I read a story this morning that really made me shake my head about how misdirected we’ve become as a society. I think it’s especially worrying, because we live in times where liberal thinking is necessary to push back against greed, against religion, against white nationalism, etc, and it is those people we need to get angry about the right things. CNN reported that a young man who was raising money through beer sales for a local hospital had raised a million dollars, but than a Des Moines news paper dug up some 7 year old tweets that were racist (he was 16 at the time) and published them in an article they wrote about him. The paper claimed that it was standard to do a social media check on people that they write stories about, and that they felt it was important for the sake of transparency to publish these 7 year old tweets so people knew who they were giving their money to.
I’ll tell you who they were giving money to. A children’s hospital. The guy was raising money for a FUCKING CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL!
What he wasn’t doing:
made any racist tweets since then
wasn’t raising money for a white’s only hospital
beating black people in the streets
remaining a 16 year old
Carson King, who was raising the money, apologized publicly and tried to make the point that he is not that person anymore and that he’s become kind and generous. Which given what he is trying to do, seems fairly straightforward. The apology of course cared little wait with Anhauser-Busch who have now distanced themselves from King.
There is good news here. Although Anhauser-Busch rescinded their offer to give this guy a year’s supply of beer with his face on their can, they did agree to add to the donation to the hospital with what would have been that beer cost. So the hospital will still get what they were promised. More importantly the readers of the newspaper turned against them and complained about this ridiculous reporting. They went further and decided to dig up old tweets on the reporter, Aaron King, who reported the story, forcing him to then apologize for his past tweets.
It seems to me that what’s really going on is that journalism is simply a competition to get clicks, and to do so they use racism as a tool to stir moral outrage among liberals. And far too many liberals are falling for it hook, line, and sinker. The way the attention economy has co-opted people with good intention is troubling and of course it happens on both sides of the political aisle. In this case we can see the ridiculousness of it all, especially since so many products we buy and use are from companies that do far more harm than this man’s two tweets as a 16 year old high school student who thought he was trying to be funny. It’s further concerning because this mentality of ‘cancel culture’ seems only interested in the condemnation of people, no matter how far in the past they held a certain view or acted in a certain way, and no matter what they have done since then. No thought has been put into whether there is any apology good enough, or any actions that a person can take to restore public opinion about them. I think this is important. If we want to hold people accountable for their actions, we need to be able to also decide what is acceptable to make up for those mistakes. I realize this is the hard part, there is going to be a lot of disagreement, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Without that part, all we are doing is punishing and we move farther from creating the society we claim we want to create by supporting great liberal causes like better training for police, justice system reform, and decriminalization of illegal drugs. These are great causes that indicates a desire for restorative justice over retributive justice.
I’m glad that readers of the newspaper fought back as I think many people also felt that we’re going off the deep end here. Overall we have to do better.
*quote in feature image is from Quentin Thomas of the Brown Daily Herald
Recently I had an experience on twitter where I saw somebody posting a link for an article that criticized presidential hopeful Kamala Harris and blamed Bernie Sanders for this criticism. The thread was full of people with nothing but vitriol for Bernie Sanders going so far to call him both a racist and a misogynist. My wife has noticed to that criticism of certain democratic candidates erupts into divisive attacks against Bernie Sanders supporters. When I asked for evidence of any connection to Bernie Sanders and a critique of Kamala Harris I was given none. This twitter account had 31K followers and had a lot of posts implying dark money and nefarious works of Bernie Sanders to attack the democratic establishment. The account belongs to Tom Watson and his credentials seem reputable, but for one who claims to be a journalist, he seemed to present no evidence of many of his claims.
But perhaps people like these are a dime a dozen on the internet, but it does make me extremely worried about this future election. What we need is at least some unity, preferably with people who voted for Trump, but if we can’t get that we have to at least be striving for some unity in the left. Identity politics seems to be winning the day, and the left has been described some as divided into all sorts of small groups. The tribalism that we characterize the right with in terms of racism and xenophobia seems to me just as rampant across many groups on the left. It may not be some of the more obvious ones like skin color, religion, or nationalism, but it’s still there and what’s most worrying is that it seems to be based on very minor differences in overall worldview. It seems to me the more that liberals are at each others throats this just increases the odds that when it comes to general election time more people will stay home if their horse didn’t win the primary, or might actually go across the aisle because they are so bitter after all the in fighting. There is no reason that Bernie Sanders fans should not support Kamala Harris at this point and vice-versa, but more importantly we have to get our heads on straight about why we are voting for a particular candidate. This isn’t sports and who ever puts on the jersey we like we have to root for. Government’s goal is to enact the best ideas about how to govern, and this should determine who we vote for.
After the last election I, and I know many of my friends did a lot of research and reflection of how we got to where we were. As incredulous as Trump’s win was, to suggest that it is the fault of anybody who tried to run for the job who had generally good ideas and who represented more compassion and benevolence than Trump. Nor should we be accusing each other because we supported who we thought was going to be the best liberally minded candidate. As a Bernie supporter I was certainly disappointed, but it was clear to me that Hillary was better than Trump and I supported. Bernie fans who voted for Trump, I think were misguided, but I don’t think this should start casting blame on inspirational politicians who challenge the establishment. If your vote for a candidate is solely based on gender, or racial identity, or the party they belong to, you are just as guilty of the same behavior as somebody who didn’t vote for someone based on their gender or racial identity. If you are liberal what you should be for is fighting for a future in which the content of the individual running for office is the reason to vote for them. And while I think there is enormous value to new generations to grow up in a time with female president and/or ethnic minority president, there is also enormous value in having them grow up with leaders who intelligent and empathetic, and who have good ideas that are going to help people have better lives.
It’s also worth remembering that the Russian interference in the election is very real, and one of the ways it worked is by exploiting division. I recently listened to this podcast interview on Sam Harris podcast with Renee DiRiesta who has done a lot of research into how Russians used social media to exploit divisions between people. Not only getting more support for Trump, but trying hard to suppress democratic voters from going to the polls. It did make a difference. They are still doing it. The same tactics have been used by terrorist organizations to recruit, and it can it it also being done within our country as well. We must resist the temptation to be divided, and while I’m certainly not suggesting that we don’t take a stand on certain issues, if you are spending a lot of time arguing with people on social media you are simply wasting your time. Twitter and Facebook can take all the steps reasonably allowed to try and prevent fake accounts, but people intent on manipulation on a mass scale through social media will find away around us and it is up to use to be aware and responsible users in the end.
The anti-establishment writing is on the wall, and it was for the last election, but the DNC refused to recognize it. Trump was no anti-establishment answer but it what many people were looking for. Likely that sentiment is going to be there again and it is going to be a source of contention on the left. For those of you who followed Bernie his goal was never to actually win, but to shift the conversation. To stay focused on issues and to address the anger that many Americans were feeling towards an economic elite that were bleeding the country dry. Not all of his ideas were great, and whoever you end up supporting will probably not have all the best ideas either. I suggest:
If you want to discuss politics, discuss the issues. Avoid name calling and personal attacks.
Stay away from social media for your information and to keep your emotional health in check during this election season. It’s a ridiculously long cycle in the U.S. and it’s easy to let your boredom lead you down the path of social media, but it is not your friend, and there are entities on there aiming to continue to divide people. Don’t let it work. Not only do you share many similar concerns with your fellow democrat, but probably also your fellow Republican.
Consider supporting a few newspapers monetarily. These platform that are free and run on advertising are prone to attention getting not truth finding. Good information and journalism costs money. Do some research on what papers have good investigative research and get an on-line subscription
Promote empathy by sticking with politicians who demonstrate it, and also be giving it to your fellow human.
“If you encounter a new kind of pleasure-if, say, you’ve somehow gone your whole life without eating a powdered-sugar doughnut, and somebody hands you one and suggests you try it – you’ll get a big blast of dopamine after the taste of the doughnut sinks in. But later once you’re a confirmed powdered-sugar doughnut eater, the lion’s share of the dopamine spike comes before you actually bite into the doughnut, as you’re staring longingly at it; the amount that comes after the bite is much less than the amount you got after the first, blissful bite into a powdered-sugar doughnut. The pre-bite dopamine blast you’re now getting is the promise of more bliss, and the post-bite drop in dopamine is, in a way, the breaking of the promise – or, at least, it’s a kind of biochemical acknowledgment that there was some overpromising. To the extent that you bought the promise – anticipated greater pleasure than would be delivered by the consumption itself – you have been, if not deluded in the strong sense of that term, at least misled.”
-Robert Wright from his book, “Why Buddhism is True”
As I read these words I started thinking about our current political climate. Scott Adams, writer of the Dilbert cartoon, who is oddly a fan of Donald Trump because of his brilliant powers of persuasion talks about the reason people love Trump is because he speaks emotional truth. I hate to see the word truth get used so badly, and if you want to argue that emotional truth isn’t truth with a capital ‘T’, then I would say I hate to see the word emotional used so badly. Because let’s face it. If Trump is tapping into some sort of emotional truth of millions of Americans, there are some pretty emotionally unhealthy people out there. But there is some truth to Adams words in general, and this passage from Robert Wright’s book made me think of this. People wonder why so many would vote against their own best interest. I have wondered that too. I wondered why so many could vote for someone who is so obviously a charlatan? Of course charlatans have been fooling people for as long as civilization has existed likely, but when it happens in the 10s of millions it seems strange. Of course if every snake oil salesmen from history could reach the same number of people on a daily basis who knows? Like every good charlatan what they are selling is the promise, and not the actual goods themselves. People’s own interests have become secondary to the promise. I would also add that Trump promises some mostly terrible things which again is why I shudder to think he is speaking some sort of emotional truth that people are responding to. The fact still remains that the dopamine is high for the anticipation, the broken promise matters little as long as enough powdered-sugar doughnuts are waved in front of the voters faces.
I will pause to say that even I am guilty of that when Obama was elected. I know many democrats feel the same way. The promise of change we thought Obama could bring was definitely a contrast to what actually happened. Many of us sat down. We weren’t active, we expected it to happen all by itself instead of recognizing that a good democracy requires continual effort. Although I still reject the idea that our own delusion of how change happens is the sole reason how someone like Trump got elected. Republicans have been priming their base for years with fearmongering and misinformation. They’ve convinced their base how much they like powdered-sugar doughnuts and convinced them that the left is the one that has taken all your powdered-sugar doughnuts. Trump came on to the scene packing oodles of them (a lot of them in his waistline) and tossed them out to the masses like paper towels being thrown to displaced masses on a hurricane ravaged tropical island.
Every time we think we’ve hit rock bottom with Trump there seems to be another. What it seems like we are seeing is the diminishing returns of the dopamine hit and so the ante is always being upped. And make no mistake the dopamine here seems less about the promises that Trump is making but more about how miserable he is making his detractors. Liberals were an easy mark after all those years of GOP priming and honestly it seems like the promises of Trump are long gone in most of their minds and most of his base just enjoy watching others squirm. There is perhaps some wisdom to the philosophy of not reacting at all to Trump as this seems to be the dopamine hit they keep craving. We may not be snowflakes, but our outrage might just be another white powdery substance. I am not sure though I have much hope to give, because it feels more and more like we have a large group of Americans who have an addiction problem, and I’m not talking about opioids. As long as Trump keeps increasing the dosage, dopamine levels will stay high in his voters.
We are probably not long away from Stormy Daniels telling her story publicly. As I read about how she is going to do this now because of Trump’s lawyer saying that it was his own personal money basically violated their “hush” deal about the affair. I started thinking that this will finally sink this “upside-down world” Titanic. A covered-up affair, while his 3rd wife is pregnant with their child. Not someone he had any romantic attachment to, but a porn star, who during the election tried to silence with money. There are few acts that I can think of more bereft of any morality for a candidate running on the ticket for the party who is supposedly pro-family, and pro-God. There are few things less corrupt than a politician bribing people who could bring truthful facts about his character to light either. For a party that is supposedly pro-American values which should include democracy and not corrupting that process I am dubious that this will be taken seriously. Just as Russian interference in the election, sexual assault, and overt racism, was not taken seriously.
I see little hope at all that this ship will sink. I see those that will discredit this woman because she makes adult films. We will have the deluded evangelicals still claiming Trump is an instrument of God. We will have the hyper-masculine crowded thinking, “well she has big knockers he had to fuck her because he’s a rich powerful man, and such men can fuck anybody they want”. And some portion of all those people will just be selfish, rich, pricks who really don’t care and just pick whatever defense looks best in their social circle, because in the end, they are making tons of cash and that’s all that matters. As an aside the only criticism I can think of for Stormy Daniels is that it only took $130,000 dollars to convince her to keep quiet about something that might have affected who the leader was of a nation of 300 million people, and the world’s most powerful economy and imperialistic force. But perhaps like the rest of us, she thought he couldn’t win anyway and just decided to make a little cash. Also, I would have thought that as a porn star you are already having a lot of sex with people you don’t choose on-camera, so there would be a stronger impetus to be more choosy with who you have sex with off-camera. 🙂 Apparently, that’s an incorrect assumption. (Trump…really? Trump?)
I do think there are also a lot of people who regret voting for Trump. They regretted it probably within the first 6 months of him being elected, so I’m not trying to pretend that some people haven’t accepted they were duped, or that they knew they probably were but were so desperate for some help they figured why not see what the other side of the aisle can do. There is good reason for people to feel frustrated by a government that is rife with corruption from big business. I hope we can turn a corner here for those people in the future. As I write this we have young people ignited by the recent gun shooting trying to fight for change. We have more women entering politics. We have the #MeToo movement. I also hope we can turn a corner for those whose mouth waters for powdered-sugar doughnuts, because a government that is actually interested in making things better for people, softens the zealotry. The best way to recover from addiction is to remove the environment in which that addiction flourishes. I hope we can find away to wash away the toxicity in our society that harms us all.
What is multiculturalism? Here is something that I am for, and think is a positive thing, but a recent interview I listened to made me wonder if I was perhaps defining it differently than other people. Not that I am necessarily wrong, but it is perhaps a term that easily lends itself to some interpretation. Perhaps part of the reason is a definition of what we consider culture likely also varies from person to person.
The argument has come up many times in Europe and North America in response to the Syrian Refugee crisis that multiculturalism doesn’t work. My father-in-law in Poland has even joined the parade of fear over refugees and said he’s against “multy-culty”. Many Americans describe the U.S. as a melting pot and promote that as an important part of a successful nation. But are we really a melting pot? It’s clear when you look around there are plenty of cultures celebrating events that are important to them. Whether it’s religious holidays, whether it’s going to the church or temple of their religion. There are also plenty of restaurants catering to different ethnic cuisines. We can see the evidence of different cultural norms among African-Americans and among Hispanic groups.
So, what is it that we are actually afraid of changing? It seems that when most people say multiculturalism won’t work it’s targeting specific values that another culture holds, or is perceived to hold that is different than values held already in the country. But since there are clearly many diverse cultural practices that go on already that don’t bother anybody is it reasonable to say something so broad like multiculturalism doesn’t work? I don’t believe so. That doesn’t mean that bringing in other cultures into your own society won’t have problems. Part of the reason why the story of immigration keeps repeating itself with one generation of immigrants being criticized by the generations before is that we generally don’t trust what we really don’t know. But we live in the age of information so there should be a bunch of stuff we do know. So let’s take a look, and for a little bit, ignore the fact that often in these situations the experiential knowledge goes a lot further than book knowledge.
When it comes to refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan let’s face it, a large majority of these immigrants are going to be Muslims and fear of Islam is at a high today. While extremism exists in every religion right now, a good portion of it is coming from Islam, so perhaps there is a good reason to have more fear, even if that fear compared to other things we have to fear in this world, are exaggerated. Once again I don’t want to get into any No True Scotsman arguments, because we can say extremists are not truly followers of Islam, but they claim they are so let’s go with the idea that whatever religion people claim they are affiliated with that’s their religion. It’s true to say that whatever small percentage of Muslims we bring into this country that are jihadists, the more immigrants we take, the numbers go up. So I think this is always worth paying attention to since a society should always be aiming to reduce violent crime. But for now let’s just throw away the extremist views and look at these societies in general. We have very traditional values. Women do not have equal rights in Islam. They are expected to dress modestly because they are a temptation to men. They try to protect their followers from information that would cast doubt or refute tenets of their religion. Their governments do not have separation of church and state. Islam has strong rewards for commitment to the religion and strong punishment for those who are apostates (both on this plane of existence and the other ones). They have no tolerance for homosexuality. Do any of these qualities sound familiar? They should, they are the very similar attitudes held by a large portion of the religion right here in the U.S. What’s very odd about it, is that the same people who have so much in common with all these potential new immigrants are the most against them coming in, and it’s the left that is happy to important such illiberal values into the U.S.
Now before you fight me on this, let it sink in a bit. If this is the case, what’s going on. Are we all very confused? No, but perhaps we are a little confused. First of all we shouldn’t expect two very similar religions to coexist happily. It’s easy to see why to very conservative groups with slight variations on “The Truth” don’t want to share space. It’s also not hard to see that Islam doesn’t have a high degree of tolerance towards free speech, something that many, if not most on the right, consider to be one of our most important values as an American. It is also isn’t difficult to understand why people on the left would be side with Muslim immigrants. Certainly, when it comes to the refugees there is going to be a great deal of desire to reduce human suffering. But let’s say, to a large degree many people, whether they support immigration or not, are moved my human suffering. From an ideological point of view, we’d expect many people to be sensitive to the oppression they’ve endured at the hands of religious intolerance, racism, and misogyny. It’s not completely irrational, therefore, to be against allowing large groups of people that are experiencing oppression and suffering to be painted with a broad-brush stroke simply for being different. We’re all too familiar with what happens when such attitudes persist in a society. We know the harm that stereotyping can play and how it closes doors to meaningful conversations which can lead to an exchange of ideas and mutual understanding. There is value in diversity and adding some might not be a bad idea. This at least for me is at the heart of a multicultural society.
My concern is that we seemed to have reached a level of political correctness where it is not okay to criticize Islam, out of fear we will be supporting attitudes on the right. And I would like to believe that there are many people on the right who might be similarly scared of expressing empathy to humanitarian crisis in the Middle East in case they are seen as supporting the left. Identity politics is not helping. We have to have some honest conversations about what we can tolerate in terms of diversity and multiculturalism. As a liberal there are certain harmful views that I will not tolerate in any culture, and do not want to see them increasingly practiced in my country or any country. Many of the Syrian refugees are very educated, which is helpful, but harmful cultural practices, particularly attitudes towards gender or sexual orientation are not dependent on the level of education. It’s not unreasonable to be against importing illiberal values into our society, just as it is not unreasonable to be intolerant to illiberal values here. It seems clear to me that multiculturalism is not impossible, but it does have limits and if you claim to be a liberal it’s of value for you to recognize that. And on the right, the level of xenophobia and fear of terrorism is also highly disproportionate, dishonest and is not helpful to meaningful conversation.
I come from Canada and am proud to say that is one the few if not the last country that largely embraces multiculturalism, but this does not mean that we tolerate every cultural practice. Canada can boast some of the most progressive imams in Islamic society who actively speak out against Islamic extremism. I wonder if Canada’s inclusive attitude towards different cultures has anything to do with that? And I am not under any illusions that racism or bigotry is absent in Canada. It’s still a problem. It takes time to solve such problems and I think Canada has made some impressive progress. Growing up in Canada my view of multiculturalism was that you retain the best of your culture and adopt the best of Canada, and the nation simply gets better. As someone who is biracial I never struggled about whether to consider myself Indian or white, I always just thought of myself as Canadian, because Canada recognized the value that other countries have brought with them to Canada. To me, this is one of the principal differences between Canada and the U.S. Canada definitely thinks we have some lessons for other cultures, but we are humble enough to recognize that maybe other cultures have something to teach us as while. It seems to me that the U.S. has an attitude that it only needs to teach others, but has nothing to learn from them. Such an attitude seems to be held by many Americans on the left and right because it seems to play out in identity politics as well. Maybe, in the end, whether or not multiculturalism can work all depends how willing each culture is willing to listen and learn. This is a value that we all need wherever we may live.
There is an idea, or perhaps several that I’ve been struggling with for the past few years. The election of Trump has certainly elevated my thoughts on this matter. It started as the issue of political correctness became controversial. There were starting to be more and more rumblings that things had gone too far. Not just from conservative pundits who complain about every ounce of liberal criticism, but from liberals as well. Often from satirists and comedians whose life’s work comes from criticizing conservatism and extreme right wing values.
It seems, in my own experience, I start to see more and more people on the left become abusive of the people on the right. It doesn’t even seem like it’s because they’ve been offended first, but are being offended for other people, and thus feel justified in shaming others. Now perhaps we have always had a group of people who have been quick to take offense, and that this age of social media has simply brought such people to the fore. Just as social media has been quick to enhance a culture of shaming which probably already existed. Perhaps the allure of being able to shame people anonymously and with greater volume is too great for many of us to resist. Keep in mind,I am not just making a criticism of people on the left here. Because for all their talk about “liberal snowflakes”, if the right was just this “let it slide” group of people who just kept their nose to the grindstone, I think social media would look much different.
The idea that has been bouncing, increasingly more violently in my head, is to what degree we create the monsters we despise, and to what degree to we become them ourselves. Many of us have listened to or read analyses by various pundits and scholars about how right wing movements are on the rise and there are some who would blame this on the left. Part of this could be in support of neo-liberalism, but some have suggested that this is due to a more aggressive liberalism that is trying to force a certain viewpoint on others. An example of that iswritten in a critiqueof a New York Magazine piece in Salon. Look I don’t want to make this another self-examination piece where I am going to blame the left for the ills of today. I am not going to let off the hook harmful ideologies on the right which have no place in civil societies either. It’s well documented that the right has usedfearandmisinformationto exploit people and for the most part I feel like the left is simply trying to react to increased levels of irrationality, but not necessarily in a rational way. Politicians are of course not the only ones to use fear to persuade people. Corporations and the media all do it as well, and so to a certain degree all of us live at a certain level of fear most who are my age or older didn’t grow up with.
I worry about universities becoming places that disinvite speakers due to social media pressure and protests from students. Such things are certainly a function of the corporate model that universities are being run as also, but it is a concern that students would be so upset to hear what someone they disagree with has to say to actually prevent that person from speaking. This article is from 2016 and only in the U.S. but it is happening in the UK as well. This year we had protests turnviolent at Berkeleybecause of professional provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and a twice this year a pro-police speaker,Heather MacDonald had talks canceledor dangerously disrupted and was unable to give her talk. I believe bad ideas fester in the dark. I would rather have bad ideas challenged in an open forum. Allowing people to speak at universities doesn’t legitimize their claims, it tells young people that in the real world you are going to face a diversity of views and people that hold them and that you must be able to absorb them and answer them with rational and evidentiary arguments.
Today, I listened to a podcast, and heard yet another critique of Merkel (from a liberal) for letting in so many refugees and that this is the fuel the right-wing parties need to take over many European nations and possibly lead to the collapse of the EU. Even if Islamic terrorists acts are small in comparison to the amount of good that helps the refugees opening borders so freely is dangerous. The overarching argument being that so much compassion leads to a blind spot, where political moderation would be more prudent for long term stability. From a political standpoint, I find it hard to disagree perhaps, but as an individual who also recognizes the cost of not helping people who are suffering it leaves me feeling helpless. If compassion leads to the rise of nationalism and racism, and I believe in the value of compassion as one of our most valuable human traits, then I must at least ask the question, “Is it enough if our heart is in the right place?”
Since I believe we can live in a more compassionate society, and that human society has trended towards greater compassion, I want to be able to see that movement continually. Maybe in the long arch of history it is our fate to take two steps forward and one step back. And these back steps may be half a human lifetime. Furthermore, perhaps in some places things go back for longer, while other countries that were back start to move forward. So globally we may still be moving forward, but all moving at different rates. The fact remains, that as an individual, while I can be pleased that the average moves forward, I still am not content to let the society that I most directly live in fall back. What can I do? How must I behave? And how can I promote positive behavior in others?
An important part of my journey in life was to understand the brain. My inspiration for doing so occurred when I met with people who had diametrically different world views, and where no amount of evidence would sway them. That journey was a great one and it gave me a greater understanding of how people come to believe the things they do. But I still find that in the everyday things we generally want the same things, and that we are all quite similar, so I find myself wondering how common ground is to be found. I guess, it is just who I am that I can’t give up on the idea that we are all human and that we have more reasons to work together than to work apart. And so it is this lens that I find myself wondering, “Even if some minds can’t be changed, how do we make sure that the problem doesn’t get worse?” It seems to me that 20 years ago, someone like Trump would have been laughed at to the point of just being a lopped off as to one of those crazy eccentrics who runs for president but nobody takes seriously. Many of us were of that very mindset in the primaries, myself included. But it also seems to me that the left has changed as well. I don’t remember a group of people on the left that behaved the way we have seen either. I don’t remember universities preventing speakers they disagreed with from speaking. I certainly don’t remember riots over it. I don’t remember the name calling and the shaming, and the dehumanization of people we disagree with.
It’s perhaps a chicken and the egg, but it seems like as the divide has grown such that the fringes grow too. In my mind I see this being plausible as a normal statistical distribution morphs into a bimodal one. Have the terrorists been winning? Sending the west into a spiral of fear, where the existence of one extreme, requires that we oppose it with another? Is the “alt-right” a response to an “alt-left”? Or vice-versa? Are most of us just living in such a state of fear that we, on average, feel a greater need to be part of a certain camp, where it’s “us” against “them”?
There was an excellentlittle article by George OrwellI read a few months ago, that he wrote in a London newspaper on fascism. A word we’ve seen a lot lately and reading this article made me realize how easily the word was thrown around then too. In trying to define the word, the most common definition that he thinks people could agree with is bullying. I think if we’re honest with ourselves we can think people who fit the description of a bully, and they aren’t all on the right. I’ve heard the political spectrum described as a horseshoe and that there is a place that the left and right meet, and that’s at fascism. Communist Russia and Nazi Germany might have come from different political philosophies, but I think we can agree that the style of governance was very similar in its oppressiveness and cruelty. The fact remains that no matter how right someone might be the way in which we deliver that truth matters. If I say it is better for you to be kind. That statement is true. But if I, in convincing you, try to shame you, push you around, call you names, surround you with a bunch of my friends and make threats, I think the importance of kindness would be lost. Yet this is the kind of behavior we see every day: people on both sides being jeered at and dehumanized for being wrong about something. There are too few attempts to educated and reason. Plenty of getting angry and ridiculing others. I maintain the belief that rightness divorced from empathy is ultimately unhealthy, even poisonous at times. We’ve all been wrong about things, and at times we’ve been ignorant or misinformed about some pretty basic information. We’ve also been guilty of letting our emotion override our rationality. This is part of being human. So even when you believe that someone is wrong about something, even dangerously wrong, it doesn’t make them any less human. We have easily duped and plastic brains that are subject to the influences in our lives.
As I quoted recently in a post about Sam Harris’ thoughts on Trump, we have two choices in influencing others: conversation or violence. Is shaming and ridicule conversation? Or is it more of a violence of the mind? Even if we can say it is still not violence, it feels like unproductive discourse that will make violence more a necessity. I am not a pacifists to the point of saying violence is never the answer, but I am constantly going to be looking at how we can avoid it. Free speech, provided it is not inciting violence, is one of our most important values. It is the one value that allows us to self-correct peacefully, and challenge ideas that cause harm.
I am not sure how this post will be perceived. Whether it appears balanced in its criticism. I guess, it seems to me, that fascism is growing in both political directions and that somehow they are a reaction to each other. A reaction to fear perhaps, and as fascism grows the fear gets worse. Can we find a way out of the positive feedback loop? Maybe the other guy started it, but as the divide grows that origin seems to matter less than trying to figure out how to end it. As a liberal rooted in all people enjoying basic human rights, I wonder how we defend those values while loving those who attack such values at the same time so that they know those values can improve the quality of life for all. But one thing is sure to me, if we can’t live by the values we claim to embrace, then a progressive liberal society doesn’t seem achievable.
This is going to be a little bit of a rant, so if it seems like I forgot to breathe at times, don’t worry I assure you I’m alright. 🙂
We’ve all heard the tone of those who voted for Trump, maybe they were third party voters, or didn’t vote at all “let’s give him a chance”, “let’s see how he does”, “I am going to support him since he’s my president”. As nauseating as this can be, there is something worse to me that’s driving me up the wall.
“You’re being divisive”.
This is hard for me to understand. Look, there is no question that we are a nation very much divided right now, and we need to, somehow, try to unite as a people. There is no question about that. During the past 8 years I heard people say all sorts of ridiculous things about Obama being a socialist, death panels, taking away everybody’s guns, and host of fabricated tales mean to discredit the president and his administration. I tried presenting counter information without name calling. I did not see their disagreement as divisive, just somebody who wasn’t informed or had a different point of view. I never accused anybody of being divisive.
Now all of a sudden everybody on the right is concerned about how divided this nation is, and at that by opposing Trump’s terrible ideas we are being divisive. When the right said they didn’t like the ACA, did anybody tell them to shut up they are being divisive? That they aren’t helping? To get behind the president?
I am a scientist. I try to base my opinions based on something, and defend my point of view. Sometimes my information isn’t the best and I own up to it. But when my disagreement is being labeled as divisiveness, this is pure distortion and I will not take ownership of that label. I’m not being derisive to people personally, but I will challenge ideas that I think are harmful. And these people who label me as being divisive were never calling out people on their own side for the same behavior. I mean if you know a large portion of the country is pro-choice…shouldn’t you tell your pro-life friend to stop posting videos of bloody fetuses on Facebook? Never seen that happen once. Never seen a Republican tell the birther’s they were being divisive. I’ve never seen a Republican ever tell another Republican they are being divisive for posting something that the other side disagrees with. But all of a sudden liberals are all divisive. We are the ones causing division.
It’s not divisive to make abortion illegal, to normalize sexual assault, to call scientific consensus a hoax, to label illegal aliens as drug dealers and rapists, to build a giant wall, to freeze immigration on refugees if they are Muslim, to say gay people can’t marry the people they love, to say you are going to lock up your political opponent in jail….an entire campaign run entirely on divisiveness.
And because I not only resist those notions, but can defend those positions with evidence and statistics, that is deemed divisive.
Look, I am not saying their aren’t a great deal of liberals calling people names, or calling Trump names gets us nowhere and is arguably divisive. But posting tips for activism, pointing out hypocrisy, presenting one’s viewpoint in a reasoned manner should not be seen as divisiveness. One person, who dropped me off of Facebook, even told me that my divisiveness was of the kind that would lead to war. And this was somebody who told me that she doesn’t vote for any party that doesn’t support banning abortion and told me Trump would restore morality to the country.
So I’m not sure what you want from me. If it’s silence, that isn’t going to happen. I am going to keep presenting what I think are informative and well-argued articles, and I am still going to reasonably explain why I think a certain action or ideology is wrong. People act like I don’t spend a great deal of time trying to understand other points of view, I’ve reached across the aisle more than anybody has reached across to me to understand my point of view and I’ve actually adjusted a number of my positions on issues as a result of it.
So when somebody who denies the existence of climate change is put in charge of the EPA, or a white nationalist is put on the National Security Council, or a completely unqualified person is put in charge of the Department of Education and you are silent about it. You are the one being divisive. You are the one who voted for someone who used divisiveness as a tactic to win your support. I am speaking out because you won’t, because I feel we will all lose at the hands of the people in charge of government.
And in the end, if you still think that’s being divisive, well then I can accept that, because I have no business being on the side of someone who, if they find my viewpoint disagreeable, can’t engage in civic discourse about it. I still bear you no ill will, but I have a country to worry about and I really don’t have time for your hypocritical judgment.
I’ve been thinking a lot about personal responsibility lately and just kind of wondering what it really means. It’s phrase that gets thrown around a lot, especially in regards to politics. Conservatives use the term quite a bit but often don’t seem to behave in a way that shows they grasp the meaning or try to determine if it’s actually true.
When I googled the definition it gave me this:
“Personal responsibility is the idea that human beings choose, instigate, or otherwise cause their own actions. A corollary idea is that because we cause our actions, we can be held morally accountable or legally liable.”
Let’s look at the truth of this statement first. There are plenty of arguments that can be made to show that this does not reflect life in any way. Simply because the choices that any one person has in front of them are simply different. A person living in poverty has a completely different set of choices to make than a person who is wealthy. Now let’s throw in a genetic background which varies across the human population. Now let’s throw environmental influences. now let’s throw in information about how the brain develops and how one can be indoctrinated or brainwashed into a certain way of thinking. Now let’s throw in levels of education which vary. We are all conditioned for a certain set of responses that is either likely or more likely, which I discussed in a previous post about free will. And of course this idea of personal responsibility is used to imply that all poor people are lazy and are poor by choice.
Now even if this notion of personal responsibility was entirely true, why is it that we have a government who shows no personal responsibility? And I’m talking about both sides of the aisle, both Democrats and Republicans. We simply don’t have a government that demonstrate personal responsibility. How often do we hear politicians admitting their own mistakes? How often do they apologize for the suffering they might have caused? How often do they apologize for the policies that haven’t worked or been implemented effectively? How often do they apologize for not doing the things they said they were going to do? Sometimes I wonder if the reason there is a lack of trust in government in this country has less to do with the fact that they keep doing stupid things, but rather not owning up to the stupid things they do. I mean seriously would you trust somebody who lacked so much self-awareness that they didn’t even seem to care or notice that they are screwing you or other people over? I know I wouldn’t?
And that brings me to a bit of a side question. Would you be more likely to re-elect someone who admitted to his/her mistakes or someone who denied that they made any? I guess the answer seems to lean towards the latter because it seems we spend so much time trying to prove that someone made a mistake (and yes mistakes when you are in a position of great responsibility can cost people their lives), but do we do that because we know they won’t admit themselves, or were we really expecting them to be perfect? The rest of us make plenty of mistakes, so does anybody really believe that those we elect are part of a select group of people who don’t make any mistakes? Isn’t the most important thing that we learn from mistakes and don’t make them again? Take the Benghazi situation. In hindsight it seems like a lot of things could have been done differently, and perhaps they will in the future, but shouldn’t we expect that with dangerous situations, even a slight error might lead to unnecessary deaths, and that such an error might be made by anyone? Maybe somebody else might not have made the mistake. Or maybe somebody wouldn’t have made the mistake 99/100 times but perhaps it just happens on the wrong day where they are more tired than usual and a mistake happens. I’m not trying to imply that Hillary is guilty of any wrongdoing, but simply that expecting high ranking politicians to be faultless is a ridiculous high bar to set, especially given the high volume and level of decisions they make daily.
It seems to me that we have to allow for some error in judgment. We should be able to expect politicians to be honest about admitting those errors and thus we can place values on their honesty and their ability to correct their own mistakes. This to me seems to be an important part of personal responsibility that is missing from our daily lives. Rich and the powerful always seem immune from the standards of personal responsibility that they hold to the rest of us. Bill Cosby is a great example of a celebrity who placed himself above this standard, even though he certainly had a lot to say about African-American parents and being personally responsible. Isn’t there something inherently untrustworthy about a person who does not practice what they preach? What if Bill Cosby confessed what he had done. Made some reparations to those he has raped, and turned himself in? We might not like him still, but at least we can appreciate a person who is taking responsibility for the pain that they caused.
In the end, it seems to me that “personal responsibility” is not a philosophy to center one’s self around. It seems largely untrue, and even if it was true we rarely see it from the people in this world who should be the most personally responsible because of how powerful their positions, their influence, and their voice is. If one wants to believe in personal responsibility then let’s look at the factors that encourage people to be more personally responsible and address those issues instead.
There was an excellent
And that brings me to a bit of a side question. Would you be more likely to re-elect someone who admitted to his/her mistakes or someone who denied that they made any? I guess the answer seems to lean towards the latter because it seems we spend so much time trying to prove that someone made a mistake (and yes mistakes when you are in a position of great responsibility can cost people their lives), but do we do that because we know they won’t admit themselves, or were we really expecting them to be perfect? The rest of us make plenty of mistakes, so does anybody really believe that those we elect are part of a select group of people who don’t make any mistakes? Isn’t the most important thing that we learn from mistakes and don’t make them again? Take the Benghazi situation. In hindsight it seems like a lot of things could have been done differently, and perhaps they will in the future, but shouldn’t we expect that with dangerous situations, even a slight error might lead to unnecessary deaths, and that such an error might be made by anyone? Maybe somebody else might not have made the mistake. Or maybe somebody wouldn’t have made the mistake 99/100 times but perhaps it just happens on the wrong day where they are more tired than usual and a mistake happens. I’m not trying to imply that Hillary is guilty of any wrongdoing, but simply that expecting high ranking politicians to be faultless is a ridiculous high bar to set, especially given the high volume and level of decisions they make daily.
Cloak Unfurled 