Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

News chunks: Texas bounty for drag queens, dead or alive; Border bounty hunters empowered to use force

Radical right sex derangement syndrome (RRSDS) continues to worsen and spread among red states. The targets of this dangerous disease are people in the LGBQT community. The Intercept writes:
GIVEN REPUBLICANS’ RELENTLESS legislative attempts to erase trans and gender nonconforming people, a new bill in Texas that LGBTQ+ advocates are describing as the “drag bounty hunter bill” may seem like a drop in the ocean. This fact alone is intolerable. There is, however, something particularly barbaric in the bill’s explicit encouragement of citizen harassment to drive gender variance out of public life.

The proposed legislation defines “drag” as any “performance in which a performer exhibits a gender that is different than the performer’s gender recorded at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs in a lascivious manner before an audience.”

The inclusion of “lascivious” might suggest that the bill is only aimed at performances in venues that already exclude minors, like nightclubs. But given that Texas Republicans are at this very moment attempting to pass a law defining any venue that hosts a drag performance as “a sexually oriented business” — including restaurants — it’s clear that “lascivious” provides no limit to the bounty hunter bill.

If passed, the law is certain to shut down family-friendly drag events and library story hours, but it threatens all gender-nonconforming performers, and even events like Pride.  
The bill is a rehash of a strategy used against abortion in the state. When Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8 in 2021, effectively banning abortion in the state, they introduced a novel legislative approach for running roughshod over constitutional protections: sanctioned vigilantism.

The abortion law deputized private citizens to sue anyone suspected of helping a person obtain an abortion, with the promise of a $10,000 reward for successful cases. Since its passing, copycat laws have abounded, given the legislation’s ability to evade federal court challenges by relying on civil lawsuits. Now, Texas Republicans are seeking to use the same legal mechanism in their all-out assault on gender variance.  
The drag bounty bill likewise encourages citizens to sue anyone who hosts or performs in a drag performance in the presence of a minor — with the added allure of a monetary reward. Successful plaintiffs could receive as much as $5,000 in “damages,” up to 10 years after the event.

Across the country, even in New York City, far-right militias and other armed fascists have already made a habit of threatening family-friendly drag performances and story hours. The Texas bill grants the practice a vile authority — and pulls from a long legacy of the government using state-sanctioned vigilantism to enforce white supremacy, gender conformity, and border rule.
It won't be long before RRSDS leads to non-conforming people being murdered by zealous, heavily armed people seeking to inflict self-righteous discipline on the bad people. Knowing this was coming, Texas has empowered and encouraged the impending slaughter by anointing the murderers to the lofty status of God's righteous bounty hunter

In due course, the radical right Texas legislature will come to see that instead of bounty hunters, God's enforcers are law enforcers. They are thus entitled to State Marshall status, a badge and qualified immunity for non-conforming who get people shot dead. It will be a BYOG operation. MAGA!!

BYOG = Bring your own gun
Compulsory heterosexuality and gender conformity is so manufactured and 
fragile, that it requires heavy policing and enforcement

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In another exciting development from Texas, the legislature is proposing a law that deputizes citizens and empower them to shoot immigrants crossing the border. The Independent writes:
Republican lawmakers in Texas want to create a state security force to patrol the US-Mexico border that critics have characterized as a "vigilante death squad policy."

Dade Phelan, the Republican speaker of Texas' House of Representatives, told a meeting of the Texas Public Policy Foundation that he plans to introduce a bill that he says will "make national headlines and change the conversation on border security," according to The Intercept.

The bill — House Bill 20 — would allow Texas' Department of Public Safety to hunt, arrest, and deport undocumented migrants.

The group would be comprised of law enforcement officers and civilians under the direction of a governor-selected chief. The members of the group would also be extended immunity from criminal prosecution relating to their actions on the border. They will be directed to "arrest, detain, and deter individuals crossing the border illegally including with the use of non-deadly force."

The group will also apparently be authorized to "use force to repel, arrest, and detain known transnational cartel operatives in the border region."

I've argued here several times that if Democrats get blown out of power and democracy falls, illegal immigration is going to be a key factor in the collapse. 


Defending the border










Who are we?

I’m throwing this together at the last minute, so I hope it makes some sense.  I’m just spit balling here, typing out loud. 🤷

A couple of days ago, one of our bloggers was asking about “How to love a country that doesn’t love you back.”  Here, in the U.S., a lot of people are feeling that way these days.  They and their chosen lifestyles are feeling rejected by the country as a whole.  Whether racially, ethnically, sexually, other, they do not feel safe or wanted. Are such people being paranoid, experiencing some kind of perceived indignance?  Or, is such treatment real?

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about those feelings of rejection, trying to figure out the “whys” of it all.  And, there are plenty.  We all know what those reasons are.  We also know it’s complicated.  As populations grow larger and more diverse, the problem gets exacerbated, almost exponentially.

It seems, politically, everyone is at each other’s throats.  For the most part, we’ve “chosen teams” and seemingly will fight to the political death (of a party) over the eventual outcome.  Who will “win” (have the final say-so)?  As a result of that inner-conflict, I have to wonder if America is destined to eventually fail.  And that would be a real shame, because it really once was, in my opinion, “the shining city on the hill,” as proclaimed by Republican President, Ronald Reagan.

Back in my father’s day, America once represented many desirable freedoms that only a handful of countries out there have enjoyed.  Patriotism abounded, and freedom of thought and expression, freedom of the press, freedom of religion or no religion, etc., was a given.  America said you could be all that you could be, and you believed it; that YOU were in charge of your own destiny.  How great was that?!?  Very.

So, what happened?

What do you think?  Is there a problem?  Is this post an overreaction?  Is it spot-on?  Does American idealism need “fixing”?  Is America even broken?  Is it destined to eventually fail?

What’s your take on all of this?  What is the ultimate solution?  Is a solution needed?  What is in America’s future?

Like I did, just go where your mind take you.  And thanks for giving us your perspective.

Saturday, March 25, 2023

News bits: Immigration into Canada; Marketing on the people; CN's authoritarian culture war

A NYT article reports on an effort by Canada (2021 pop. 38.3 million) to increase the size of its workforce by increasing immigration:
For the first time in its history, Canada grew by over one million people last year and most of them were newcomers, signaling that the federal government’s ambitious goal of boosting immigration to fill labor shortages is within reach.

Canada’s population growth rate of 2.7 percent in 2022 put it among the world’s 20 fastest-growing nations, ....

The growth comes as the federal government makes a push to address its labor shortage and manage a wave of retiring baby boomers by raising its 2025 immigration targets almost 25 percent.

a United States official familiar with the issue said that the two countries had reached an agreement that would allow Canada to turn back asylum-seekers walking into the country from the south. In exchange, Canada has agreed to provide a new, legal refugee program for 15,000 migrants fleeing violence, persecution and economic devastation in South and Central America, the official said.

Canada enjoys widespread support for immigration and public “attitudes are extremely positive,” said Victoria Esses, the director of the Centre for Research on Migration and Ethnic Relations at Western University in London, Ontario.  
But as Canadians contend with house prices and monthly rents that strain even affluent budgets, some are questioning how much the government’s rosy outlook on immigration is taking into account the other supports those newcomers will need, particularly for housing.
One can hope that this does not lead to the rise of a Canadian radical right movement like immigration has in other countries. 

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Marketers, like some politicians, are chronic liars. The car industry is pushing paid subscriptions for whatever can be turned into a subscription. Most consumers are not buying it. The car industry is telling us consumer demand is driving the whole thing. ArsTechnica writes:
The last decade or so has seen the creeping techification of the auto industry. Executives will tell you the trend is being driven by consumers, starry-eyed at their smartphones and tablets, although the 2018 backup camera law is the main reason there's a display in every new car.

But automakers have been trying to adopt more than just shiny gadgets and iterating software releases. They also want some of that lucrative "recurring revenue" that so pleases tech investors but makes the rest of us feel nickeled and dimed. Now we have some concrete data on just how much car buyers are asking for this stuff, courtesy of a new survey from AutoPacific. The answer is "very little."

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Christian nationalism (CN) is a powerful, aggressive political movement that aims to gather power and wealth for elites, while imposing cruel theocratic Christian Sharia law on everyone except chosen elites. At present, brass knuckles capitalism (BNC) and CN dogmas dominate the radicalized GOP. After the takeover of the Supreme Court by radical Republican CN judges under Trump and the radical CN Republican Party, the Christian theocracy floodgates opened fast and wide. We all know what happened to abortion. It still is happening. 

There is an expanding scope of increasingly virulent CN attacks on transgendered people. For whatever reason, transgendered people enrage and terrify the CN ranks and file. CN elites feed that fear and hate by passing laws to make transgendered sex identity go away, or at least get out of sight and mind. Vice reports:
Trans Children Were the Beginning. The GOP Is Coming for Adults Now

The politicians who’ve repeatedly introduced anti-trans bills under the guise of “protecting children” are routinely going after adults now

A newly-proposed healthcare ban in Florida could effectively ban gender-affirming care for people of all ages, in yet another indication that GOP lawmakers are not only targeting trans youth, but trans adults too.

Florida HB1421 would prohibit insurance providers, including private insurers, from covering gender-affirming care, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. “A health insurance policy may not provide coverage for gender clinical interventions,” the bill states. Florida previously introduced a bill that will force businesses that pay for gender-affirming care to also pay for detransitions, in a bid to further restrict access to life-saving healthcare for transgender people by disincentivizing employers from covering care in the first place.
So here is a case where radical right BNC hate of government interference dogma appears to be at odds with CN dogma which imposes government interference with the powerful insurance industry. The tension probably will not flare up into anything because a lot or probably most BNC elites are also CN elites. There is a lot of cooperation and overlap between those two anti-democratic, authoritarian powers. That, along with a couple of things like vast wealth and vicious, shameless demagoguery, is a significant part of what make the unholy authoritarian BNC-CN alliance so powerful and terrifying.

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Another trait of the CN-BNC power and wealth movement is its hate of transparency. That too is starting to be reflected in states controlled by the radical right Republican Party. The NYT writes
Florida Bill Would Shield DeSantis’s Travel Records

The bill, which was advanced by state senators in both parties, includes a sweeping retroactive clause that would block the release of many records of trips already taken by Mr. DeSantis and other officials, as well as their families and staff members.

Florida has long had expansive public information laws, known as sunshine laws, codified in the State Constitution. They allow the public to gain access to a variety of government records, including criminal files, tax documents and travel logs. These laws have exposed abuses of state resources by Florida officials: In 2003, for example, Jim King, the president of the State Senate, was found to have used a state plane to fly home on the weekends.[1]
So, not only is the authoritarian CN-BNC wealth and power movement anti-democracy and anti-inconvenient truth, it is also pro-corruption. Corruption shielded by unwarranted secrecy is a key marker of authoritarianism. It is always or nearly always a significant part of the tyrant-theocrat package. The rule of thumb is: Where corruption is high, tyranny is high and democracy is low.




Footnote: 
1. In a sign of Democratic Party stupidity, Democrats voted for the secrecy bill in committee. One Democratic legislator was asked why they voted the bill out of committee, they said they thought the bill was only about security for government officials. On reflection one changed their mind and claimed they now oppose the bill.

Honestly, one has got to wonder what is wrong with a lot of Democratic politicians. They still don’t get it. Are they really that stupid or are they complicit and in silent support of getting rid of democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, secularism, pluralism, the Democratic Party, inconvenient truth, transgendered people, etc.?

Friday, March 24, 2023

News chunks: Framing issues as morals; Republican identity politics

Chris Ruffo is a radical right activist. He was probably responsible for the Democrats losing the governorship of Virginia. He did that by pointing out that some public schools in Virginia were involved to some extent in teaching or at least being aware of CRT (critical race theory). At the same time, the Democratic candidate denied this was true. That gigantic blunder, either a lie or a ignorant mistake, was a big part of what sunk the Democrat.

Ruffo now travels the country attacking woke concepts like CRT, BLM, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). I had thought for years that issues the radical right supported or opposed were weaponized by framing them in terms or morality or immorality when possible. Despite my impression that the moral weapon was old and standard radical right practice, Ruffo seems to portray it is a new rhetorical tactic. He writes:
I recently hosted a summit on anti-woke public policy and, beneath all of the legal and technical details, I realized that there is an opportunity for a significant shift in rhetoric for the political Right.

For decades, conservatives made their arguments primarily through a statistical frame, using the language of finance, economics, and performance metrics. Think “running government like a business.” But in recent years, the rise of left-wing racialist ideology—BLM, CRT, DEI—has created an opportunity, even the necessity, for conservatives to make their arguments through a moral frame, speaking to the conflict of values that underlies the division between Left and Right.

This linguistic shift is already happening—and paying dividends. At the summit, we discussed two specific examples. First, on education, the activist Corey DeAngelis noted that the school choice movement suddenly started winning when it stopped making statistical arguments about performance metrics and started making moral arguments about parental rights and the content of the curriculum. Second, on the federal budget, Wade Miller of the Center for Renewing America has engaged in a similar strategy, moving the debate from the language of large-firm accounting to the language of moral conflict, arguing that Congress should defund the “woke and weaponized bureaucracy.”  
Yes, we should improve test scores and balance the budget. But the deeper purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people and to establish a principle of justice. Conservatives must speak to the ends, not simply the means. And, in our advanced managerial society, this will require a new moral language that appeals to the interests and emotions of the common citizen, who wants to be protected from the institutions and ideologies that have arrayed themselves against him.  
One of the problems that we’ve had as conservatives is that we’ve ceded the moral language to the Left, to the point that you have even conservative political candidates using identity politics as their framework and as their pitch to voters, because it’s really the most available moral lens. For example, you have someone like Nikki Haley—an ambassador, a governor, a successful administrator—who is pitching her candidacy as: “I am a minority female. Hear me roar.” What she doesn’t seem to understand, however, is that when you operate in your opponent’s frame, you’re guaranteed to lose.

A conservative will never win in a battle of identity politics against the political Left, because they’re setting all of the rules and terms of debate. They’re almost like a bank or a casino and, at the end of the day, the house always wins. But there is also an opportunity and something I learned in the discussions at this summit was that the anti-woke movement has reawakened the possibility for a conservative moral vocabulary.
What continues to be obvious but unseen and/or denied by tens of millions of Americans is the profound hypocrisy and reality disconnect between radical right propaganda and the movement's actual authoritarian, capitalist, theocratic and anti-civil liberties goals. Ruffo criticizes liberal identity politics while the radical right is at least equally immersed in it. The authoritarians warn the public of the danger of a weaponized bureaucracy that oppresses people, but the actual policies are to get rid of laws and bureaucrats that protect average people from abuses of power by the elites. 

Believers in radical right propaganda are immersed in this nonsense but firmly and sincerely believe it. Their cannot be changed. If they ever gain enough power, which may already be the case, we will lose our democracy, our inclusive, secular society, the rule law, and many of our civil liberties. Power will flow from us and government to the radical brass knuckles capitalist and Christian nationalist elites who now control the Republican Party, its radical policies and its authoritarian, no-compromise, no-inconvenient truth mendacity and tactics.

But, Ruffo is right about one thing. When you step into your opponent’s frame, you usually lose the debate.

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Identity politics
What is identity politics? Is it always bad? Like with many or most other issues in politics, people probably will bicker over definitions, descriptions and whether it is good, bad, neutral, mixed or ambiguous. It probably mostly boils down to it’s bad if my political opponents use it, but it’s good if me and my group use it. 

Google defines identity politics like this: a tendency for people of a particular religion, ethnic group, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.

That definition doesn’t necessarily mean it is necessarily good, bad, neutral or anything else. Maybe it suggests unhelpful polarization to some. Broad-based party politics, which has had its problems over the decades, constitutes a broad form of identity politics, at least in my opinion. To some extent in democracies, politics has probably always been at least partly identity-based. That just reflects what humans are.

In 2021, the NYT published an interview with political scientist Lilliana Mason. It discussed the rise of identity politics in the Republican Party:
One problem with the conversation around political polarization is that it can imply that polarization is a static, singular thing. That our divisions are fixed and unchanging. But that’s not how it is at all. The dimensions of conflict change, and they change quickly. In the Obama era, Republicans mobilized against government spending and deficits but didn’t think much about election administration. Now, a trillion-dollar infrastructure package has passed the Senate with bipartisan support, but the divisions over democracy and voting access are deep.

Mason: .... we have this social sorting, right, where effectively the Republican Party has become increasingly white, Christian, rural, male — or at least pro- sort of patriarchy — and the Democratic Party is not as monolithic as that. They’re just sort of the party that’s trying to push for a more egalitarian, multiracial democracy. And so the Republican Party is kind of forced into this — I mean, ironically, right — identity-based politics where they are really trying to make sure that the white Christian male is at the top of the American social hierarchy. That’s what they’re fighting for.

So one of the things that we found, obviously being a Republican, being a conservative, that predicted that they would like Trump in 2018. And it also predicted that they would like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and the Republican Party in general. However, for Trump himself, and Trump alone, the other thing that predicted whether they would like him was that they disliked Muslims, African Americans, Hispanics and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. Any mix of those, but largely all of them. And that animosity towards those marginalized groups did not predict support for the Republican Party. It did not predict support for Mitch McConnell or for Paul Ryan. It just predicted support for Trump.

And also, these people were coming not just from the Republican Party. Democrats who had these attitudes in 2011 liked Trump in 2018. Independents who had these attitudes in 2011 liked Trump in 2018. So it’s almost like Trump acted as a lightning rod for people who held these attitudes. He was extremely attractive to them, regardless of party, regardless of ideology.

And I think it’s important to say that this is not about the Republican Party, because it’s not true — these attitudes don’t predict support for the Republican Party. Trump was really kind of crystallizing or collecting all of these people into one political movement. And they happened to take over the Republican Party, but it’s not that every Republican holds these attitudes.

And so the racial messages I think became really powerful during Obama’s administration. The Tea Party was very powerfully motivated by racial animosity. And ultimately, this faction of people who love Trump were kind of bubbling up during the Obama administration. And then Trump, of course, really encouraged it. But Trump pulled people from not just the Republican Party.

Now, this is not to say that the Republican Party has not been benefiting from racial rhetoric. And the entire Southern strategy is trying to use implicit racial dog whistles in order to get votes from racially resentful white voters. So it’s not an accident that Trump was popular within the Republican Party, because the Republican Party has been cultivating this group of people. They’ve just been doing it on an implicit level, to a large extent.  
Ezra Klein: So imagine we’ve got an electorate of 100 people, and zero opinions have changed between 2000 and 2020, but that the people who have a lot of let’s call it outgroup animosity, right, racial animosity, animosity towards L.G.B.T.Q. people, that they used to be split, let’s call it, 70-30 between the parties. And then now, they’re split 90-10 or 95-5.  
Mason: I think that the Democratic Party has been gradually, partly in response to the Republican Party’s attraction [for] people who are high in racial animosity, the Democratic Party has had to react against that.  
And unfortunately, that means that we have in the Republican Party — and again, it’s really this MAGA faction, right, these people that really disliked marginalized groups even before Trump came along. They’ve always been in the American electorate. They were Democrats during the Civil War and Jim Crow, et cetera, and now they’ve moved into the Republican Party.  
But the problem with that is that we end up with an entire political party that is really trying to speak to these animosities and that sense of hatred of marginalized groups, which means that it has become an anti-democracy party, right? It is not in their interest to fully represent every single American. It’s not in their interest to have a multiracial democracy. In fact, they’re campaigning against that.  
This is a country that has been diversifying. It’s going to continue to diversify. White Americans will be not the majority relatively soon. And so ultimately, this movement is for future white ethnic minority rule of the country, which is not compatible with democracy at all. So I think that, in that sense, it’s something to really pay attention to and worry about.
That is how just one expert sees identity politics in the GOP. Obviously, radical right Republican elites, propagandists and the rank and file will vehemently deny that their party is a party with animosity toward any minority. They firmly tell us they are inclusive and tolerant, while the tyrant socialist Democrats and their evil identity politics are the bad actors here. We are identity polarized, to say the least. 

Trump Can Help Overcome Identity Politics
Americans are divided in part by decades-old 
bureaucratic decisions the president could undo

Identity politics—the artificial segmentation of Americans into antagonistic groups organized along often imagined ethnic, racial and sexual categories—is tearing America apart. President Trump can do something about it.

Does that sound realistic?
Who is the protagonist antagonist group here?

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Trump Won - Natasha Owens

 


Natasha Owens is an award-winning Christian music artist who’s performed with superstars from Michael W. Smith to Toby Keith. Her new album is called “American Patriot,” and the first single is “Stand For Life.” Check it out here: https://ffm.to/patriot


Random thoughts: Classifying cognitive biases; Dragging fairness into radical right legal reasoning

Cognitive bias update
There are about 190 unconscious human biases identified so far. In politics and religion, perceptions of reality, human thinking (data processing) and belief formation/emotional/intuitive reaction are often or usually driven significantly or mostly by one or more unconscious biases. We are not aware of this until after the unconscious mind does its initial processing and then alerts the conscious mind of what it sees and has decided. The conscious mind then usually accepts the unconscious mind's perceptions and opinions, and then we consciously act accordingly. Some people are better attuned to stopping and consciously reconsidering the prior decision before acting on it in terms of observable behavior. Sometimes, maybe more often than not in some situations, we act before we are consciously aware or are in conscious control.


Cognitive bias research has reached a point where it is time to consider how to classify biases into groups and subgroups. The point being to try to discover underlying or bedrock cognitive or psychological sources of bias, belief and behavior. A recent paperToward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases, discusses this. The paper hypothesizes that groups of bases are linked by, or flow from, fundamental beliefs such as me or my group is reasonable or that I am good.


The paper notes that people’s information processing is influenced by empirically observed biases. Biases were found by various lines of research, but that tends to obscure shared neurological or psychological causes for the biases. Thus, some unrelated biases such as bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias and outcome bias, appear to come from some combination of fundamental prior belief and the human trait toward belief-consistent information processing. Humans really dislike the cognitive dissonance that arises from disconnects between reality and personal beliefs, group or tribe membership, personal morals and the like. But as we all know by now, what is consistent with personal moral or belief can be, and often is, partly, mostly or completely inconsistent with real facts, true truths and/or sound reasoning.

In other words, specific beliefs tend to guide information processing in the unconscious mind. The paper proposes that influence of different biases can arise from a common underlying belief. The output of bias in terms of behavior reflects the unconscious mind doing its thing, i.e., information processing. By trying to classify groups of apparently linked biases, researchers hope that will point to hypotheses about underlying biological/social/psychological sources for groups of apparently linked biases. In turn, those hypotheses can be tested for their validity. If valid, that will lead to more confirmatory research. If invalid, that will lead to different hypotheses that need to be tested for validity.

Obviously, bias research is still struggling to understand the nature of biases, unconsciousness, consciousness, the mind generally and how they work. But this is why issues and beliefs in politics and even facts are often or usually so messed up, irrational and/or bitterly contested.

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Fairness in the law
To me and some other observers, the concept of fairness is generally antithetical to radical right legal reasoning, politics and policy. It just never comes up and isn't a concern. But in view of its unprincipled reasoning the radical right Supreme Court, finds the concept useful to get a radical right decision when the other bases to decide a case look flimsy or are non-existent. 

This is about the lawsuit that some radial right state Attorney Generals have filed to block Biden's attempt at student loan forgiveness. For a refreshing change, the law is crystal clear. The law allows Biden or his administration to engage in student loan forgiveness for those affected by a national emergency. In this case a COVID national emergency was declared by both Trump and Biden.  

So the law is clear, Biden's student loan forgiveness program is legal. Instead of calling it illegal as apparently most experts expected[1], the six brass knuckles capitalist Republicans on the Supreme Court also complain that loan forgiveness is unfair. Unfair? What is fair, just like what is unfair, is an essentially contested concept.[2] There is rarely, if ever, any rational way to resolve a dispute about what is fair and what isn't. B&S writes about this bizarre situation:
Caring About “Fairness” Is a Political Choice

The Supreme Court’s conservatives have spent their careers disclaiming the relevance of “fairness” in legal analysis. Now, though, a Democratic president is trying to do something they don’t like.

Last year, President Joe Biden announced a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for some 43 million borrowers whose lives and livelihoods were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

.... the conservative legal movement has coalesced around what I would describe as a jurisprudence of fuck-your-feelings. In this conception of the constitutional order, judges are not to behave as “activists” who concern themselves with fuzzy concepts like “equity” (whatever that means) or doing “justice” (same). Instead, they are to set aside their policy preferences and apply the law as written, no matter where the analysis takes them.  
“Textualism means you are governed by the text. That’s the only thing that is relevant to your decision,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia told Fox News’s Chris Wallace in 2012. “Not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.”

For this reason, it was more than a little startling to hear conservative justices spend their time on Tuesday fixated on a point that will be familiar to anyone with children who are old enough to talk. The legal authority for Biden’s plan is a 20-year-old federal statute that allows the Secretary of Education to “waive or modify” student debt obligations for borrowers affected by a national emergency. The statute’s text is neither complicated nor ambiguous. To anyone without a terminal case of Federalist Society brain, its relevance to an economic crisis stemming from a global health disaster that has dragged on for three years and counting does not require detailed explanation.

And yet, the conservative justices argued, there remains a fundamental problem with Biden’s plan: It just isn’t fair to those who would not benefit from it.

“I think it’s appropriate to consider some of the fairness arguments,” announced Chief Justice John Roberts, who posed an elaborate hypothetical about two high school graduates: one who borrows money to go to college, and the other who borrows money to start a lawn care business. The Biden plan, he argued, provides nothing to the businessman and yet forces him to subsidize the student. “Why isn’t that a factor that should enter into our consideration?” asked Roberts, apparently unable to fathom a more sympathetic debt-saddled person in America in 2023 than a guy who owns a business.
Set aside whether Biden's loan forgiveness plan is good, bad or ambiguous policy. Ignore it. Instead, just consider how utterly unprincipled the radical right Republicans on the Supreme Court are. They want radical right decisions, no matter how they get them. 

What are radical right decisions? Ones that radical Christian nationalist theocrats and/or brass knuckles capitalists would want, regardless of what the law is. For this particular case, the elite Supreme Court  Republican radicals appear to be mostly wearing their brass knuckles capitalist hats. But who knows, maybe most Christian nationalist theocrats would also approve. A lot of the students are minorities. Most elite Christian nationalists appear to be race and ethnic bigots at best, virulent bigots or racists at worst.


Footnotes: 
1. Salon writes about the radical right legal tactic that will probably mostly decide the case against Biden's loan forgiveness program:
But most of the conservative justices have devised a tool to wriggle out from under the text of a law: the “major questions doctrine,” a dubious and ill-defined rule that courts can use to strike down any policy that presents a “major question” if Congress has not authorized it explicitly enough. (How major? Nobody knows.) Chief Justice John Roberts involved the major questions doctrine in an early colloquy with Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was there representing the Biden administration to defend the program. He asked Prelogar if she “would recognize at least that this is a case that presents extraordinarily serious, important issues,” requiring the court to look at it “a little more strictly than we might have otherwise to make sure that this was something that Congress would have contemplated.” Kavanaugh connected the doctrine with the notion that courts should look skeptically at policies justified by emergencies, implicitly invoking decisions that upheld Japanese internment and other wartime civil liberties violations as a (questionable) comparison.
Because it is ill-defined and mostly subjective, the major questions doctrine tactic will be used to knock down a lot of laws the radical right dislikes, maybe hundreds or thousands. This is a major tool that radical right authoritarians and theocrats will use to completely remake the law and constitution in their program to kill, among other things, democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, secularism and inconvenient facts and history.

Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof. They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users", and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone".