dealing with spirituality and how to describe it and do research on it.

A 2009 review article comments:

To figure out whether the main empirical question “Is our brain hardwired to believe in and produce God [the producing point of view], or is our brain hardwired to perceive and experience God? [the perceiving point of view]” is answered, this paper presents systematic critical review of the positions, arguments and controversies .... allowing consciousness/mind/spirit and brain/body/matter to be seen as different sides of the same phenomenon, neither reducible to each other. .... A methodological shift from “explanation” to “description” of religious experience is suggested.

Thus, based on the reasoning set out above, we can construct the following definition of religious experience: religious experience is the very moment of experiencing of ultimate divine reality or ultimate divine truth, a transcendence of events or universe, timelessness, spacelessness, and divine being and/or union with it in any combination with an accompanied memorable feeling of reality, emotions and thoughts with a religious content. We use the word “religious” instead of “mystic” or “spiritual”, because “religious” in our opinion is a narrower concept and also adds a cultural dimension.

It seems that religious experience was and is a world-wide phenomenon. According to Burkert (1996) in prehistoric times no groups of people lived which had no religious experience (judging by the existence of religion). At the same time, groups existed which have no demonstrated such attributes of human culture as agriculture, clothing, money, laws and writing.

Arguments for a “producing” point of view

A “producing” point of view (sometimes it is referred as neuroscientific and/or cognitive) is a reductionistic one and can be summarised as follows: our brain is structured so as to provide us with experiences that make us believe there is a God, but this belief may merely be the result of internal brain activity and our interpretation of it.

Argument 1: It has been reported that the intense activation of the frontal and temporal cortices and limbic system, as well as (de)activation of the parietal cortex give rise to religious experience (for the full list of brain areas and structures and for the references, see Table 4). .... The formulation of argument 1 is weak because the findings on which it is based are correlative in nature, and as such, they tell us nothing about the cause-consequence relationships. .... It follows from this brief critical review of the arguments for a “producing” point of view that observed neuroscientific arguments tell us nothing about the true nature of religious experience or God.

Arguments for a “perceiving” point of view

The “perceiving” position (sometimes it is referred as theological) can be summarised as follows: our brains have the capacity to perceive God, and since our brain is designed to attune us to reality, this points to the likelihood that there is a God.

Argument 1: If the human brain enables humans to have religious experience, to perceive and believe in God, then it should be a reason for this experience (Joseph 2001). .... Religious experience may co-evolve with any other human phenomenon (for example, deactivation-mediated abstract reasoning, Previc 2006) which increases the survival of the organism. On the other hand, religious experience and practice themselves may have a protective effect on human communities and thus may also increase their survival. However, this reasoning tries to explain how religious experience has been preserved in human evolution but not the reason for the origin of religious experience. 

As it follows from critical review of the arguments for both the “producing” and “perceiving” points of view the main empirical question “Is our brain hardwired to believe in and produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive God?” remains unanswered.

A 2016 assessment of the state of the art indicates that spirituality is both hard wired and an adaptation. The Brain Blogger wrote:

The question of whether religion has been “hardwired” into our brains or an evolutionary adaptation has been debated for decades, however, more recently we have uncovered scientific underpinning for both possibilities.

Barrett equates religion to language acquisition where “we come into this world cognitively prepared for language; our culture and upbringing merely dictate which languages we will be exposed to.” Brain Blogger’s own Dr. Jennifer Gibson discussed how “the brain seems predisposed to a belief in all things spiritual” back in 2008.

As the original question remains unanswered, we are early… the neuroscientific study of religious and spiritual phenomena remains in its infancy. There is mounting evidence of a biological correlate to these phenomena, however, this does not necessarily negate an actual spiritual component.

A 2020 review article comments:

Neurotheology originated from brain-scan studies that revealed specific correlations between certain religious thoughts and localized activated brain areas known as “God Spots.” This relatively young scholarly discipline lacks clear consensus on its definition, ideology, purpose, or prospects for future research. .... God Spot research is poised to move beyond observation to robust hypothesis generation and testing.

The field of neurotheology emerged from metabolic brain-scan discoveries, made in a few pioneering laboratories, showing that specific areas of the brain become more metabolically active when people have religious experiences (d’Aquili and Newberg 1999; Newberg et al. 2002; McNamara 2009; Newberg 2010, 2018). Scholars have responded to these findings in various ways, ranging from intrigue, to indifference, and to dismissive labeling of these areas as “God Spots” in the brain.

The field is unsettled. Physical structures in the brain, neural pathways or hard wiring, are believed to be necessary for religious or spiritual experience, but those concepts that are hard to define and pin down. One can be doubtful that a spiritual component outside the brain is involved. But that belief is probably subject to the criticism that it is too reductionist and/or contradicted by sufficient evidence. Maybe so, but I continue to doubt it. 

RINO Hunts, McConnell's Calculations and Fox News vs Democracy & Consumers

These short pieces clearly indicate the future path of American politics for the foreseeable future. They also reveal a lot about the moral basis on which mainstream conservative politics and most of the business community operate.

After RINO hunts, only the left is left

Moderate republican - extinct

Disloyal republican - nearing extinction

Bloomberg Businessweek writes:

The start of Donald Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial is the latest reminder that although he’s left the White House, the former president hasn’t vacated his role as the dominant figure in the Republican Party—and the most divisive one. Republicans had hoped to spend the Biden era stoking tensions between moderate Democrats like the new president and the rising faction to his left. Instead, it’s the GOP that’s quickly fractured over the question of whether its members should remain in thrall to Trump or seek to move on from him.

“Many of you are hacked off that I condemned his lies,” Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, whose state party plans to censure him, said in a video defending his criticism of Trump. “Let’s be clear: The anger in this state party has never been about me violating principle or abandoning conservative policy. I’m one of the most conservative voters in the Senate. The anger’s always been simply about me not bending the knee to … one guy.”

Make no mistake, when Sasse says he is one of the most conservative voters in the Senate he means it, He is a radical right authoritarian or maybe something worse, e.g., a semi-fascist. He is not close to moderate by any reasonable definition. GOP voter loyalty to the party has shifted to the ex-president. Even radical conservatives people like Sasse are facing extinction unless they join the fascist cult.[1] That is where mainstream American conservatism has moved. 

Biden has no GOP moderate wing to try to work with. All that remains is a few tribal radical right authoritarians like Sasse and the majority fascist personality cult. Biden has no choice but to act without GOP support or do nothing. 

What McConnell wants

NPR's Michele Martin interviewed investigative journalist Jane Mayer, chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, about his ambitions.

Martin: So how closely tied to whatever victories Trump did achieve was Mitch McConnell?

Mayer: Oh, McConnell has been incredibly important to Trump. He's made Trump's administration look like it was competent because they got legislative victories and these judges through. .... And so this turn against Trump is really dramatic in the final day just before Biden was to be inaugurated.

Martin: So what do you think was the cause of that shift?

Mayer: Well, if you look at McConnell's career, there's really one theme running through it from start to finish, and it's always his self-interest. He doesn't act out of sort of moral principle, particularly. He's always calculating what the angles are for him and for his party. And so he's got his eye on 2022. He wants to get back into being the majority leader. That's what he lives for, really. And he's now come to think of Trump as standing in the way.  

What Trump has done is split the coalition that has kept the Republican Party in power for many of the past few decades. It's a coalition between big-business Republicans, sort of the establishment wing, and the social conservatives that are in the evangelical wing of the party and sort of white reactionaries. And Trump is taking those in one direction, and McConnell is getting heat from the business community and the other because after the Capitol mob rebellion and insurrection, the business world said, forget it, we're not supporting these people anymore.

Again, there is no hope of bipartisanship on the horizon anywhere in the fascist GOP. McConnell was not acting out of constitutional principle or public interest in breaking from the ex-president. He was, as always, acting in self-interest and party interest in the name of personal political power. That came at the expense of all other interests. The GOP has rotted to its core. For the time being, it appears that the business community that had been supporting the GOP even while it morphed into demagogic radical right authoritarianism seems to have stopped short of supporting full-blown fascist cultism.

Fox is invincible, really!

To faze the Fox, you have to unFox your box

https://unfoxmycablebox.com/

Some sources have reported that Fox News ratings have dropped in the wake of the Nov. 3 election and the 1/6 coup attempt. Consumers are angry and agitating to boycott advertisers, but that is futile. An NPR broadcast of On the Media reports that unless Fox is deplatformed, consumer backlash will not faze Fox. OTM points out that Fox became more extreme over the last year or so. It downplayed COVID and supported election fraud conspiracy theories. Fox was busy bringing dangerous previously far-right fringe lies to the mainstream. In recent weeks activists and journalists have called on advertisers and cable providers to pressure Fox to moderate or get kicked off the air.

Well over 90% of Fox revenues come from cable providers who pay Fox to be in their lineup of cable channels. The only way to faze the Fox is to get it deplatformed and booted off cable. Us consumers are the ones who financially support Fox and the poison it routinely injects into American society and politics. 

That is galling, to say the least. It shows exactly what the morals of the business community and especially the cable news industry are. Specifically, their morals are profit. Social and political poison is of no significant concern, i.e., lip service does not count.

Footnote: 

1. A blog post at Patheos, Kinzinger’s Family Letter: God, the GOP and Conservative Media, describes just how vicious, reality-detached and incoherent at least some of the fascist GOP cult is. This is both sad and terrifying:

There are three legs to the stool upon which public opinion over Trump and the impeachment sits: God, the GOP as a tribal entity, and conservative media in its incurably rabid form. Nothing exemplifies this more acutely than the letter that Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican House Representative who voted to impeach Trump, received from his own family. It’s a pretty torrid and shameful affair.

Kinzinger voted with his conscience, he did the correct moral thing, and he has been disowned by his family and claimed to be possessed by the devil for doing so.

In the two-page letter, Kinzinger’s family said he embarrassed their name by breaking with Trump, called Democrats the “devil’s army,” and rebuked him for losing the respect of several conservative talk show hosts. They also accused him of falling for the Democratic party’s alleged “socialism ideals.”

“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” the letter dated January 8 read. “We were once so proud of your accomplishments.”  

“You should be very proud that you have lost the respect of Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Greg Kelly, etc., and most importantly in our book, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh and us!”

Honestly, we have got to unFox our box. 

Biden Restarts White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives

Source

The Hill writes:

The White House announced on Sunday that President Biden would be relaunching the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

“As our country grapples with a global pandemic, a severe economic downturn, the scourge of systemic racism, an escalating climate crisis and profound polarization, President Biden knows that civil society partnerships are essential to meeting such challenges,” the White House said in a release.

The office was established 20 years ago by former President George W. Bush, the White House noted, and continued on through the Obama administration. Former President Trump did not appoint a director to the faith-based office during his tenure and its website remained blank during the four years he was in the Oval Office. Trump instead created the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives, which served as the Health and Human Services Department's "liaison to the faith community and to grassroots organizations" and sought to "champion religious liberty in all HHS programs" according to its website.

Melissa Rogers will reassume the position she held in the Obama administration as executive director of the office and as senior director for faith and public policy as part of the White House Domestic Policy Council. White House Senior Adviser for Public Engagement John Dickson will serve as deputy director of the office. He previously served as national faith engagement director for the Biden campaign.

“At a time of great challenge and opportunity, the Biden-Harris administration is re-launching this bipartisan initiative,” the White House said. “The Partnerships Office’s initial work will include collaborating with civil society to: address the COVID-19 pandemic and boost economic recovery; combat systemic racism; increase opportunity and mobility for historically disadvantaged communities; and strengthen pluralism.” 

“That is not who we are. That is not what faith calls us to be. That is why I’m reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to work with leaders of different faiths and backgrounds who are the frontlines of their communities in crisis and who can help us heal, unite, and rebuild," he added.

What does that mean?

There is no way to know what that means. There can be multiple ways to see it. One is that it's a good way to start trying to tamp down the belief in the Christian Persecution myth by showing Christians that Biden and liberals are not trying to do evil things like forcing them to convert them to pedophilic cannibal atheists or turning them into lizard people via microchips in COVID vaccines. This is a chance to bring anti-Christian Nationalist Christians into more prominence. That would be a very good thing. 

I'm a rock solid atheist and intensely oppose mixing secular government with religion. But, right now most conservative Christians in America seem to believe that democrats and Biden are agents of Satan. Just look at the lies and hate gushing out of fascist radical right sources like Breitbart, Fox News, Gateway Pundit and the rest of the multitudes of vicious lying beasts the right has unleashed. If this is a means to try to dispel the toxic hold that decades of radical conservative dark free speech has on their minds, then maybe on balance this is a good thing. Maybe.

Of course, people can see this as much more bad than good precisely because it mixes secular government with religion. That is entirely possible. Maybe more likely than not.

I'm inclined to wait and see what, if anything, this will amount to. I'm willing to give Biden the benefit of a doubt. Of course, maybe people who know Biden and his religious beliefs better than I can articulate reasons why this is more detrimental than helpful.

Regarding the Morality of Opacity, Lies and Deceit

Kant was an absolutist

Regarding lies and deceit,[1] there are two basic choices. A person, group, party, political leader and anyone else can play their cards close, or semi-close, with blunt honesty when it is called for. Given the human condition, some things need to be left unsaid, e.g., because truth causes more harm than good. It's usually, or more likely almost always, not only black and white. Some harm and some good are both there. The issue is how one sees the balance. Opinions will differ. 

I have a powerful personal bias against unwarranted opacity in politics, including truth withholding for the alleged benefit of me, anyone else, any group, the nation or society. IMO, opacity is where (i) crime and corruption, (ii) authoritarianism, (iii) social and personal abuse, (iv) incompetence and (v) contempt for truth and the rule of law hide and flourish. Lies and deceit of omission are no more moral or justifiable than lies or deceit of commission. 

Re authoritarianism: I now firmly believe it is an absolute necessity for the rise of out-of-power demagogues to the status of tyrant or kleptocrat. If there are exceptions to that personal rule, I am unaware of them. Hate of unwarranted opacity has long been my bias. On the matter of lying and deceit, I am persuaded by the reasoning of moral philosopher Sissela Bok, who brilliantly capsulized the issue for democracies: 

“[Johnson repeatedly told the American people] ‘the first responsibility, the only real issue in this campaign, the only thing you ought to be concerned about at all, is: Who can best keep the peace?’ The stratagem succeeded; the election was won; the war escalated. .... President Johnson thus denied the electorate of any chance to give or refuse consent to the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Believing they had voted for the candidate of peace, American citizens were, within months, deeply embroiled in one of the cruelest wars in their history. Deception of this kind strikes at the very essence of democratic government. 

When political representatives or entire governments arrogate to themselves the right to lie, they take power from the public that would not have been given up voluntarily. .... But such cases [that justify lying] are so rare that they hardly exist for practical purposes. .... The consequences of spreading deception, alienation and lack of trust could not have been documented for us more concretely than they have in the past decades. We have had a very vivid illustration of how lies undermine our political system. .... Those in government and other positions of trust should be held to the highest standards. Their lies are not ennobled by their positions; quite the contrary. .... only those deceptive practices which can be openly debated and consented to in advance are justifiable in a democracy.” 

If that reasoning is good for a national government and democracy, why isn't it good for a political party or a person? IMO, the logic flows like water just about everywhere, including to deceptive demagogues and tyrants. Or is that reasoning flawed or wrong?

Footnote: 

1. My definition of deceit includes unwarranted emotional manipulation, which usually arises when irrational or unwarranted fear, anger, hate, distrust, bigotry, etc., are fomented by speech or behavior. That's usually done intentionally to divide people and dehumanize allegedly threatening people or groups. Deceit also includes application of motivated reasoning to facts and truths (especially inconvenient ones) to distort real reality into a false reality. In my opinion, lies, unwarranted emotional manipulation and motivated reasoning are all forms of deceit.

Motivated reasoning: a cognitive biology phenomenon where personal biased reasoning produces justifications or make decisions that are most desired rather than those that accurately reflect the evidence and/or unbiased reasoning; it is an evolved personal defense mechanism against cognitive dissonance that arises when personal beliefs or desires conflict with reality or reason-logic; it is a tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions a person, group or tribe wants to believe despite contrary evidence and/or less biased reasoning that would lead to a different conclusion or belief