Book Review: The Party of Fear

Introduction

The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, is an account of American conservative extremism. The book (second edition, 1995) was written by historian David Bennett. The party of fear does not refer to a political party as such. Instead it refers to various groups of people who share a common mindset that is fundamentally grounded in fear. The main fears changed over time, but included groups that could be vilified and attacked. Focus groups included various immigrant groups at various times, Catholics, immigrants (Irish, Italians, Germans, etc.), communists, Jews, blacks, homosexuals and secular humanists. For his 1995 edition, Bennett added a chapter that described the rise of the militia movement and the ideological constraints the fear party had to deal with to remain viable and to try to build mainstream political power.

The book is easy to read but dense with facts. The book discusses dozens of groups, movements and leaders. Some of them were quite influential and had hundreds of thousands of believers. Over the 20th century, the numbers of people actively involved decreased. That coincided with the gradual loss of fear-based issues that extremists would wield to get people to join fear party (FP) causes.

Book review

Since the 1700s, the goals of the American far right have been about the same and the fears have been similar. Regarding overall fears and goals, Bennett commented about the Order of the Star Spangled Banner of the 1850s, informally known as the Know Nothings:

“For they were there to save and cleanse the nation, to preserve for themselves that abstraction which some would later call the American dream. .... In dozens of books, pamphlets and broadsides the theme was repeated and refined: ‘Our mission is to restore America to the Americans, to purify and strengthen this nation ... to keep it clean from corruption.’”  

Although that bile was directed at Europeans, it sounds like American conservatism and populism in 2020 directed at non-European immigrants, Jews, democrats, actual experts and pretty much anyone who disagrees. The issue or problem that Bennett’s narrative raises over and over is simple: Who are the ‘real’ and privileged Americans, what is the ‘real America’ and who is to be ostracized and suppressed? It was always about the same. Regarding colonial times, Bennett writes:

“The specter of an alien religion penetrating and poisoning the new world garden made anti-Catholicism a recurring theme in early American history. .... What tied these movements to one tradition was the common vision of alien intruder in the promised land -- people who could not be assimilated in the national community because of their religion or ethnicity.”

As Bennett put it, the common FP ideological belief was:

“saving America was worth any price. .... As politicians of morality, they refused to treat those whom they feared with tolerance or civility. As moralists of the Right, they were idealists whose utopia was in the past.” 

Apparently, nothing much has changed since then. That makes sense. Significant human evolution happens over at least tens of thousands of years, not a few centuries.

Bennett comments that early scholars focused on the “history of American bigotry.” The FP leaders were seen as “vicious authoritarians, terrorizing the vulnerable, the sensitive, and the innocent.” Later, more analytic and detached scholars focused on economic factors, social disorder and intense competition for jobs that led to the fear mindset that motivated many but not all nativists of the 19th and 20th centuries. As time passed, scholars were apparently becoming more ecumenical about the human condition and the harsh reality of everyday life for most Americans. Dire circumstances lead some to extremist distrust, intolerance and hate:

“Unable to adjust to a world of power dispersal or to handle life in a complex society, the ignorant or the the powerless abandoned themselves to apocalyptic fantasies. They embraced what two writers called a ‘politics of unreason,’ striking out against certain perceived villains, who often themselves were innocent victims of a society in flux.”

Good grief, that sounds like 2020.

The right ≠ the left: The past vs the future

Bennett comments on the overall appearance to some scholars of extremists on the right compared to extremists on the left:

“The men and women of the Left can be pictured as heroic losers, persevering but not prevailing in the struggle for justice and equality, fighting to help the poor, ....; those on the right often appear only as the deranged or malevolent enemies of American freedom. The vision of the left is of the future, not the past; the ideal America is yet to be created .... Their language may be as graceless as their adversaries .... Those who respond to its appeal reject not only reject traditional political arrangements but also the values of society.”

The right = the left = everyone else in the 99%

Bennett argues that the fears of the extremist right reflect tensions that have been endemic in American history. As other historians have observed, elites, ideologues, wealthy people and interests (the 'manipulators') knew and still know how to deceive, manipulate and divide people to advance their own interests. When it suited them, the manipulators fomented discord between races, nationalities and anything else they could use to polarize and divide average people, e.g., lies, deceit, gender, religion, work skill level, language, ethnicity, nationality and everything else that can be used to foment distrust, hate, bigotry and so forth.

Fun & games in modern times: Christian deceit & etc.

A few of points from the last chapter 16 are merited. One deals with the fall of communism. It forced the extremist right FP to abandon communists as an enemy that could win public support. Bennett observes that the New Right had to focus on domestic enemies because the commies were mostly neutralized. The public didn't much fear that alien ideology. The new FP, the militia movement, focused instead on domestic enemies, the main one being the federal government with a tinge of veiled racism. Catholics were largely no longer seen as an enemy of the nation. The far right anti-government message resonated strongly with presidents Reagan and Bush, who favored wealthy people, e.g., by decreasing their taxes and decreasing regulations. In the 1980s, extremist right anti-government sentiment slowly crept into mainstream belief. Government spending was typically characterized as an attack on traditional family values.

In the 1980s and 1990s, extreme right televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson introduced Christianity into politics with a renewed intensity. In the 1700s and thereafter, many radical right ideologues wanted a clean Christian American nation, which meant Protestant, not Catholic. Unlike their predecessors centuries before them, the smart modern day Christian political activists relied on deceit to not scare mainstream people off. Bennett commented on the Christian Coalition and the aggressive, deceitful tactics its leader Ralph Reed endorsed:

“But keep your profile low was the message. .... Reed was quoted in the spring of 1990 .... ‘What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, .... I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians . . . and Christian values.’ But saying such things to the larger public would only frighten the majority, who might find this an extremist vision in a pluralistic society. .... ‘Your should never mention the name Christian Coalition in Republican circles,’ the coalition’s Pennsylvania manual instructed.”

Politicians who were in the Christian Coalition but downplayed their extremism included Rick Santorum. These Christians were accomplished deceivers and liars, just like the practitioners of the radical right in 2020. Lies meant nothing to them. At the time of Reed and other radical right extremists, the GOP did not criticize the radicalization of the party. That too is just like it is in 2020. The invocation ‘Thou shalt not lie’ was completely obliterated into irrelevance for most politically activist Christians. The ends justified the means and that is still true in 2020.

One snippet reinforces the radicalism of the FP. This is how Bennett describes one group in the virulently racist and anti-Semitic extremist movement called Christian Identity:

“Total membership is probably not more than a few thousand, but those involved often appear as ordinary people at their Sunday place of worship -- singing hymns, eating potluck lunches, hearing announcements of upcoming church socials and then listening to an Identity sermon. ‘Judeo-Christianity is a lie from the pit of Babylonian hell. . . . Judaism is the pinnacle of filth and everything evil. Your are either a Christian following Christ or a Jew following a Satanic religion.’”

What a fine sermon.

About that pesky US Constitution & fine art -- Even they are

not something that deranged quackery can’t easily distort into nonsense

Bennett briefly discusses the Constitution and the how FP mindset makes it coherent with extremist FP views. Most crackpot extremist groups tend to see the Constitution about the same way, which is the way the modern GOP is coming to see it. This at is the core of some Christian radical right authoritarianism and probably some GOP authoritarianism, since the Christian radical right is integrating mostly into the GOP and it does not care.

The 14th Amendment says: “No state shall make any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Some Christian Patriots and other radical groups do not like that and rationalize it away by seeing two kinds of citizens. “State citizens” are White Americans who derive their rights from God, while “14th Amendment citizens” derive their rights from the Constitution. That makes blatant racism just fine because God trumps the constitution.[1]

On the other hand, radical right extremists tend to like the 10th Amendment just the way it is. The 10th gives powers to the states that aren't listed for the government or the people. That dovetails nicely with what the radical right libertarian movement that controls the GOP at present. They want federal power to flow from the central government to state governments, which are far easier to corrupt and subvert than a strong federal government.

A parting thought or two. Some on the radical right criticize Hitler as being too humane, while Bo Gritz of the Christian Patriot movement said of the Oklahoma City bombing that killed dozens of innocents, “it was a Rembrandt.” Apparently, some on the radical right have a twisted appreciation of what is humane and acts of destruction. They think savagery is too humane, while or murdering lots of innocents is art.

Footnote:
1. And apparently, Trump trumps God for at least some Christians.

Public Service Announcement for residents of the United States

If you are like me, you recently received a postcard notice in the mail regarding your 2020 Census information.  On it, you will find your 12-charater Census ID designation along with the following message:

Dear Resident:

To protect the health of the public during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Census Bureau interviewers have had limited direct contact with the public until now.

Interviewers will begin visiting homes that have not responded in August.  Respond today, and we will not need to send an interviewer to your door to collect our answers.

If you have already completed your 2020 Census questionnaire, thank you.

Sincerely,

Steven D. Dillingham

Director

The U.S. Government depends on this information to distribute funds, determine congressional representation, and many other factors that will be in play for the next 10 years.  Don’t miss out on your entitled equal representation and funding.  If you did not receive such a post card, you still can participate by asking for an ID number on the initial screen.

Here is the link to begin your participation:

https://www.census.gov/en.html

A Tale of a School Reopening

After the reopening fizzled out

The New York Times describes an exciting public health adventure in Israel.

"Confident it had beaten the coronavirus and desperate to reboot a devastated economy, the Israeli government invited the entire student body back in late May.

Within days, infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school, which quickly mushroomed into the largest outbreak in a single school in Israel, possibly the world.

The virus rippled out to the students’ homes and then to other schools and neighborhoods, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives.

Other outbreaks forced hundreds of schools to close. Across the country, tens of thousands of students and teachers were quarantined.

Israel’s advice for other countries?

“They definitely should not do what we have done,” said Eli Waxman, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and chairman of the team advising Israel’s National Security Council on the pandemic. “It was a major failure.” 

The lesson, experts say, is that even communities that have gotten the spread of the virus under control need to take strict precautions when reopening schools. Smaller classes, mask wearing, keeping desks six feet apart and providing adequate ventilation, they say, are likely to be crucial until a vaccine is available.

“If there is a low number of cases, there is an illusion that the disease is over,” said Dr. Hagai Levine, a professor of epidemiology at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health. “But it’s a complete illusion.” "

Well, there you have it public health experiment fans. Another adventure in watching in horror at how the human mind slowly, painfully comes to grips with just how nasty the pandemic is. Of course, that is Israel. Here in the good 'ole U S of A, our national leadership is still in the C&I stage (clueless & incompetent) stage of mental processing. The leadership in Israel is in the more advanced C&S stage (concerned and scared).

The Human Mind and the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Prior research has shown that people mispredict their own behavior and preferences across affective states. When people are in an affectively “cold” state, they fail to fully appreciate how “hot” states will affect their own preferences and behavior. When in hot states, they underestimate the influence of those states and, as a result, overestimate the stability of their current preferences. The same biases apply interpersonally; for example, people who are not affectively aroused underappreciate the impact of hot states on other people’s behavior. After reviewing research documenting such intrapersonal and interpersonal hot– cold empathy gaps, this article examines their consequences for medical, and specifically cancer-related, decision making, showing, for example, that hot– cold empathy gaps can lead healthy persons to expose themselves excessively to health risks and can cause health care providers to undertreat patients for pain. -- George Loewenstein, Carnegie Mellon University, Health Psychology, Vol. 24, No. 4(Suppl.), S49 –S56, 2005 [1]

The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

An NPR broadcast of Hidden Brain, discussed research on strong physiological (hunger, sexual arousal, pain) and emotional states (fear, anger, disgust) that can move people's minds from cold states to hot states. In hot states, physiology and/or emotions control, and at the same time memory of cold state knowledge and logic or reasoning are unavailable to shape behavior. In hot states, things just happen, and sometimes (usually?) they are bad or dumb things.

The comments below are mostly based on the broadcast from the start to about 20:40 and ~50:00 to 53:00. Maybe most people here will already understand all of this. Nonetheless, it should help to keep this important aspect of the human mind in easily accessed memory.


People in a cold state tend to misjudge what their behavior would be when they are in a hot state. Men's behavior when sexually aroused changes compared to when not aroused. When arousal passes people appear to have forgotten and downplay the intensity of the hot state. Studies show that after experiencing a hot state and returning to a cold state, people are generally worse at predicting what their behavior would be if they returned to the hot state.

The data indicates that the hot-cold empathy gap works two ways across time, prospective and retrospective. The prospective gap leads people to misjudge their future behavior if they re-experience a hot state they have experienced before, such as sexual arousal. The hypothesis here is that the memory that people have of their own hot state experience is softened or distorted, leading them to misjudge themselves in the past and their future hot state behavior.

The retrospective empathy gap is also hypothesized to involve the same memory tricks, which can happen literally within a minute or two of a hot state situation such as feeling pain. People who experienced pain and then had the pain source withdrawn, immediately misjudge and overestimate their ability to handle the same pain again. The same phenomena applies to hunger, addiction and depression. The cold state mind and what it knows is unable to access the hot state mind, making the hot state version of a person incomprehensible. The hot state mind cannot access the cold state logic. One woman, Irene, in a cold state said about this about her own hot state sexual arousal experiences: "I don't know that girl."

That was cold Irene talking about hot Irene.

This phenomenon also applies to other people. The empathy gap can literally blind us to how other people feel and why they do some of the things they do.

The Empathy Gap and Politics

Maybe this restates the obvious, but it still is worth saying. When politicians, special interests, ideologues and others use dark free speech (lies, deceit, emotional manipulation) (collectively 'bad people') to create false realities, leverage flawed reasoning and win support, they are generally trying to push listeners into a hot state. Fear is probably the most powerful emotion that bad people have in their dark free speech arsenal. Anger, bigotry, disgust, distrust and intolerance are other powerful emotions that bad people play on to try foment hot states and irrationality.

People in hot states are more susceptible to lies, deceit and flawed reasoning, including logic fallacies. That is why it is important to at least try to maintain emotional control when engaging in politics. And when control is lost, it is usually best to walk away until control is regained. The cooling off period can be very useful to help maintain rationality, even if it requires backing away overnight.


Footnote:
1. Lowenstein also writes:

"Affect has the capacity to transform us, as human beings, profoundly; in different affective states, it is almost as if we are different people. Affect influences virtually every aspect of human functioning: perception, attention, inference, learning, memory, goal choice, physiology, reflexes, self-concept, and so on. Indeed, it has been argued that the very function of affect is to orchestrate a comprehensive response to critical situations that were faced repeatedly in the evolutionary past (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000)."

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Thinking about thinking (without the BS)

By Dan Carsen

The first logic class I ever took was in a philosophy course in college. And that’s part of the problem.

I don’t mean the problem with me, though there are many. I mean the problem with our politics, our civics, and just the way we get along (or don’t) right now. One way we could help with all that, believe it or not, would be to teach logic the way we teach math: Start early, keep at it, and make it required. I’ve taught logic to fourth graders, proof you don’t need a Ph.D. to share the basics and get kids in the habit of evaluating claims and thinking about their own thinking.

One deceptively simple definition of logic is "the study of correct reasoning, especially regarding making inferences."

Logic is about understanding what follows from something else, what must be true, given a certain premise. It’s about the leap from A to B, or in logic parlance, from p to q, as in “if p, then q.” Logic is what takes us from a premise, via inference, to a conclusion. Let’s say all cats have tails. In that universe, if it’s a cat, then it must have a tail. Get it? Of course you do.

But speaking of cute (we hope), imagine a toddler who lives with a cat and recently learned the word “kitty.” One day, the toddler is cruising around in the back of mom’s car and spots a fuzzy, four-legged animal. The toddler joyously points at this poodle and yells “Kitty! Kitty!” Mom smiles and chooses not to shatter the happy moment with a distracted-driving lecture on logical fallacies.

I, however, have no such qualms (sorry kid): This toddler, perhaps forgivably, assumed all cute fuzzy four-legged animals are “kitty.” That’s a common flaw in logic, a logical fallacy, and not just among toddlers; it’s often called hasty generalization or overgeneralization. And this type of fallacy and others are everywhere. They’re used, believed, repeated, broadcast, printed, and repeated some more, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly. Once you’re familiar with them, you see them everywhere, especially in election season. I’ll bet a beer and a biscuit that after reading the prime offenders below, you’ll notice them regularly between now and November, and maybe for the rest of your life (again, sorry, but you’re better off). So here are just seven of many deadly logic sins, a most-wanted list of tried-and-true, mass-misleading fallacies, simplified and combined for easy reading:

Fancy Latin name: ad hominem ("to the person")

Simple description: Attacking the person, not the argument or position.

Example: In a debate, Candidate A makes a policy recommendation. Opposing Candidate B says, “What do you know? You’re just a [insert any term seen as denigrating]!” Candidate B has certainly disparaged Candidate A but in no way addressed the policy suggestion. Fallacious fail.

A similarly invalid and unfair cousin of ad hominem is guilt by association. A more positive but equally fallacious relative is appeal to authority. (Seen any attack ads or endorsements lately?)

Fancy Latin name: post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this therefore because of this")

Simpler science-y description: correlation is not causation.

So-simplified-it-actually-had-to-be-longer explanation: Just because event A precedes event B does not mean A caused B.

Example: In February of a U.S. president’s first term, the unemployment rate falls sharply. The president declares, “See! I’m a job-creating president!” In reality, it’s unlikely that the president — though his paddle is bigger than the average citizen’s — significantly changed the course of the supertanker that is the U.S. economy in one month. There are likely other reasons or causes for the improvement.

Yummier example: Crime rates rise as ice-cream consumption rises (that’s generally true, by the way). Fallacious reasoning: Clearly, ice cream is making people go insane with pleasure and commit crimes, plus ice-cream addicts are jacking people to get ice-cream money.

Actually, it’s just that ice-cream consumption and crime rates both tend to rise in summer. Along these lines, with the clear exception of my magic Boston Celtics socks, your lucky hat, lucky shoes, or — apologies to an AL.com Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist — lucky fish before Alabama games did not cause your team to win. Unless, of course, you literally (and accurately) threw it in the opposing team’s faces at a key moment during a game.

Fancy name: false dichotomy

Simple name: either-or thinking

Simple description: Simplistically presenting the complex, gray-area world as if there are only two choices.

Real example: After the 9-11 terror attacks, some political leaders said, in effect or exactly word-for-word, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.” Uhm … actually, no. Someone can hate the terrorists and be against what you’re doing, too. Reality is not nearly as simple as your kindergarten-level portrayal. It almost never is. Advertising often relies on a false dichotomy, too: Use this product or you’re a chump. Again, no. I can avoid your product as if it’s a smelly guy with a bad cough and a machete and yet still not be a chump. Matter of fact, since you tried that fake, weak, fallacious Jedi mind-trick to try to capitalize on insecurity, using your product is what would actually make me a chump.

Simple name: straw man

Simple description: Distorting an opposing argument so you can more easily knock it down.

Example: Candidate A says, “Foreign aid often includes products that U.S. businesses make, then get paid for, and even so, it accounts for less than 1% of the national budget. I’m OK with keeping foreign aid expenditures where they are.”

Candidate B responds indignantly, knowing a loud show of emotion will be broadcast all over, "Why do you care more about foreigners than you do about U.S. citizens?!?"

That, of course, is not what Candidate A said, but it might soon be spread around the world.

By the way. this response also includes another type of logical fallacy, a non sequitur, Latin for “does not follow.” Fallacious panderers often get their money’s worth by using several fallacies simultaneously.

Simple name: overgeneralization

Simple description: Drawing a conclusion based on too little evidence.

Toddler example: See above how every cute fuzzy four-legged animal equals a kitty.

Adult but still cat-lover example: “My cat has a tail, and so does every other cat I’ve seen, so all cats have tails.” (Understandable, but wrong. See Manx cats, mutations, rocking chairs.)

One dangerous brand of overgeneralization is stereotyping, or unfairly attributing a quality to an entire group of people, like “all Asians are _____,” or “women are _____.” Stereotypes are sometimes positive, often negative, but always wrong with specific, actual people. They’re also straightforward examples of how simplistic, sloppy thinking can hurt people.

Simple name or description: slippery slope

Simple description: You assume, without evidence, that one event will lead to other, often undesirable, events.

Real example: A well-known pundit in 2009 repeatedly said that allowing same-sex marriage could lead to humans marrying animals, including goats, ducks, dolphins and turtles. If it came down to it, I guess I’d choose a dolphin (I value intelligence and love to swim), but to my knowledge, there have been no hot-zones of inter-species matrimony since gay marriage became legal. Likewise, no matter your views on the subject, we can all agree that few if any human-turtle hybrids are walking around, which helps show the fallaciousness of that particular slippery-slope argument.

Simple names: false equivalence or false analogy.

Simple description: You assume things that are alike in one way are alike in other ways.

This fallacy is painfully common in politics and media perception. It’s even a crutch or a byproduct of overworked, lazy or otherwise compromised news producers: “I don’t care that 99.9% of the field is saying X! Get that bombastic suspiciously funded contrarian who’s saying Y in the studio and give him equal time — that’ll make for interesting (and misleading) TV!” Or, “You’re saying my political party is corrupt. So is yours!” Or, “You’re saying my news source is slanted. So is yours!” This reflexive both-side-ism appeals to our American egalitarianism. But facts aren’t egalitarian. As the heartless killer Marlo in “The Wire” explained, they’re one way, not another way. It’s highly unlikely that Political Party A and Political Party B commit identical transgressions and to an identical degree. It’s also highly unlikely that News Outlets C and D are biased, inaccurate, misleading or damaging in the same way, to the same degree, and to the same number of people.

These are some of the most common errors in logic that can mislead us even from true premises to false conclusions. But even airtight logic can bring us to false conclusions if a premise is false. Logic matters, and the facts it depends on matter, too.

Learning about logic, which is what joins facts into the web of how we understand the world, is one type of a valuable but rare endeavor: thinking about our own thinking. I know some of you would love to get that clueless uncle or gullible Facebook friend thinking, period, but thinking about our own thinking does improve thinking in general. It makes it less automatic, less reflexive, less taken for granted, and less impervious to the insane idea that we might be wrong. That’s crucial because, in addition to swimming in logical fallacies and purposeful misinformation, we’re all lugging around an unfortunate filter psychologists call “confirmation bias.” It’s one of the most important truths anyone can grasp: We all tend to accept evidence that supports what we already believe but dismiss what would undercut our beliefs. Given that backdrop, skilled media manipulators, and bias-boosting social-media algorithms, bad logic that seems like common sense is all the more seductive and misleading.

Carsen is a reporter and editor turned teacher who lives in Birmingham.

https://www.al.com/news/2020/08/thinking-about-thinking-without-the-bs.html

My Moral Duty: Step into the Belly of the Enraged Beast

The president presents an urgent and deadly threat to democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, civil society and honest governance.[1] I've felt that way for over two years, but since his election, a lot of other people have come to about the same conclusion. Some people saw the danger immediately. Masha Gessen, a Russian who witnessed Putin crush democracy and the rule of law in Russia, wrote this a couple of days after the 2016 election in an article, Autocracy: Rules for Survival:

“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”

That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said [in her concession speech] on Wednesday.

  Given that, I started spending some time every couple of days at big, hard core radical right political sites. The goal is not trolling. The goal is engagement based on facts and sound reasoning as best I can articulate it. I've been at it for just a few days. What it is like at the three sites I'm visiting is pretty ugly. Most of the articles and reader comments are based on lies, misinformation, irrational emotional manipulation and flawed reasoning due to partisan bias (motivated reasoning and logic fallacies). Those sites present a vast cornucopia of unrestrained dark free speech.

Crippling inconvenient voices 

I wanted to start with The Federalist, Breitbart, Town Hall and Daily Caller. Since I last visited, The Federalist has shut down its comments section, so that one is out. Town Hall blocks comments with links in them, which greatly undermines my ability to engage with evidence. This morning, Daily Caller blocked one of my comments with links in it by holding it in moderation. I do  not expect the comment to be OKed. Daily Caller does not allow images to be uploaded, so those are out there.

In response, I will change tactics and provide a phrase of about 5-7 words that people can search to find the material I wanted to link to.

So far, my general impression is that these big radical conservative sites are trying to limit dissident voices as much as possible. That helps to protect the tribe from cognitive dissonance, inconvenient facts and so forth. In turn, that further radicalizes people who stay in echo chambers like that.

I am beginning to believe that Disqus itself could be involved in limiting dissenting voices by allowing downvotes to damage a commenter's reputation. I am also checking to see if my new Germaine II account gets hacked and my upvotes drained away. If that happens, that I will no longer be able to freely comment without an administrator owner acting to allow make me a trusted user. In my experience, that has not happened with my old Germaine account at any conservative site.

The experience so far

The experience is what I expected. Most of it is irrational and disrespectful. So far, one person has been respectful, rational and evidence-based. We parted on good terms. Here is one approximate (not exact) example of the kind of engagement I am experiencing:

Initial comment: Fauci has been incorrect on everything.

Germaine II: No, he has been mostly (~95% ?) correct. And, since COVID-19 is new, there was significant uncertainty in the early months. There still is uncertainty about important aspects of how the virus spreads and its pathology. Fauci's statements have been couched in terms of probabilities, not certainties. That is being honest and professional. (the comments are here: http://disq.us/p/2ax83tg )

Lots of lies and fake conspiracy theories have been spread about him, but that's just radical right politics these days.
Attacker 1 (Gunny something): Hey Liberal (and that's a filthy word where I come from), Quack Fauxi ain't never been RIGHT but then again, you're a Leftist so facts are to YOU as a crucifix is to Drac.

You should write-in The Hildabeast for POTUS! hahahahaahahahahahahahahah

Germaine II: Hey Gunny. I'm not a liberal (or a conservative or centrist). I'm a pragmatic rationalist.

Fauci is as right as he can be in view of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, which is caused by a new virus. You are grossly misinformed about Fauci.

Attacker 2: YOUR A PIMPLE ON SOCIETY,S REAR, CHIT4BRAINS !!

Germaine II: When I see ad hominem attacks, I know the insulter is shooting blanks.

Attacker 3: Go gaslight your pals over at Media Matters... or whatever leftard craphole you came from...

Attacker 2: WHAT TRUTH, YOURS IS JUST ANOTHER OPINION FROM THE DARK SDE, CHIT4BRAINS !!


Anyway, you can see what it is like trying to deal respectfully with many of the radical right folks at dark echo chambers. But in view of the danger that Trump represents, I should try to do something, even if it is just a little and even if it doesn't work. Maybe I'll be able to sow a few seeds of doubt in a couple of minds.

My expectation

I expect the sites I'm visiting to ban or shadow ban me. It probably won't be long. This is deeply concerning because it would show an increasing unwillingness to even allow dissenting but respectful voices to be heard at all. That is socially damaging and frightening.


Question: Am I wasting my time, or should a person try to do what they can as best they can?


Footnote:
1. Even if Trump is re-elected, he may not be able to establish some sort of a plutocratic dictatorship based on demagoguery. Nonetheless, it is possible he can get close or even succeed. Since there is time to try to oppose the president, it seems reasonable to at least try.