Chapter review: Down the Memory Hole

We see things not as they are but as we are. -- Anon. ~1890

That Anon. ~1890 person correctly intuited what human cognitive biology and social behavior usually does to how most people see reality most or all of the time. -- Germaine, 2021

When information which properly belongs to the public is systematically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and--eventually--incapable of determining their own destinies. -- Richard Nixon, ~1993

Down the Memory Hole: The Disappearance of the Recent Past is chapter 10 of James Lowen’s 2018 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Here, Lowen focuses on the reasons that history textbooks have limited coverage of the recent past, roughly events that most living people have some direct or nearly direct knowledge and memories about. For example, far fewer Americans have direct experience with WWII than the Vietnam War. In general, events that occurred before a person's birth date fade from recent memory to the true past as time passes and no one alive has direct experience. Treatment of recent history in textbooks is quite different from treatment of people and events that are fully in the past. 

Presumably, recent history books for post high school students and professional scholars are more honest and detailed. Lowen comments on why the recent past is underplayed and is not something that public school textbook authors and publishers can treat honestly or in depth: 

We read partly in a spirit of criticism, assessing what the authors got wrong as well as agreeing with and perhaps learning from what they got right. When we study the more distant past, we may also read critically, but now our primary mode is ingestive [learning]. Especially if we are reading for the first time about an event, we have little ground on which to stand and criticize what we read. .... Thus authors tiptoe through the [recent past] with extreme caution, evading the main issues, all the main “why” questions.

The “why” questions are directed at why history sometimes unfolded as it did. Answering those questions is critical for students to get a feel for cause and effect in the past, and how linked events can echo in their own lives in the future. American history textbooks generally do a poor job of answering those questions, especially for the recent past.

Authors and publishers defend their admittedly bad job of dealing with the recent past to a lack of historical perspective. They argue that with the passage of time, historians gain insight from hindsight and in later decades give a more informed and nuanced account of recent history. Lowen properly attacks and rejects the historical perspective shield as nonsense, citing fear as one key reason:

Each of these matters is still contentious, however. Some parents are Democrats, some are Republicans so what authors say about the impeachment and trial of Bill Clinton will likely offend half the community. .... Homosexuality is even more taboo as a subject of discussion or learning in America’s high schools. Affirmative action leads to angry debates. The women’s movement can still be a minefield even though it peaked in the 1970s. Every school district includes parents who affirm traditional sex roles and others who do not. So let’s not say much about feminism today; let’s leave it in the 1970s.

Many teachers also lack courage or simply run out of time. .... most teachers never get near the end of the textbook. .... Like publishers, teachers do not want to risk offending parents.

Without [the shield of] historical perspective, textbook authors appear naked: no particular qualification gives them the right to narrate recent events with the same Olympian detachment and absolute certainty with which they declaim in events in the [true past].

The passage of time does not in itself provide perspective, however. Information is lost as well as gained over time. Therefore the claim of inadequate historical perspective cannot excuse ignoring the [recent past]. 

Leaving out the recent past ensures that students will take away little from their history courses that they can apply to the world.

Lowen then goes on in great detail about the awful textbook treatment of recent past events such as the Iraq war and the 9/11 attacks, usually cloaked in the myth of America being an innocent “international good guy.” Lowen is blunt about the American presence on the international stage: 

Textbooks find it hard to question our foreign policy because from beginning to end they typically assume the America as “the international good guy” model .... Like all nations, the United States seeks first to increase its own prosperity and influence in the world. .... We preach democracy while supporting dictatorships.

He also points out that historical perspective can change based on changes in society. Woodrow Wilson was one of those who history initially treated negatively, but now more positively due to anti-communist ideology of the 1950s.[1]

Question: Should recent history be treated more honestly and address questions about “why” some events happened, e.g., the 9/11 attacks are inexplicable if most Arabs and other people in the Muslim world see America as a great hypocrite, not an innocent international good guy? 

Footnotes:

1. Lowen comments on Wilson’s changed historical perspective: “During the Cold War our government operated as it did under Wilson, with semi-declared wars, executive deception of congress, and suppression of civil liberties in the name of anticommunism. Wilson’s policies, unpopular in the 1920s, had become ordinary by the 1950s.”

Dark free speech tactics: Sealioning, Gish gallop and other popular deceit and manipulation tactics

“The mind is divided into parts, like a rider (controlled processes) on an elephant (automatic processes). The rider evolved to serve the elephant. . . . . intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Therefore, if you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first. .... Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t. Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants work. Their slogans, political commercials and speeches go straight for the gut . . . . Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory.” -- Psychologist Johnathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012

Dark free speech (DFS): Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. Germaine, ~2016 or thereabouts

There are lots of ways to engage in debate in ways that can feel right and principled, but are in effect ways to subvert principled focused debate into far less rational or focused engagements. Provoking frustration, impatience and anger are common goals of subverting rhetorical tactics. Logic fallacies are a common tactic of people that have to rely on weak or non-existent fact, truth and/or reasoning positions, e.g., the 2020 election was stolen. Denying, distorting or irrationally downplaying inconvenient facts and truths are also popular and usually present in some form in nearly all DFS. 

Here is how some of these things are described.

Wikipedia on sealioning:

Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki.

The troll feigns ignorance and politeness, so that if the target is provoked into making an angry response, the troll can then act as the aggrieved party.[7][8] Sealioning can be performed by a single troll or by multiple ones acting in concert.[9] The technique of sealioning has been compared to the Gish gallop and metaphorically described as a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10]

An essay in the collection Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online, published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, noted:

Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target's patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the "sea lion" may seem innocent, they're intended maliciously and have harmful consequences. — Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019) (emphasis added

Wikipedia on the Gish gallop: 

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott, who named it after Duane Gish. Scott argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution.[1][2] It is similar to a method used in formal debate called spreading.

During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate.[3][4] In practice, each point raised by the "Gish galloper" takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place.[5] The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved[6] or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics.

In the case of the Gush gallop, the dark free speech proponent can plays on a person's ignorance to make arguments and asserted facts or truths seem at least plausible. It shifts the burden to the principled participant to fact check, which often takes more time and effort than is reasonable and is often frustrating, which tends to degrade the quality and social usefulness of the debate.

Whataboutism: Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument (Germaine: or without showing its relevance). 

Whataboutism is usually embedded in false narratives implied through irrelevant questions. When cornered, there are two typical strategies. One, claim "I'm just asking questions! Two, claim "I can't prove it, but it sounds right!"

Wikipedia on false balance or bothsidesism: False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause of misinformation.[1]

False balance is a bias, which usually stems from an attempt to avoid bias, and gives unsupported or dubious positions an illusion of respectability. It creates a public perception that some issues are scientifically contentious, though in reality they aren't, therefore creating doubt about the scientific state of research, and can be exploited by interest groups such as corporations like the fossil fuel industry or the tobacco industry, or ideologically motivated activists such as vaccination opponents or creationists.[2]

Examples of false balance in reporting on science issues include the topics of man-made versus natural climate change, the health effects of tobacco, the alleged relation between thiomersal and autism,[3] and evolution versus intelligent design.

Wikipedia on logic fallacies:

A fallacy is reasoning that is logically incorrect, undermines the logical validity of an argument, or is recognized as unsound. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies.

Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classified by their structure (formal fallacies) or content (informal fallacies). Informal fallacies, the larger group, may then be subdivided into categories such as improper presumption, faulty generalization, error in assigning causation and relevance, among others.

The use of fallacies is common when the speaker's goal of achieving common agreement is more important to them than utilizing sound reasoning. When fallacies are used, the premise should be recognized as not well-grounded, the conclusion as unproven (but not necessarily false), and the argument as unsound.

Informal fallacies

Informal fallacies – arguments that are logically unsound for lack of well-grounded premises.[14]

• Argument to moderation (false compromise, middle ground, fallacy of the mean, argumentum ad temperantiam) – assuming that a compromise between two positions is always correct.^[15]
• Continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard, line-drawing fallacy, sorites fallacy, fallacy of the heap, bald man fallacy, decision-point fallacy) – improperly rejecting a claim for being imprecise.^[16]
• Correlative-based fallacies
  • Suppressed correlative – a correlative is redefined so that one alternative is made impossible (e.g., "I'm not fat because I'm thinner than John.").^[17]
• Definist fallacy – defining a term used in an argument in a biased manner (e.g., using "loaded terms"). The person making the argument expects that the listener will accept the provided definition, making the argument difficult to refute.^[18]
• Divine fallacy (argument from incredulity) – arguing that, because something is so incredible or amazing, it must be the result of superior, divine, alien or paranormal agency.^[19]
• Double counting – counting events or occurrences more than once in probabilistic reasoning, which leads to the sum of the probabilities of all cases exceeding unity.
• Equivocation – using a term with more than one meaning in a statement without specifying which meaning is intended.^[20]
  • Ambiguous middle term – using a middle term with multiple meanings.^[21]
  • Definitional retreat – changing the meaning of a word when an objection is raised.^[22] Often paired with moving the goalposts (see below), as when an argument is challenged using a common definition of a term in the argument, and the arguer presents a different definition of the term and thereby demands different evidence to debunk the argument.
  • Motte-and-bailey fallacy – conflating two positions with similar properties, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one more controversial (the "bailey").^[23] The arguer first states the controversial position, but when challenged, states that they are advancing the modest position.^[24][25]
  • Fallacy of accent – changing the meaning of a statement by not specifying on which word emphasis falls.
  • Persuasive definition – purporting to use the "true" or "commonly accepted" meaning of a term while, in reality, using an uncommon or altered definition.
  • (cf. the if-by-whiskey fallacy)
• Ecological fallacy – inferring about the nature of an entity based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which that entity belongs.^[26]
• Etymological fallacy – assuming that the original or historical meaning of a word or phrase is necessarily similar to its actual present-day usage.^[27]
• Fallacy of composition – assuming that something true of part of a whole must also be true of the whole.^[28]
• Fallacy of division – assuming that something true of a composite thing must also be true of all or some of its parts.^[29]
• False attribution – appealing to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument.
  • Fallacy of quoting out of context (contextotomy, contextomy; quotation mining) – selective excerpting of words from their original context to distort the intended meaning.^[30]
• False authority (single authority) – using an expert of dubious credentials or using only one opinion to promote a product or idea. Related to the appeal to authority.
• False dilemma (false dichotomy, fallacy of bifurcation, black-or-white fallacy) – two alternative statements are given as the only possible options when, in reality, there are more.^[31]
• False equivalence – describing two or more statements as virtually equal when they are not.

• Slippery slope (thin edge of the wedge, camel's nose) – asserting that a proposed, relatively small, first action will inevitably lead to a chain of related events resulting in a significant and negative event and, therefore, should not be permitted.^[43]
• Special pleading – the arguer attempts to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule or principle without justifying the exemption (e.g.: a defendant who murdered his parents asks for leniency because he is now an orphan).
• Etc., etc., etc. 

Red herring fallacies

• Ad hominem – attacking the arguer instead of the argument. (Note that "ad hominem" can also refer to the dialectical strategy of arguing on the basis of the opponent's own commitments. This type of ad hominem is not a fallacy.)
  • Circumstantial ad hominem – stating that the arguer's personal situation or perceived benefit from advancing a conclusion means that their conclusion is wrong.^[70]
  • Poisoning the well – a subtype of ad hominem presenting adverse information about a target person with the intention of discrediting everything that the target person says.^[71]
  • Appeal to motive – dismissing an idea by questioning the motives of its proposer.
  • Tone policing – focusing on emotion behind (or resulting from) a message rather than the message itself as a discrediting tactic.
  • Traitorous critic fallacy (ergo decedo, 'thus leave') – a critic's perceived affiliation is portrayed as the underlying reason for the criticism and the critic is asked to stay away from the issue altogether. Easily confused with the association fallacy ("guilt by association") below.
• Appeal to authority (argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam) – an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it.^[72][73]
• Straw man fallacy – misrepresenting an opponent's argument by broadening or narrowing the scope of a premise and/or refuting a weaker version of their argument (e.g.: If someone says that killing animals is wrong because we are animals too saying "It is not true that humans have no moral worth" would be a strawman since they have not asserted that humans have no moral worth, rather that the moral worth of animals and humans are equivalent.)^[105]
• Texas sharpshooter fallacy – improperly asserting a cause to explain a cluster of data.[106] This fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.[1] This fallacy is the philosophical or rhetorical application of the multiple comparisons problem (in statistics) and apophenia (in cognitive psychology). It is related to the clustering illusion, which is the tendency in human cognition to interpret patterns where none actually exist. The name comes from a joke about a Texan who fires some gunshots at the side of a barn, then paints a target centered on the tightest cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter.
• Tu quoque ('you too' – appeal to hypocrisy, whataboutism) – stating that a position is false, wrong, or should be disregarded because its proponent fails to act consistently in accordance with it.^[107]
• Two wrongs make a right – assuming that, if one wrong is committed, another wrong will rectify it.

 As one can see, there are a heck of a lot of ways to derail focused, principled debate into fluff, false beliefs, social discord, etc. Skilled trolls, professional propagandists and most hard core ideologues are familiar with these tactics. Most people and interests that use dark free speech (~97% ?), do so without hesitation or moral qualm. Even people who try to stay principled can engage in logic fallacies without being aware if it. 

Given the way the human mind evolved to work, existing research evidence indicates that relative to principled debate grounded in honest speech, dishonest debate grounded in DFS can be and often is more persuasive. In my opinion, reasonable sounding DFS, usually not crackpottery like the trash that QAnon spews, tends to be about 2-4-fold more effective in influencing public opinion. Being limited to facts, true truths and sound reasoning forecloses a whole lot of rhetorical territory and tactics that can be used to describe real or fake facts, truths and reality. 

Some logic fallacies were discussed here several time before, e.g., this chapter review.

One moral argument holds that people who decide and act based on DFS, false beliefs, misinformation, disinformation and the like deprives them of the power to decide and act based on truth and reality. A counter moral argument is that the ends justify the means and thus lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation are morally justified. I consider the counter moral argument to be inherently anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian.

Questions: 

1. Is it reasonable to believe that DFS is more effective than honest speech in convincing people to believe things?

2. Since both DFS and honest speech are legal and constitutionally protected, are both morally equivalent?

Why collecting and analyzing data is necessary for democracy: Labor data is suppressed

A small labor kerfuffle:

Eight workers in Lincoln, NE quit 

their jobs at a BK there because 

the pay was too low to live on --

that is the message they left on the sign

Context

One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism, demagoguery and abuse of the public is the shield against reality that opacity plus dark free speech affords. When there is no data about a situation, demagogues, tyrants, crooks, liars, kleptocrats, plutocrats, and the like (collectively, the "thugs") do not hesitate tell people things that are false. Thugs just make stuff up with no moral or other qualms about the real situation or actual truth. Since there is no empirical evidence to contradict a thug's lies or falsehoods, irrational emotional manipulation and self-serving motivated reasoning, the uninformed public tends to be more easily misled compared to a more informed public.

Decades ago, the FRP (fascist Republican Party) realized this truth about the usually pro-democracy, anti-thug aspect of undistorted empirical data. Starting at least as early as the Reagan administrations, the FRP started targeting and suppressing federal government data collection and analysis activities. Loss of data made the lies, falsehoods and nonsense that the FRP was telling the public impossible to refute on the basis of evidence. Debate began to degenerate into competing opinions instead of at least modestly evidence-shaped debate. Over time, irrationality increased and rationality decreased. That helped nudge American society into the toxic garbage that passes for politics today. That is especially applicable to America's modern radical right and the FRP, which has advanced to a mindset that  is now open to not just suppressing data, but also denying inconvenient data when it is available. 

The next step in this intellectual progression will be fabricating data when real data is too inconvenient. Arguably, that line has already been crossed in the form of various debunked lies and conspiracy theories that the FRP routinely poisons political discourse with. I expected the election "audit" in Arizona to finally cross the line from data suppression and distortion to data fabrication. That didn't happen in terms of lying about vote counts. Nonetheless that audit farce included a blast of fabricated reasons to distrust the Arizona election results. Maybe faux audits in states such as Texas will cross the line and finally come up with altered vote counts as faux empirical data to buttress the "stolen election" lies.

The key points are obvious: Data is powerful. Thugs need to suppress, distort or fabricate data to advance their run at power and/or wealth, the most common political, social and commercial goals of thugs.

America's labor situation: What's the data?

The September issue of The Hightower Lowdown, a solidly liberal source, published an interesting article about collecting labor statistics entitled, We’re humans, not corporate cogs. THL writes:

The corporate hierarchy has long tried to diminish labor activism in the US by insisting that strikes and other workplace agitations have never had broad support or impact because they are fundamentally un-American. The corporatists cluck that from the get-go America’s cultural zeitgeist has been grounded in veneration of individualism, appreciation for the financial blessings of the corporate order, and the rejection of collectivism.

No matter how hard corporate mythologists try to deny it, labor uprisings are natural expressions of people’s maverick spirit, and they’ve been both a constant and an essential force in the democratization of American society. Our nation–born in bloody rebellion–was never likely to create a “yes, boss” workforce meekly serving the corporate order. Indeed, the story of US labor is the epic tale of widespread, aggressive labor rebellions, with generations of workers in every economic sector in every region of the country confronting, organizing, protesting, boycotting, striking, and otherwise agitating for a little more economic fairness and a bit bigger say about working conditions.

Unfortunately, our educational and media Powers That Be don’t celebrate that story. Instead, they ignore, minimalize, and whitewash the frequency and intensity of the agitation–in hope that workers won’t grasp the democratic possibilities of such activism.

Consider this rather basic question: How many labor actions have taken place in the US so far this year?

Most people: “Dunno. I didn’t hear of any.”

Mass Media Establishment: “We focused on one— that bruhaha in Alabama over unionizing Jeff Bezos’ Amazon warehouse.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (official keeper of worker stats): “We’ve counted eight.”

Actual Number: 640. That’s just the January to September count of labor uprisings documented by Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker shows union actions against corporate powers in nearly every state, with especially strong activity (more than 100 actions) in the South, which media keep portraying as solidly anti-union.

Well, golly, a spread of zero to 640 is more than a minor statistical discrepancy. So what’s going on?

The article goes on to argue that: 

1. Public ignorance is almost entirely due to the MSM's failure to treat workers and unions as newsworthy, and accordingly they have eliminated the “labor beat” and ignore labor news; and

2. The discrepancy between the official Bureau of Labor Statistics number and reality is deliberate and political. 

THL points out that the BLS used to provide an honest count of labor incidents, but in 1982, “the virulently anti-union Reagan presidency slashed the agency’s funding and staff, so it now only reports strikes, lockouts, etc. involving more than 1,000 workers.” That political cutoff effectively ignores most labor actions. That can be considered to be a lie of omission. It intentionally misinforms the public and lawmakers. 

THL comments:

For example, as the August Lowdown reported, since May 1, ExxonMobil has locked out 650 steelworkers in Beaumont, Texas. Those feisty workers are taking a momentous stand against outrageous corporate greed, but under BLS’s arbitrary 1,000-worker rule, they don’t count. Almost no major news outlet, national or state, has even reported that the lockout is happening. 

Just 10 years ago, Gallup polls found that not even half of Americans approved of labor unions, but a steady rise in favorability has pushed that number to two-thirds. (That’s fast approaching the 72% level Gallop registered in 1936 at the start of our modern organized labor movement.) Even 45% of today’s Republicans approve of unions, 15 points higher than a decade ago.

Moreover, the “representation gap”–the difference between the number of workers who would like to be represented by a union and the number who are–is the widest in decades. More than half of Americans say they would now vote for a union in their workplace, but current labor laws are so stacked against organizing that only 10.8% of US employees have one.

Questions: 

1. Is it reasonable to argue that collection and reporting of data is as important to defend democracy and usually inherently anti-authoritarian and anti-thug as described here?

2. Since the BLS labor statistics have been poisoned by thugs since 1982, can one reasonably argue that both the Democratic Parties and the FRP are both inherently hostile to labor's concerns, maybe with the Dems being less virulent?

3. Is it unfair, inaccurate or otherwise unreasonable to call demagogues, tyrants, crooks, liars, kleptocrats, plutocrats, and the like thugs, and if so, is there a better collective label?

The 1/6 coup attempt compared to BLM riots and protests

Real Clear Investigations put together a comparison of the two things. Some polling indicates that most Americans want to see congress investigate both, but so far only the 1/6 insurrection is under investigation. 

The comparison of fallout links BLM riots with a dramatic nationwide increase in homicides but decreasing arrests. It's not clear how linkage between BLM riots and increased non-BLM homicides was made, so causation maybe not be strong or present at all. The BML protests led to over 16,000 arrests, while only ~570 arrests came from the 1/6 coup attempt 

Question: 

1. If the 1/6 coup attempt is seen as an unwarranted partisan political attack on democracy and the central government, while the BLM protests are seen as sometimes violent responses to alleged unwarranted police use of lethal force, can the two be directly compared in terms of overall threat? 

What some rural Afghanis think of the US war in Afghanistan

The US presence in larger towns and cities was different than its presence in rural areas where most of the fighting was done. The Washington Post writes:

SINZAI, Afghanistan — The white flags flutter in the apple orchards of this serene hamlet ringed by oatmeal-colored mountains. They mark the precise spots where U.S. airstrikes killed Afghans. In the village center lies the destroyed shell of a building that once housed shops; down the road is a mangled, rusted car.

There are white flags there, too.

Together, they’re reminders of the legacy the United States has left in many rural areas across Afghanistan.

“Everyone here hated the Americans,” said Zabiullah Haideri, 30. His shop was shattered by an airstrike in 2019 that killed 12 villagers. “They murdered civilians and committed atrocities.”

In Kabul and other Afghan cities, the United States will be remembered for enabling two decades of progress in women’s rights, an independent media and other freedoms. But in the nation’s hinterlands, the main battlegrounds of America’s longest war, many Afghans view the United States primarily through the prism of conflict, brutality and death.

Here in Wardak province, 25 miles southwest of the capital, the U.S. military, the CIA and the ruthless Afghan militias they armed and trained fought the Taliban for years. Trapped in the crossfire were villagers and farmers. Many became casualties of U.S. counterterrorism operations, drone strikes and gun battles.

They [the Taliban] were abetted by the harsh tactics of U.S. forces and their Afghan allies and by the corruption and ineffectiveness of the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Exacting any justice or compensation from the U.S. military or the government was elusive. So the killings of their relatives and the lack of accountability drove many villagers to support the Taliban.

To be certain, the Taliban controlled the villagers through fear, intimidation and their own brand of viciousness. But rural Afghan society is largely conservative, and residents mostly agreed with the militants’ harsh interpretation of Islam.  

With the departure of U.S. forces and the fall of President Ashraf Ghani’s government, there’s now a calm unlike any the villagers have experienced in two decades. With the conflict ended and the Taliban in control, the violence has stopped.

“The major change is there is peace and security now, and the killings of the people have stopped,” Mohammed Omar, the village imam, said in front of a mosque peppered with bullet holes. “You can move freely now anywhere. Death has disappeared.”  

“There are no airstrikes, no night raids, no bombings,” said Haideri, tall and wiry with a black beard and wavy hair. “But the problem now is there is no work and no money. People here are facing hunger.”  

The Taliban, by then [2015], controlled much of Nerkh. The government was entrenched in the district’s center. The villagers were caught in between. Even mundane tasks became matters of life or death. If Haideri shaved, for example, would the Taliban consider him loyal to the foreigners and the government? If he grew out his beard, would the government or U.S. forces consider him a spy?

“Whenever we left our homes we told our families, ‘goodbye,’ ” he said. “We didn’t know whether we would return home alive.”

This is an unusual bit of reporting about what some rural Afghanis saw, experienced and believed about the war. This fits with other, limited reporting from rural areas that suggested there was significant public support for the Taliban. It adds to the reporting about (i) the kleptocracy and incompetence of the Afghan central government, (ii) the brutality of US military and allied operations, and (iii) the arrogance-plagued futility of the entire US enterprise. To this day, the pentagon refuses to answer villagers’ questions about the status of investigations into allegedly unwarranted killings of villagers by US forces.

Question: What the hell did the US government think it was doing there all those years? 

Major upcoming Supreme Court cases: Power grab alert!

Context

Two bits of stuff help put this fun discussion in context.

First bit: We all remember this from the scintillating Senate hearings in 2017 during Brett Kavanaugh’s delightful confirmation hearings.

Ben Sasse (R-NE) said this:  “. . . . . the people don’t have a way to fire the bureaucrats. What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws. What we mostly decide to do is to give permission to the secretary or the administrator of bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make law-like regulations. That’s mostly what we do here. We go home and we pretend we make laws. No we don’t. We write giant pieces of legislation, 1200 pages, 1500 pages long, that people haven’t read, filled with all these terms that are undefined, and say to secretary of such and such that he shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our dang jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary, because this body rarely finishes its work. [joking] And, the House is even worse.”

For the most part, Sasse is a far right radical fascist extremist, but in this instance he nailed it dead on. Congress does not like to legislate because it might upset some voters and imperil re-election. Sasse was frustrated because the refusal of congress to actually legislate competently and coherently shifts a huge amount of power from congress to federal agencies. Sasse, hates, hates, hates federal agencies, mainly because he hates government just as much. In large part, federal agencies are the federal government. His logic is impeccable. Except for the Department of Defense, federal law enforcement and federal courts to protect sacred property rights, Sasse wants to see most or all of them obliterated. One can certainly feel his pain and frustration.

Second bit: We all also remember how hostile fascist Donnie and his mendacious cadre of crooks and thugs were to the federal government. People like Betsy DeVos and Louie DeJoy were put in charge to destroy their agencies, Education Department and Post Office, respectively. The animosity was blatant.

It is a huge mistake to believe that the FRP (fascist Republican Party) is not radical and extremist in its animosity to the federal government and its intent to gut it. FRP hate of government is aimed at nearly everything, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, environmental regulations, workplace regulations, and on and on and on. The goal is to shift power to the business sector and the states and to shift wealth to elite White Christians and authoritarian White faux Christians, e.g., fascist Donnie, at the top of society.

Buggs bunny voice: Meeaaah, what’s on the docket, doc?

Yesterday, a segment on the NPR program 1A discussed some of the cases the Supreme Court has accepted for review and decision in this term. Given the court’s current political makeup, radical right fundamentalist Christian and staunch extremist Republican ideologue, one can pretty much guess what’s on the docket.

Obliterate abortion rights. Check.

Obliterate gun regulations. Check.

Obliterate campaign contribution regulations. Check.

Obliterate same-sex marriage rights. Check.

Obliterate environmental regulations. Check.

Obliterate federal agency power. Check.

Jaw drop!

Wait! What?? Obliterate federal agency power? Yes, check, check . . . . . . can't you read?

OMG, what fresh fascist hell is this!?

The court will hear an obscure case, Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, which centers on FRP demands to limit the power of federal agencies to interpret congress’ often incomprehensible statute language. In the past, federal agencies had the Supreme Court’s blessing to do this based on a major 1984 case, Chevron.

Wikipedia: Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984), was a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court set forth the legal test for determining whether to grant deference to a government agency’s interpretation of a statute which it administers. The decision articulated a doctrine now known as the “Chevron deference.” The doctrine consists of a two-part test applied by the court, when appropriate, that is highly deferential to government agencies: “whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction [emphasis added] of the statute”, so long as Congress has not spoken directly to the precise issue at question.

Well, if congress writes a law that is ambiguous or incoherent, license to interpret it according to what can be seen as a “permissible construction” is shockingly broad. That is what Ben Sasse was complaining about in 2017. This is what the FRP refers to as the “deep state.” According to the FRP, the deep state is experts in federal agencies interpreting the incoherent slop that congress routinely produces in the form of statutes it passes. The court in Chevron decided that federal agencies with actual experts should turn incoherent congressional blither into at least semi-coherent regulations.

So, in the Becerra case, the FRP is asking the Supreme Court to reign in, or overturn Chevron, thereby neutering the power of federal agencies to recycle congressional garbage into something useful in the form of usually mostly understandable federal regulations.

Wait a minnit! What about power? Where will it go?

Usually power does not just go away. If the court does gut Chevron, the power that federal agencies used to have can go one of four basic places. It can revert back to congress, but since congress refuses to be competent and does not have the expertise even if it did try, power won’t go there. Besides, there are those pesky socialist-communist tyrant Democrats in congress who would interpret laws the wrong way if they ever got power. That’s no good.

Power could flow to the people, but as a whole, the American public seems to be a herd of uninformed, perpetually grumpy cats. That doesn’t seem to be a promising place for power to go. Besides, the FRP is authoritarian and wants power concentrated at the top, not distributed to the people. Power to the people is a non-starter.

What’s left? The private sector and the courts themselves.

 

The power could go to special interests who are affected by federal laws. They do have the experts needed to be coherent. Unfortunately, the business sector would make damn sure that federal law gets interpreted as they see fit, i.e., in social and environmental damage and profit-maximizing, and regulation and cost-minimizing ways. The business community would love that outcome and presumably so would the FRP.

According to the person A1 interviewed, Leah Litman a professor at U. Michigan law school, surmises that the FRP is angling for power to flow to the courts. The radical Republicans that dominate the Supreme Court would give legal interpretations the FRP and the business community would want. Even though the courts do not have the expertise to regulate, they would be free to decide case by case based on the briefs that the disputants submit. The courts would be free to decide in favor of Christian churches and the business community, which is what the FRP wants.

The segment that discusses the Becerra case is at 32:00-35:42 of the 47 minute 1A broadcast.

Questions: 

1. Should partisan political federal courts or experts in federal agencies interpret incoherent congressional language, or should congress actually try to do its job better? 

2. Is it credible to think that congress could ever obtain the expertise to regulate in complex areas, e.g., because congress is broken, or because the FRP hates government and has no intention of ever governing in the public interest?

3. Does this help bring into focus why the people that FRP elites coaxed fascist Donnie to put in power were there to attack and subvert the federal agencies they in charge of, not to make their agencies function better or work for the public interest? 

4. How good, bad or ambiguous a job has the MSM done on informing the American people of what the Supreme Court is up to? (here's one source, E&E News, that discusses some upcoming cases the Supreme Court has decided to hear[1])

Footnote: 

1. E&E News writes on how the radical right court thinks about environmental regulation: 

But the real blockbuster environmental battles could come through a series of pending petitions for the Supreme Court to get involved in legal fights over the scope of EPA regulations under the nation’s bedrock clean air and water laws.

“The fight about the environment at the Supreme Court significantly overlaps with the fight about executive power and agency power,” said Sean Marotta, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells. “What we see in the court’s environmental rulings is not so much strong feelings about the environment but fears of agency overreach.”

With the FRP, “agency overreach” is synonymous with the despised “deep state.”