Testing Lowen's thesis about history textbooks and the recent past

 In a recent post, James Lowen's savaging of history textbooks was discussed, and this quote was offered:

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.

This struck me as a highly implausible view of how 8th grade middle school students (at least that was my grade for American history) are likely to read discussions of the recent past.  Their parents and grandparents may remember the recent past, but those kids will not be able to.  

I think instead, that history textbooks are subject to the same issues that all textbooks are -- the PARENTS of kids, do not read critically, but sometimes get worked up by politicians or troublemakers agitating over a misrepresented passage. A textbook subject to a fulminating local talk show host in even one district, is a textbook in marketing trouble nationwide.

I would like to offer a test to my thesis, by citing a few of what I consider to be pretty clear lessons from recent history, ands see if they get our board here worked up.

Lesson 1, Wholesale socialism does not work

Motivated by the failures of market capitalism: the sweatshops, terrible wages and political control by oligarchs at the turn of the last century, a wide selection of alternatives were advocated for, and tried, in over half of the world, for most of the last century.  These efforts ranged from social welfarism, socialism, democratic communism, thru bloody communist dictatorships.  This represented a massive uncontrolled experiment to evaluate alternatives to market capitalism.  Karl Popper, in The Open Society and its Enemies, notes that democracies prove the most rapid feedback loop for correcting bad government policy, but that other forms of government may learn in a feedback loop as well.  At any rate, by ~1990, almost all the communist states had replaced their controlled economies with market economies, and the democratic socialist states had replaced much of their bureaucratic controlled sectors of their economies with contracted or privatized sectors.  

There HAS been some successes with the massive experiment in socialism.  Wholesale literacy, and both primary and secondary education were mostly implemented.  Much more access to Housing, and more widespread medical care, were among the benefits. And socialist states often did a better job with infrastructure investments.  

What they did not do well. was technology innovation, product quality, or response to fluxuating demand.  .

The socialist democracies basically abandoned the socialist goal of the public owning the means of production, and instead adopted a social welfare program, of providing the education, medical care, housing, and safety net that markets do poorly.  The countries of the world have, coming out of this experiment, converged on a model of 50-70% market economics, with 25-50% state services.  

Lesson 2, Burke was right, anarchists wrong

Burkian social conservatism is -- basically, a Darwinian belief that a successful societies norms and institutions are GOOD norms and institutions, as they are the ones that a successful society used to out-compete the legions of societies that are now historical footnotes.  Burke basically advocated for stability and social convention above all, out of a concern that societies are fragile, and institutions and norms difficult to recreate.  Lord of the Flies was a Burkian book. 

Robert Heinlein, a mid century Science fiction writer, was a leading advocate of an alternative more optimistic  anarchist view.  He advocates that breaking social conventions, leads to societies that spontaneously form new structures and norms, and that these are generally better than what they replace.  Much economic market theory basically assumes this spontaneous emergence of unplanned order is expected.   

We got to test these two models, in China, and Eastern Europe, when they each de-socialized.  China did this gradually, fearing instability.  Eastern European leaders were assured by market advocates of the ability for spontaneous order to emerge, and the old controlled Soviet economy was basically shut down overnight, and sold off for a pittance.  China, gradually built up an effective and innovative market economy, while state employers have been gradually scaled back over a period of decades.  China is now a global economic superpower.  While Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe -- have yet to experience the economic windfall that was promised decades ago by anarchist libertarians.  

Lesson 3, Armed revolutions work, except when they don't.  Ideas are more powerful.  

The 2oth century started with most of the world occupied by a few European powers. Under the Enlightenment values that those nations supposedly held, this was unjustifiable.  And the peoples in these occupied regions became restive.   There were world wide violent revolutionary movements against colonialism over much of the 20th century.  The cost and blood needed to maintain those empires, was more than those countries were willing to pay anymore, and revolutionary movements gained control of newly freed colonies worldwide.  This gave the illusion that popular revolutions are easy, and readily successful.

Other than the decolonization by democracies whose own value system did not support colonization, there were few other successes.  Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua and Soviet Afghanistan were among the few. Thousands of other revolutionary movements died in remote jungles and mountains, and the torture chambers of secret police.  Most states, are stable.  At least against armed revolution.  

What works far better to overthow a state, is to subvert it, with more attractive ideas.  Note, that is how the decolonization happened -- the colonial powers were forced, by internal civil rights movements, to confront the racism that was behind their occupations.  And enough of the state decision-makers were no longer believing in the racist/imperialist principles that are needed to be a colonial power.  

The Shah as also overthrown by ideas -- democratic theocracy in his case.  His army was unwilling to fight the popular will for democratic theocracy, so he fled.  Ferdinand Marcos fell the same way, although to democracy not theocracy,.   And both Eastern Europe, an South America, democratized due to a groundswell adoption of enlightenment principles by the dictatorial state's own agents!

Ideas matter, and have replaced many times more abusive states than armed revolution has.  .  

Lesson 4.  9-11, and Iraq Invasion.  Blunders all Around.  And good by accident.  

Both Lowen and Germaine seem pretty off here on even this very recent history.  Here is Lowen:

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.

And here is Germaine: 

 the 9/11 attacks are inexplicable [I assume meant "Are only explicable] if most Arabs and other people in the Muslim world see America as a great hypocrite, not an innocent international good guy? 

For Germaine, the 9-11 attack was not a popular attack.  The entire world, arab, muslim, and everyone, rallied to assist us in destroying Al-Quaida.  Russia offered their bases.  Iran offered their intelligence info, etc.  For Lowen -- the US reputation, has nothing to do with the attack.  

Osama Bin Laden was a zealot.  He believed in religious purity, AND that a community of religious purists would triumph over rivals.  This is a common view in history.  Zealots want their society to adopt their zealotry, in order to defeat other societies.  This generally means purging those who oppose Zealotry.  

His model for this all came from his early life, as a Muhajideen volunteer in the Afghan war against the Soviets.  Zealots frm around the musllim world came together, defeated the Soviets, and their secular/communist Afghan quislings, who were killed and their ideas have not resurfaced.  THEN, compromisers and corrupt leaders squabbled, until a MORE pure zealot movement swept the corrupt away, and unified the country.  Something very similar had also just happened in Lebanon, during an Israeli occupation.   Osama wanted to apply this model to the world, by:

1. start a war with the USA  
2. provoke the US to become an occupier, like the Soviets were
3. rally the zealots of all of Islam to fight the US
4. Use war with US to purge Islam of secularists and corrupt non-zealots
5. Us will be defeated more easily than the soviets, because we have no staying power (lesson he learned from Vietnam)
6. A victorious unified Isalm, under a new Caliphate government, will then replicate Mohammed's success in conquering and converting much of the world.  

Note the US plays the role that war with weak foreign powers has often played in domestic politics -- a bogey-man threat to use for domestic power grabbing purposes.  

9-11 was not about hypocrisy, or ANYTHING the US did.  Only what we were -- a secular state, with an army, and no backbone.  

Osama was right about roughly 2/3 of his agenda.  The US became an occupier, he was successfully able to propagandize this, and rally millions to Al Quaida, and Zealots killed thousands of secular educators, writers, and screen personalities across the Muslim world.  But the Zealots could not defeat stable states, nor unify.  And the Us DID eventually pull out, but after MUCH longer than he predicted.  His 2/3 agenda -- had harmed the world immensely.  

Note, the US WAS an innocent target for 9-11.  

Then, the Bush admin, run by the "Valkyries" who believed that mass movements were irrelevant, in the greatest foreign policy  blinder in my recent memory, decided to use 9-11 as a pretext to "take some pieces off the board" by invading the uninvolved Iraq.  they were convinced that AlQuaida, and the GWOT was actually irrelevant, because they were not state actors.  ,

Much of the Left's criticism of the Bush2 admin was valid.  We did invade on a lie.  Part of the calculation, was that we could take Iraqi oil as payment for our military costs in liberating them.  The centrist critique, that there was no plan to govern, was only partly true.  The Bush2s -- after all -- were mostly Heinlein optimists about spontaneous organization. Many of the others has thought "roll in, roll out" should have been the plan.  

Blunders accumulate:  When the lack of any police or courts became a clear problem, The Bush admin overruled the Valkyries, actually did set up a military occupation, and seemed to be trying to learn from and copy the successful Japan occupation from a half century earlier.  That occupation had been for over a decade, and left Japan a stable democracy.  But the Bush people had not looked at the Lebanon example, that Osama had.  Religious/nationalist zealots increasingly attacked the US forces.  An election was coming up, Iraq was spiraling out of control, Bush's Valkyrie and post WW2 advisor teams were both out of ideas.  Kerry put a proposal together of transferring Iraq to an appointed administration of Iraqis, and planned to run on it.  So Bush -- implemented Kerry's plan the very next month!

The US was an innocent, attacked for domestic political purposed, by a purging religious zealot.  And then, while the US was deceitful about it, for about half of the Bush admin the planned outcome of the Iraq invasion was to eventually leave them with a democracy.  Lowen's own example does not support his apparent thesis that the US was attacked for justified reasons on 9/11, and invaded Iraq purely for selfish reasons.  

Lesson 5 -- Marx was mostly right (if you drop the historical determinism)

Karl Marx was a pretty good economist, and a pretty good sociologist, and he built a toy model for both, to try to understand our future.  He ALSO believed in historical determinism, which got in the way of his understanding his own models. But we can look at the models without the determinism.  Those models predict that oligarchs will maintain economic affluence, basically forever, and they will use that money to buy governments that help them maintain their wealth.  This model was true of the time he contracted it. Both democracies and monarchs protected and assisted oligarchs.  

But soon after he constructed it, the income of workers went up, as did their political power, and the western democracies imposed OSHA requirements, and work week requirements, etc that ended the sweatshop era.  There is a question here -- why was his model wrong?  And more importantly will it STAY wrong? 

The answer appears to be no -- we have seen a gradual re emergence of oligarchs, along with a decline in worker income.  Which, as per his sociology model, leads to a more pro-oligarch government.  

The problem in his economic model was he trusted Malthus, and assumed workers would multiply without limit.  Remove unlimited workers, and add a cost to ship goods, and one can get a local labor shortage when industries co-locate to minimize transport costs.  We had a labor shortage in N America for a half century.  Industries are relocating to the 3rd world, and that drops our wages here, and increases oligarch profits.  

Note, we have seen previously that oligarchs will own our democracy if they have all the wealth,   One of the major themes of this board is how to prevent that from happening.  This lesson -- shows we really need to figure that out.  

Do these belong in a history textbook?  

Here were 5 controversial, yet potentially critically important lessons I at least see from recent history.  But does anyone else here agree with all of them?   Note I am a centrist -- my views are probably less offensive to more people than that of most historians.  I would be surprised if everyone on this board could agree on more than one or two minor lessons from recent history.  Do what should a text do?  Just make some parents apoplectic?  

Democrats and Republicans for a Pro-Democracy Coalition?

 

Yesterday (Oct. 11), the NY Times published an op-ed piece by former Republican Governor, Christine Todd Whitman and Miles Taylor (a former Trump employee who published an anonymous critical article about Trump while working for him). They suggest a strategy that may sound familiar to those who remember the Lincoln Project and similar groups of Never-Trump Repubs that threw their lot in with the Dems to elect Biden last year. Their idea is simple: the best way to make sure the House does not end up in the hands of Trump loyalists next year is for moderate, center-right Repubs to become part of a pro-democracy coalition  with the singular goal of defeating Trump-loyalists who have made embracing The Big Lie  about Trump's "stolen election" a litmus test for GOP races. In the abstract, the idea sounds promising as a strategy to minimize chances of a pro-Trump GOP ascendancy. But we've seen this movie before in the form of the Lincoln Project and other similar ones that spent millions on ads, but didn't seem to have much of an effect on Republicans. As a matter of fact, 92% of them voted Trump, an increase from the 2016 election. The Lincoln Project says that it had more impact on undecided independents, but I haven't seen any evidence of this. Meanwhile, the fragile Dem coalition is already having a hard time maintaining unity among moderates, conservatives (e.g. blue dog types) and progressives like "the squad."

The article generated close to 3,000 comments at the NYT, an unusually high number there. Readers' responses range from enthusiastic support to firm rejections of such a coalition. Some think we should throw out all purity tests and build bridges wherever we can to contain and ultimately defeat the pro-Trump GOP. Others point out how much trouble we already have on our hands trying to deal with the so-called "moderate" dems, (esp. Manchin and Sinema) on the one hand, and the no-compromise Justice Democrats https://justicedemocrats.com/  like AOC and "the squad"  on the other. I tilt towards being a single-issue voter right now, because the issue is, I believe, defeating Trumpism, which amounts to rejecting an autocrat with a tight grip on a party willing to abandon constitutional principles in order to win elections. In other words, as many, including Whitman and Taylor have warned, we stand to lose democratic governance with free and fair elections if we can't defeat the Trumpists. This does seem like a once in a lifetime emergency, and if it were possible to unite people around this idea I would support it. But unfortunately, many people do not share this fear, or at least not enough so to overlook intra-party differences within the Dem party, as made evident by the disputes between Dems who have failed to pass Biden's signature bill in any form thus far. Such a failure, if not remedied, could result in losses in 2022.

I'm posting the article here, and hope it will stimulate thoughtful debate on the idea of a broad anti-Trumpist (or put positively, pro-democracy) coalition. Also, here's a link to the NYT article for those interested in the many and diverse opinions expressed in their comments section today: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/opinion/2022-house-senate-trump.html

 

Guest Essay

We Are Republicans. There’s Only One Way to Save Our Party From Pro-Trump Extremists.

Oct. 11, 2021

 

By Miles Taylor and Christine Todd Whitman

Mr. Taylor served at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as chief of staff, and was the anonymous author of a 2018 guest essay for The Times criticizing President Donald Trump’s leadership. Ms. Whitman was the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001.

 

After Donald Trump’s defeat, there was a measure of hope among Republicans who opposed him that control of the party would be up for grabs, and that conservative pragmatists could take it back. But it’s become obvious that political extremists maintain a viselike grip on the national and state parties and the process for fielding and championing House and Senate candidates in next year’s elections.

Rational Republicans are losing the party civil war. And the only near-term way to battle pro-Trump extremists is for all of us to team up on key races and overarching political goals with our longtime political opponents: the Democrats.

This year we joined more than 150 conservatives — including former governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and party leaders — in calling for the Republican Party to divorce itself from Trumpism or else lose our support, perhaps with us forming a new political party. Rather than return to founding ideals, Republican leaders in the House and in many states have now turned belief in conspiracy theories and lies about stolen elections into a litmus test for membership and running for office.

Starting a new center-right party may prove to be the last resort if Trump-backed candidates continue to win Republican primaries. We and our allies have debated the option of starting a new party for months and will continue to explore its viability in the long run. Unfortunately, history is littered with examples of failed attempts at breaking the two-party system, and in most states today the laws do not lend themselves easily to the creation and success of third parties.

So for now, the best hope for the rational remnants of the Republican Party is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year — including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.

It’s a strategy that has worked. Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with 7 percent who voted for him in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden, a margin big enough to have made some difference in key swing states.

Even still, we don’t take this position lightly. Many of us have spent years battling the left over government’s role in society, and we will continue to have disagreements on fundamental issues like infrastructure spending, taxes and national security. Similarly, some Democrats will be wary of any pact with the political right.

But we agree on something more foundational — democracy. We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic’s guardrails or who are willing to put one man’s interests ahead of the country. We cannot tolerate Republican leaders — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.

To that end, concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the House of Representatives. Some of us have worked in the past with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, but as long as he embraces Mr. Trump’s lies, he cannot be trusted to lead the chamber, especially in the run-up to the next presidential election.

And while many of us support and respect the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, it is far from clear that he can keep Mr. Trump’s allies at bay, which is why the Senate may be safer remaining as a divided body rather than under Republican control.

For these reasons, we will endorse and support bipartisan-oriented moderate Democrats in difficult races, like Representatives Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, where they will undoubtedly be challenged by Trump-backed candidates. And we will defend a small nucleus of courageous Republicans, such as Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer and others who are unafraid to speak the truth.

 

In addition to these leaders, this week we are coming together around a political idea — the Renew America Movement — and will release a slate of nearly two dozen Democratic, independent and Republican candidates we will support in 2022.

These “renewers” must be protected and elected if we want to restore a common-sense coalition in Washington. But merely holding the line will be insufficient. To defeat the extremist insurgency in our political system and pressure the Republican Party to reform, voters and candidates must be willing to form nontraditional alliances.

For disaffected Republicans, this means an openness to backing centrist Democrats. It will be difficult for lifelong Republicans to do this — akin to rooting for the other team out of fear that your own is ruining the sport entirely — but democracy is not a game, which is why when push comes to shove, patriotic conservatives should put country over party.

One of those races is in Pennsylvania, where a bevy of pro-Trump candidates are vying to replace the departing Republican senator, Pat Toomey. The only prominent moderate in the primary, Craig Snyder, recently bowed out, and if no one takes his place, it will increase the urgency for Republican voters to stand behind a Democrat, such as Representative Conor Lamb, a centrist who is running for the seat

 

For Democrats, this similarly means being open to conceding that there are certain races where progressives simply cannot win and acknowledging that it makes more sense to throw their lot in with a center-right candidate who can take out a more radical conservative.

Utah is a prime example, where the best hope of defeating Senator Mike Lee, a Republican who defended Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede the election, is not a Democrat but an independent and former Republican, Evan McMullin, a member of our group, who announced last week that he was entering the race.

We need more candidates like him prepared to challenge politicians who have sought to subvert our Constitution from the comfort of their “safe” seats in Congress, and we are encouraged to note that additional independent-minded leaders are considering entering the fray in places like Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, targeting seats that Trumpist Republicans think are secure.

More broadly, this experiment in “coalition campaigning” — uniting concerned conservatives and patriotic progressives — could remake American politics and serve as an antidote to hyper-partisanship and federal gridlock.

To work, it will require trust building between both camps, especially while they are fighting side by side in the toughest races around the country by learning to collaborate on voter outreach, sharing sensitive polling data, and synchronizing campaign messaging.

A compact between the center-right and the left may seem like an unnatural fit, but in the battle for the soul of America’s political system, we cannot retreat to our ideological corners.

A great deal depends on our willingness to consider new paths of political reform. From the halls of Congress to our own communities, the fate of our Republic might well rest on forming alliances with those we least expected to.

Blog note: Falling behind in responding to comments

My in-box has over 300 comments I have not reviewed. I don't respond to all comments, but I usually have time to at least read most of them. More than a few are complex and require a lot of time to read and think about. It will take me another day or two to catch up. I'll post again after I've worked my way through. 🙂

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?