The GOP's Goal: Tear Biden Down

An article The Hill posted makes clear the goal of the fascist GOP (FGOP) to destroy Biden and make Americans hate him. Their goal is not be principled opposition that acts in good faith based on facts or sound reason. The FGOP is just loaded with ill-will, poison and partisan hate. The Hill writes:

Republicans are struggling to land attacks against President Biden as they grapple with how to win back power in Washington next year.

Biden is proving to be an elusive cipher for Republicans to successfully message against nearly 100 days into his administration, keeping a relatively low profile and refusing to engage in the day-to-day verbal sparring that has consumed Washington in recent years.

It presents a challenge that, GOP senators acknowledge, they aren’t hitting the mark on.

“We need to get better at it. I don't think sometimes our messaging is as sharp as it should be because a lot of the things they're doing are things that are popular—when you’re spending money, you’re popular,” Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said about Republicans’ success in defining Biden.

Asked how his party was doing, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) replied: “Poorly.”

“I don’t think we’ve done a very good job because he’s getting away with defining himself and rolling out this stuff that we’re borrowing every penny for it, and the public is buying it,” Braun said. “We’ve got to find ways to articulate and scuffle in a better way, and I don’t know that we’ve found that.”  

Republicans are betting that voters will ultimately turn against Biden’s trillion-dollar spending.

“His tone is moderate and he’s an affable person, he’s a likeable individual and a lot of us know him, have relationships with him and it’s probably harder to attack somebody who is relatable and likeable,” Thune said.

Well, there you have it. That Biden, the likeable guy, is doing things that are popular, including spending money. The FGOP knows all about that money and debt thing. That was the main point of their 2017 tax cut for rich people law that adds about $1 trillion/year to federal debt. The stench of FGOP hypocrisy. There's nothing quite like it.

And, when FGOP Senator Braun says the FGOP needs to find ways to articulate and scuffle in a better way, we all know what that means. More lies, slanders and crackpottery are coming your way real soon.

Politics Is Seeping Into Our Daily Life and Ruining Everything

 

Americans are choosing jobs, brands, and friends for partisan reasons, say researchers.

Is there anything that politics can't ruin? The answer, it appears, is a resounding "no" as partisan conflict creeps into all areas of American life. Our political affiliations, researchers say, obstruct friendships, influence our purchases, affect the positions we take on seemingly apolitical matters, and limit our job choices. As a result, many people are poorer, lonelier, and less healthy than they would otherwise be.

"Political polarization is having far-reaching impacts on American life, harming consumer welfare and creating challenges for people ranging from elected officials and policymakers to corporate executives and marketers," according to a new paper in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing by researchers from Arizona State University, the University of Wyoming, and four other U.S. universities.

The researchers find that people's chosen political identities become self-reinforcing through associations with groups with shared beliefs. Our associations can even create a "group-specific shared reality" that makes it harder to relate to those with opposing views.

"[A]s society has become increasingly polarized, politicians' objectives diverge and their animosity toward the opposition grows, thereby reducing opportunity for compromise," the researchers warn. "Partisan incivility is a major reason for failed dialogue: Uncivil exchanges result in disagreement and greater polarization regardless of the evidence presented."

People's partisan identities influence the range of people with whom they are willing to have relationships, the brands they purchase, and the jobs they take. In an era of public health concerns, people often choose positions on matters such as vaccines or mask-wearing not based on a rational assessment of the issues, but on a plug-and-play adoption of their tribe's stances. This sort of politicized decision-making can stand in the way of rational choices and healthy connections.

"With political positions influencing decisions, people may sacrifice wages, lose out on jobs, make suboptimal purchases and disregard opportunities to save," the researchers note. "For example, research has found that employees accept lower wages to work for politically like-minded entities, and people may select higher-priced products or ones that offer less-functional value."

"Polarization has the potential to prevent neighbors or colleagues of opposing parties from developing friendships. This ultimately deprives individuals of intellectual diversity, among other things," they add.

The finding that everything is becoming politicized builds on a growing mountain of data. Even before political tensions hit their current fever pitch, a 2018 survey found that "Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world will buy or boycott a brand solely because of its position on a social or political issue" (the number for the U.S. was 59 percent). In 2020, a separate survey reported that "83% of Millennials find it important for the companies they buy from to align with their values."

That means that the price and utility of products and services are actually secondary considerations for many people, taking a back seat to companies' public posturing. Many business executives have risen to the challenge, advocating positions on gun control, immigration, and race relations, whether because they sense an opening to promote their opinions, or just a marketing opportunity. 

"These leaders hope that their political activism will help shape public opinion and potentially lead to lasting change, while simultaneously cementing their reputations as moral leaders and change agents," Christine Moorman wrote for Forbes. She noted that, as of 2018, most marketing experts considered this a bad move with the potential for alienating both customers and employees.

Since then, the trend has only intensified — especially after former President Trump's challenge to election results and in the wake of the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Recent events "accelerate a broader movement in business to address social and political issues" according to a January 15 piece in the Wall Street Journal.

This politicization of all things great and small is what another researcher referred to last summer as the "oil spill" model of mass opinion polarization.

"[W]hat if polarization is less like a fence getting taller over time and more like an oil spill that spreads from its source to gradually taint more and more previously 'apolitical' attitudes, opinions, and preferences?" Pennsylvania State University's Daniel DellaPosta asked in a study published in June 2020 in American Sociological Review. "[E]ven many initially apolitical lifestyle characteristics, from musical taste to belief in astrology, can become politicized as signals for deeper beliefs and preferences—a tendency most saliently captured in the popular image of the 'latte liberal'."

Americans, then, are increasingly making decisions along tribal political lines, potentially depriving themselves of rewarding friendships, better-paying jobs, well-reasoned judgments, and optimal goods and services. But by choosing beverages, beans, sports equipment, and employment according to tribal affiliation, they are also losing points of shared interest with people who disagree with them. The people they see in their neighborhoods, at concerts, and in their chosen restaurants likely share their views on hot-button issues, because those who disagree live, party, and shop elsewhere. That further reduces the opportunity for connections across partisan boundaries.

Worse, when the political tribes are so divorced from one another in terms of preferences and lifestyles, it becomes easier to target the "enemy" by going after their ways of life. With conservatives largely living in rural areas and exurbs, and liberals confining themselves to cities and suburbs, and the groupings having shrinking overlap in terms of their interests, it's pretty easy to hurt opponents by targeting pastimes and brands for boycotts, regulatory action, or legal restrictions.

"I think we're all aware of how political polarization has affected our elections and system of government, but the impacts go far beyond the political arena," comments Dave Sprott, dean of the University of Wyoming's College of Business and one of the authors of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing paper. "Ultimately, polarization harms mental and physical health, financial welfare, relationships and societal interests through its impact on psychology, marketing and public policy outcomes."

There is nothing we can or should do about people's lifestyle choices, but we can give them less reason to fight. Making politics less important through reducing the ability of government to affect our lives has the potential to make us all healthier and happier.

https://reason.com/2021/02/17/politics-is-seeping-into-our-daily-life-and-ruining-everything/

What’s the real problem?

 

The U.S. is supposedly the wealthiest nation on earth… renowned for its institutions of higher learning, has the most prolific innovators of medical and other technologies, a true beacon of freedom and democracy, and yada, yada, yada.  Such is what we tell ourselves, though I don’t know how much of that is actually true.  But the majority of us believe it, have been indoctrinated to believe it, boast about it, etc., and etc.  But can we prove it?

But that’s not what this OP is about.  However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s all true.  We are the greatest (GOAT)! 😉

Q: What I’m wondering is, if we are so great, why can’t we work together toward common goals? 

Goals such as sustainable clean energies (good for the earth, good for us); universal health care, cradle to grave; free higher education for all its citizens… you know, the kinds of stuff that lifts all boats.  What really is our problem?  Why all the discord?  Left hand constantly fighting with the right hand (political pun intended).

What is at the heart of this problem?  Explain it to me, like I’m a five-year-old (a la Denzel Washington in “Philadelphia”).  Great movie, btw.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Book Review: Thieves of State

Sarah Chayes

Former NPR correspondent Sarah Chayes wrote Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (2015), largely based on her years of experience in Afghanistan working with average Afhgani people as they struggled to build normal lives in the wake of years of war and systemic kleptocracy. Chayes, now at the Carnegie Endowment, has spent years surrounded by and trying to work within the systemic kleptocracy that is the government of Afghanistan. She came to Afghanistan as an NPR correspondent and shortly thereafter abandoned journalism to work as a free agent trying to rebuild civilization.

Chayes observes that over the centuries, many commentators on government, e.g., from Nizam al-Mulk in the 11th century to Erasmus and Machiavelli in the 16th century, repeatedly pointed to corruption and the injustice it inflicts on the innocent is the single most potent threat to stable governance and peace. al-Mulk, an influential 11th century administrator wrote The Book of Politics (Book of Government), which, among other things, (1) argued the need for a racially integrated army, and (2) proposed confiscating property of corrupt officials who take too much and repay those who were stolen from. Chayes: “Now there was an anti-corruption measure that would make an impact.”

Coming to see just how pervasive Afghan government corruption actually was took time. For example, Chayes co-founded a charity “of unclear mission,” that was run by President Hamid Karzai's brother, Qayum. Chayes had no idea that he was corrupt to the core: “At first I believed Qayum’s description of himself as constituting a ‘loyal opposition’ to his younger brother the president. . . . . Not for years would I begin systematically comparing his seductively incisive words with his deeds.” A chagrined Chayes finally came to understand that “I had, in other words, been an accessory to fraud.”

It turns out that kleptocrats like Qayum and his kleptocrat brother, president Hamid Karzai and the rest of the entire Afghan government know two things very, very well. First, they present themselves as a safe, rational, sincere refuge in the face of a vicious throat-cutting population. Chayes was terrified for a long time and another Afghani kleptocrat Chayes worked with did that number on her to keep her on a short leash. Kleptocrats need to keep outsiders like Chayes from directly interacting with average Afghanis as much as possible. Outsider and even leaders speaking directly to the people that non-leader kleptocrats have feared for centuries.

Second, all high level kleptocrats learned to speak English. They work hard to learn the jargon and acronyms that Western minds want to hear. On other words, they tell us exactly what we wanted to hear. The poison sounded so true and rational because it sounded so much like us.

The money pit bridge – finding the shallowest place to cross the river: Referring to a bridge outside Kandahar that foreign aid kept rebuilding “That bridge kept springing holes. And the foreigners kept paying more money for more repairs. And no one, as far as we knew, was called to account.” It’s not the case that ordinary Afghanis were blind to the corruption. One person ‘from the orchards north of town once told me’: “We all know this money is coming in. We just don’t know which hole it is spilling out through.”

The way it worked was simple. Foreign aid to fix the bridge would be awarded to an Afghani contractor. That contractor would then award the job to a subcontractor, but take a cut, and the sub would take another cut and award to job to another sub who took another cut and so on until there was little left of the money to fix the bridge. What repairs that were done was temporary band-aid. People got used to driving their cars and trucks off the road and through the river to get to the other side. The holes in the bridge afforded good, unobstructed views of the river below.

Chayes came to see the entire Afghanistan government as a vertically integrated criminal organization. Later, she came to see about the same thing in other countries, including Russia, Nigeria, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and so forth. If fact, if one looks at Transparency International’s transparency map, most countries are kleptocracies of some form or another.

So what? Where’s the security threat?: The central point that Thieves of State makes is that at some point, systemic corruption isn’t just a by-product of the war, but it morphs into a force that fosters and maintains global conflict. Corruption simply cannot be ignored as a serious source of international instability and conflict. The injustice and economic inequality of it enrages people. Chayes comments: “Abusive government corruption prompts extreme responses and thus represents a mortal threat to security.” She watched NGOs, NATO, and U.S. Army anti-corruption programs repeatedly fail.

The security threat comes from the rage and hate that grows in the soil of corruption. Citing cognitive science research on the point and her direct observations, Chayes points out that people who feel abused or cheated often do not always react rationally. Sometimes otherwise normal people moved into the arms of the hated Taliban because the government was so outrageous and the Taliban, speaking like normal Afghanis, began to sound rational and comforting enough. Screw democracy, Afghanis wanted justice. And, America and Western countries were seen by average Afghanis as complicit in and accepting of massive corruption because they allowed it to go unchecked, the thieves going unchecked. Chayes’ book is full of examples of how utterly inept and clueless American and Western diplomats, military, NGOs, aid groups and just about everyone else really was for a long time.

Chayes efforts as an official US military advisor finally began to sink in. Admiral Mullen (chairman, joint chiefs of staff) wasn’t stupid enough to let personal arrogance get in the way of seeing reality for what it was. But to finally get to that point, Chayes had to fight tooth and claw to get past the smug, clueless arrogance of US (and Afghani) military and diplomatic officials who fought her every step of the way. The CIA was a special sort of hell for Chayes – always quietly trying to undermine her to protect their ‘assets’. Some years after the US military woke up, the US State Department also started waking up. Everyone was now beginning to see just how serious and counterproductive US lives, efforts and money really had been. Systemic, pervasive corruption, not Islam or Afghani culture, was what made nation-building impossible. American efforts were doomed from the get go due to cluelessness.

Bin Ladn and 9/11: Just to make this strike home a bit more, Chayes argues that a significant driver of Bin Laden’s hate of the US and the West generally had nothing to do with religion. It was Bin Ladn’s white hot rage and hate flowing from decades of kleptocracy and what appeared to be, and often in fact was, decades of Western support and complicity in the moral outrage called corruption.

Although it’s not a full-blooded kleptocracy (yet), Chayes sees cause for concern even in America, pointing to the causes of the 2006-2007 financial meltdown and president Obama’s failure to see it for what it was and his failure to prosecute the responsible criminals. Of course, these days, there’s more than just Obama’s unfixable failures to be concerned about.

Solutions: Chayes isn’t naïve. Fighting corruption is hard and complex. There can be directly competing goals and priorities. Nonetheless, she does give a list of practical things that governments, multinational companies, Western militaries, diplomats even average citizens can do to fight global corruption.

In the overall scheme of things, corruption arguably ranks with the threat of nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, wealth inequality (significantly a function of corruption) and global overpopulation among serious threats to civilization and the fate of the human species.

For people wanting to learn about some reasons to reject isolationism and embrace proactive international engagement, this book is an excellent place to start.

B&B orig: 11/30/17; DP: 11/3/17

What about us? Fear in Afghanistan is rising

Mawoud Academy in Kabul, Afghanistan -- the planned US troop withdrawal 

and the Taliban’s likely return to power raises fears about the 

future of rights and education for women and girls

The war in Afghanistan was sold to the American people as short, low cost and nothing like Vietnam. Unfortunately, it was clear at least 15 years ago it was going to be long, high cost and a lot like Vietnam in at least one way. One aspect of sameness is the ultimate futility of the American effort to build a stable democracy and transform Afghan society. That failed. The Taliban is likely to come back to power and those folks are not democrats. They in a society transforming mood, but the mood is harsh, sour and it points to some version of the Dark Ages, but with cell phones and AK-47s. These people are in no mood to be "civilized" as we see the concept.

The new leadership, it's not like the old incompetent kleptocrat leadership

So one question is what about women, their rights and the people who collaborated to help the US effort to nation build? It's pretty clear what the Taliban will do once they chase the incompetent US-backed  kleptocratic government out of the country. Women will be enslaved and shut up. The collaborators we leave behind will be chased down and slaughtered. Again, one can hear echoes of Vietnam and its bogus Peace with Honor.

The new York Times writes:

As American troops prepare to leave and fractures form in the Afghan government, militias controlled by powerful local warlords are once more rising to prominence and attacking government forces.

The American withdrawal will undoubtedly be a massive blow to morale for the Afghan security forces, spread across the country at hundreds of checkpoints, inside bases and along violent front lines. For years, the U.S. presence has meant that American air power, if needed, was nearby. But since the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban, those airstrikes have become much less frequent, occurring only in the most dire of situations.

Without American military support, Afghan government troops are up against a Taliban enemy who is frequently more experienced and better equipped than the average foot soldier.  

“It is not the right time to withdraw their troops,” said Major Saifuddin Azizi, a commando commander in the southeastern province of Ghazni, where fighting has been especially brutal in recent days. “It is unreasonable, hasty and a betrayal to us. It pushes Afghanistan into another civil war. Afghanistan’s destiny will look like it did two decades ago.”  

An Afghan Army official recently said the Taliban would have overtaken the city if not for U.S. air support.

Credit...

Once again, America betrays its allies and leaves them to be slaughtered. How many will we leave behind? The republicans will fight tooth and claw to severely limit the number of Afghan refugees into the US. After all, most republicans appear to see Muslims as terrorists, drug dealers, Sharia law spreaders and so forth. We will probably never know the scope of the brutality once we leave because journalists will also be targeted and slaughtered if they get caught there.

Bush, Obama and T**** all failed to get us out of an obviously hopeless situation with obviously hopeless nation building goals. Now Biden is going to get us out. One can already hear the republicans, Fox News, Breitbart, etc., inhaling deep so that they can commence loud and long screaming at President Joe for his failures. Biden will be the one the GOP falsely portrays as the reason for the US failure.  

A 14-year old Afghan bride sets eyes on her new 65-year old 

husband for the first time

This 8-year old Afghan bride is too young to be scared, unlike the 14-year old

She thinks this is going to be fun

The Second Amendment Protects Gun Ownership...and Gun Regulation

Since this issue is bound to be deranged to the point of imbecility in the coming "debate" about gun control [ see this unreasonable "Reason" content ], I thought it would be fruitful to establish up front what informed citizens should expect of their right to bear arms, which to wit:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

That the 2A itself is incorporated in terms of national self-defense is obvious, what is apparently less obvious to modern audiences is that the "right of the people" which is subordinated to necessary upkeep of militia, is not a newly invented right being outlined by the 2A itself. Rather, it refers to existing rights held by Americans, making the question of the context of the right ( that is, in terms of militia and national defense ) moot.

So the question of regulation is not appropriately derived from military service, but from pre-existing laws. There are two major forms of these laws: the first and oldest is English Common Law, of which all Americans were and are inheritors, and the second ( and which was premised on the former ) is state constitutional law, as written at the time of the adoption of the Amendment.

As to the former, while the foundation of our present laws was laid by Common Law, it was not itself nearly so well formalized and, being subject to change through context and interpretation, was encoded in official law in different ways by different states. Nevertheless by the Colonial era the right of citizens to own firearms was well established, if not always equally applied - neither slaves nor minors, for example, nor "habitual drunkards" could own or carry weapons or types of weapons [ 1 ]. And among those legally entitled to own firearms there were general prohibitions against types and consequences [ 2 ]:

In some cases, there may be affray, where there is no actual violence; as when a man arms himself with dangerous and unusual weapons, in such a manner, as will naturally diffuse a terrour among the people.

Pistols were a primary target of prohibition, as well as concealed weapons, and even Thomas Jefferson was concerned about citizens carrying shotguns off the farm ( IIRC - I need to find the letter Jefferson described his concerns in ). So by the Revolutionary era, state constitutions both declared the ownership and use of firearms to be an inalienable right, and also prohibited concealed carry in some cases or banned types of firearms outright. It is objectively the case, then - with actual state constitutions being the objective proof - that the premise of inalienable right to self defense, a well regulated militia, and various forms of "gun control" are not contrary to the 2A, but are legally mandated by it.

The idea maintained by certain factions in the US today that the 2A bars any regulation is founded on an ahistorical, ungrammatical reading of its text. Ahistorical for the reasons listed, and ungrammatical not only because "the right of the people" is erroneously read by them as a new, rather than existing, right ( which is easily discernible by reading Madison's comments on it ), but also because "shall not be infringed" is read as a general rule meaning "shall not be limited". This is not the case. Rather the meaning of infringement, as understood by seventeenth and eighteenth century audiences, was a violation, as of a contract or promise.

Hence the language here cannot be read as a bar against limitation, which would in any case present an outright contradiction against the need for a "well regulated militia", but rather as enforcing the contemporary rights held informally ( as in common law ) or formally ( as in state constitutional law ). These rights are federalized and, as the Constitution was then written, the 2A barred federal laws from violating those prior rights.

The tendency on other factions of the American public to repudiate the ownership of guns entirely as unconstitutionally is so manifestly stupid that I won't bother to defend it here - I would rather just cite Scalia's majority decision in the Heller case, and the controversy at the time over an Emory University professor's fraudulent book denying firearms were commonly owned by colonial Americans.

Rather in today's fractious politics, it's far more important to point out that those proposing to defend the 2A against supposedly unconstitutional restrictions against AR-15s or assault weapons generally are objectively opposed to the actual 2A, and therefore to the protection of our rights outlined in it.

[ 1 ] FIREARM REGULATION, John Brabner-Smith, p. 404

[ 2 ] THE COMMON LAW AND THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO BEAR ARMS: CARRYING FIREARMS AT THE FOUNDING AND IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC, Stephen P. Halbrook, p. 51