The new GOP and the power flow that created it

This WaPo opinion by EJ Dionne is spot on (whole opinion not paywalled off):

Let’s just say it: The Republican problem is metastasizing

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein shook up Washington with their argument that the U.S. government wasn’t working because of what had happened to the Republican Party.

They made their case in a 2012 book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” and in a powerful Post op-ed titled “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics,” they wrote. “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”  

Events of the past week not only ratify what they wrote but suggest that matters are, to borrow from them, even worse now.

Power in the GOP has moved away from elected officials and toward those right-wing “commentators” on television, radio, podcasts and online. The creation of ideological media bubbles enhances their power. Republicans in large numbers rely on partisan outlets that lied freely about what Lankford’s [border bill] compromise did and didn’t do, rather than on straight news reports.

The party’s hostile vibe can also be traced back to a habit in the Bush years to distinguish between “real America” (the places that vote Republican) and what is presumably unreal America. Declaring a large swath of the population to be less than American means they’re not worth dealing with and, increasingly, easy to hold in contempt.

In the 2020 book, Political Science for Dummies, the first sentence of the first chapter reads: 

Political science is the study of politics and more precisely power 

Mann and Ornstein were among the first of prominent observers I am aware of to point out in 2012 that the GOP had degenerated. In my view the degeneration was moral rot, because by then, I had adopted pragmatic rationalism as the most moral way to do politics in a democracy.[1] With fidelity to facts and true truths as core moral values, the sheer mendacity and alt-facts the GOP had come to accept and help normalize made the GOP party leadership look morally rotten and authoritarian. 

The question what about the rank and file became more urgent after DJT came on the scene. Nowadays I have an opinion about that, but will keep it to myself.

The point of this post is to just remind people to keep an eye on where power flows and who wins and who loses from power flow, no matter what the power seekers tell you. They are usually lying.

Footnote:

1. With authoritarianism, morals are mostly irrelevant. Authoritarian systems operate on the basis of power and how much the usually kleptocratic dictators, plutocrats and theocrats can get away with before they cause a major rebellion. For authoritarians, facts, true truths, sound reasoning and service to the public interest are all ignored, downplayed, denied or deflected when inconvenient for the power party line. Demagoguery, lies, slandering and crackpottery are dominant. Hybrid authoritarian-democratic systems are some mix of those things.

Debating freedom of thought

I got a criticism of my thinking regarding freedom of thought in a post yesterday. I raised the idea of society or the law somehow disapproving of DFS (dark free speech) in politics. The criticisms and my responses shed light in one reasonable mental frame about how to think about these complicated things.

Criticisms 

You said:

Is it unconstitutional for government to tax Faux News more heavily than NPR because Faux relies heavily on DFS? I don't see why.

Well, there's this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Taxing a private company because of its speech - dark or otherwise - is definitely an abridgment of freedom, and unconstitutional.

Style over substance? I don't get it. Lies are lies, not truths. Logic flaws are logic flaws, not sound logic. Deceit is deceit, not honesty. Those things look clear to me, even if the lines are not always sharp...

So what "lies" are you referring to? That the moon landing was a side project by Kubrick filmed in Hollywood, or that global warming reversed when we elected Obama, or that there were no WMD in Iraq? Here you focus on the most straightforward of the criteria you listed earlier, and yet here too you'll find the utility of limiting speech marginal at best.

And whatever utility you think there is, none of these rebuttals eliminates the role of agreement in determining the "correct" standard. Ultimately your demand for limiting "dark" speech is inherently a demand for others to take your view of things. They must agree with you, do things your way, or be punished in some way.

My responses

I am unsure if taxing a private company because of its DFS (not honest speech) is definitely unconstitutional. That is a legal hypothesis I would very much like to see tested. Consider defamation law, which is constitutional:

To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.

Different states vary in their anti-defamation statutes. As such, courts in different states will interpret defamation laws differently, and defamation statutes will vary somewhat from state to state. In Davis v. Boeheim, 110 A.D.3d 1431 (N.Y. 2014), which is a New York state court case, the court held that in determining whether a defamation claim is sufficient, a court must look at whether the "contested statements are reasonably susceptible of a defamatory connotation.

Truth is widely accepted as a complete defense to all defamation claims. An absolute privilege is also a complete defense to a defamation claim. Among other examples, this includes statements made by witnesses during judicial proceedings.

In commerce, lying can amount to a criminal offense:

Businesspersons Beware: Lying is a Crime

The rules regarding lying in business in the U.S. are currently being vigorously enforced

In case after case, scandal after scandal, American federal law enforcement officials have clearly shown by their indictments and prosecutions that there is no confusion in their minds—lying is a crime. Businesspersons need to clearly understand those rules and what prosecutors define as lying.

In recent corporate scandals, some executives have learned the hard way that lying is still a crime in corporate America. Martha Stewart was accused of selling her ImClone stock allegedly after receiving insider information. However, she was not convicted of securities fraud. She was instead convicted for lying. In addition, Computer Associates executives were indicted and some have already pleaded guilty for lying to their own company’s attorney during an internal investigation when their lies were passed on by their attorney to the government.

To me the evidence is rock solid: It is sometimes or often possible to determine that a person has lied and that can trigger criminal guilt for the liar. That is a key point here.

So what "lies" are you referring to?

Excellent question. My main focus is on politics, which now clearly includes both commerce and religion. Therefore lies in politics are what I refer to, especially lies by people in government, commerce or religion who hold positions of power or public trust. Lies such as (i) the 2020 election was stolen, (ii) Joe Biden is an illegitimate president, (iii) Trump's 1/6 coup attempt was merely legitimate political discourse and/or something Trump bears no responsibility for, (iv) the over 30 thousand false or misleading statements DJT made while he was in office, (v) the lies that Faux News routinely asserts as truth in some or most of its broadcasts, and (vi) decades of corporate lies about climate change.

From what I (and some others) can tell, the entire GOP leadership now relies heavily on DFS because actual facts and truths are not on the side of kleptocratic authoritarianism.

No, fact checking is not a perfect science. Humans make mistakes, so honest mistakes will be made. But where does the greater danger lie? In my opinion, the greater danger is in letting people and interests who significantly rely on DFS to get away free and clear shifts the costs and harms from those responsible to the whole society. Screw that noise, I'm tired of people and the environment getting constantly shafted by the rich and powerful hiding behind a thick shield of constitutionally protected DFS.

Ultimately your demand for limiting "dark" speech is inherently a demand for others to take your view of things. They must agree with you, do things your way, or be punished in some way.

I vaguely recall this criticism from you before. Regardless, let's do it again.

My demand for limiting DFS is the opposite of a demand for others to take my view of things. Pragmatic rationalism is a demand for respect for facts, true truths and sound reasoning in a political context of democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law and service to the public interest. There is vast room for disagreements within those broad constraints, especially democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law and service to the public interest, all four of which I believe are essentially contested concepts. But notice, there is a lot less room for disagreements over facts and intermediate room for disagreements over true truths and sound reasoning.

So, on the one hand, my pragmatic rationalism is intended to at least partly (noticeably) purge some lies and irrationality from politics in defense of democracy and the public interest. Pragmatic rationalism frees minds, allowing freedom of thought and freedom of choice.

On the other hand, consider the mental framework and reality that purveyors of DFS use to win their arguments. They are usually corrupt authoritarians who deceive, distract, confuse, enrage, terrify, derationalize, polarize and bamboozle people to get what they want in defense of the elite's interests. DFS politics traps minds, infringing on freedom of thought and limiting choices.

What political framework do you prefer, pro-democracy pragmatic rationalism, anti-democracy DFS irrationalism, or something else? If something else, exactly what?

What DFS politics looks like

What pragmatic rationalism politics looks like

A couple of thoughts about atheism and pragmatic rationalism

NYT opinion columnist Ross Douthat opines (full opinion not paywalled off):

Where Does Religion Come From?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the ex-Muslim critic of Islamic fundamentalism and longtime champion of Enlightenment liberalism, has announced that she now calls herself a Christian — a conversion that she attributes to a twofold realization.

First, that atheist materialism is too weak a base upon which to ground Western liberalism in a world where it’s increasingly beset, and the biblical tradition from which the liberal West emerged offers a surer foundation for her values. Second, that despite the sense of liberation from punitive religion that atheism once offered her, in the longer run she found “life without any spiritual solace unendurable.”

Her essay, not surprisingly, attracted a lot of criticism. Some of it came from Christians disappointed in the ideological and instrumental way that Hirsi Ali framed her conversion, the absence of a clear statement that Christian claims are not merely useful or necessary but true. The rest came from atheists baffled that Hirsi Ali had failed to internalize all the supposedly brilliant atheistic rebuttals to her stated reasons for belief.

I have no criticisms to offer myself. Some sort of religious attitude is essentially demanded, in my view, by what we know about the universe and the human place within it, but every sincere searcher is likely to follow their own idiosyncratic path.

A lack of a spiritual component to both atheism and pragmatic rationalism struck me as a serious problem starting about 15 years ago. My study of human cognitive biology and social behavior led me to believe we are hard-wired for spirituality. Spirituality apparently has a powerful attraction for humans and formal, organized religion. As best I can tell, that still seems to be a reasonable belief today.  

So when Douthat opines that in view of human knowledge and behavior, some sort of religious attitude is demanded, that seems to be basically right. The human brain-mind really does demand some sort of religion or source of spiritual gratification. 

For the life of me, I cannot figure out a way to integrate spirituality into either atheism or pragmatic rationalism. That probably permanently relegates those mental frameworks to permanent small minority, low influence status. I can see serious pro-civilization and pro-sustainability value in both, but they are fatally flawed by evolution. I’ve hit a brick wall and can’t see a way past it. Bummer. 

Q: Is that true, false or mixed true & false?

Book review: Reasoned Politics

Context

Reasoned Politics is a 2022 book written for a general audience by a young Danish author, Magnus Vinding. Vinding has an undergraduate degree in math and some undergraduate study in areas including psychology, philosophy, and the history of science. He relies heavily on cognitive biology, social behavior and moral philosophy of politics to argue for politics that is more rational and reasoned than it is now. His main interest now is in reducing suffering and the moral reasoning behind of that goal. Vinding is not an academic. As far as I can tell, he has authored no peer-reviewed papers in the science literature. He founded and apparently works at the Center for Reducing Suffering, presumably in Denmark. His book is very easy to read. It is available online in pdf format.

If I had written a book, I would hope it would be close to Reasoned Politics. What Vinding calls reasoned politics, I call pragmatic rationalism. The two are nearly identical. In my communications with him, he and I both draw on the same sources of influence on politics, human cognitive biology, social behavior and moral philosophy. He sees the same major problem with reasoned politics (my pragmatic rationalism) that I see. Specifically, reasoned politics cannot stand alone because rationalism alone does not have the personal and social glue that most humans (~95% ?) need to be drawn in. It's impossible to build a big cohesive tribe based on rationalism alone, which is often quite uncomfortable psychologically, socially or both. 

Magnus Vinding

Book review

Broken politics: Reasoned Politics starts with a description of broken politics and a two-step protocol for doing it better: 

Politics is broken. To say that this is a cliché has itself become a cliché. But it is true nonetheless. Empty rhetoric, deceptive spin, and appeals to the lowest common denominator. These are standard premises in politics that we seem stuck with, and which many of us shake our heads at in disappointment.  

The good news is that we have compelling reasons to think that we can do better. And it is critical that we do so, as our political decisions arguably represent the most consequential decisions of all, serving like a linchpin of human decision-making that constrains and influences just about every choice we make.

The two-step protocol is actually three steps: Vinding's two-step protocol is simple:

A problem with mainstream political discourse is that there is a striking lack of distinction between normative and empirical matters. That is, we fail to distinguish ethical values on the one hand, and factual questions about how we can best realize such values on the other, which in turn causes great confusion. And predictably so. After all, the distinction between normative and empirical issues is standard within moral and political philosophy, where it is considered indispensable for clear thinking.

If that feels familiar to some regulars here, it should. My pragmatic rationalism envisions a two-step protocol, first the empirical step, second the normative step. This is the only significant difference between Vinding's brand of politics and mine. 

I put the empirical first specifically because it tends to be less emotion and bias-provoking than thinking about one's morals. I pointed this reversal of order out to Vinding and he sticks with his order of things, but he then raised the possibility of a third step, being aware of common biases, which he termed step 0. He and I both think that self-awareness of personal biases and group or tribe loyalties are a necessary predicate for doing reasoned politics. So, three steps arguably is needed, with self-awareness training part of the protocol being the first step.

The point of step three is simple. If a person denies that they are biased or influenced by group or tribe loyalty, they've already positioned themselves to likely fail at reasoned politics and unknowingly default back to broken politics. 

Moral reasoning, cognitive biases & virtue signaling to the tribe: Vinding then marches through cognitive biology, social influences on moral reasoning and the main unconscious biases that distort our perceptions of reality and facts and how we think about what we think we see. The point is to raise self-awareness of how powerful but subtle people's main biases are on both perceiving things and thinking about them. Some quotes from the book are in order.

• In their book Democracy for Realists [my book review is here], political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels review a large literature that consistently shows that voters mostly vote based on their group membership and identity rather than their economic self-interest (Achen & Bartels, 2016). This contrasts with what Achen and Bartels call the “folk theory” of democracy, a more rationalistic view according to which voters primarily vote based on their individual policy preferences — a view that turns out to be mostly false (Achen & Bartels, 2016, ch. 8-9).

• It is well-documented that the human mind is subject to confirmation bias: a tendency to seek out and recall information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs while disregarding information that challenges these beliefs (Plous, 1993, pp. 233-234). Closely related is the phenomenon of motivated reasoning, which is when we seek to justify a desired conclusion rather than following the evidence where it leads (Kunda, 1990). It hardly needs stating that confirmation bias and motivated reasoning are rampant in politics (as indeed implied by Haidt’s social intuitionist model).

• Voters tend to be ignorant about politics. In fact, this has been characterized as one of the most robust findings in political science (Bartels, 1996; Brennan, 2016, ch. 2). And voters are not just wrong in small ways on insignificant matters, but in big ways on major issues. In the words of political scientist Jeffrey Friedman, “the public is far more ignorant than academic and journalistic observers of the public realize” (Friedman, 2006b, p. v). .... A relevant phenomenon in this context is the “illusion of explanatory depth” — the widespread illusion of believing that we understand aspects of the world in much greater detail than we in fact do.

• To be clear, the point here is not that our intuitions should be wholly disregarded. After all, our intuitions often do carry a lot of wisdom, sometimes even encapsulating centuries of hard-won cultural moral progress. .... But the point is that we do not have to go with the very first intuition that eagerly announces itself and tries to dictate our judgment.

• .... political scientists have deemed group attachments [tribalism] “the most important factor” in determining people’s political judgments (Achen & Bartels, 2016, p. 232). This is at odds with the more common and more flattering view of ourselves that says that our political judgments are primarily determined by our individual reasoning — a picture that assigns little importance to our group affiliations, if any at all. .... And as is true of motivated reasoning in general, our drive to signal group loyalty is rarely fully transparent to ourselves, in that it rarely comes with any indication that it serves the purpose of loyalty signaling. Both individually and collectively, we have little clue of the extent to which group loyalty motivates our political behavior (Achen & Bartels, 2016, ch. 10; Simler & Hanson, 2018, ch. 5, ch. 16).

Reasoned politics or broken politics?

Vinding's book concludes with various thoughts about the difficulty of people doing reasoned politics and our unconscious tendency to do broken politics.   

• Lastly, a significant impediment to the two-step ideal is that the true epistemic brokenness of the human mind, especially in the realm of politics, is hardly something welcome or flattering for anyone to hear about. .... In particular, it may be difficult for us to recognize that much of our epistemic brokenness is a direct product of our social and coalitional nature itself (cf. Simler, 2016; Tooby, 2017). After all, we tend to prize our social peers and coalitions, so it might be especially inconvenient to admit that they are often the greatest source of our epistemic brokenness — e.g. due to the seductive drive to signal our loyalties to them and to use beliefs as mediators of bonding, which often comes at a high cost to our epistemic integrity (Simler, 2016).

It is clear from Vinding's, book that American society and political rhetoric is currently inimical to the rise of reasoned politics. For now, reasoned politics will remain an academic curiosity instead of the potent political force that America and the rest of the world desperately needs right now.

News bits: Schiff shafts Durham with truth; House Republicans attack enemies; Etc.

From the Republicans tried but failed to smear files: GOP propaganda and rhetoric is loaded with lies, smears and slanders aimed mostly at Democrats, liberals, and RINO Republicans. It turns out that most of the time when the matter is pressed, the evidence shows the propaganda and rhetoric to be actual lies, smears and/or slanders. The Daily Beast writes about a really big Republican lie that ran into a buzzsaw of inconvenient truth with no place to hide from it, despite trying to hide and deflect from it:  

Adam Schiff Gets John Durham to Admit Russia Helped Trump

When Republicans brought Special Counsel John Durham to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, they thought it’d be an opportunity to score points on Democrats—particularly Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who spent years hyping up Donald Trump’s connections to Russia.

What they got instead was a viral moment when Schiff got Durham—the man tasked with concluding whether the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s connections to the 2016 Trump campaign was appropriate—took Durham to task.

Schiff, a former impeachment manager against Trump, questioned Durham about whether President Trump flaunted information that was released by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. Durham repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of the matter [what a whopper of a lie]. But in the midst of the exchange, Durham clearly stated he doesn’t doubt the validity of evidence showing Russia was trying to help Trump—something many Republicans have vehemently denied.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Russians intruded into—hacked into the systems, they released information,” Durham said.

“And that was helpful to the Trump campaign, right?” Schiff asked.

After trying to deflect the question, Durham agreed the Russians had been helpful to the Trump campaign.

“And Trump made use of that, as I said, didn’t he, by touting those stolen documents on the campaign trail over a hundred times,” Schiff said.

Durham said he didn’t “really read the newspapers, or listen to the news.”

“So I don’t know that,” he said. 

“Were you totally oblivious to Donald Trump’s use of the stolen emails on the campaign trail more than a hundred times?” Schiff asked. “Did that escape your attention?” 

Durham responded that he wasn’t aware of that.

There is no basis in existing evidence to accord Durham any credibility. He doesn't read newspapers? What does read or listen to, Evie Magazine? Breitbart? Faux News? Nothing? Durham, like the rest of the radical right Republican elites, is a shameless liar. They all tell lots of whopper lies and slanders and get away with it.

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The NYT writes about House Republicans openly attacking enemies: 

House Censures Adam Schiff Over His Role Investigating Trump

The G.O.P.-led House formally censured Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, on Wednesday over his role investigating former President Donald J. Trump, the first in what could be a series of votes seeking to punish those whom Republicans have deemed the party’s enemies.

The censure passed by a party-line vote of 213 to 209 with six Republicans voting “present.” The measure had the backing of Speaker Kevin McCarthy after its lead sponsor, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, altered its language to remove a multimillion-dollar fine some Republicans viewed as unconstitutional.

“Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting U.S. president,” Ms. Luna said. The censure accused him of engaging in “falsehoods, misrepresentations and abuses of sensitive information” as he sought to unearth connections between Mr. Trump and Russia.

As usual, the Republicans use lies and slanders to attack enemies. That's all they've got, so that's what they use.

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About the morality of democracy vs authoritarianism: Few or no dictators like to be called dictators. They prefer other labels, often some form of democrat. A day or two ago, president Biden called China's powerful dictator Xi Jinping a dictator. CNN reported on the dictator's instant backlash:

When President Joe Biden referred to his Chinese counterpart as a dictator late Tuesday in California, the response from Beijing was swift and angry.

“The remarks seriously contradict basic facts, seriously violate diplomatic etiquette, and seriously infringe on China’s political dignity,” the spokesperson for the foreign ministry said.

I take that as more evidence that living under democracy is inherently more desirable to most people than the idea of living under authoritarians like dictators, theocrat or plutocrats. Authoritarians know this, so they deny, downplay or deflect from the fact that they are authoritarian. What was most important was that Xi's political dignity was infringed, not necessarily China's.

Setting aside the wisdom or stupidity of Biden's remark, plenty of evidence indicates that the human urge to live under democracy is widespread and universal or almost so. I take that as convincing evidence that at least in modern times, democracy is inherently more moral than various forms of dictatorship. It may not mean that democracies are always better in one or more ways than a comparable dictatorship, but that is a different issue. 

Belief in the superior morality of democracy over authoritarianism or dictatorship is a core moral belief that underpins my own political ideology, pragmatic rationalism. 

Qs: What is an argument(s) that supports some form(s) of authoritarianism as being more moral than some form of democracy? Or, is authoritarianism vs. democracy simply not a matter of ethics or morality?

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Thoughts on democracy in India: A NYT opinion piece by Harvard history professor Maya Jasanoff opines:

Narendra Modi Is Not Who America Thinks He Is

On Thursday the White House will roll out the red carpet for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to “affirm the deep and close partnership between the United States and India” and “strengthen our two countries’ shared commitment to a free, open, prosperous, and secure Indo-Pacific.” A state dinner and Mr. Modi’s address to a joint session of Congress will crown months of fawning assessments of India by everyone from Bill Gates to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Here is what Americans need to know about Mr. Modi’s India. Armed with a sharp-edged doctrine of Hindu nationalism, Mr. Modi has presided over the nation’s broadest assault on democracy, civil society and minority rights in at least 40 years. He has delivered prosperity and national pride to some, and authoritarianism and repression of many others that should disturb us all.

Since Mr. Modi took power in 2014, India’s once-proud claim to being a free democratic society has collapsed on many fronts. Of the 180 nations surveyed in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, India sits at 161, a scant three places above Russia. Its position on the Academic Freedom Index has nose-dived since Mr. Modi took office, putting it on a course that sharply resembles those of other electoral autocracies. The Freedom in the World index has tracked a steady erosion of Indian citizens’ political rights and civil liberties. On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, India has tumbled squarely into the ranks of “flawed democracies.”

A working paper from the Indian government dismisses such metrics as “perception-based.” Sadly, it is no “perception” that the government systematically harasses its critics by raiding the offices of think tanks, NGOs and media organizations, restricting freedom of entry and exit, and pressing nuisance lawsuits — most conspicuously against the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who was recently ejected from Parliament after his conviction on a ludicrous charge of having defamed everybody named “Modi.” It is no “perception” that Muslim history has been torn from national textbooks, cities with Islamic eponyms renamed and India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, stripped of its autonomy.  

As for India’s readiness to partner on efforts to combat climate change — one of the Biden administration’s highest hopes — the Indian government has cracked down on climate activists and just removed evolution and the periodic table from the curriculum for under-16-year-olds in its ongoing assault on science.  

Healthier ways to engage with India begin with understanding that Mr. Modi’s version of India is no less skewed than Donald Trump’s of the United States, even if Mr. Modi has been more successful at getting the media and global elite to buy into it.

Why does it too often look like democracy is weaker than authoritarianism? And why do various rising dictatorship look increasingly like the one now unfolding in the US? The tactics authoritarians use worldwide keep looking more like what the GOP is doing to America, Putin is doing to Russia, and what Viktor Orban has done to Hungary.

The US believes it needs good relations with India to help it fight a new Cold War with China. But India has become mostly authoritarian. Modi is going to do what he sees as in his and India's interest, whether or not it is in the US interest. Sure, the US can and should be on at least somewhat friendly terms with dictatorships. But to praise dictators like Modi as presiding over "free and open" countries undermines democracy. India is no longer free or open. It seems that democracy can no longer defend itself very well against the rising global tide of authoritarianism.

How pragmatic rationalism works in a nutshell

In response to a recent comment, a quick explanation of how my pragmatic rationalism ideology works was appropriate. For what its worth, here is a version of it for public consideration:

I don't usually start out contesting truth from anyone, especially someone I trust. That's the adversarial mindset. Some people deserve adversarial treatment because they earned it, e.g., by being demagogues, liars, crackpots, etc. Absent that, I'll just look into an issue or matter with as neutral and open a mind as I can muster. It helps to sense when a posited fact, truth or line of reasoning is unfamiliar but plausible, especially when it is inconvenient. Then I decide on the basis of facts, truths and my own human reasoning. Being a pragmatic rationalist means a three-step process. Facts and truths first, reasoning second, beliefs third.

If one starts with beliefs first, as most people seem to do most of the time, the influence of unconscious biases, ideologies and social pressure/situation, e.g., tribe loyalty, are more potent. Inconvenient facts and truths are more easily obscured, distorted and/or downplayed. Reasoning tends to get distorted to make beliefs more comforting and plausible. False/unjustifiable beliefs tend to remain intact.

Science has diagrammed the human foundation that gave rise to pragmatic rationalism. Inconvenient facts, truths, reasoning and beliefs are shown below in green, and the psychological-social discomfort they cause is shown in red. The human is highly motivated to make the discomfort at least appear to go away. 

Mass delusion, moral courage and the mass psychology of fascism

A 21:49 video by groups called After Skool (AS) and Academy of Ideas discusses mass psychology involved in violence and authoritarianism. It points to innate human traits as the key source of mass psychosis, which AS calls mass mental illness. Some of this feels dated, but the general contours feel very relevant and current.

The video starts with these thoughts:

According to  Wikipedia, Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) was a leading French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. In the book, Le Bon claims that there are several characteristics of crowd psychology: “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others...” 

A couple of points from the video:

• Humans are their own worst enemy dues to incapacity to control themselves, summarized as “Man is wolf to man”

• When mental illness (mass delusion) in a society become the norm, humans are at their worst

Episodes of mass psychosis include American and European witch hunts 

of the 16th and 17th centuries and 20th century totalitarianism 

• Moral and intellectual rot and loss of control typifies the mass psychosis disease among the affected; those people typically become unreasonable, emotional and irresponsible to some non-trivial degree; crimes can become group-sanctioned and acceptable or normalized, but nearly all of the affected people are unaware of this → the psychosis manifests itself almost entirely or entirely in the unconscious mind, not consciousness 

• The most common case of mass psychosis is a flood of negative emotions resulting in anxiety, fear and panic, and that leads people to look for psychological relief and comfort from the burden; some people have the moral courage (my term, not in the video) to face their fears and anxieties, but most people experience a psychotic break that leads to a state of mind grounded in a perception of more simplicity, order and personal agency (control) in their lives → people gain relief by blending fact with fiction and rationality with comforting motivated reasoning → irrationality increases and rationality decreases

• In modern times, the greatest threat from within is the appeal of totalitarianism (or at least authoritarianism -- democracy is always a threat); the rulers are power hungry and see themselves as Godlike or perfect; most of the affected masses are willing to cede power to the elites in return for psychological comfort

• The masses are primed for totalitarianism by sowing fear through constant propaganda, fake news, lies and confusing reporting to obscure the true nature of what is happening; over time, public confusion leads people to be more susceptible to false claims and waves threats; threat presented in successive waves are asserted to be increasingly dangerous and imminent; a side effect is decreasing morality (loss of moral courage, my term, not in the video)

Does this sound familiar? It should because it is and has been standard 

Republican and American radical right propaganda tactics for decades --

That includes laissez-faire capitalist propaganda and 

Christian nationalist fundamentalism propaganda   

• Social media, cell phones, information screening algorithms, and shameless propaganda and lies on television and radio are collectively persuasive and pervasive → people voluntarily subject themselves to the propaganda of the elites and powerful special interests  → people get trapped in siloes and are insulated from dissenting opinions and reality that is contrary to the propaganda

Pragmatic rationalism is a parallel structure

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Freeze Peach for bringing this video to my attention.

Pragmatic rationalism: Summary and links to discussions

The context

Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. -- Master propagandist Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923

We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. -- Political psychologist George Marcus, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013

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

The tedious thing

The issue of my political ideology comes up from time to time, usually when I'm being criticized as unreasonably biased, partisan, socialist, stupid or whatever. It's tedious to repeatedly explain my ideology, pragmatic rationalism (PR). A post summarizing it and linking to past posts is in order. 

Short summary: PR is an ideology based on moral values of (i) acceptance of facts, true truths and sound reasoning, especially whenever they are inconvenient or cognitive dissonance-inducing, (ii) service to the public interest (it's complicated but it favors democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, transparency, honesty, balancing of public and private interests, reasonable regulation of commerce, etc.), and (iii) reasonable compromise to ward off authoritarianism.

PR is intended to be an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology. It is intended to help reduce emotion to increase rationality and acceptance of inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. It mostly ignores things like conservatism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, Christianity and so forth. Disputes about those are essentially contested, and thus for the most part resolvable only by compromise or brute force. 

PR focuses mostly on what most people claim their politics is based on, facts, true truths, sound reasoning, what's best for the people and the country (service to the public interest) and for pro-democracy people, reasonable compromise. Things like personal morals, self-esteem and group loyalty are baked into the 'service to the public interest' moral value. Maybe most of those can be called less contested concepts, especially facts. Despite facts being either mostly or completely objective, they are still often contested, usually they are inconvenient, i.e., when they generate cognitive dissonance.

PR is an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology: Political, economic and religious ideologies tend to lead the believer's mind to distort, deny or downplay facts, reality, truths and sound reasoning that are inconvenient. Humans hate cognitive dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty. The human mind evolved to rationalize uncomfortable things into other things or nothings that are more psychologically comfortable. (June 3, 2019 post)

An attempted brief explanation of PR: It's not clear this attempt succeeds, but it's there. (Dec. 28, 2019 post)

Shared traits of bad leaders: Books teach that bad leaders tend to be ruthlessly demagogic and authoritarian. They usually (~97% of the time?) rely more on deceit, lies, slanders, irrational, emotional manipulation and flawed motivated reasoning. The emotional manipulation usually appeals to and foments negative emotions such as unwarranted fear, anger, hate, bigotry, intolerance and distrust, all of which tend to divide and polarize societies. Propaganda based significantly or completely on motivated reasoning generally makes arguments on some combination of emotional manipulation, logic flaws, deceit, lies, opacity and slanders of target individuals, groups and/or nations. (Aug. 10, 2019 post) 

Self-criticism of PR: Many criticisms can be leveled at PR, e.g., it is impractical for whole societies, especially ones awash in propaganda, opacity and deceit like the US. That is probably true. Nonetheless, considering criticisms helps to clarify what might be possible and what probably isn't. (Aug. 13, 2015 post)

How PR fits with social science research: Short answer is that PR fits. It should fit because it is built largely on human cognitive biology, neuroscience, psychology, social behavior science and related sciences. There's also a strong streak of moral philosophy inherent in PR. 

This quote from a 2013 book chapter on ideology exemplifies the fit:

While I will review a great deal of important research on the structure and determinants of political ideology in this chapter it is important not to lose sight of the implications of low levels of political knowledge, instability in measures of issues preferences, and multiple dimensions of issue preferences when evaluating research on individual-level political ideology. At a minimum, these findings encourage us to consider models of ideology that do not require a great deal of sophistication from most people and to be aware of the limits of ideology among nonelites. --- Feldman, S. (2013). Political ideology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 591–626). Oxford University Press.

Based on that, a test for PR asks if it is too sophisticated for nonelites to adopt a pro-rationalism mindset that looks to facts, true truths and sound reasoning as a major basis for political thinking and belief. (Aug. 15, 2021 post)

Complexity is unavoidably embedded in PR: Politics is very complicated, despite strenuous argument from some that it isn't. It just is. That is inherent in the human condition and the workings of the human mind. Therefore, PR is necessarily complicated, although at one time I used to naïvely think it was simple. Now I know better.

For example, service to the public interest and many of the concepts it includes are complex because they are essentially contested. There is thus no authoritative definition or agreement on definitions about when and how they apply in various circumstances. That is an unavoidable aspect of politics. That is why reasonable compromise is necessary in a democracy. In a dictatorship, autocracy, neo-fascism, plutocracy or other non-democratic form of government, definitions and compromise are at the whim of the person or people in power. (July 11, 2020 post)

Can Civics Save America?

Culture war in education

A May 2021 article in the Atlantic, Can Civics Save America?, considers whether civics and history can be taught in public schools in a way that helps to restore some health to our seriously damaged American democracy. The alternative is that it will inflame partisan antagonisms if not done with extreme care and strict neutrality. The Atlantic writes:

Civic education sounds dull, dutiful, and antiquated, like paper drives or the Presidential Physical Fitness Test—but today it bears all the passion and distemper of our fraught politics. Last year, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz found that a majority of Americans of both parties rank civics as their top choice for how to “strengthen the American identity,” ahead of national service (preferred by Democrats) and religious activity (favored by Republicans). Civics, if left undefined, is the one solution for polarization that both sides support.

It’s also the most bitterly contested subject in education today. Civics is at the heart of the struggle to define the meaning of the American idea. Think of the battle lines as 1619 versus 1776—The New York Times Magazine’s project to reframe American history around slavery and its legacy, and the Trump administration’s counterstrike in the form of a thin report on patriotic education. Teaching civics could restore health to American democracy, or inflame our mutual antagonisms. Events are currently pushing in both directions.

Schools fail to give students not only a knowledge of basic facts and concepts, .... but also “the realization that free people will disagree about just about everything.” The art of self-government depends on a capacity for argument, persuasion, compromise, and tolerance of disagreement—civic virtues that need to be learned and practiced. .... If Americans of all stripes now hold righteously dogmatic views that we can neither ground in facts nor justify against counterarguments, one overlooked cause is the fading of civics from American education.

In 2019, a group of scholars and educators began an ambitious effort to lay out a vision for how American children in the 21st century should learn about their multi-everything, relentlessly divided democracy. .... Funding came from the U.S. Department of Education (then led by Betsy DeVos) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Around 300 people ultimately worked on the project, whose 33-page report, Educating for American Democracy, came out in March.

Rather than euphemizing hard truths and eliding divisive arguments, the report faces them in clear language. “In recent decades, we as a nation have failed to prepare young Americans for self-government, leaving the world’s oldest constitutional democracy in grave danger, afflicted by both cynicism and nostalgia, as it approaches its 250th anniversary,” the report announces at the top. Its solution is not a new nationwide curriculum (sure to self-immolate in partisan fights) but a “roadmap” of pedagogical guidelines, informed by broad themes such as “civic participation” and “institutional and social transformation,” and also by questions such as “How can we offer an account of U.S. constitutional democracy that is simultaneously honest about the past without falling into cynicism, and appreciative of the founding without tipping into adulation?”

The article goes on to point out that the Educating for American Democracy report intentionally does not choose sides in culture war. That would cause it to be rejected and attacked by one side or the other and then fade into irrelevance. To avoid that trap, the authors resort to reliance on evidence, inquiry and reason (like pragmatic rationalism). In particular, the report does not tell schools what to teach or students what to think. It just provides guidance on educating students about how to think, debate, disagree, and learn about the past in the context of the present. The goal is to balance American pluralism and diversity with a shared American narrative. 

Phrases like “reflective patriotism” and “civic friendship” were invented and used to try to limit the inherent tension. As one can imagine, this puts a significant, complicated burden on teachers. 

The author of the article understands that the Educating for American Democracy report could lay out good ideas but still die a quiet death, like many other reports and efforts that try to be helpful. One question asks what else can we try to do? The two sides are bitterly divided and that is not going to change. 

We oppose it!

A proposed bill in Congress, the Civics Secures Democracy Act, appropriates $1 billion to support civics and U.S. history teaching. As of last May, there was some bipartisan support, but it is tenuous. The Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act both came  

under immediate attack from the right. A radical right pro-T**** source called American Greatness, referred to the report as “a Trojan horse for woke education.” The influential radical right National Review, Federalist Society, and Heritage Foundation all argued that the report and the proposed bill constituted a conspiracy to impose a national left-wing agenda and ideology on schoolchildren. A conservative group, the National Association of Scholars asked Republicans in congress to withdraw their sponsorship of the Civics Secures Democracy Act. 

Biden screws the pooch - he took a side in the culture war

In what appears to be a serious, probably lethal mistake for a civics and history teaching renewal, on April 19 the Biden administration proposed Education Department funding for two small teaching grants related to teaching civics and history. The grant rationale and requirements blundered by clearly taking the liberal side in the culture war. Information that accompanied the grants included these mistakes (i) citing “the New York Times’ landmark ‘1619 Project,’” (ii) emphasis on teaching “both the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society,” and (iii) stating that grant applicants must “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” “support the creation of learning environments that validate and reflect the diversity, identity, and experiences of all students,” and “contribute to inclusive, supportive, and identity-safe learning environments.” 

Both the Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act were designed to not inflame partisan differences or take a side. Despite that, both elicited immediate, intense criticism from the radical right. The ghastly mistakes in the grant applications has given the radical right the excuse to say, we told you so, and more vehemently reject the report and the bill pending in congress. Radical right demagogues are reveling in a festival of disinformation using Biden’s mistake as fresh ammunition.

The article ends with this correct observation:

Unlike Educating for American Democracy, the Biden administration’s [grant application] rule, like its conservative critics, imposes a fixed view of civics and U.S. history in place of inquiry, debate, and disagreement. By intent or blunder, the left and right are colluding to undermine the noble, elusive goal of giving American children the ability to think and argue and act together as citizens.

Questions: 

1. Based on the information in this post, is it reasonable to think the right is mostly acting to sabotage by intent and the left mostly blundering, assuming that the left generally supports the Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act, while the right attacks and opposes them?

2. Is it reasonable to see neutral but honest teaching of civics and history as inherently more at odds with the morals, ideology, beliefs and politics of the radical right than with those of the center or left, radical or not?

Pragmatic rationalism: Another forlorn attempt to explain it

Germaine's predicament -- cognitive rocks are super heavy

This blog post is another of my proverbial lost causes. But I'm a modern day Sisyphus. In my opinion, my past attempts to explain my political anti-ideology ideology, pragmatic rationalism, have been unsatisfactory.

Nonetheless, Sisyphus is persistent. He keeps pushing that rock up the hill, hoping the spouse doesn't, uh, interfere?

Hey tweety pie, could you please let that thing go and get some groceries?? 

You can play with your rock later. I'll make sure it 

stays at the bottom of the hill. 

Aw, crud, do I have to?

Yesterday, I tried to explain why I now believe that the Republican Party and its rank and file supporters are fairly included in the label of FRP (fascist Republican Party). I got entangled in this quite useful politics back and forth, also known among experts as "to and fro."  

The following is from yesterday's discussion here about the fascism or lack thereof among Republican rank and file voters.

Opening volley: I don't think your description of the Republican party is either helpful or entirely fair. You basically are saying that there are 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News. There isn't enough daylight between these groups to call them separate.

Most of the people who actually care about fiscal conservatism (read: tax cuts) are a separate group. The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. Likewise, the base is willing to parrot the points of the elites, but they don't really care about the priorities of the elites. Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons. The elites are fine with it because it solidifies their power. The base is fine with it because it lets them impose their will on others.

Sisyphus response 1: 

The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. .... Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons.

That is a really nice, clear way to describe the situation. Well done.

That is how I see it. The elites are happy to, and expert at, using the base to serve their own interests.

But I do not understand the unfairness you see in how I characterize and label the FRP. I'm missing something in your reasoning. Is fascism the wrong label, and if so, why? What is a better label, or is it better to assign labels to the different groups to be more accurate?

For example:
elites = three groups (i) anti-democratic laissez faire capitalists, (ii) anti-democratic radical Christian nationalists, and (iii) anti-democratic racists, fascists and/or White supremacists
R&F = ? (some of all of the above?)

Volley 2: The label of fascist is fine for the party as an organization. What's unfair is saying that there are only 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News.

You stated that there are 2 groups. The elites, radical ideologues whose main goals include Christian nationalism, and the rank and file, 50% of whom are Nazis, and 50% of whom are deluded by Fox News. By your reasoning, all Republicans fall into one of those 3 groups. That's what isn't fair.

There are plenty of Republicans who joined the party because they are anti-tax and/or anti-regulation. They don't care about Christian nationalists, Nazis, or Fox News, both in the sense that they don't necessarily share that ideology but also in that they feel no need to oppose it. Saying there's no difference between that group of Republicans and those who fall into your 3 groups is unfair and inaccurate.

Response 2: I understand your point. Not all Republicans are strictly in one or more of those three major groups. That is true.

But here is my problem. Reference to the FRP includes in people who aren't in one of the three groups, but they are in the genus group called Republicans, which includes all groups, not just the big three. If these outliers vote for Republican candidates who advocate for anti-democratic policies and rely heavily on anti-democratic rhetoric and dark free speech, what are those people? They support the fascism of the FRP with their votes. Maybe there are enough Republicans outside the big three groups that they are a necessary block of votes to win state and/or federal elections for anti-democratic or fascist Republicans.

In their minds they are not fascists. But in practice, what does their meaningful behavior amount to?

Volley 3: If you're just going to paint them all with the same brush based on how they're voting, you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore. If you're actually trying to understand them, though, you have to consider where they're coming from. The question, then, it what you're trying to do. Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

Response 3: 

... you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore.

It's not a charade on my part. It is an attempt to explain why the categories can collapse into the single FRP label. Some people accuse me of unreasonably lumping disparate groups into one genus and to be transparent, explaining the subgroups helps people understand my reasoning, which they are free to partly or completely accept or reject. At least when others decide, it will be on the basis of a reasonable understanding of why I lumped groups as I now do. I don't ignore the small groups but conclude that, by their actions or behaviors, they defensibly or rationally can be included in a larger generic group.

Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

I am trying to make a fair description of them. I try not to engage in irrational screaming. Not all criticism amounts to irrational screaming. But unless I explain myself and my reasoning, people have no objective basis to decide if I am unjustifiably screaming or fairly describing something that is complicated and open to dispute.

Without an empirical basis to understand my beliefs, people default to politics as usual, i.e., people who agree will see my opinions as true, and ones who disagree will see them as false or flawed. I don't want to do politics as usual. IMO, politics as usual is inherently toxic and anti-democratic. I want to do pragmatic rationalist politics and that requires enough explanation to afford people a better basis to decide for themselves than mere uncritical agreement or disagreement with an opinion not supported by any facts, truths and/or reasoning.

Volley 4: You really don't seem like you're trying to make a fair description. Your three categories look more like of a collection of insults than any kind of serious effort to understand them, and your dismissal of anyone who doesn't fit one of those three as being a small minority not worth considering only compounds that impression. The entire post makes me think it's unlikely you have any friends or family that are conservatives.

Response 4: Fair enough. At least we understand each other and that is a good thing.

To recapitulate, nothing I have said to try to explain myself in this blog post and my comments to you is sufficient for you to believe that my assertion of facts, truths and reasoning is nothing more than mere insults with no respect or serious effort to understand the people my comments discuss. 

Just curious, exactly what do I not understand about the people you believe I unfairly and/or irrationally smear, slander and/or falsely lump together or characterize? Since you offer almost no details of your facts, truth or reasoning, I assume you completely reject everything I assert as false or worse, with little or no probative weight in fact, truth or reason.

 

I am not trying to be obtuse or disrespectful to you. I am trying to explain myself. So far, my explanation is completely unpersuasive in your mind. I accept that, but don't understand why.

FWIW, some of my family is deeply conservative, but not my immediate family. Some of my friends are conservative, but not hard core T**** supporters -- they are uncomfortable with the modern GOP. Would a different family and friends situation for me necessarily make a major difference in my analysis and beliefs? How many liberal friends and family do T**** supporters have and would a difference in

Volley 5: to be determined if there is a return volley

The point I want to make

The core point I want to make here is in the comments highlighted above. Whether one agrees or disagrees with my assessment of rank and file Republicans as fascists is beside the point here. 

My point is this: One cannot do rational pragmatism without at least some explanation of asserted facts, truths and/or reasoning. Absent that, there is no rational basis to evaluate most political opinions in dispute, ~98% in my opinion. In those cases, politics defaults to politics as usual where people agree with opinions they like and disagree with ones they don't.

Questions: Other than facts, truths and reasoning, what else is there to evaluate the acceptability or lack thereof in disputed political opinions, e.g., personal morals and self-interest? Are morals and self-interest built into truths? Is this blog post too wonky?