News chunks: Framing issues as morals; Republican identity politics

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

Ruffo now travels the country attacking woke concepts like CRT, BLM, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). I had thought for years that issues the radical right supported or opposed were weaponized by framing them in terms or morality or immorality when possible. Despite my impression that the moral weapon was old and standard radical right practice, Ruffo seems to portray it is a new rhetorical tactic. He writes:

I recently hosted a summit on anti-woke public policy and, beneath all of the legal and technical details, I realized that there is an opportunity for a significant shift in rhetoric for the political Right.

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

This linguistic shift is already happening—and paying dividends. At the summit, we discussed two specific examples. First, on education, the activist Corey DeAngelis noted that the school choice movement suddenly started winning when it stopped making statistical arguments about performance metrics and started making moral arguments about parental rights and the content of the curriculum. Second, on the federal budget, Wade Miller of the Center for Renewing America has engaged in a similar strategy, moving the debate from the language of large-firm accounting to the language of moral conflict, arguing that Congress should defund the “woke and weaponized bureaucracy.”  

Yes, we should improve test scores and balance the budget. But the deeper purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people and to establish a principle of justice. Conservatives must speak to the ends, not simply the means. And, in our advanced managerial society, this will require a new moral language that appeals to the interests and emotions of the common citizen, who wants to be protected from the institutions and ideologies that have arrayed themselves against him.  

One of the problems that we’ve had as conservatives is that we’ve ceded the moral language to the Left, to the point that you have even conservative political candidates using identity politics as their framework and as their pitch to voters, because it’s really the most available moral lens. For example, you have someone like Nikki Haley—an ambassador, a governor, a successful administrator—who is pitching her candidacy as: “I am a minority female. Hear me roar.” What she doesn’t seem to understand, however, is that when you operate in your opponent’s frame, you’re guaranteed to lose.

A conservative will never win in a battle of identity politics against the political Left, because they’re setting all of the rules and terms of debate. They’re almost like a bank or a casino and, at the end of the day, the house always wins. But there is also an opportunity and something I learned in the discussions at this summit was that the anti-woke movement has reawakened the possibility for a conservative moral vocabulary.

What continues to be obvious but unseen and/or denied by tens of millions of Americans is the profound hypocrisy and reality disconnect between radical right propaganda and the movement's actual authoritarian, capitalist, theocratic and anti-civil liberties goals. Ruffo criticizes liberal identity politics while the radical right is at least equally immersed in it. The authoritarians warn the public of the danger of a weaponized bureaucracy that oppresses people, but the actual policies are to get rid of laws and bureaucrats that protect average people from abuses of power by the elites. 

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

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

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Identity politics

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

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

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

In 2021, the NYT published an interview with political scientist Lilliana Mason. It discussed the rise of identity politics in the Republican Party:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, this is not to say that the Republican Party has not been benefiting from racial rhetoric. And the entire Southern strategy is trying to use implicit racial dog whistles in order to get votes from racially resentful white voters. So it’s not an accident that Trump was popular within the Republican Party, because the Republican Party has been cultivating this group of people. They’ve just been doing it on an implicit level, to a large extent.  

Ezra Klein: So imagine we’ve got an electorate of 100 people, and zero opinions have changed between 2000 and 2020, but that the people who have a lot of let’s call it outgroup animosity, right, racial animosity, animosity towards L.G.B.T.Q. people, that they used to be split, let’s call it, 70-30 between the parties. And then now, they’re split 90-10 or 95-5.  

Mason: I think that the Democratic Party has been gradually, partly in response to the Republican Party’s attraction [for] people who are high in racial animosity, the Democratic Party has had to react against that.  

And unfortunately, that means that we have in the Republican Party — and again, it’s really this MAGA faction, right, these people that really disliked marginalized groups even before Trump came along. They’ve always been in the American electorate. They were Democrats during the Civil War and Jim Crow, et cetera, and now they’ve moved into the Republican Party.  

But the problem with that is that we end up with an entire political party that is really trying to speak to these animosities and that sense of hatred of marginalized groups, which means that it has become an anti-democracy party, right? It is not in their interest to fully represent every single American. It’s not in their interest to have a multiracial democracy. In fact, they’re campaigning against that.  

This is a country that has been diversifying. It’s going to continue to diversify. White Americans will be not the majority relatively soon. And so ultimately, this movement is for future white ethnic minority rule of the country, which is not compatible with democracy at all. So I think that, in that sense, it’s something to really pay attention to and worry about.

That is how just one expert sees identity politics in the GOP. Obviously, radical right Republican elites, propagandists and the rank and file will vehemently deny that their party is a party with animosity toward any minority. They firmly tell us they are inclusive and tolerant, while the tyrant socialist Democrats and their evil identity politics are the bad actors here. We are identity polarized, to say the least. 

The Wall Street Journal (2018:)

Trump Can Help Overcome Identity Politics

Americans are divided in part by decades-old 

bureaucratic decisions the president could undo

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

Does that sound realistic?

Who is the protagonist antagonist group here?

Trump Won - Natasha Owens

 

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

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

Cognitive bias update

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

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

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

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

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

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Fairness in the law

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

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

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

Caring About “Fairness” Is a Political Choice

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

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

.... the conservative legal movement has coalesced around what I would describe as a jurisprudence of fuck-your-feelings. In this conception of the constitutional order, judges are not to behave as “activists” who concern themselves with fuzzy concepts like “equity” (whatever that means) or doing “justice” (same). Instead, they are to set aside their policy preferences and apply the law as written, no matter where the analysis takes them.  

“Textualism means you are governed by the text. That’s the only thing that is relevant to your decision,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia told Fox News’s Chris Wallace in 2012. “Not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.”

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

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

“I think it’s appropriate to consider some of the fairness arguments,” announced Chief Justice John Roberts, who posed an elaborate hypothetical about two high school graduates: one who borrows money to go to college, and the other who borrows money to start a lawn care business. The Biden plan, he argued, provides nothing to the businessman and yet forces him to subsidize the student. “Why isn’t that a factor that should enter into our consideration?” asked Roberts, apparently unable to fathom a more sympathetic debt-saddled person in America in 2023 than a guy who owns a business.

Set aside whether Biden's loan forgiveness plan is good, bad or ambiguous policy. Ignore it. Instead, just consider how utterly unprincipled the radical right Republicans on the Supreme Court are. They want radical right decisions, no matter how they get them. 

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

Footnotes: 

1. Salon writes about the radical right legal tactic that will probably mostly decide the case against Biden's loan forgiveness program:

But most of the conservative justices have devised a tool to wriggle out from under the text of a law: the “major questions doctrine,” a dubious and ill-defined rule that courts can use to strike down any policy that presents a “major question” if Congress has not authorized it explicitly enough. (How major? Nobody knows.) Chief Justice John Roberts involved the major questions doctrine in an early colloquy with Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was there representing the Biden administration to defend the program. He asked Prelogar if she “would recognize at least that this is a case that presents extraordinarily serious, important issues,” requiring the court to look at it “a little more strictly than we might have otherwise to make sure that this was something that Congress would have contemplated.” Kavanaugh connected the doctrine with the notion that courts should look skeptically at policies justified by emergencies, implicitly invoking decisions that upheld Japanese internment and other wartime civil liberties violations as a (questionable) comparison.

Because it is ill-defined and mostly subjective, the major questions doctrine tactic will be used to knock down a lot of laws the radical right dislikes, maybe hundreds or thousands. This is a major tool that radical right authoritarians and theocrats will use to completely remake the law and constitution in their program to kill, among other things, democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, secularism and inconvenient facts and history.

2. Wikipedia writes: 

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

Israel: Overview of the Current Political Crisis

The following article appeared in today's online edition of World Politics Review, and was written by Avner  Inbar (academic director of Molad, a liberal think-tank in Jerusalem) Inbar's interpretation of events, like any other, partly reflects his own positions; but it strikes me as a fair description and analysis that provides more context than almost all coverage in MSM, especially in the US. 

It places the conflict over the fate of the Judiciary in a context of competing and irreconcilable ideologies and visions of Israel. Broadly, there are 2 factions on the Right he describes; "Bibism" and "Religious Zionism." The former often accommodates the latter but is not the same as it, and ultimately incompatible with it. The liberals in Israel, who Avner claims have been largely silent in recent years under "Bibi,"constitute a large segment of the population of Israel, and their relative complacency, says Inbar, has given way to outright alarm as they see democratic institutions under threat and ever more power going to a Right  that accommodates radical Zionists once considered fringe, and in some cases illegitimate or illegal as explained below. I share it because it strikes me as a reasoable and thoughtful piece that backs up from the merely momentary news, and reflects on this as a crossroads for Israel as it reckons with its history while struggling to define its future.

Briefing Middle East & North Africa

Israel’s Protests Are a Battle Over the Meaning of a Jewish State

Avner Inbar

The so-called judicial reform launched by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has roiled Israeli society, setting off massive protests that possibly constitute the largest social unrest the country has ever seen. Whole swaths of Israeli society that were previously proudly apolitical have taken to the streets, including the business sector—most notably, the booming high-tech industry—and military reservists. Start-up companies are withdrawing their funds from Israeli banks, and air force pilots are withdrawing from active service.

The energetic and resolute reaction by a liberal public that had been considered politically moribund for years likely took Netanyahu by surprise. Netanyahu expected smooth sailing, having secured a robust majority in the  Knesset  with a new coalition that finally delivered on his promise of a government that is “fully right-wing.”

The election that brought Netanyahu back as prime minister in November—Israel’s seventh in 10 years—was called when the previous government fell apart under relentless pressure from the right. The coalition of then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett comprised parties from the right, center and left that were united only in their determination to keep Netanyahu from power.

In addition to having little in common on a policy level, the coalition was assailed by Netanyahu and other elements of the Israeli right as treasonous for having included Ra’am, the first Arab party to ever enter a government in Israel. The gist of the attacks against Bennet’s coalition was that a legitimate government of the Jewish state cannot rest on the support of an Arab party, and possibly not even include one. Ultimately, the coalition collapsed after several members of Bennet’s own right-wing party defected, leaving him short of a majority in the Knesset.

But the question of what, exactly, being a Jewish state means looms even larger these days, as Israelis are realizing what the “fully right-wing” version entails. With the electoral collapse in November of the anti-Netanyahu elements represented by Bennet, the Israeli right is now divided into two camps.

The first and most dominant camp in terms of political representation is the personality cult around Netanyahu—called “Bibism,” after Netanyahu’s nickname. It can be roughly described as a populist movement completely devoid of any political content, held together by a shared resentment toward the left and purported cultural elites as well as animosity toward Palestinians. It remains to be seen what will become of Bibism after Netanyahu’s eventual departure from political life. What is clear, however, is that it does not represent a substantive ideology.

The right’s second faction is a highly ideological movement espousing a clear vision of Israel—in short, everything that Bibism is not. Over the past three decades, this faction—the national-religious movement, or religious Zionism—has become the most dynamic and, in ideologically terms, the dominant political force in Israel.

Two processes enabled its rise to power: the left’s cultural and ideological implosion following then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination and the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and the secular right’s embrace of the vacuity of Bibism. While Bibi’s supporters vastly outnumber adherents of religious Zionism, the latter deftly positioned themselves as a political vanguard that shapes and steers the right as a whole, including Netanyahu himself. While the current judicial reform has been portrayed in part as a way for Netanyahu to neuter the judiciary at a time when he faces multiple criminal proceedings for corruption, it is spearheaded by the religious Zionists, who see an independent judiciary—especially a Supreme Court that can overturn laws passed by the Knesset—as an obstacle to their goals.

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Religious Zionism as currently constituted emerged in 1967, when Israel’s occupation of the West Bank after the Six-Day War ignited the messianic aspirations of a previously moderate and marginal national-religious community. Their political theology allegedly vindicated by the unexpected triumph in the war, religious Zionists began to view themselves as the true heirs to the secular pioneers who established Israel, summoned, as it were, to assume leadership of the Jewish state.

Over the course of its political and cultural accension over the past generation, the national-religious movement radicalized even further, with the most stringently religious element—known as  Hardal, or national-haredi—becoming internally hegemonic. The current political alliance between the national-religious party, currently called simply Religious Zionism, and the Jewish Power Party [ Otzma Yehudit - ed]—a nationalist party descended from the Kahanist movement movement, which was outlawed in Israel as a terrorist organization—would have been unimaginable in the past and is a testimony to religious Zionism’s descent into overt racism and fanaticism.    

Until now, the national-religious movement’s chief undertaking since 1967 had been promoting settlements in the occupied West Bank. The settlements are a tremendous tactical achievement, matched only by the magnitude of their strategic failure. More than half a century after the first Jewish settlers moved into Hebron, their ultimate goal—annexation of the West Bank—is not close to being realized, despite widespread concerns that it is unavoidable.

This is because the earthly realization of religious Zionism’s messianic ambitions requires the absorption and, eventually, naturalization of millions of Palestinians into the Israeli body politic, an endeavor that is entirely inconsistent with the modern Zionist idea of the Jewish state. Though the settlers sometimes elide this issue by suggesting that Palestinians could be forcibly removed from the West Bank or denied full citizenship rights under annexation, the former is unrealistic and the latter unsustainable. The settlement project is much likelier to bring the modern Jewish state to ruin than to extend its sovereignty to the entirety of what the religious Zionists consider to be the Holy Land, or Greater Israel.

As a result, religious Zionism is at odds with mainstream Zionism, which has always viewed the Jewish state as a vehicle for the realization of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination. This commitment rested on the assumption that Jews will one day be a sufficient majority in their state to enact their self-determination through democratic institutions. It furthermore relied on the essential Zionist belief that Judaism is not only or even mainly a religion, but is first and foremost a nationality. To be a Jewish state, therefore, Israel need not have any necessary relationship to the Jewish faith.

Such a Jewish state is democratic in two crucial ways. First, it is committed to the self-determination of Jews through democratic institutions. Second, it promotes their freedom to define their collective “Jewishness” as they please. Zionism, in short, was always committed to the resolution of the “Jewish problem” by the establishment of a modern, democratic, free state.

Religious Zionism rejects this essential Zionist belief that Judaism primarily denotes a national rather than a religious kinship. Consequently, it rejects the modern conception of the Jewish state as essentially democratic and free. It doesn’t view the Jewish state as a vehicle for the realization of Jews’ right to self-determination, but as a vehicle for the Jewish people’s divine calling. For the national-religious movement, Israel is not a normal state but, in the words of Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, “the foundation of God’s throne on earth.” This is a profoundly undemocratic conception, since it means that the Jewish citizens of Israel—let alone its non-Jewish citizens—are not free to conduct their affairs as they please. They must, rather, play their predetermined role in what religious Zionists perceive as a divine drama set in motion by the Jewish people’s reintroduction to political power.

The irreconcilable difference between these two conceptions of the Jewish state is the source of the social strife that is currently unfolding in Israel. It is also the reason that a compromise between the two sides is unlikely. After nearly three decades of political dormancy, the liberal public in Israel is waking up to the inherent consequences of the rise of the religious right.

The protests are currently focused on the right’s attack on the independence of the judiciary. But if they lead to a real reckoning with the underlying theological-political doctrine of religious Zionism and its connection to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, they may bring an end to the rise of the religious right. Beyond the crucial battle on democratic values and checks and balances lies a fundamental disagreement about the very meaning of a Jewish state.

News bits: Climate change update; Israel's toxic version of America's toxic Federalist Society

The WaPo reports on another update from climate experts:

Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming.

The report released Monday from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme people cannot adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end.  

Decades of delay have denied the world any hope of an easy and gradual transition to a more sustainable economy, the panel says. Now, only “deep, rapid and … immediate” efforts across all aspects of society — combined with still-unproven technologies to pull carbon from the atmosphere — will be able to stave off catastrophe.

At this point, it's reasonable to think that the human species probably cannot proact effectively. In the US, the radical right Republican Party remains firmly opposed to doing anything and firmly committed to fighting coordinated federal and commercial efforts to even try. In that case, we will react only after disasters hit, or we won't react much and just let species go extinct and people die or live disrupted lives.

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Israel's democracy is on the verge of falling to some form of a a corrupt authoritarian theocratic fascism. Democracy there could fall within months. The NYT writes about Kohelet, a powerful secretive society that, like America's Federalist Society, quietly operates to replace democracy with corrupt, bigoted, racist fascist theocracy/autocracy/plutocracy:

Who’s Behind the Judicial Overhaul Now Dividing Israel? Two New Yorkers

Kohelet, the once-obscure think tank that conceived and now champions a revamped court system, is an American import

As part of a recent “national day of resistance,” a group of army reservists wearing masks converged at the Jerusalem office of a think tank and blocked its front door with sandbags and coils of barbed wire. Outside, protesters led a noisy rally on the street, waving dozens of placards and sharing a microphone for a series of furious speeches.

“The Kohelet Policy Forum has been hiding in the shadows,” shouted one speaker, standing atop a car. “But we are onto them and we will not let them win!”

For years, Kohelet quietly churned out position papers, trying to nudge government policy in a more libertarian direction. Then, starting in January, it became more widely known as one of the principal architects of the judicial overhaul proposal that has plunged Israel into a crisis over the future of its democracy. 

If the plan succeeds, it would be a stunning victory not only for the think tank, but also for the people behind it: two guys from Queens.

Like America's radical anti-democracy, authoritarian Federalist Society, Kohelet works to hide as much about itself as possible, at least regarding money. The NYT points out that Kohelet is not required to disclose the names of individual donors. For years the group "has artfully deflected questions about funding." One source of money is New Yorker Arthur Dantchik, a 65-year-old multibillionaire. 

Not surprisingly, Dantchik refused to comment for the NYT article. All modern authoritarians working to overthrow democracy and install dictatorship and/or radical authoritarian theocracy, like the Federalist Society and Kohelet are expert at the KYMS tactic in the face of inconvenient questions. The anti-democracy forces of the world are watching each other. Under the right circumstances, they adopt tactics that might work to overcome local pro-democracy, pro-secular and anti-bigotry/racist opposition, while avoiding the ones that probably would not work under local circumstances.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut

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Lunacy on cable TV: Yesterday on her weekly MSNBC program, Rachael Maddow discussed the impending Georgia law that gives power to state legislators to simply remove prosecutors from investigations that they don't like. Short of establishing a full-blown American dictatorship-theocracy, that is about as anti-democracy and anti-rule of law as the political situation in America can get.

The Georgia law has passed the legislature and the governor has said he supports it. So, this authoritarian (fascist IMO) law will be in effect soon. The point of radical right Republicans in passing this law is to protect Trump from prosecution for his illegal attempts to commit mass election fraud in Georgia after the 2020 election. The lead prosecutor there is Fulton County district attorney Fanni Willis, a black woman.

Oddly and inexplicably, one of Maddow's guest commentators, a Georgia prosecutor characterized the pending law not as authoritarian or fascist, but as racist because Willis is a black woman. Maybe I'm way off base here, but that allegation of racism instead of fascism struck me as shockingly stupid and about as counterproductive as possible. I understand that racism very likely is involved in what the radical right in Georgia is trying to do to the rule of law in Georgia. But by citing racism as his basis for opposing the law, Rachael's idiot guest hands the radical right an excuse to accuse him of racism. That fool gave the radical right a perfect foil to deflect from the fact that the fascist Republican Party in Georgia is going to gut the rule of law in that state.  

Given how idiotic and damaging the guest's racism comments were, is reasonable to believe that Maddow's guest intended to sabotage the story while appearing to be on the side of democracy.

Raw Story commented on the Maddow broadcast:

Currently, Georgia lawmakers are working to fast-track legislation that would remove any prosecutors that they don't like. It's a target on Fulton County Fani Willis, who is close to indicting Donald Trump for his attempt to overthrow the Georgia election. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has pledged to sign it. At the same time that Trump is facing charges, the Georgia lieutenant governor is facing potential charges in the same investigation, Maddow said.

"So Republicans will have the power to remove prosecutors in the middle of their investigations and in the middle of prosecuting any particular case Republicans might not like for any reason," explained Maddow. "And to be clear, this has now passed the Georgia legislature as of tonight. A version of the bill passed the state Senate, and the House just passed it tonight. And the Republican governor there says he will sign it. He's a strong supporter of this. So, they're doing it. ...."

Maddow said about Trump being indicted or withdrawing, "Maybe he will, maybe he won't. None of us know. But in the one place where he is under criminal investigation, and his party is in full control of the state government, they've just decided for the first time in the state's history, that it is within their own power to remove prosecutors in the middle of their duties on their own say so. And, yes, this is a story about Georgia, and yes, this is a story about Trump and the potential charges he's facing. But this is a whole new step for us as a country."

If that isn't some form of fascism,** maybe neo-fascism or maybe American fascism or Christofascism, what is it? Girl Scouts singing kumbaya around the camp fire?

** For several months, I've refrained from calling what the radical right is doing fascism because it is soooo naughty and pejorative that the label is counterproductive. Maybe so, but what the dictator-plutocrat-Christian theocrat radical right is doing in Georgia is clearly some form of fascism. In my firm opinion, democracy has fallen in Georgia. It is now a single party state ruled by radical elites, not the rule of law. I am just calling what is obviously and undeniably a spade, a spade.

Dirty tricks & lies: What is the scope of presidential legitimacy?

The NYT reports on a cute little trick that Republican Texas governor John Connally played on Jimmy Carter to sabotage Carter's re-election campaign against Reagan. Connally was hoping to sabotage Carter to gain a prominent spot in the Reagan administration: 

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”  

Confirming Mr. Barnes’s account is problematic after so much time. Mr. Connally, Mr. Casey and other central figures have long since died and Mr. Barnes has no diaries or memos to corroborate his account. But he has no obvious reason to make up the story and indeed expressed trepidation at going public because of the reaction of fellow Democrats [Barnes is a Texas Democrat].

Illegitimate US presidents

This story triggered an unusually unpleasant thought. Based on my own core political moral values, fidelity to facts, true truths and sound reasoning, it arguably is the case that the US has probably had a lot of illegitimate presidents. How could that be?

For me, this mental journey started with Trump and what some US intelligence experts believed was a necessary role of Russian interference before the 2016 elections. Other factors were necessary, e.g., Comey's calling out an investigation of Hillary just before the election, with some arguably more important than Putin. Nonetheless, I came to believe that Putin's interference was one of the necessary factors in Trump's win. That led me to conclude that Trump was an illegitimate president, in large part because Putin had poisoned too many American votes by spreading lies and slanders about Hillary. Those voters were deceived and manipulated.

Before that, I had read a book by moral philosopher Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life.[1] There she described how Lyndon Johnson lied to the American people about his intentions for the Vietnam war. Publicly he claimed to be the peace candidate who would end the war. Privately he intended to escalate the war. That led me to understand how immoral or even evil (if people get harmed or killed) deceit of voters can be. Johnson's deceit took away from voters the power to decide on the basis of truth whether they supported war in Vietnam or not. 

Somewhere along the way, I became aware of Nixon committing treason by torpedoing peace talks with North Vietnam to help his own presidential campaign in 1968. Again, the American voters were deceived. Here, the false belief was propaganda that the Vietnam peace talks were not progressing. That left Nixon free to argue he would do a much better job making peace. It was a promise based on pure deceit.

Now this NYT story about John Connally pops up. Connally at least tried to sabotage hostage negotiations with Iran in a self-serving effort to harm Carter's re-election chances. Assuming that sabotage effort was successful, Americans were deceived once again. They were deprived of the power to decide how to vote on the basis of truth.

Based on that evidence, I've come to this unpleasant belief: Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Trump were all illegitimate presidents, if one defines illegitimacy as power obtained by too much intentional, unwarranted deceit, including irrational emotional manipulation. On reflection, maybe there have been a lot of  illegitimate US presidents. But as I see it and judge in light of my morals and reasoning, at least those four were not legitimate.

Of course, how much deceit is too much? The bickering in that point will never end. There's probably at least some deceit about federal and high level state candidates in all or nearly all campaigns. That is what probably most people who are uncomfortable with a conclusion of illegitimate elected politicians will say does not render any significantly deceit-based candidate illegitimate. 

If that is true, then Bok's assertion that deceit is immoral is false. I do not believe that is true.

On the basis of too much deceit one can argue that there have been no illegitimate presidents because voters should accept a lot of lies, slanders, dirty tricks and crackpottery in the rough and tumble of politics. Is that really true? That's true for deceit-based politics. That's also true for anti-democracy politics. With authoritarians and demagogues espousing brass knuckles capitalism, theocratic Christian nationalism and some variant of old-fashioned, hard core fascism, socialism or communism, truth is not a moral concern. For the authoritarians, truth is what the tyrants, plutocrats, kleptocrats or theocrats say it is. That assertion is not rationally contestable, except of course by the deceivers.

Qs: Were some or all of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Trump illegitimate? Is Barnes lying about Connelly trying to sabotage Carter? How can voters know things that are kept from them and still make an informed choice of who to vote for? Is, or should there be there no such thing an an illegitimate elected politician based on too much deceit, e.g. because most lying, deceit and unprosecuted slandering are free speech, either protected by law or by failure to prosecute? Do you personally accept a lot of lies, slanders, dirty tricks and crackpottery in the rough and tumble of politics, or would you prefer a lot less of it? What about George Santos? Trump?[2]

Footnote: 

1. Bok wrote:

The social incentives to deceit are at present very powerful; the controls often weak. Many individuals feel caught up in practices they cannot change. It would be wishful thinking, therefore, to expect individuals to bring about major changes in the collective practices of deceit by themselves. Public and private institutions, with their enormous power to affect personal choice, must help alter the existing pressures and incentives. ..... Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain. They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity.

When political representatives or entire governments arrogate to themselves the right to lie, they take power from the public that would not have been given up voluntarily. .... But such cases [that justify lying] are so rare that they hardly exist for practical purposes. .... The consequences of spreading deception, alienation and lack of trust could not have been documented for us more concretely than they have in the past decades. We have had a very vivid illustration of how lies undermine our political system. .... Those in government and other positions of trust should be held to the highest standards. Their lies are not ennobled by their positions; quite the contrary. .... only those deceptive practices which can be openly debated and consented to in advance are justifiable in a democracy.

2. By the time Trump had been in office for a year or so, I came to believe that he should be impeached for lying, deceiving, slandering and crackpotting far too much. His constant dark free speech struck at the heart of democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, ethics, honest governance, secularism, pluralism, and respect for inconvenient facts, true truths and sound reasoning. His current dark free speech still poisons minds and tries to kill the same good and decent things.

Lest we forget, his final tally of false or misleading statements by the WaPo fact checker: Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years