American horror stories: The monster from the Ivy League on the Supreme Court

A 2005 article The Nation published was just brought to my attention. This is worth knowing about, if you are OK with horror stories. The Nation wrote:

Alito’s CAP Connection

Samuel Alito once boasted he was a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which opposed and bemoaned the impact of co-education and affirmative action. What does this say about his character and the kind of place he would like America to be?

The Daily Princetonian published a story that merits attention from senators gearing up for the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito, George W. Bush’s nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

In 1985 Princeton graduate and conservative Republican Alito sought to impress his colleagues in the Reagan Administration, where he was applying to become deputy assistant attorney general, by touting his membership in an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton.

Launched in 1972, the year Alito graduated, CAP had an innocuous-sounding name that disguised a less benign agenda, which included preventing women and minorities from entering an institution that had long been a bastion of white male privilege. In a 1973 article in Prospect, a magazine CAP published, Shelby Cullom Davis, one of its founders, harked back to the days when a gathering of Princeton alumni consisted of “a body of men, relatively homogeneous in interests and backgrounds.” Lamented Cullom Davis: “I cannot envisage a similar happening in the future with an undergraduate student population of approximately 40% women and minorities, such as the Administration has proposed.” Another article published that same year bemoaned the fact that “the makeup of the Princeton student body has changed drastically for the worse” in recent years–Princeton had begun admitting women in 1969–and wondered aloud what might happen if the university adopted a “sex-blind” policy “removing limits on the number of women.” In an unsuccessful effort to forestall this frightening development, the executive committee of CAP published a statement in December 1973 that affirmed unequivocally, “Concerned Alumni of Princeton opposes adoption of a sex-blind admission policy.”

By the time Alito was readying his 1985 job application with the Reagan Administration, the admission of women and minorities was well established at Nassau Hall, but this did not stop CAP from lamenting the consequences. “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place,” fretted a 1983 Prospect essay titled “In Defense of Elitism.” “Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they’re black and hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children.” By this point the editor of Prospect was Dinesh D’Souza, who brought to its pages a new level of coarseness aimed at those who did not know their place. “Here at Princeton homosexuals are on the rampage,” complained a 1984 news item in Prospect–this after a gay student group had dared to protest being denied permission to hold a dance at a campus club. Another article poked fun at Sally Frank, a Princeton alumna who was suing the university for denying women access to all-male eating clubs. It noted that a Rhode Island woman who’d won a discrimination suit against a mining company had subsequently died in an on-the-job accident. “Sally Frank, take note,” it quipped.  

Some argue that Alito’s membership in the organization hardly proves he shared such views. “It would be outrageously inaccurate to say Sam was deeply involved in the group, and he certainly wasn’t in charge of choosing the articles,” T. Harding Jones, who edited Prospect during the 1970s, told me, adding that CAP’s main goals were strengthening the alumni’s voice and championing a more ideologically balanced curriculum. Diane Weeks begs to differ. Weeks graduated from Princeton three years after Alito did and went on to work with him as an assistant US Attorney in New Jersey. In an interview she took pains to stress that she considers Alito “a man of integrity” with a first-rate legal mind. But, she added, “when I saw CAP on that 1985 job application, I was flabbergasted. I was totally stunned. I couldn’t believe it.” CAP, she said, “made it clear to women like me that we were not wanted on campus. And he is touting his membership in this group in 1985, thirteen years after he graduated. He’s not a young man by this point, and I don’t buy for a second that he was doing it just to get a job. Membership in CAP gives a good sense of what someone’s personal beliefs are. I’m very troubled by this, and if I were on the Senate I would want some answers.”

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee might take the time to leaf through some of Prospect’s back issues and formulate questions for the candidate. Is the Princeton graduate slated to replace the first female Supreme Court Justice proud of his affiliation with an organization that attempted to prevent women and minorities from receiving the same education he did? If not, why did he flaunt his membership in it? What does this say about his character, and about the kind of place he would ultimately like America to be?

One can say that Alito did not share the view of CAP and its Prospect publication because he was just a member of CAP. On the other hand, people can accord no benefit of doubt to Alito, like Diane Weeks. Based on his public record alone, Alito arguably deserves no benefit of any doubt on anything that comes up in his defense. Alito gets distrust because he earned and deserves it.

Waddabout the Bushes (and Trump)?

The Bush family has a worse than terrible track record with their Supreme Court picks. Bush Sr. gave us Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Bush Jr. Gave us John Roberts and Sam Alito. What rotten choices. Being at least as bad as the Bushes, Trump gave us the hyper-radical Neil Gorsuch, the whacko Brett Beer Boofer Kavanaugh, the religious freak Amy Comey Barrett and Aileen Loose Cannon Cannon, whatever she is. All eight are/were radical right authoritarians. Radical right authoritarian is the kind of judge that represents the authoritarian aspirations and politics of the Republican Party.

The thug traitor, bigot and authoritarian Alito

showing his loyalty to Trump 

(oh sorry, his wife did it)

Authoritarian traitor credentials on the left, 

Christian theocrat credentials on the right,

democracy nowhere to be seen

About Perplexity and error correction; About the global warming hoax; GOP corruption & tyranny

A question I had for Perplexity was burning a hole in my brain. So I asked the question. Based on past personal experience, I got the answer I was expecting:

Q: When asked a question and Perplexity gives a wrong answer, but that answer is corrected with a follow up question based on solid evidence, does Perplexity learn from being corrected with correct information, or does Perplexity not remember and use the new information for answering the same question in the future?

A: Perplexity is an AI model, not a learning system. It does not have the capability to learn from corrections or update its knowledge based on new information provided during conversations.

Perplexity is a pre-trained language model designed to generate human-like text based on the data it was trained on. While it can provide coherent and contextual responses, it does not have a mechanism to incorporate new knowledge or learn from feedback dynamically.

When Perplexity generates an incorrect answer and is provided with the right information through follow-up questions or corrections, it does not retain or integrate that new knowledge into its existing model. Each response from Perplexity is generated based solely on its initial training data and the current conversational context.

However, without such retraining, Perplexity will continue to rely on its original training data and may provide the same incorrect answer if asked the same question again in the future. It does not have an inherent ability to remember or apply the corrected information provided during a single conversation.

I think I found a flaw in system. A fly in the ointment. A snake in the wood pile. A hitch in the operation. A hair in the soup. . . . . 

Well, at least Perplexity is honest. 🙃

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The NYT reports:

Climate Change Added a Month’s Worth of Extra-Hot Days in Past Year -- Since last May, the average person experienced 26 more days of abnormal warmth than they would have without global warming, a new analysis found. Hypothetically, had we not heated the globe to its current state, the number of unusually warm days would have been far fewer, the scientists estimated, using mathematical modeling of the global climate. The precise difference varies place to place. In some countries, it is just two or three weeks, the researchers found. In others, including Colombia, Indonesia and Rwanda, the difference is upward of 120 days.

The NYT also reports: Dead Monkeys Are Falling From Trees Amid Brutal Heat in Mexico -- The deaths of dozens of howler monkeys may be the latest sign of the danger extreme temperatures pose to wildlife around the world. Scientists investigating the deaths still don’t know exactly what caused them. But they hypothesize that warmer temperatures may have combined with a confluence of other factors — including fires, deforestation and logging — that have cornered the monkeys in smaller areas of forest with little shade, food or water. The scientists haven’t yet ruled out pathogens, but a recent necropsy on one of the monkeys showed no signs of influenza, including bird flu, or Covid-19, Dr. Pozo said.

And Newsweek reports: Map Shows Florida Cities Break Heat Records Amid Surging Temperatures -- Highs well into the 90s from Texas to South Carolina were reported throughout the weekend. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), record-high temperatures were felt in Central Florida as area residents celebrated Memorial Day. Melbourne experienced its second-warmest May temperature at 98 degrees, while the city of Fort Pierce tied its warmest day of the month at 98.

See, global warming is a hoax, just like the Republican Party and DJT say. /s

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From the Republican Party Corruption Files (not paywalled): Trump makes sweeping promises to donors on audacious fundraising tour -- By tying donation requests to pledges of tax cuts and other policies, Trump is testing the boundaries of federal campaign finance laws. When Donald Trump met some of the country’s top donors at a luxurious New York hotel earlier this month, he told the group that a businessman had recently offered $1 million to his presidential effort and wanted to have lunch. “I’m not having lunch,” Trump said he responded, according to donors who attended. “You’ve got to make it $25 million.” Another businessman, he said, had traditionally given $2 million to $3 million to Republicans. Instead, he said he told the donor that he wanted a $25 million or $50 million contribution or he would not be “very happy.”

Well, there it is ladies & germs. Bribery right out in the open. It is legal and fun. And the USSC would sanction it as just garden variety, constitutionally protected free speech. Yay Republican Citizens United and later Republican USSC decisions that have legalized and sanctioned large scale political corruption. Attaboys! Republicans really know how to do free speech! 

From the Republican Party Tyranny Files: 

Texas GOP Amendment Would Stop Democrats Winning Any State Election

The Republican Party of Texas has voted on a policy proposal that would require any candidate for statewide office to win in a majority of the state's 254 counties to secure election, effectively preventing Democrats from winning statewide positions based on the current distribution of their support.

Democratic voters in Texas are heavily disproportionately concentrated in a handful of major cities which only constitute a small number of counties, while Republicans dominate most of the more sparsely populated rural counties.

American plutocracy corrupting government; Public consequences of plutocracy; Weak Democrats

As we all know, American politics operates as a pay-to-play system. Playing means favorably influencing policy in return for the donor’s free speech in the form of cash contributions. The WaPo reports about the current wave of corruption of congress by the crypto industry:

As crypto cash floods Washington, 

Congress eyes gentler regulations

Major crypto firms are fighting to remake federal law with an expensive lobbying campaign that has left no part of American politics untouched

Cryptocurrency companies and investors have spent at least $149 million over the past four years to thwart tough regulation, elect new allies to Congress and defeat lawmakers seen as potential threats, a campaign that culminated this week with a House vote to soften federal oversight of the embattled industry.

The wide array of financial backers include Coinbase and Ripple, which the U.S. government recently sued for allegedly violating federal rules meant to protect investors from harm. Even as they have come under withering scrutiny, these and other major crypto firms have fought not only to rebuff the charges but to remake the laws entirely, mounting an expensive lobbying effort that has left no part of Washington untouched.

On Capitol Hill, the industry has shelled out more than $60 million to shape federal policy since the start of 2021, according to filings analyzed by The Washington Post and data from OpenSecrets and Public Citizen, two money-in-politics watchdogs. The lobbying campaign helped spur the House on Wednesday to advance the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, the first major piece of legislation on cryptocurrency to clear either chamber of Congress.

As usual for Washington, money always talks and everything else usually walks.

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The Hill reports about social effects arising from the only moral value, profit, that brass knuckles capitalism values and lives by: 

Water systems warn Americans could soon see major rate hikes to 

filter out toxic ‘forever chemicals’

In exchange for cleaner [less toxic] water, Americans around the nation may soon have to pay hefty prices.

Water systems are starting to warn residents of massive rate hikes as they prepare to install technology to filter out toxic chemicals in a family known as PFAS.

Utilities from South Florida to upstate New York have warned customers that they could see significant price increases after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated that they remove the substances, which have been linked to a number of cancers and other diseases, from their systems.

Last month, the EPA said it will require utilities whose water systems contain high levels of six types of PFAS to remove them from the water.

PFAS, which stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of thousands of chemicals that have been used to make a variety of nonstick and waterproof products and firefighting foam.

The substances have also become ubiquitous in the environment, due in part to the fact that they tend to persist for a long time instead of breaking down.

Exposure to these so-called forever chemicals has been linked to increased risks of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers, weakened immune systems, high cholesterol, and developmental issues in children.

Now, for the first time, utilities around the nation will be required to get them out of their drinking water to prevent customers’ exposure. But that will come at a price.

Last month, officials with Broward County, a populous South Florida locale, warned residents that those on county water could see “double or triple water rates for users.”

Obviously, not all businesses are brass knuckles capitalist. But nearly all the big ones are and most of the medium sized ones are. The profit moral value can be described pretty accurately like this:

Make as much profit as possible as fast as possible, privatize it, and trickle it up to elite wealthy investors and owners, while limiting risk, accountability and cost by denying and socializing social, human and environmental damage and harms.

 

In the unregulated capitalist US, PFAS were found to be useful and immediately put on the market to sell for profit. Adverse human and environmental effects were either not researched, or they were found but denied and/or hidden from public knowledge. 

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Politico reports about the abject weakness in Biden and the balance of power in the Democratic Party:

Biden has no plan to touch the Alito controversy, 

even with a 10-foot pole

The president and his team have decided not to engage on a story that progressives say demands their engagement

Top Democrats have no plans to investigate reports that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew an upside-down American flag outside his home after the 2020 election. And Joe Biden has no desire to even talk about it.

Amid growing demands from the base of the party to call out the actions of several conservative justices and embrace reforms of the court, both the president and the White House have stayed mum.

Biden has publicly warned that Republicans are undermining democratic norms and threatening its institutions. But he is reluctant to extend that argument to the judicial branch, aides say, fearful it could be cast as politically motivated and undermine his broader effort to portray himself as a champion for strengthening democratic institutions. They believe it’s crucial to maintain a clear contrast with Donald Trump, who has readily attacked an independent judiciary for political gain.

That exemplifies why I see Biden and his brand of Democratic Party politics as center right, politically weak. In my opinion, those people are not seriously committed to defending democracy or civil liberties such as voting rights and abortion rights. If a Democratic Party USSC justice did what Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas have done, the authoritarian radical right Republican Party would be screaming bloody murder in self-righteous moral outrage. But when Republicans are corrupt and hyper-partisan like all six of the Republican rotters on the bench are now, there is not a squeak of protest from high level center-right politicians like Biden. 

In my opinion, if Trump wins in November and we lose our democracy, liberties and rule of law, it will be because corrupt, center right Democrats in power were unwilling to even try to mount an effective defense. In their minds they are valiant defenders of democracy, liberty and the law. In my mind, they are weak, wussified and self-deluded or naive at best, but sympathetic to corruption and authoritarianism at worst.

Some Memorial Day thoughts; A new centrism rising?; DJT & his dark free speech

A sobering NYT opinion (not paywalled) contemplates several aspects of America’s wars: 

How Should We Honor the Dead of Our Failed Wars?

Iraq 2006

About 10 years ago, as the war in Afghanistan was slowly, painfully winding down, I walked through Arlington National Cemetery with a fellow Marine veteran and a relative of mine visiting from Ireland. We passed row after row of pristine white tombs, the dead of all the just wars and unjust wars that made and remade this country, and my relative told us he found it quite moving; he hadn’t been expecting that. Perhaps he thought it’d be more bombastic, or obviously militaristic, and he was taken by the beauty and serenity and quiet dignity of the place.

So we brought him to Section 60 to see some of the newest graves, of kids born in the ’90s, and I told him the sight filled me with rage, these young lives thrown into a mismanaged war, where even their deaths, at that late stage, were mostly ignored. Just the background hum of a global superpower.

A couple of years later, in 2021, the Afghan war finally ended, taking with it a few American children of the 2000s, and, in a moral failure laid on top of the military failure, leaving tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with us at risk in the now completely Taliban-controlled country. The last Marines to fall died in a suicide bombing at a gate to Kabul’s airport, a blast that killed 11 Marines, one Navy medic, one soldier and about 170 Afghan civilians. The Marines were trying to manage the chaos of the poorly planned evacuation of Afghans from Kabul — a humanitarian mission at heart, trying to help those we were abandoning. A week before she died, one of the Marines, Sgt. Nicole Gee, posted a photo of her cradling a baby in Kabul and captioned it, “I love my job.”

America responded to those deaths with a drone strike against a Kabul vehicle the military claimed was transporting ISIS members who were about to carry out another attack, but that, in a twist that felt grotesquely emblematic of so many of our failures, turned out to carry an Afghan aid worker. The blast killed the aid worker and his relatives, seven of whom were children. The sort of people those Marines died trying to help.

How do you memorialize the dead of a failed war? At Arlington, it’s easy to let your heart swell with pride as you pass certain graves. Here are the heroes that ended slavery. Here are the patriots who defeated fascism. We think of them as inextricably bound up with the cause they gave their life to. The same can’t be said for more morally troubling wars, from the Philippines to Vietnam. And for the dead of my generation’s wars, for the dead I knew, the reasons they died sit awkwardly alongside the honor I owe them.

For so many of the kids I saw, their mission mattered to them, and so their mission should matter to all of us when we remember their deaths. And the mission was a catastrophe. Memorial Day should come with sorrow and patriotic pride, yes, but also with a sense of shame. And, though it has faded for me over the years, with anger.

I’ve come to feel that airbrushing out the complexities of their wars is, ultimately, disrespectful to the dead. We owe it to the dead to remember what mattered to them, the ideals they held, as well as how those ideals were betrayed or failed to match reality.

This Memorial Day, as I get ready to take my sons to march in our local Memorial Day parade, our country is in the midst of the most divisive antiwar protests since the early days of the Iraq war, protests my friends characterize as either “objectively pro-Hamas” or as “opposing undeniable genocide.” Questions long dormant, about how we use our might and whom we help kill, feel like live political questions once again (even if we’re not talking much about actual American military deployments, or the troops who have most recently died at the hands of Iranian proxies). The debate is raw and angry.

Good. What a good, uncomfortable, painful national mood for remembering the dead. This year, when I remember them, I will not just remember who they were, the shreds of memory dredged up from past decades. I will remember why they died. All the reasons they died. Because they believed in America. Because America forgot about them. Because they were trying to force-feed a different way of life to people from a different country and culture. Because they wanted to look after their Marines. Because the mission was always hopeless. Because America could be a force for good in the world. Because Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden didn’t have much of a plan. Because it’s a dangerous world, and somebody’s got to do the killing. ....

For Vietnam and most of our later wars, the mission was always hopeless. The wars were mismanaged. The goals were ill-defined, and usually impossible to attain. 

Trying to elect better leaders would be one way to honor the dead.

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The NYT writes about an alleged new, maybe pro-public interest, centrism in Washington politics:

A New Centrism Is Rising in Washington

Call it neopopulism: a bipartisan attitude that mistrusts the free-market ethos instead of embracing it

But in a country that is supposed to have a gridlocked federal government, the past four years are hard to explain. These years have been arguably the most productive period of Washington bipartisanship in decades.

During the Covid pandemic, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to pass emergency responses. Under President Biden, bipartisan majorities have passed major laws on infrastructure and semiconductor chips, as well as laws on veterans’ health, gun violence, the Postal Service, the aviation system, same-sex marriage, anti-Asian hate crimes and the electoral process. On trade, the Biden administration has kept some of the Trump administration’s signature policies and even expanded them.

The trend has continued over the past month, first with the passage of a bipartisan bill to aid Ukraine and other allies and to force a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner. After the bill’s passage, far-right House Republicans tried to oust Speaker Mike Johnson because he did not block it — and House Democrats voted to save Johnson’s job. There is no precedent for House members of one party to rescue a speaker from the other. Last week, the House advanced another bipartisan bill, on disaster relief, using a rare procedural technique to get around party-line votes.

The new centrism is not always so moderate. Forcing the sale of a popular social app is not exactly timid, nor is confronting China and Russia. The bills to rebuild American infrastructure and strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry are ambitious economic policies.

A defining quality of the new centrism is how much it differs from the centrism that guided Washington in the roughly quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, starting in the 1990s. That centrism — alternately called the Washington Consensus or neoliberalism — was based on the idea that market economics had triumphed. By lowering trade barriers and ending the era of big government, the United States would both create prosperity for its own people and shape the world in its image, spreading democracy to China, Russia and elsewhere.

That hasn’t worked out. In the U.S., incomes and wealth have grown slowly, except for the affluent, while life expectancy is lower today than in any other high-income country. Although China, along with other once-poor countries, has become richer, it is less free — and increasingly assertive [more to the point, increasingly aggressively anti-democracy].

Both Democrats and Republicans have grown skeptical of free trade; on Tuesday, Biden announced increased tariffs on several Chinese-made goods, in response to Beijing’s subsidies. Democrats and a slice of Republicans have also come to support industrial policy, in which the government tries to address the market’s shortcomings. The infrastructure and semiconductor laws are examples. These policies feel more consistent with the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower or Franklin Roosevelt than those of Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton.  

“There is a sense on both the left and right, and among many independents, that the economy hasn’t been working in many places,” Ro Khanna, a progressive House Democrat whose district includes Silicon Valley, told me. Daniel DiSalvo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said that more Republicans “have woken up to the fact that neoliberal policies didn’t work out so well for a large coalition of working people.”

This alleged centrism feels strange, assuming it exists at all. Maybe in a year whether this is for real will become apparent. Right now, there is no room for centrism in Project 2025 or DJT, but there is plenty of room for bigotry, dictatorship and kleptocracy. Time will tell.

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Reuters reports that DJT is falsely claiming, no evidence as usual, that illegal immigrants are building an army to attack Americans:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed without evidence on Thursday that immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere were "building an army" to attack Americans “from within,” once again using inflammatory rhetoric about migrants in the U.S. illegally.

During a rally in the mainly Hispanic and Black neighborhood of New York City's South Bronx, Trump sought to portray migrants from China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries as a violent threat, even as studies show immigrants are not more likely to engage in criminality.

“Almost everyone is a male and they look like fighting age. I think they're building an army,” Trump said to a few thousand supporters who gathered to hear him in the South Bronx's Crotona Park. “They want to get us from within.”

By now lies like this are to be expected from DJT. But what, if anything at all, are those few thousand people at the rally thinking? Do they really believe the lies, or are they mostly just virtue signaling to the cult by simply being there and cheering on the lying, kleptocratic dictator bigot? My guess is it is probably mostly a mix of the two, maybe ~20% the former, ~70% the latter and ~10% whatever else. 

About cancel culture: Who cancels whom the most?

The evils of cancel culture appears to be an important issue in this election. Some people believe that liberals cancel conservatives more than vice versa. The bickering is endless. From what I have seen so far, the bickering is not backed up by research data. Instead, the arguments boil down to personal opinions based on personal experience, anecdotal examples and/or mostly partisan dark free speech. A key issue is assessing whether one kind of cancellation, e.g., liberal students blocking a conservative speaker on campus, is the same, better or worse than another, e.g., Republican election deniers firing RNC employees who refuse to say the 2020 election was stolen. Not all cancellations are necessarily anti-democratic. Cancelling liars and divisive rabble rousers strikes me as generally more good for the public interest and democracy than harmful.

My suspicion was that authoritarian conservatives (ACs) probably cancelled more than democratic liberals (DLs). In part, that was based on a personal belief that ACs were generally more rigid, biased and ideological about politics and people than DLs. But that tentative personal belief was not based on any empirical research data I could recall. It was just anecdotal.

A question to AI started my inquiry:

Q: In society generally, are liberals or active in cancelling conservatives than conservatives are in cancelling liberals?

A: Based on the provided search results, there is no clear evidence that either liberals or conservatives are more active in “cancelling” the other side. The search results focus on comparing the general political and social views of liberals and conservatives, but do not directly address the issue of “cancelling” or attempting to silence opposing viewpoints.

The search results highlight the key differences between liberal and conservative ideologies, such as their contrasting views on the role of government, economic policies, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, and their preferred living environments (urban vs. rural). However, none of the results specifically discuss the prevalence or extent of “cancelling” behavior from either side of the political spectrum.

If that is true, but it may not be, then my current assessment is correct that the bickering about this is mostly opinion or dark free speech, but not based on empirical research data.

A 2023 political science research paper comments about perceptions of cancel culture by conservative and liberal academics:

In recent years, a progressive “cancel culture” in society, right-wing politicians and commentators claim, has silenced alternative perspectives, ostracized contrarians, and eviscerated robust intellectual debate, with college campuses at the vanguard of this development. These arguments can be dismissed as rhetorical dog whistles devoid of substantive meaning, myths designed to fire up the MAGA faithful, outrage progressives, and distract from urgent real-world problems. Given heated contention, however, something more fundamental may be at work. To understand this phenomenon, the opening section defines the core concept and theorizes that perceptions of this phenomenon are likely to depend upon how far individual values fit the dominant group culture. Within academia, scholars most likely to perceive “silencing” are mismatched or noncongruent cases, where they are “fish-out-of-water.”

Social situation: Fish out of water feel  

cancelled more than fish in water

Data are derived from a global survey, the World of Political Science, 2019, involving almost 2500 scholars studying or working in over 100 countries. The next section describes the results. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and considers their broader implications. Overall, the evidence confirms the “fish-out-of-water” congruence thesis. As predicted, in post-industrial societies, characterized by predominately liberal social cultures, like the US, Sweden, and UK, right-wing scholars were most likely to perceive that they faced an increasingly chilly climate. By contrast, in developing societies characterized by more traditional moral cultures, like Nigeria, it was leftwing scholars who reported that a cancel culture had worsened. This contrast is consistent with Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence thesis, where mainstream values in any group gradually flourish to become the predominant culture, while, due to social pressures, dissenting minority voices become muted. The ratchet effect eventually muffles contrarians. The evidence suggests that the cancel culture is not simply a rhetorical myth; scholars may be less willing to speak up to defend their moral beliefs if they believe that their views are not widely shared by colleagues or the wider society to which they belong.

That data is limited to academics, not people outside academia. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to think that contrarian non-academics react similarly to some extent when faced with a society, group or personal situation that is mostly in opposition to their beliefs. Situational behavior is a very important aspect of the human condition. 

American society today is split roughly in half by two deeply differing and clashing mindsets, generally secular, DL and generally religious, AC. Non-authoritarian conservatism, roughly correlated with opposition to Trump, and authoritarian liberal, seem to be small minority influences. Dominance of the DL mindset is generally (but not always) centered in urban areas and AC generally rural (but not always).

Partisan ideology and the degree that individuals are ideologically biased could lead to partisan bias and partisan cancel behavior. A 2019 research paper found equal bias among liberals and conservatives. But another paper criticized that research as flawed and unreliable. The research I looked at for this post is incomprehensible to me. Other factors such as false memories and personality traits complicate the research. A 2022 paper reflects the messy complexity of political bias research, e.g., propensity to believe in false memories is partisan biased: 

While cognitive psychologists have learned a great deal about people’s propensity for constructing and acting on false memories, the connection between false memories and politics remains understudied. If partisan bias guides the adoption of beliefs and colors one’s interpretation of new events and information, so too might it prove powerful enough to fabricate memories of political circumstances. Across two studies, we first distinguish false memories from false beliefs and expressive responses; false political memories appear to be genuine and subject to partisan bias. We also examine the political and psychological correlates of false memories. Nearly a third of respondents reported remembering a fabricated or factually altered political event, with many going so far as to convey the circumstances under which they “heard about” the event. False- memory recall is correlated with the strength of partisan attachments, interest in politics, and participation, as well as narcissism, conspiratorial thinking, and cognitive ability.

As he reported on both December 4, 2001, and January 5, 2002, George W. Bush clearly remembers watching footage of the first plane strike the Twin Towers on 9/11. On December 20, 2001, though, he made no mention of watching this footage and instead remembered that adviser Karl Rove informed him that the first plane had struck the towers. History tells us that Bush’s memory of watching footage of the first crash is inaccurate; only amateur footage of it exists, and it was not available on the morning of the attacks. While some suspect that Bush was lying, it is likelier that he simply possesses a false memory of the events of the morning of 9/11, memories that he genuinely believes to be true (Greenberg, 2004). He can hardly be blamed for this. False memory is a phenomenon that afflicts all people (Nichols & Loftus, 2019).

This 2023 paper indicates that bias seems to highly correlate with partisanship in terms of pro-democracy vs (unconscious) anti-democracy partisanship. That sometimes correlates with cancelling opposition, e.g., restricting civil liberties:

Democracy often confronts citizens with a dilemma: stand firm on democracy while losing out on policy or accept undemocratic behavior and gain politically. Existing literature demonstrates that citizens generally choose the latter—and that they do so deliberately. Yet there is an alternative possibility. Citizens can avoid this uncomfortable dilemma altogether by rationalizing their understandings of democracy. When a politician advances undesired policies without violating democratic rules and norms, people find ways to perceive the behavior as undemocratic. When a politician acts undemocratically to promote desired policies, citizens muster up arguments for considering it democratic. Original survey experiments in the United States, and 22 democracies worldwide, provide strong support for this argument. It is thus not deliberate acceptance, but a fundamentally different perceptual logic that drives the widespread approval of undemocratic behavior in today’s democracies.

[A]ccording to existing research, citizens are willing to accept undemocratic behavior if they stand to gain from it politically. When asked in abstract terms, they profess to hold sincere democratic values, but when asked in more specific terms, they merely act as “questionnaire democrats”: they are not willing to tolerate groups they dislike; they are willing to restrict civil liberties for those they disagree with politically; and they are likely to vote for an undemocratic candidate as long as that candidate offers policies they desire. When policy considerations conflict with democratic values, citizens often end up on the undemocratic side of the equation. (emphasis added)

In conclusion, I still do not know if DLs cancel more than ACs. That arguably depends on how cancellation is defined and assessed. I still suspect that in America today (i) ACs do more cancelling than DLs, and/or (ii) the cancelling that ACs do is more important relative to democracy and the public interest than the cancelling that DLs do. Maybe quality is more important than quantity in assessing who does more.

News bits: Election update; Christian nationalism on the USSC; Plutocrats for Trump

From the For What It Is Worth Files: Most everyone paying any attention over the last 8 years or so is wary of putting much weight on polls this far out from elections. That’s reasonable. However, a bit of apparently new information has popped up. Polling suggests that although DJT has been leading in battleground state polls for the last several months, some of that support appears to be coming from low information people who may or may not vote next Nov. The NYT writes:

[A warning sign for DJT]: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.

To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election.

President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Mr. Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.

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By now, everyone paying any attention knows that USSC justice Sam Alito is radical, deeply morally corrupted (e.g., mendacious, kleptocratic), hyper-partisan, and authoritarian. Based on recent revelations and reporting, there is solid evidence he is also a Christian nationalist theocrat. He flies flags indicating he believes in (i) Trump’s stolen election lie (although he blamed his wife for that), and (ii) American government should adopt Christian Supremacy and theocracy based on Christian Sharia law as its guiding dogmas. NPR reported about the Christian nationalist flag Alito flew at one of him homes: 

The New York Times reports that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which has origins dating to the Revolutionary War but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's election win, was seen flying outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s New Jersey beach home last year. .... The flag has origins dating to the Revolutionary War, but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's 2020 election win. The flag was also carried by rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

By flying two different partisan flags at two of his homes, Alito clearly has conflicts of interest in Trump’s immunity lawsuit the USSC will eventually get around to maybe hearing. Deciding on immunity might happen in 2025 or 2026, depending on how much the radical authoritarian Republicans choose to slow the case down. It is also possible that the court will sidestep the case entirely on some technical ground the Republicans dream up. Despite his conflicts of interest, Alito will probably not recuse himself from the immunity case. In the unlikely case that Alito deigns to give an explanation, he will simply lie and he can be fair and unbiased. That is authoritarian Republican moral rot on the USSC. 

The flag of authoritarian Christian Supremacists  

and theocratic Christian Sharia law

So far, Alito has refuse to explain why he was flying the Christian Supremacist theocrat flag at one of his homes. He is expert at the KYMS (keep your mouth shut) tactic when faced with inconvenient facts and questions. The KYMS propaganda tactic effectively prevents FIMS (foot in mouth syndrome).

Alito also flew the US flag upside down at his home. The US flag is not to be inverted “except as a signal of dire distress in instance of extreme danger to life or property.” That is clear 

evidence that Alito believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He cannot be impartial about deciding Trump’s immunity case. Flying a US flag upside down in protest dates back at least 50 years. In Spence v. Washington (1974), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a student to display a US flag upside down from his dorm room with a black peace sign taped on it. 

At Sammy’s house --

his naughty wife did it!

At Trump’s 1/6 coup attempt

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Various reports of discontent of billionaires with Biden are coming out. Biden wants them to pay some taxes. They do not want to pay any. So to protect their cash piles, they are going to vote for Trump and plutocracy. The NYT writes: Some of Silicon Valley’s Most Prominent Investors Are Turning Against Biden -- Marc Andreessen, Chamath Palihapitiya and several other tech venture capitalists are increasingly criticizing President Biden and making their disaffection known in an election year.

For plutocrats, money talks and everything else walks. Money includes pro-plutocrat dictatorship and plutocracy. Everything else includes democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. According to one source, Elon Musk elegantly has stated the compelling plutocrat rationale: Musk used to vote '100% Dem,' but now he thinks the US needs a 'red wave' to save it. Save it from what? Taxes on himself.

Plutocrat and patriot Elon defending the border,

but not democracy or taxes on billionaires