Chapter review: Levers of Influence: (Power) Tools of the Trade

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.” -- Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Fail to Produce Responsive Governments, 2016

(Note: the argument in Democracy for Realists about the "average citizen" being too confused by the complexity and intricacy of the world to have a reasonable grasp of it, basically recaps Walter Lippman's classic argument to the same effect in Public Opinion (1922). In the end he concludes we need experts in communications-- propagandists he depicts as benign-- to interpret the world and spoon feed the masses the limited knowledge they can handle. Dewey and Lippman argued about this. Lippman said democracy is impossible, Dewey denied such a conclusion while recognizing that for it to succeed the mindset prevalent in our society would need to change. Hence his educational theories.) -- PD, comment here, Aug. 27, 2021 

If some form of pragmatic rationalism is to ever have a chance of making a significant difference regarding the human condition, public education will need to be significantly reoriented to focus on how the human mind works and fails to work and how it can be and often is deceived and manipulated. -- Germaine, Aug. 29, 2021

Chapter review

Levers of Influence: (Power) Tools of the Trade is chapter 1 of Robert Cialdini’s 2021 book, Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion. Cialdini is a leading expert on persuasion science. Some of his research was discussed here before. The book (446 pages, 41 pages of notes) is written for a general audience and is easy to read.

Cialdini starts out by noting that evidence from social science is settled that both humans and other higher animals often, maybe usually, respond to input information in what he refers to as an automatic “click-run” mode. This kind of behavior is formally called fixed-action patterns. These behavior patterns range from simple to very complex. A key trait of click-run mode behavior is that the behaviors in the pattern almost always play out is exactly the same pattern or sequence of behaviors. As Cialdini puts it: 

“It is almost as if the patterns were installed as programs within the animals. .... Click, and the appropriate program is activated; run and out rolls the standard sequence of behaviors.”

What is really interesting about click-run is what triggers the initial click. It often isn’t much at all, e.g., a patch of the right color instead of the same color as a whole animal threatening the turf of another animal. With humans Cialdini points out that the word “because” in a request for a favor is the trigger, not the reason for the favor that follows the trigger. Thus ‘can I cut in line at the copy machine because I'm running late and need copies right away’ is ~94% effective, ‘can I cut in line at the copy machine because I need to make some copies’ is ~93% effective, while ‘can I cut in line at the copy machine’ is only ~60% effective. The trigger is the word because, not the reason given.

Cialdini argues that humans have no choice but to rely on click-run, mental shortcuts and other tactics that reduce the cognitive load needed to navigate a world that is too complex for anything more than a superficial understanding or even a false impression of some understanding:

“Such automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much of human action because in many cases, it is the most efficient form of behaving, and in other cases it is simply necessary. You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex ever on this planet. To deal with it, we need simplifying shortcuts. .... Without the simplifying features, we would stand frozen--cataloging, appraising and calibrating-- as time for action sped by and away.”

In addition to click-run mode, humans can respond to information by a process called controlled responding. This mode is slow and requires conscious effort. This requires both a desire to be more thoughtful and an ability to think the information through. There is a strong human tendency to operate in click-run mode when the effects of something are relatively modest or impactful on other people, but not themselves. Thus controlled responding tends to kick in and act as a safety net in situations where personal stakes are significant. 

We all know where this is going - the profiteers

Cialdini notes that complexity and time are not on the side of mindsets oriented to controlled responding: “I have become impressed by evidence indicating that the form and pace of modern life is not allowing us to make fully thoughtful decisions, even on many personally relevant topics.” Too often, issues are too complex, time too limited, distractions too intrusive and fomented emotional responses too strong for people operate in controlled processing mode, so we default to click-run mode. 

Professional influencers are aware of all of this. Propagandists have been aware of most of these things at least since the early 1900s. Some or most of these aspects of the human condition were intuited by careful observations of people ranging from Plato in ~400 BC to master propagandist Edward Bernays in the early 1900s to Walter Lipmann in the 1920s to modern corporate marketing and the Republican Party today.

Cialdini comments that most people know little or nothing about click-run mode and how it can be triggered to coax people to believe and/or do things they might otherwise not. He sounds a warning: “it is vital that we clearly recognize one of their [click-run] properties. They make us terribly vulnerable to anyone does know how they work.” He points out that humans share with other animals this aspect of behavior and the vulnerability it imparts on people and other animals.  

Businesses are acutely aware of this aspect of human behavior and they know how to hit triggers that lead to more sales and higher profits. We are rarely aware that we have been manipulated. For example, salespeople in clothing stores are instructed to always guide customers first to the most expensive item and then to a less expensive item. That is because once we have accepted a more expensive item, a lower cost item seems less expensive that it would if that had been the first thing the customer decided to buy. Some (most?) real estate salespeople show new home shopper a couple of undesirable but over priced properties and then show a couple of nicer properties. This contrast makes people more open to higher prices for a nicer home. 

Car dealers and salespeople use the same low-high contrast tactic, called perceptual contrast, to coax people into buying expensive options after a price on the car has been agreed to. By contrast with the cost of the car, the cost of various options or upgrades look cheap and are offered inly one at a time. They can easily add a lot to the final price the customer winds up paying. Cialdini sums this sales tactic up nicely: “While customers stand, signed contract in hand, wondering what happened and finding no one to blame but themselves, the car dealer stands smiling the knowing smile of the jujitsu master.” 

Questions: 

1. It is mostly legal, but is it immoral to trigger click-run behavior patterns or use tactics like perceptual contrast to coax people to buy and/or pay more than they otherwise would have? If one business doesn’t adopt such tactics, a competitor could or would, putting the less manipulative business at a disadvantage. 

2. Roughly, what amount of commerce in the US is driven by manipulation that increases buying and selling over mostly unmanipulated commerce, e.g., ~45%? Of that, how much is waste in the sense that added purchases turned out to be not needed, e.g., ~85%? 

3. Is the moral situation any different for politics compared to commerce, at least when they are mostly independent? What about when business buys legal favors from governments to more aggressively exploit consumers, at least in situations (i) without discernable beneficial impacts on society, or (ii) with discernable harmful impacts on society, e.g., freedom from pollution regulations?

Where the fascist Republican Party stands on voting rights: In staunch opposition

What the aftermath of the 2020 elections in

Georgia led to in 2021: voter suppression laws, election rigging laws

and protests against those laws 

The Washington Post reports in an opinion piece on how the debate went in the House of Representatives on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. As one might expect, it was ugly. WaPo writes:

This week’s House debate on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which passed on a 219-to-212 party-line vote, was a reprise of past legislative wars on voting rights. It was a disgusting sight to behold.

The Lewis Act itself is straightforward. It strengthens the Voting Rights Act of 1965 against the onslaught of voter suppression measures that many states passed following the 2020 elections. It also restores enforcement mechanisms that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013.

But when the Lewis Act reached the House floor Tuesday, a host of Republicans weighed in against the measure hurling objections that were as old and as specious as arguments made by Southern lawmakers against the original Voting Rights Act.

Fifty-six years ago, faced with compelling evidence of blatant discrimination against Black voters — as well as a nationally televised attack by Alabama state troopers on the peaceful participants in a march from Selma to Montgomery that left civil rights leader John Lewis with a cracked skull — Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina argued that passing the Voting Rights Act would make Congress “the final resting place of the Constitution and the rule of law," Thurmond said. “For it is here that they will have been buried with shovels of emotion under piles of expediency in the year of our Lord, 1965.”

Sen. Lister Hill (D-Ala.) denounced the act as a “head-on rush to the destruction of the basic rights of the individual states and the liberties of the American people to satisfy the demands, the clamor, and the expediency of the day.” He continued: “Never in my more than 40 years in Congress have I seen a measure come before this body that has had such built-in potential for the destruction of our constitutional system and the breakdown of law and order as the pending bill.”

Fast-forward to 2021.

House Democrats had compiled compelling evidence that the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act prompted states with discriminatory records, that were previously covered by the law, to enact measures that restricted voting. They had also collected data showing that Republican-led state legislatures have been passing restrictive election laws that disproportionately impacted Black and brown voters.

Confronted last Tuesday with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would help correct those wrongs, House Republicans fell back on Thurmond and Hill’s line of attack.

“If you vote for this legislation, you are voting for a federal takeover of elections,” said Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.). “You are removing the people elected at the state and local level to run elections from making decisions about how elections are run, including voter ID laws, and putting an unaccountable, unelected election czar at the DOJ, the attorney general, in charge of all election decisions in this country.”

Said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio): “This bill is not about expanding voting rights; it is about Democrats consolidating their political power. That is why they are focused on this. They are focused on consolidating their power and, I think, taking it away from the states.”

“[The Lewis bill] is a radical, unprecedented federal power grab by unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington that every conscientious American ought to oppose,” said Mike Johnson (R-La.).

“This bill would comprehensively transfer the power to govern elections in this country from the sovereign states to the federal government permanently and everywhere,” said Dan Bishop (R-N.C.).

Once again, the fascist Republican Party (FRP) relies on lies, hyperbole, irrational emotional manipulation and crackpot motivated reasoning to attack free and fair elections. As argued here before, the party has no choice but to suppress votes and rig elections. The FRP is out of step with the American public. Demographic changes have been against it for decades and the party has been acutely aware of that fact for decades. RINO hunts have left the party ideologically cleansed, intolerant and a shrinking small tent. Increasingly, it cannot win free and fair elections. It has to subvert democracy to stay in power.

In their arguments against free and fair elections, FRP House members have no choice but to (i) ignore what has happened since 2013 when the FRP Supreme Court gutted enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act[1] (or argue that never happened in effect), or (ii) claim as some do now that states have the power to run elections as they see fit and there is no actionable racial or political discrimination going on.  

FRP Senators have been mostly quite because they have political cover to say nothing. Mitch McConnell has made it clear that the John Lewis bill, is “unnecessary.” He promises it will be filibustered into oblivion in the US Senate. Saying it is unnecessary to protect free and fair elections might be about as close as FRP leadership will ever come to saying (1) there is no racial discrimination going on, and (2) there is no partisan discrimination going on against Democratic voters or candidates. All the party is trying to do is get rid of all that voter fraud that made Biden's election invalid.

Free election: roughly, easy voter access to voting with minimal reasonable voting requirements

Fair election: roughly, an election not subject to laws that allow the FRP to overturn the vote for partisan advantage without a valid reason(s), i.e., a rigged election 

Questions: 

1. Is the FRP merely trying to get rid of all that voter fraud that made Biden's election invalid? Or was Biden's election valid and something else is going on here, i.e., is the FRP in congress racist and/or fascist (single-party rule oriented, autocratic, etc.)? If not either, what is it? 

2. What about rank and file voters who vote for those people? 

3. How serious a threat to two-party rule and free elections does FRP opposition to free and fair elections pose, lethally serious, serious, moderate, low or trivial to nonexistent?

4. If there is no racial discrimination or opposition to free and fair elections as the congressional FRP leadership at least implies, why oppose federal laws that reinforce free and fair elections, while state FRP legislatures are passing dozens of state laws that directly attack free and fair elections?

Footnote: 

1. For context, Wikipedia says this about the 1965 Voting Rights Act: 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country. It is also "one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

As initially ratified, the United States Constitution granted each state complete discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents. After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments were ratified and limited this discretion. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) prohibits slavery "except as a punishment for crime"; the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) grants citizenship to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person due process and equal protection rights; and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." These Amendments also empower Congress to enforce their provisions through "appropriate legislation".

To enforce the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts in the 1870s. The acts criminalized the obstruction of a citizen's voting rights and provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including voter registration. However, in 1875 the Supreme Court struck down parts of the legislation as unconstitutional in United States v. Cruikshank and United States v. Reese. After the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877, enforcement of these laws became erratic, and in 1894, Congress repealed most of their provisions.

Southern states generally sought to disenfranchise racial minorities during and after Reconstruction. From 1868 to 1888, electoral fraud and violence throughout the South suppressed the African-American vote. From 1888 to 1908, Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting Jim Crow laws; they amended their constitutions and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that voter registration applicants interpret particular documents, and grandfather clauses that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves or otherwise ineligible). During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In Giles v. Harris (1903), the court held that regardless of the Fifteenth Amendment, the judiciary did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.  

In South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) the Supreme Court also held that Congress had the power the pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 under its Enforcement Powers stemming from the Fifteenth Amendment.

From that bit of history, one can clearly see that conflicts over race and the scope of government have plagued American governance and society for a long time. Those same conflicts are still with us today.

In the pre-Jim Crow era, lynchings were more likely in the lead up to an election. This relationship disappeared once Jim Crow laws were in place. Southern politicians replaced violence to suppress black voters with laws that had the same effect. While these laws fell away following the Civil Rights Era, with the recent rolling back of much of the Voting Rights Act, there is a return to legal means for voter suppression.

HAVE we lost our starry notions on the way?

 Yesterday posted a thread on my channel about the joys of growing up in the 1970s.

https://snowflakesforum.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-70s.html

Now, the era was not a joy for everyone, clearly.

The 1970s were a tumultuous time. In some ways, the decade was a continuation of the 1960s. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians and other marginalized people continued their fight for equality, and many Americans joined the protest against the ongoing war in Vietnam. In other ways, however, the decade was a repudiation of the 1960s. A “New Right” mobilized in defense of political conservatism and traditional family roles, and the behavior of President Richard Nixon undermined many people’s faith in the good intentions of the federal government. By the end of the decade, these divisions and disappointments had set a tone for public life that many would argue is still with us today.

https://www.history.com/topics/1970s/1970s-1

I was too removed from all the political upheaval at the time, being in my own head space, but the reason I am pointing this out:

SO many are viewing THIS age as the "worst of times", yet my views, which I have expressed often, are quite different.

In the 60s and 70s, there was a movement afoot to change attitudes, but we still had to deal with assassinations, unjustifiable wars, rampant racist which included lynchings, and further back - McCarthyism.

But for me, the difference is more basic, at eye level. What we have NOW is social media, 24/7 news cycles, every word spoken, every policy advanced, is dissected to meet a narrative. Are things bad now? YOU BET YOUR BIPPY THEY ARE? BUT worse than the 50s, 60s, 70s?

Now I see gay couples walking hand in hand, I have witnessed the election of a black President, I see Muslim kids walking to school side by side with non-Muslim kids. 

AND the talk around the coffee table? You know, the "everyday" chatter? 

Believe it or not, NOT about stolen elections, NOT about Cuomo or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Granted, what I am hearing is anecdotal, but day to day, among my friends, family members, fellow townspeople - the talk right now is Afghanistan, still about Covid, concerns about the "weather" and what a shame about what is happening in Haiti.

HAITI! Yet how often does THAT make the news? Or gets discussed on social media?

So is NOW worse than it was back in the days of Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, Vietnam, gay bashing, and fears of nuclear war?

YET, I would argue that:

Those were the days, my friend

We thought they'd never end

We'd sing and dance forever and a day

We'd live the life we choose

We'd fight and never lose

For we were young and sure to have our way

Now we just dwell on angst and anxiety, or so it seems, we have lost the ability:

Where we used to raise a glass or two

Remember how we laughed away the hours

Dreamed of all the great things we would do?

MAYBE:

Then the busy years went rushing by us

We lost our starry notions on the way

The fascist Republican Party attack on voting rights and fair elections continue

A Washington Post editorial comments on fascist Republican Party (FRP) efforts in Ohio to rig elections so that FRP candidates tend to win while Democrats tend to lose regardless of what voters might have wanted:

The latest came this month from a group of Ohio Republican lawmakers. Their bill would ban ballot drop boxes, rescind no-excuse absentee voting, slash early voting, bar election officials from sending out absentee ballot applications and narrow the forms of ID that people may present to vote, ruling out military IDs, bills and paychecks. “It would eliminate some of that fraud that potentially is happening in the system,” one Republican lawmaker told the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Ohio has offered early and no-excuse absentee voting since 2005 without major incident. Other states run their elections almost entirely by mail without seeing substantial deviations from other states in their level of fraud, which is tiny.

Aside from the usual fuming about fraud, they argue that early and absentee voting make it harder for campaigns to get out their messages, as though voting rules existed for candidates’ convenience. The real reason they want to crimp the early and absentee vote is not hard to discern: Even though Mr. Trump carried Ohio last year, Democratic voters appeared to cast most of the early votes.

The WaPo opinion piece noted that one FRP politician complained that Democrats want their ballots “served with breakfast in bed.” The FRP apparently wants voters to get their ballots from the top of Mt. Everest and they have to get them by hiking up there without a tour guide. To get rid of ballots served with breakfast in bed, the Ohio FRP is imposing a voting crackdown. This self-righteous voter discipline will “reduce the time people have to request absentee ballots; cut off early voting the day before Election Day; limit drop boxes to only one location per county, and permit their use in only the 10 days before Election Day.”

Note that thing about drop boxes being limited to just one location per county. Think about it. In counties with big populations, voters tend to be Democrats. In small population counties, voters tend to vote for the FRP. One location in a big pop. county will cut off far more votes than one location in a small pop. county. That would be especially true if the location in the big pop. counties is made as inconvenient and inaccessible as possible for the largest number of Democratic voters, while locating the one drop box in the low pop. counties in a place that is as convenient and accessible for the largest number of FRP voters. That one measure alone could be enough to throw an election to the FRP.

See how that works? Those mischievous little FRP devils! 😈 Take that you rotten voters.

But, this is the socialist fake news WaPo speaking, so it has the audacity to opine: “if Republicans cannot compete when more Americans have their say, they should change their candidates and their policies, not discourage people from casting ballots.”

What socialist gall and rot! The FRP is not going to field candidates that are acceptable to most voters. What were all those RINO hunts for? Not to be responsive to voter sentiment, that’s for sure. Fascism is not acceptable to most voters, and that’s that. The goal of suppressing votes by the FRP dates back at least to the 1980s. Rigging elections and suppressing voters are absolute necessities for the FRP to remain competitive today.

The bigger picture

But that is just Ohio. What about the rest of the country? How has the FRP effort to suppress votes and rig elections gone so far in other states? For context, the most recent surge in voter suppression and vote suppressing and election rigging started in 2013. That is when the FRP judges on the Supreme Court gutted voter protections under the 1965 Voting Rights Act in FRP states that had historically discriminated against voters they wanted to discriminate against. Shortly after that court decision, many FRP states passed laws that limited voting. That anti-democratic trend accelerated enormously after the 2020 election and the constant stream of FRP lies that the vote was fraudulent and invalid.

As of June 21, 2021, the Brennan Center reported that, among other things, 17 states had passed laws to restrict voting and/or rig elections.[1] Provisions are categorized as restrictive if they would make it harder for Americans to register, stay on the rolls, and/or vote, as compared to existing state law. The Brennan Center commented: 

“At the same time, at least 880 bills with expansive provisions have been introduced in 49 states. Of these, at least 28 bills with expansive provisions have been signed into law in 14 states. At least 115 bills with expansive provisions are moving in 25 states: 45 have passed at least one chamber, and 70 have had some sort of committee action. .... At least 14 bills moving in 6 states would expand voter purge practices in ways that risk improper removals. At least eight bills would require the use of new and often unreliable data sources to eliminate voters from the rolls. 

Three new state laws seek to punish local election officials for technical mistakes. Iowa’s SF 413 allows the state commissioner of elections to impose a fine on county election officials for technical infractions, including failure to purge voters. In Arkansas, SB 644 allows the State Board of Election Commissioners to decertify local election officials or even take over the administration of local elections based on any violation (even if inadvertent) of voter registration or election laws they deem severe enough. 

After governors, secretaries of state, and local officials took action in 2020 so that voters could safely cast their ballots during the pandemic, state legislators are advancing bills that limit executive and local power. 

This session, five bills have been enacted that restrict or prohibit the use of outside funding for election administration expenses. In 2020, nonpartisan philanthropic grants were essential to election officials’ ability to conduct safe elections during the pandemic. Laws in Arizona, Florida, and Georgia prohibit election administrators from accepting private funding for election expenses, while the Kansas law creates a felony offense for election officials to accept or spend money on elections from private sources.” 

In recent weeks Texas also acted to rig elections and suppress votes. Now Ohio can be added to the list. If my arithmetic is right, these suppressed and/or rigged states, TX, GA, OH, MT, WY, UT, AZ, IA, KS, OK, AK, ID, KY, FL and AL control 176 Electoral College votes, 32 Senate seats and 144 Representatives.[2] At least 270 electoral college votes is required to elect the president and vice president. Given that, it is possible that FRP efforts have effectively subverted free and fair elections, but we just cannot know it yet. To assess the final impact of all the new laws, it will be necessary to see the outcomes of the 2022 and 2024 elections. In the case of restrictive laws the FRP supports, the goal has usually or always been to make it harder for Democrats to win according to experts who have looked at the laws and the rationales, if any, for passing them. 

Questions: Do restrictive FRP laws constitute a lethal, serious, moderate, low or no threat to free and fair elections? Can one define a free and fair election as one that rigs it so that the FRP candidate almost always beats the Democrat?

Footnotes: 

1. In some of the states that passed restrictive laws or election rigging laws, some laws were also passed that could expand voting, e.g., easier vote by mail laws. What could be given to voters with one law, could more than be taken away by another law(s) that suppresses votes or rigs elections. Election results from 2022 and 2024 will be necessary to assess the situation.

2, Some other states, e.g., ND, SD, NE, TN, NC, SC, MO, AK, and LA (71 Electoral College votes), rarely voted for Democrats in recent times in most congressional and presidential elections. That seems unlikely to change by 2024 if not a lot longer than that.

Christian nationalist Paul Weyrich attacking 

goo-goo, voting and majority rule

https://youtu.be/8GBAsFwPglw

A tactical shift in social media propaganda?

Zuckerberg -- Liar or truth teller?

Misleading propaganda from politics-related sites are among some of the most popular sources of online interaction with people. Misleading propaganda is up a notch in sophistication compared to simple lying. Instead of merely asserting blatant lies, misleading content is more subtle. One can call this lies of omission because the intent is to deceive as is the case with simple lying. Misleading content is harder to fact check and harder to expose as intentional propaganda because of differences in how different people perceive information and think about it. 

One interesting trend is that people are less engaged with sites that sites that repeatedly post outright lies and blatantly false information. That data indicates that some of the public has become aware of the amount of lying that drives a lot of politics-related news content and consciously wants to avoid it. The Washington Post writes:

More than 1 in 5 interactions — such as shares, likes or comments — with U.S. sites from April to June happened on “outlets that gather and present information irresponsibly,” according to a report by the German Marshall Fund.

This includes outlets such as the Daily Wire, TMZ, the Epoch Times and Breitbart[1] that researchers say “distort or misrepresent information to make an argument or report on a subject,” a metric determined by NewsGuard, a website cited in the study that rates the credibility of news sources. Researchers say these sources, which they argue spread subtler but still harmful forms of misinformation, are decidedly different from sites that publish overtly false news.

“These are the kinds of sites that will cherry pick anecdotes and are giving rise to vaccine hesitancy and other kinds of conspiracy theories,” said Karen Kornbluh, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative, a public policy think tank.

Researchers highlighted articles that they say “disproportionately amplify vaccine-hesitant voices over experts” and “fail to mention risks of not being vaccinated against covid-19,” such as a June story on football, titled, “NFL Wide Receiver Refuses Vaccine, Wants To ‘Represent’ Other Silent Players.”

While platforms have cracked down on black-and-white cases of fiction masquerading as fact, they are still grappling with how to handle murky yet wide-reaching cases that stop short of falsehood. [lies are usually a lot easier to fact check and debunk than flawed motivated reasoning (crackpottery)]

“What we really see is that the information environment has changed dramatically,” said Kornbluh, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development under the Obama administration.

The ratio of misleading content marks a five-year high for Facebook, where “false content producers” have received a higher share of engagement in the past, according to the findings. At the same time, engagement with U.S. sites that repeatedly share outright false information — going a step beyond merely misrepresenting information — has plummeted across Facebook and Twitter. 

On Twitter, 9 percent of shares by verified accounts to U.S. sites went to misleading sites, while 3 percent went to sites that publish false content, marking a three-year low for both categories.

WaPo goes on to comment that cracking down on false content producers is low hanging fruit. It will be harder for social media to figure out how to deal with an information ecosystem increasingly shades of gray as the sophistication of propaganda increases. Obviously, sites like Daily Wire and Breitbart that rely on divisive, deceptive propaganda will continue to refine their dark art, so those sources of social poison are not going to go away unless people finally realize they are being manipulated and betrayed. It may be the case that outright lies will have to play a smaller role in deceiving and polarizing people into irrational states of mind. 

The open question is whether the more subtle propaganda will be as effective as the blunt stuff that pushed us to the poisoned society we have today. Some evidence hints that subtle deceit may be somewhat less effective than a blunderbuss packed with lies. WaPo commented that engagement decreased among U.S. sites in the second quarter, dropped significantly faster for misleading sites compared to reliable sites with a high trustworthiness rating. That is quite encouraging. Maybe society’s defenses against the dark arts are slowly increasing.

If only social media companies could be trusted. WaPo reports that some evidence indicates that Facebook is lying about some of this the data to limit damage to its reputation. Content with lies has been a money-maker for social media companies, so there is an economic incentive for them to keep the lies coming. This reporting therefore has to be taken with some caution. 

Footnote: 

1. From what I can tell, most hard core radical right politics sites block commenters like myself who post content that contradicts false fact assertions or clearly flawed reasoning. It is often fairly easy to find and cite evidence that rebuts false fact assertions. It usually takes significantly more time and effort to rebut flawed reasoning, i.e., intentionally misleading motivated reasoning. In retaliation for posting truth and sound reasoning, I’ve been blocked and cannot comment at multiple big fascist right sites including Daily Wire and Breitbart. Before I was blocked, my comments that contradicted lies tended to generate the most responses and the most emotional responses by people who disliked hearing that they were being lied to. 

Early on (before ~March 2016), fascist right sites allowed links to be in comments. I used links to cite to evidence that rebutted lies and crackpot reasoning. But over time, sites used links to hold inconvenient comments in moderation, allegedly to look for spam, but most often for no reason. Inconvenient comments with links in them were destined to never be seen. That made it a little harder to rebut lies, but significantly harder to rebut crackpot reasoning. 

But even that level of free speech censoring wasn’t enough. In time, radical right sites decided they needed to flat out block people like me from making any comments. No reason was ever given. Based on what WaPo is reporting here, it may be the case that, despite what appeared to be no impact from people posting truth and sound reasoning, maybe there was some impact. Maybe some people who trusted those sites gained some awareness that they were possibly being lied to or crackpotted on (misled). That would be consistent with sites like Daily Wire and Breitbart shifting somewhat from heavy reliance on flat out lies to more reliance on misleading motivated reasoning as WaPo is reporting now.

Maybe, just maybe, people like me who commented in opposition to wanton dark free speech at least for a while were not acting completely in vain. Of course, maybe we didn't have anything to do with this mindset shift, assuming it is real.

Chapter review part 2: The New Right and Racism

The New Right and Racism is chapter 6 of Sarah Posner's 2020 book, Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump. Part one of this chapter review centered mostly on the propaganda, and the racism the modern alt-right and ex-president relies heavily on to foment false beliefs, social discord and distrust, thereby gaining significant public support. 

This 2nd review focuses on the catastrophic failure of the MSM (mainstream media) in this mess, and two matters of moral opinion, (i) the inherent dark mindset that some humans have, arguably from birth, and (ii) how much tolerance for ignorance and acceptance of propaganda lies should people of good will in a secular democracy have for a lethal threat in their midst.

The MSM

The American people are largely ignorant of what the alt-right and New Right are and stand for. Most of the American people have little or no idea of what Christian nationalism is or the history of the New Right and alt-right since the 1950s. On these issues, the MSM deserves a grade of F-, if that grade exists If not, a grade of F will have to do. IMO, that conclusion isn't a close call. It’s brain dead simple.

Posner mentions a couple of examples of ignorant, deceived MSM complicity. 

First and foremost is the Washington Times (WT). Assuming one can call it part of the MSM, a debatable proposition, that propaganda paper is solidly New Right. It tends to be deceptively described as an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., or something bland like that. That is a bald faced lie of omission. For years, the WT employed the extreme racist Samuel Francis (1923-1994) as a syndicated columnist. As mentioned in part 1 of this chapter review, Francis is the racist hater who wrote in favor of dictatorship and justified violence by hurt delicate fascist feelings to get satisfaction, e.g., by attacking civil liberties. 

Also included in the list of incompetent MSM outlets are the Washington Post and New York Times.[1] Both of those boobs published and praised some of the later New Right propaganda and saw it as something new and worthy of consideration in American politics. Those idiots had no idea that they were praising fascist racist propaganda. They get a well-deserved F- on this issue for failing to inform the American people  of what they were in the midst of and being deceived by. To this day, most Americans are mostly or completely  unaware of what Christian nationalism is, what its leaders stand for, and how powerful and hateful it is right now.

The inherent human dark mindset

 As best I can tell, a significant proportion (sometimes majority? usually majority?) of modern humans in a culture, a nation, a group or a tribe are born with brains that develop into openness to beliefs in unpleasant ideas, including openness to and embrace of racism and the psychologically comforting lies of demagogues. This seems to be inherent in the human condition that evolution conferred. Erich Fromm focused on this in his 1941 book Escape from Freedom. There, Fromm argued that many people simply cannot handle democracy and freedom due to its inherent complexity and ambiguity. They psychologically need an escape from the burdens and ambiguities of pluralistic freedom.

In my opinion, the New Right and now the alt-right reflect this ever-present aspect of the human condition. It provides a plausible at least partial rationale for why democracies and pluralism are fragile and prone to fall to tyrants and demagogues despite their typical cruelty and lies.

How tolerant should pro-truth and pro-reason patriots be?

Once upon a time, one observer was alleged to have commented on the human condition, saying something about like this: “If a person’s paycheck depends on them not understanding something, it is damn hard to get them to understand.” There is truth in that, but the observation is too narrow. A more encompassing truth is this: If a person’s paycheck, self-esteem, tribe loyalty, self-identity or ideology depends on them not understanding something, it is damn hard to get them to understand, and if they are members of a cult is it essentially impossible to get them to understand.

Most rank and file voters who vote for most modern Republicans probably do not understand what they are voting for. Their paychecks, self-esteem, cult loyalty and whatnot keep them from seeing. Their minds are trapped and blinded. They cannot see.

Questions:

Does the MSM deserve an F for its failure to adequately report on the New Right and now alt-right, or are the American people reasonably well-informed? Does economic fear keep the MSM from dealing with this competently? If not that, then what?

How much tolerance for that should there be from people who mostly see and accept the alt-right propaganda? Does it matter that those people are often or usually quite intolerant of others they disagree with? Does it matter that they often (usually?) reject differing opinions out of hand, no matter how respectfully they are presented?

Footnote: 

1. In 1986, the Washington Post published an essay by the hard core racist Paul Weyrich that argued for a moderate new trend he called cultural conservatism. He called that “the most important political idea” of the times. It was pure propaganda. Weyrich was astute and understood it would take time to bamboozle the press. He commented that reporters would need to be “spoon fed these ideas over and over again” before New Right propaganda started to gain traction. The bamboozled boobs at the New York Times gushed in a 1987 opinion piece that Weyrich’s drivel might be, as Posner described it, “ushering in a new era of conservative compassion and service to others.” What a load of rot from buffaloed fools.