Some Further Thoughts on "Lesser Evils"

Another procrastinatory post, but it also fits in with the one I'm trying, slowly, to write.

A few weeks ago I posted on Facebook that I'd voted for Bernie Sanders as "the lesser evil."  This upset a friend who worked for Sanders in the primaries.  He conceded that Sanders was flawed but he couldn't see him as evil.  I pointed to Sanders's support for no-fly / no-buy (a no-due-process policy that would mainly target Muslims), his ambivalent criticism of Israel, his support for the Iran nuclear deal based on some odd assumptions about America's right to order other countries around.  (In this position statement Sanders spends most of his time on a tirade about George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, but never acknowledges that Iran didn't have and wasn't pursuing a nuclear weapons program in the first place.  In general, supporters of the agreement from Obama on down have deliberately confused "nuclear program" and "nuclear weapons program.")  I got bogged down in other things and didn't continue the conversation, but something occurred to me today.  Perhaps, having clarified this in my mind, I'll return to the exchange with my friend.

I want to ask my friend and all other Democrats, whether Sandernista or Clintonbot, what is the proper response when someone tells them that he or she intends to vote for their candidate -- but as the lesser evil.  I think the answer is obvious.  It should be something along the lines of "Thanks for your vote.  Will you need a ride to the polls on election day?"  It's revealing that, on the contrary, their first (and last, for that matter) impulse is to attack the prospective voter, as though his or her vote is not wanted unless it is offered in a spirit of total and unconditional adulation.  A vague admission that the candidate is "flawed" may then be permitted, provided that no flaws are specified or acknowledged.  It seems to me that a vote is a vote, but Democrats evidently don't agree.  My friend was much less hostile than Clinton or Obama devotees, but that may be because no one had ever called Sanders "the lesser evil" around him before, and he wasn't ready to break out the vitriol yet.

My original remarks on Facebook were partly satirical anyway, which I thought would be obvious to anyone who'd been conscious during the past election season.  It now seems to me that anyone being asked for their vote should refer to the candidate in question as the lesser evil, and see what reaction they get.  If you encounter resistance, you're dealing with a personality cultist who is unable to see their candidate clearly, and who is hoping to elect a messiah, not a politician.  This is why there was a good deal of disappointment (exactly how much, I'm not sure) among his supporters when Sanders kept his promise to campaign for Clinton after she won the nomination.  (My friend wasn't one of these, I should mention.)  It's why Obamamaniacs were unable to hold his feet to the fire when he was elected and began breaking his promises, selling out his base -- though of course he'd begun doing that during the campaign, and met almost no resistance, so why not continue? If you can't vote for someone while being as critical of them as need be, but must attack all their critics -- even those who vote for them -- something is wrong; you're probably pushing a bad candidate, and the angrier the criticism makes you, the worse your candidate probably is.

Thank You for Pressing the Self-Destruct Button

It turns out this meme backfires on itself, as so many do.

I didn't notice at first that it's partly an exhortation to vote for the lesser evil if that will "shift your country as much closer to your ideal as possible."  That's pretty funny right there, since Dem loyalists were furiously denouncing the Lesser Evil option so recently.  I guess that if you don't actually say the words, it's okay.  (But if you say them three times quickly ...?)

The main thing, though, is that the meme amounts to a denunciation of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the DNC, and Democratic partisans.  Clinton most of all, though, who put her determination to be President ahead of every other consideration, including the probability that Sanders had a better chance of beating Trump.  Her ego, her entitlement, her notion that it was her turn now.  I can't think of a better example of "extreme individualism."  To ensure that she won the nomination, she played dirty, which some of her fans even thought amusing.  It's their party, after all, one such person wrote, which at least was honest: the party belongs to its elites and big donors, not to the rank and file who do the scut work of making phone calls, knocking on doors, driving voters to the polls -- let alone the voters themselves.  It's not about you, you individualist with your silly notions of government by the people.   Don't believe the fairy tales the elites told you, that elections are meant to choose the best candidate for office.  Don't believe the fairy tale drummed into your head since childhood, that American values and ideals have anything to do with the running of our government.  It's like the Bible: you're not supposed to take it literally, just have faith in your leaders.  Just don't reject the fairy tales during election season, or in the hearing of the real owners of the party.

I guess I'm more or less functional again, after spending a day walking around feeling stunned.  I needed to write to find out what I thought about Trump's victory, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know what I thought.  I stayed off Facebook yesterday, and timidly logged in today.  Before long my liberal friends' reactions had me angry again, and I was back in the fray.

Most notable, as I expected, were Democrats blaming everybody but themselves for the debacle. Paul Krugman was apparently leading the charge, but I hear Rachel Maddow was in there too.  If I'm not mistaken, that was one of the tendencies that drove Germany into the hands of the Nazis.  Did Germany lose the Great War?  It wasn't their fault, it was the Jews and the homosexuals and the Reds stabbing the Fatherland in the back, and women spitting on Our Troops.  Did Hillary lose this world-historical election?  It wasn't her fault, it was the Bernie Bros and Julian Assange and Jim Comey and all the haters who made voters stay away from the polls.

Most entertaining are the Dems who yell "Don't play the blame game!" when their own attempts to play the blame game are rebutted.  We can blame everybody, but don't you dare blame us -- that's being judgmental.  We aren't being judgmental, we're just pointing out who stabbed Hillary in the back...  Really, they are acting as we were warned Trump's followers would react if he lost.  I imagine I'll be seeing a lot more of that.

Meanwhile, what to do?  I don't have any answers, but some writers are making sense.  There are others, of course, but these two were close to hand.  It's alarming that so many liberals and progressives and near-rightists and neoliberals are freaking out, lashing out almost randomly, but that was only to be expected.  I can't go on, I'll go on.

Campaign 2020 Begins in Just Two Days!

The dishonesty of this meme is outrageous.

Whence (to unleash my Inner Grammar Nazi) did so many Americans get this idea?  Like so many rhetorical questions, it's easy to answer: Along with belief in Santa Claus, we get it from the official propaganda we're dunned with from childhood onward, down to the marketing campaigns of the candidates themselves. 

Partisans only drag out this line when they're dealing with voters who don't find their candidate inspiring, or even worse, who've criticized their candidate substantively.  Or, worst of all, that they will vote for their candidate as the lesser evil.  I suppose it's preferable to the vicious abuse they indulge in when this one doesn't work. It's what we saw in 2008 and 2012: "Barack is dreamy! He's all about Hope and Change! He could have big positive repercussions for progressive politics!  He'll make us feel good about being Americans again! He can pronounce 'nuclear'!  He'll end the wars!" Anyone who pointed out that Obama was a center-right corporatist and war-lover was a Republican troll or a cynical non-voter. Then, after he was in office and showed himself to be a war-lover and a center-right corporatist, his fans asked who'd been so foolish as to think he'd be any different from any other politician -- what did you expect, Che Guevara?  Weren't you paying attention?

It's 3:26 p.m. on Tuesday in Seoul as I write this, which means it's just after midnight on Tuesday in Indiana.  The polls will open in a few hours.  In twenty-four hours this foully dispiriting election campaign will be over, and the next one will begin.  If Clinton pulls off a decisive victory, Trump voters will throw tantrums; we can hope it won't get any worse than that.  Clinton fans will be kvelling about her greatness, the world-historical moment of a female President (sure, other countries have elected female heads of state, but they aren't us) and the glorious peace and prosperity she'll give us.  If the results are close, if Clinton wins in the Electoral College or something, everybody will be throwing tantrums.  If Clinton loses, the recriminations will be "epic," as the Internet says: everybody but Clinton herself, or the Democratic Party Leadership, will be blamed.  I'll be back in the US a week later, if I haven't applied for political asylum in the meantime.  By then, I hope, the dust will have more or less settled.

Anthropology

One irony of this meme, which I believe is meant to play off others based on skeletons, is that "people who vote for Trump" actually have the same skulls as people who don't.  But Occupy Democrats, a scabrous bunch mooching off the integrity of the Occupy Movement, feel free to toss inclusiveness (to say nothing of mere fact) under the bus for partisan purposes.

The other irony is that it was not Australopithecines but Homo Sapiens that invented nuclear weapons, poison gas, racism, Nazism, religion, antigay bigotry and all the other evils this meme attributes to our distant ancestors and Trump voters.

A Watched Pot

I'm curious about this: "[Trump]’s given up trying to expand his appeal to women, minorities and college-educated Republicans. Instead he’ll tear into Mrs. Clinton in an attempt to demoralize her voters and motivate his." Does that really work? Will Trump's attacks "demoralize her voters," or will it just get their backs up? Is this a damned pro-wrestling match? (Well ... yes, I knew that.) Is that how voting works? (Well, yes, I guess I knew that too.) How damn hard is it, one you've chosen your candidate, to go to your polling place, sign in, get your ballot and cast your vote? How much morale does that take? 

It seems to me that if anything is "demoralizing," it's the endless media coverage that treats the campaign as a horse race, and of course the hysterical babbling of the partisans, which we can now hear / see every day on Facebook and other social media. If I find anything demoralizing (but don't worry, I've already voted -- absentee), it has been the vicious, almost demented squabbling of the Democrats I know. I already knew that Republicans are vicious and demented, and to be honest, I knew from past elections how bad the Dems were. But it's even worse this year, truly.

Here's another example of what I'm talking about. The SF writer and blogger and Twitterer John Scalzi wrote today that this election cycle has hurt his productivity because he spends so much time reading election coverage, including 538.com and the polls. Many of his readers agree: it's the polls. I can't think of anything less useful than following the polls. It's like thinking that the stock market is a sign of economic health and watching the Dow Jones when you're not even an investor.

For example, this commenter:

It’s so distressing that Trump has even been considered a serious candidate that I’m constantly checking my Google Now feed to see if he’s made any new stupid or damning statements, and when he does, I check FiveThirtyEight.com in hopes of seeing his estimated chances of winning dwindle some more.

Or the guy who wrote that he doesn't "have time to read all the comments because I’m too busy jumping back and forth to 538, HuffPost Pollster, TPM Polltracker, and RCP." All this seems to me like picking endlessly at a scab to see if it has healed yet.

One person commented as follows: "... it was because the opposition to my personal ideals was making me physically ill." I think I know what she's talking about, but knowing that there is opposition to your personal ideals is the price you pay for living in a more or less free and pluralistic society. I think a lot of Trump fans could say the same thing, though: even knowing that there are people who don't share their beliefs makes them ill. I sympathize with both sides, but in this case they are the problem, not the people who oppose their personal ideals.

Similarly, a commenter wrote "I gather that Muslim is a very uncomfortable thing to be, just now" -- as if the past 35 years hadn't happened. Yeah, Trump's campaign has probably made things worse, but Muslims (and people mistaken for Muslims) have been under attack in this country at least since the fall of the Shah in 1979.

Personally, I agreed more with another commenter:

It has been a serious distraction. On the positive side, all the research I’ve done to rebut fallacies seen on social media has made me a better informed person (as if I wasn’t already) with a much more complete set of data source bookmarks and reaction gif memes.

A number of the commenters (like the one who's physically ill) have written about the fear they feel. Some are immigrants, some are trans, some are trans immigrants, some are Muslim or ethnic/racial minorities. They have good reason to be afraid, but Scalzi and most of his commenters don't fall into any of those categories. Something else must be going on.

In the early 1990s, a study of media coverage of the First Gulf War found that the more people relied on TV news, the more misinformed they were.

While most respondents had difficulty answering questions about the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, 81 percent of the sample could identify the missile used to shoot down the Iraqi Scuds as the Patriot. That media consumers know facts relating to successful U.S. weapons but not about inconsistencies in U.S. foreign policy, the researchers argued, “suggests that the public are not generally ignorant—rather, they are selectively misinformed.”

"Selectively misinformed" is ambiguous.  Since people are not merely passive receptacles of information, even from the media, I think it's fair to suspect that people selectively misinform themselves, choosing what they want to know.  Where a war is happening, the events that led up to it, even that the people on the receiving end of our bombs and missiles are people with interests of their own rather than mere obstinate obstacles to American interests, just don't interest most people.  "Facts relating to [more or less] successful American weapons" do.

You can see this not just in supposedly uneducated, emotional Trump supporters but in supposedly educated, rational Clinton supporters.  Mention Libya to a Clinton loyalist, for example, and they will immediately assume you are talking about Benghazi, not about the validity of the NATO bombing itself.  The Podesta emails are both obvious forgeries and trivial reminders that a Clinton presidency will be business as usual -- nothing to see here, folks, move along.  What is important is that, contrary to the sinister Putin-funded corporate media conspiracy to try to convince you that she's unlikable, Clinton is really cool, adorable, and progressive.  Voters are idiots who know nothing about the issue and care less, while elite Democrats care about important issues like hot and dreamy Barack is, and how "he and Michelle really adorn the White House. As a couple they are just...well...magnificent"; the gnarly old Rethuglicans are just jealous.

Recently Bodhipaksa at Fake Buddha Quotes noted that "some Buddhists are preferentially drawn to Fake Buddha Quotes. When they do blog posts based on the Buddha’s sayings, or when they quote the Buddha in an article, they’re far more likely to post fake quotes than those found in the scriptures."  I've noticed this too, and not just among Buddhists -- you'll have seen this coming of course -- but in discussions of US politics; and not just among the drooling masses but among the wise elites whose job it is to be informed.

I'm with the commenter who jeered "You guys are going to make Trump TV really popular…"  Yup, and he was addressing people who oppose Trump.  Even after the election, even after Trump has been defeated, people will still obsess.  Pick that scab.  And after it's healed despite your best efforts, keep scratching at it until you've opened it up again.

Public and Privates

I'm not surprised by this material, since it's about what I expected from Clinton as the corporatist Reagan Democrat she is. But you can see why she didn't want it made public -- I mean, "There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives"! I feel their pain.

At the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovators Summit, Clinton responded to a question from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who quipped that you “go to Washington” to “make a small fortune.” Clinton agreed with the comment, and complained about ethics rules that require officials to divest from certain assets before entering government. “There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” Clinton said.

At a 2013 speech for Morgan Stanley on April 18, Clinton praised the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan — which would reduce corporate tax rates while raising the Social Security age. “But Simpson-Bowles — and I know you heard from Erskine earlier today — put forth the right framework. Namely, we have to restrain spending, we have to have adequate revenues, and we have to incentivize growth. It’s a three-part formula,” she said ...

But there are signs in the emails released by Wikileaks that she also took a fairly progressive stance on certain topics, including health reform ...

But during the campaign this year, she again reversed her position, declaring that single payer will “never, ever” happen in the U.S. Audio obtained by The Intercept last week showed Clinton dismissing the idea of free healthcare during another private event with donors.

I've already seen Clintonistas dismissing the new Wikileaks material as no big deal, underwhelming, a letdown. And maybe it is, if you expected/ hoped it would include celebrations of eating aborted babies. And as I say, there are not really any surprises to her critics; just what we expected.

The thing to remember is that partisans will dismiss any criticism of their candidate. Trump fans aren't going to be bothered by the latest video showing Trump to be a vilely sexist scumbag -- Oh please, is that news? Tell us something we didn't already know -- because they know what he's like and that's why they like him. So do his critics, but they enjoy clucking over his awfulness.  The same is true of Clinton, as it was of Obama.  Oh, she's a devout corporatist and warmonger?  Tell us something we didn't already know!  What did you expect, Che Guevara?

Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength, War Is Peace

A dose of Campaign 2016 on Democracy Now! each morning is about as much as I can take.  This morning, journalists David Barstow and David Cay Johnston, who've been doing great work on Donald Trump's finances and politics, warned that if Trump becomes president, it could be very bad for basic civil liberties.  Johnston said:

David, if he gets elected, he will have the power of federal law enforcement. I’m not worried if he threatens to sue me, as he has, if he loses. But if he wins, he could put you and I and Dean Baquet on no-fly lists. And the courts have been very reluctant to let people off those, if the government claims national security. He can do all sorts of things to mess up your life. And he’s made it clear he will do this. He talks as if the president is a dictator with unlimited power, who doesn’t need to pay attention to Congress or to the courts. He’s talked of firing generals. And the first thing someone does who plans to turn a republic into a dictatorship is they fire those general officers who are loyal to country and replace them with people loyal to him. And in my book, I quote Donald at length, in several forums, as saying what matters to him is getting revenge—that’s his philosophy: get revenge; even though he says he’s Christian, get revenge—and absolute loyalty to him, the person. That’s what these threats of litigation should really concern the voters about.

This is all true, and is reason to worry.  But I couldn't help reflecting as I listened to Johnston that we already have a President with those powers.  It was "no-fly list" that got my attention, because it reminded me how liberal Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, embraced bipartisanship and jumped on the bandwagon for "no-fly, no-buy" after the Orlando massacre earlier this year.  But hey, an overwhelming majority of American voters supported no-fly no-buy, and many Americans think the press is too dang free anyhow.  Glenn Greenwald and others have been warning ever since Obama took office that even if you trust him not to abuse them, the powers he has arrogated to himself will still be available to the next Republican president.  But, of course, no one could possibly have foreseen that, even after eight years of George W. Bush.

You Cannot Hope to Bribe or Twist, Thank God! the Clinton Loyalist

As we trudge wearily into the home stretch of the current horse-race-cum-WWE bout, it looks like "false equivalence" may be the Clintonista word of the week.  Among other cases, a friend of a friend linked to this hopefully satirical piece from the Washington Post about Monday's Trump-Clinton debate, and commented on it:

This is great whether you watched the debate or not. In fact, I kind of wish I hadn't and just read this instead. It's a satirical (but totally accurate) version of the debate. Let's try to remember that Hillary may have politics we don't agree with (I put myself strongly in this camp), but she is a person with actual experience in governance that takes the issues seriously and actually has some understanding of them. Trump can tick neither of those boxes. I can think of many politicians I would prefer to Hillary, but I can't think of anyone less qualified or more ignorant than Donald J. Drumpf. Please, please, please, no more false equivalence. It only benefits the more dishonest, inaccurate candidate.

Someone else added this comment: "Um...seems like there is a big gap between perfect and evil? And um...pretty sure Hillary is in that gap."  Um... no.  But go ahead, make a case.  (Of course, the person didn't.)

There was also an article by on a self-styled progressive site by one Allen Clifton, which in tone resembles the Onion's fake editorials.  "I'd Like to Address This Absurd 'Hillary Clinton Is the Lesser of Two Evils' Nonsense" is the title -- see what I mean? -- but the pros at the Onion would have done a better job of addressing the topic.

I’ve met entirely too many individuals who mistake an overall “lack of excitement” for Clinton, or the fact that she’s not the best public speaker (sometimes too robotic/can come off disingenuous) with how terrible and dangerous Donald Trump is by citing the only reason they’re supporting her is because they’re choosing the “lesser of two evils.” ...


Is Hillary Clinton perfect? No. Does she have flaws? Of course. I’m not here to tell anyone that she’s some flawless candidate who can do no wrong. But I will say, without hesitation, that she’s one of the most qualified human beings to ever run for president. 

Saying she’s the “lesser of two evils” when comparing her to Trump is like saying a college kid arrested for selling marijuana out of his dorm room to help pay tuition is the “lesser of two evils” when compared to Charles Manson. 

It’s ridiculous ...

So this nonsense that she’s the “lesser of two evils” has to stop. Just because they’re part of the same debate, running for the same office, doesn’t mean that these two are equals. Believing that is sort of like suggesting Donald Trump is just as much of an expert on climate change as Bill Nye simply because they’re both well-known figures who have weighed in on the topic. The real truth is that Hillary Clinton’s “worst flaw” is the perception of her that’s largely impacted by the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent slandering her for nearly a quarter century.

Throughout his overwrought screed Clifton keeps working with variations on "lesser of two evils" and "these two are equals."  But those are two very different claims: to call Clinton the lesser of two evils is to assert explicitly that she and Trump are not equals, not the same.  To lack enthusiasm for her, which Clifton pretends to accept, is not at all the same thing as seeing no difference between her and Trump; I, for one, lack enthusiasm for Clinton, but I hold Trump in contempt, and I know I'm not alone.  That seems obvious to me, and I don't quite understand why Clifton keeps making that elementary mistake -- aside from the practical necessity of defending his candidate from any and all criticisms, of course.  His entire 'argument' is based on confusing the two.

He concedes that she's not perfect, but he does not really address any serious criticism that has been made of her, such as her foreign policy, her coziness with dictators (which is really more problematic in a Secretary of State and presidential hopeful than it is for a business tycoon), her fondness for neoliberal economics at home, her hostility to civil liberties, her offer/threat to put her husband in charge of the economy, and so on.  This is business as usual, as I said, but it's no endorsement of her.

Clifton also declares of Clinton's various political posts that "she left each of those positions extremely popular and admired."  Maybe so, but if so, why is she so disliked now?  Clifton blames it on Americans' short historical memories, and of course on the millions of dollars that have been spent attacking her.   But short historical memories also help unpopular politicians, as with George W. Bush, and the well-funded propaganda campaigns against President Obama have not really breached his teflon.  Another common claim is to blame the media, but their attacks on Trump have not stopped him, and they also were barely able to stop Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination, though they failed to crush him.  Much as people (including media people themselves) like to think so, the media are not omnipotent.  I wouldn't want to put too much store by most people's good judgment, but they (we!) just aren't as controllable as our rulers wish.

One simple point might help to clarify all this: In the primaries, I voted for Bernie Sanders as the lesser of two evils.  I didn't think he was the messiah his fans wanted to believe he was; his foreign policy was open to serious criticism, for one thing, if not quite as bad as Clinton's.  He was, in short, the lesser evil, and that obviously (I hope) does not imply that I thought him and Clinton to be equals.  But I thought, and the evidence indicates, that he could do better against Trump than Clinton could.  If this is as historically portentous an election as the Clinton campaign and its hangers-on and toadies would have us believe, then putting a candidate as weak as Clinton against Trump was foolish at best on the part of the DNC.  One would think, given the peril in which our Republic now stands according to just about every Trump opponent, that people's willingness to vote for Clinton, even if they do not love her, would be enough.  (It damn well had better be.)  But no -- for the loyalist, only total surrender will do.  Every knee must bend, and every mouth confess Her name: Hillary!

I admit, though, I have begun to see some actual examples of what could be called false equivalence about the campaign.  There was an editorial cartoon, which I unfortunately didn't save and seems to have disappeared from my feed, which showed Uncle Sam weeping into his hands in front of a big-screen TV displaying Trump and Clinton, the two major-party candidates.  I posted a critique as a comment, which may be why the cartoon and my comment disappeared.  By the kind of mainstream American political standards that Uncle Sam represents, Clinton is a notably better candidate than Trump.  Trump is a buffoon, though hardly the first buffoon to run for President or to be elected to the office.  Clinton is a thoroughly competent technocrat, with abundant experience at high levels of government.  Mainstream politicians mostly love her, as shown by the numbers of establishment Republicans who've been lining up with her (which her fans, inexplicably but revealingly, consider a recommendation).  And by their standards, why shouldn't they love her?  She'll steer the great ship Business As Usual like the pro she is.  Uncle Sam would be busting his shirt buttons with pride over her.

I've also seen numerous posts and comments from ordinary citizens, the common clay of the new west, to the effect of Who cares, they're both crooks -- all politicians are crooks! They would say the same of any candidates, so I can't see that they represent a specific response to Clinton.  Nor do they reflect the specific criticisms of Clinton that better minds have made.  Pretending that your cornpone general-store cynics and informed political writers are on the same plane, though, reeks of false equivalence itself.

P.S. I just encountered another indignant "not a lesser evil" piece, and it's more of the same.  I don't get it.  It isn't necessary to flail around incoherently and fall on your face in a puddle of stale verbiage either to endorse Clinton or to savage Trump.  Why, then, this compulsion to repeat Clinton campaign talking points?

Apples and Surrogates: The Revolving Door

I don't have regular access to TV, but an Internet-connected Blu-ray player with a Youtube app has been easing me back to the medium.  Last night the CNN celebrity newsperson Anderson Cooper visited Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, and in the course of "hugging it out" together he acknowledged something that in a better universe would have been embarrassing.

To be fair, it looks to me as if Cooper was embarrassed: he almost seemed surprised by what he had just admitted.  Maybe it really had never occurred to him before.  Colbert didn't press him very hard, but I think he knew what a gem he'd just unearthed.

Colbert had asked about various Trump campaign people Cooper had interviewed lately.  Cooper volunteered the name of Trump's former campaign manager Cory Lewandowski.

COLBERT: Who now works at CNN.  [pause while Cooper confirms it with a nod and a gesture] He works for you guys. [pause] Does he still get any money from the Trump people at the same time?

COOPER: I believe -- I read he gets a continuing severance from Trump.

COLBERT: So you all are paying him and Trump is paying him but he's still on your show doing analysis on a man he still gets cash from.

COOPER: Pretty much. I guess that's one way to look at it.

COLBERT: And you still respect his opinion, too?

COOPER: We have people from all the campaigns.  We have campaign surrogates for Hillary Clinton on.

COLBERT: What is a surrogate, by the way?  I have heard that term a lot.

COOPER: It's somebody who represents the campaign.  They're often paid by the campaign.  They just -- I don't know, you know, Katrina Pearson, I think, is one of those people you see on cable news a lot.  She is a surrogate for the Trump campaign.  There are a lot of surrogates. The campaign can't be everywhere so they have people out there speaking for them.

At this point Colbert abruptly changed the subject to Trump's recent "pivot" attempting to present a kinder, gentler image to minorities.  Which, it turns out, Lewandowski has something to say about too, in his capacity as a cable news journalist / commentator.

Cooper was being disingenous here, to put it nicely.  I presume that the various campaign surrogates are not paid by the news programs on which they appear, any more than the candidates themselves are -- though who knows, I could well be wrong about that.  But Lewandowski's role on CNN is not, supposedly, as a campaign surrogate: it's as someone who, as a former insider, should know what hard questions to ask the surrogrates.  Since he's still being paid by the Trump campaign, there's at least the appearance of a conflict of interest in his case, and his defense of Trump's reluctance to campaign in communities of color reinforces the suspicion.

I wonder, too, if Colbert would have brought up the point if a former Clinton campaign manager had been snapped up by CNN after being fired by his boss.  I doubt it, since Colbert has largely followed the Clinton line since before she officially won the nomination.  Also last night he did a segment on "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theories, referring derisively to a couple from the Republican side but neglecting any from the Democrats.  Oh well, maybe it was just time limitations.

Campaign 2016: Race to the Bottom

One of the stories on Democracy Now! this morning was about Donald Trump's "alt-right" connections, exemplified by his hiring of Breitbart's Stephen Bannon to run his campaign on top of his Birtherism, his appeal to white racists, and so on.  DN anchor Amy Goodman asked the reporter Sarah Posner (at about 56:50 in the video):

GOODMAN: Some are saying that this whole presidential election that he is involved with is actually a strategy for developing Trump TV, that he is consolidating a media leadership here, with Bannon, with Roger Ailes, who is now forced out because of sexual harassment allegations by more than twenty women, from Fox, and now reportedly advising Donald Trump.  How significant is this possibility?

POSNER: ... If this is something that Trump does, in fact, have in mind, the fact that he's asking Roger Ailes for advice, and was asking Roger Ailes -- he was in regular contact with Roger Ailes even before Ailes was forced out of Fox over the sexual harassment lawsuit, and the fact that he's hired Bannon, and combine that with how throughout his campaign Trump has been so disparaging of the mainstream media, the way he calls out individual reporters at his campaign events, calls on his rally attenders to turn around and scoff at and disparage the media that's covering the rally from a press pen, all of this points to -- and also how he talks about the unfairness of the way the media covers him, and almost setting the stage for blaming the media if he loses.  So if you put all of this together, regardless of what Trump actually does organizationally, in terms of creating a media outlet if he were to lose the presidency, after the campaign, it seems pretty evident there's a lot of sowing of discontent about the mainstream media, and of bolstering of these alternative media sites that have been supportive of Trump and supportive of the alt-right.

This is not insignificant, but Posner's answer made me laugh almost as much as Trump's running mate Mike Pence laughed when Fox News asked him about Trump's prospects with African-American voters.  Posner seemed genuinely indignant that anybody would disparage the mainstream media, would sow discontent about the mainstream media, would bolster alternative media sites to counter the mainstream media -- while she was appearing on an alternative media site that regularly disparages the mainstream media, to plug an article she had written for Mother Jones, an alternative media outlet.  The mainstream media provide many good reasons to disparage them, every day.  That being said, Trump and his supporters are no happier with the coverage he gets in the liberal and left alternative media.  It's not really about alternative vs. mainstream, but about fawningly pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump.

And it's not as if mainstream or left-liberal alternative media are more rational or responsible than alt-right media -- look, for just one example, at the ginned-up hysteria over Putin's alleged influence on the Trump campagin.  If, as Posner and Goodman mentioned, Breitbart publishes vitriolic attacks not only on liberals and Democrats but on right-wing figures who are insufficiently supportive of Trump, certain popular liberal and alternative media, such as Daily Kos, have become cesspools of center-right clickbait, posting material of minimal content whose sole purpose for production and publication (aside from getting site traffic) is to whip the faithful into a frenzy of ragegasms against Trump, the Republican Party, and the right in general, using many of the same tactics (slut-shaming, fat-shaming, racism [the evil of China is a point of agreement between center-right and far right, for example], religious bigotry).  The comments sections aren't as bad as right-wing comment sections -- yet -- but many of the commenters seem engaged in a race to the bottom with their fascist counterparts.  Many of my liberal friends and acquaintances on Facebook obsessively scratch the itch of Trump-loathing with meme after meme, clickbait post after clickbait post, embellished with remarks like "UGH", "SICK," and the like; the accusations of mental illness and/or mental retardation echo the same accusations from their fascist counterparts.  Factual accuracy and critical reason are optional, and indeed conspicuous by their absence. The 2012 campaign season, as bad as it was, looks almost like a paradise of sweet reason and love by comparison.  No doubt 2020 will continue the trend.

I still see a tendency among liberals to imagine that all this is something new.  It's not; it's a regular, ongoing feature of American political life.  I don't see any prospect of change.

You Cannot Hope to Bribe or Twist

Avedon Carol's Sideshow continues to be a very useful source of links, but there's less discussion in the comments than there used to be.  I remember having some spirited debates there in 2008, especially.  Her blog is still prominent enough to draw fire from Democratic loyalists, however, and under the latest post is a fine example of the syndrome.  I'm going to quote the whole thing, because comments have a tendency to disappear over time as one commenting platform is replaced by another, and it might be handy to be able to quote this in the future as an example of a well-trained Clintonbot.

Every time the "lesser evil" debate comes up, it bears repeating that we could solve this once and for all with approval voting. And repeating, and repeating. The two-party monopoly is a function of the voting system, and that can be fixed.

Lots of luck fixing that; I can't see Clinton taking any interest in the project, or the party elites on either side.  How would you change the voting system, by the way?  By voting?

In this particular case, I have to say the "lesser evil" question looks pretty easy to me. Clinton has the most progressive Democratic platform ever*, and while she's more hawkish than Obama and that sucks, that would still makes her the second least hawkish president in over 100 years. Her opponent is a narcissist with ADD who's riding a wave of hate and wants to know why we don't just nuke more countries. I voted Nader because I didn't see the difference between Gore and Bush, and I think history has proven that there was one. But there is no doubt at all that, as inadequate to the deeper challenges as Clinton is, she's a damn sight better than Trump.

Nice footwork.  As far as I can tell, there's no need to prove that Clinton is the lesser evil to anyone but a Trump supporter.  If you're addressing a frustrated progressive or liberal who says that everybody must vote for Clinton because otherwise Trump will win, that Clinton is the lesser evil is already given.  The Sanders supporters who don't want to vote for Clinton aren't really interested in the question; they recognize that even if Clinton is the lesser evil, she's still very evil; even if she's not as dangerous as Trump, she's still very dangerous.  So this commenter, whether intentionally or out of standard partisan cluelessness, misses the point completely.

The commenter's defenses are of course debatable.  It's certainly open to question whether Clinton would be "the second least hawkish president in 100 years", especially if (as it appears) the least hawkish president is supposed to be Obama.  I'm not really interested in how progressive the current Democratic platform is, and I see no reason to suppose that this commenter is any better informed on that topic than on Clinton's hawkishness.

On the fabled difference between Gore and Bush, much beloved of Democratic loyalists, no one has any idea what Gore would have done if he'd become president.  I suppose that the commenter has in mind Gore's environmental campaigning after he became a more or less private citizen, but private citizens are much less constrained that elected officials, including American presidents.  (Again, it's funny how partisans oscillate between touting the great power of presidents on one hand, and denying that they can do anything on the other.)   Gore didn't distinguish himself as a progressive while he was vice-president, and I see no reason to suppose that he'd have changed if he'd gained the White House.  It might be pertinent to recall the difference between Jimmy Carter's inspiring behavior and pronouncements since he became a private citizen, and his squalid record while he was in the Oval Office.  For what little it's worth, I voted for Nader not because I thought there was no difference between Gore and Bush, but because the differences were too small to suit me.  Anyone who wants to argue this line should have to address the many continuities between Bush and Obama, in terms of hawkishnness and hostility to civil liberties at home.

"Her opponent is a narcissist with ADD who's riding a wave of hate and wants to know why we don't just nuke more countries."  I've become increasingly intolerant of Democrats who use mental illness as an accusation against Trump and his followers.  As far as I know, no mental health professional is in a position to diagnose Trump with any condition, so neither this commenter nor I know whether Trump has ADD for example.  Even if he did, mental illness (like mental retardation) is not a moral failing, yet it's clear that these Dems assume that it is.  If Clinton or Obama were known to have ADD or some other condition, their fans and their organizations would be spinning it in terms of a heroic individual's struggle with a cripping disease, and they would assure the nation that the illness would not hinder the candidate's performance in office.  It's especially ironic since a favorite anti-Trump talking point is his mockery of a disabled journalist a few months ago.  The wave of hate that has been directed by Democrats at Trump all along means that they're in no position to cast the first stone.

*Some would say "who cares about the platform, it's all lies." But history shows that, whether they truly believe it or not, presidents try to keep the majority of their promises. Go ahead and discount the Democratic platform by 1/3; it's still light years from Trump.

Would "some" say that?  Maybe.  "Some" will probably say anything you like; it's a big world.  Just how far apart Clinton and Trump really are is hard to say, and I don't see that it matters, certainly not enough to spend much time debating it.  For all that Trump has taken many vile positions, his lack of any real political experience means that he has no record to judge what kind of a president he'd make.  Not that I have any wish to find out, and his record as a businessman inspires no optimism anyway.  But "light years"?  I don't think so.  I guess that if you're one of the Good Guys, as the commenter evidently assumes him or herself to be, that kind of childish exaggeration ("thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big!") is supposed to pass for rational discourse.  Once again, we see that Democratic apologists won't be satisfied if you recognize Clinton as the lesser evil; you must convince yourself that she's a positive good.

The Unbiased View Lies Somewhere in Between

Ted Rall did this better, but it reminded me of something I've been noticing for a while.  Just as both Americans and South Koreans oscillate between seeing North Korea as a weak, pathetic, ineffectual clown show on the one hand and an existential threat poised to rain nuclear missiles on Washington, D.C., so liberals can't quite make up their minds whether Donald Trump's laughable campaign has been doomed to fail from the beginning or is a sleek, streamlined fascist steamroller that will take Hillary down and impose a Nazi dictatorship on America if we don't clench our fists, squint real hard, and mock him on Facebook a dozen times a day.

Now that I think of it, such doublethink characterized the World War II-era propaganda cartoons that were recycled on TV when I was a kid: Hitler was a terrible threat, but mainly a clown, so we all must join hands and unite to destroy him without breaking a sweat.  One must simultaneously convince oneself of the danger, and deny that there's any danger.  But it gets comical when the contrary ideas are put side by side.

Human Sacrifice and Political Capital

The last national political convention I watched on TV was the Democratic one in 1968.  By 1972 I wasn't living with my parents any more and didn't have a television on all the time, and that's still true.  This time around I watched stray Stephen Colbert clips on Youtube, and listened to Democracy Now's coverage in the mornings.  I don't think I missed anything important.

The big story out of Philadelphia last week was evidently the brief speech by Khizn Khan, a Pakistani immigrant whose son Humayun was killed in action in Iraq in 2004. Khan Senior assailed Donald Trump for wanting to keep Muslim immigrants out of the US, waved around a copy of the Constitution, and said "You have sacrificed nothing and no one."

The Democrats could hardly have hoped for better political theater. Khan's speech went viral, as they say.  The American Civil Liberties Union offered free copies of the Constitution until election day.  Families of American soldiers killed in action stood with the Khans.  Trump flailed around, trying to divert attention to Khan's wife Ghazala, who stood in silence while her husband delivered his speech (but spoke up in reponse to Trump), and finally whined that "I was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention.  Am I not allowed to respond?  Hillary voted for the Iraq War, not me!"  (Of course Trump is "allowed to respond," but it's proper to judge him on the quality of his response, which was even poorer than I'd have expected; but his normal style of attack would backfire if he used it on a Gold Star family.)  Trump's running mate Mike Pence issued a statement praising the Khans and trying to blame Obama and Clinton for Humayan's death, evidently because they'd traveled back in time and made George W. Bush start the War on Terror.

It wasn't until this morning, preparatory to writing this post, that I read the transcript of Khizr Khan's remarks at the DNC.  Khan spoke briefly, without a prepared text or a teleprompter.  As he told the New York Times, "It all flowed pretty easily, because he had been thinking about these things for quite a while, he said."  It's not a criticism of Khan to say that it shows; he wasn't there to make an argument but to make an emotional appeal, and grieving Gold Star families and fallen heroes are very effective emotional appeals.

I don't like it when any party exploits veterans or their families for political capital, and the cognitive dissonance in Khan's speech and the reaction to it is stronger than usual.  It's true that if Muslim immigration had been blocked in the past, the Khans would not be in the US and Humayan would not have gone to Iraq for our military; but in that case he would probably still be alive.  I almost feel sympathy for Trump when he pointed out correctly that Clinton supported the invasion of Iraq (though incorrectly that he didn't).  True, Trump made no sacrifices -- but neither did Bush, Obama, or Clinton.  And though it makes no difference to the pain and suffering caused the Khans by the loss of their son, I must stress again that Humayan Khan was not defending America or its freedoms.  He was a willing participant in a war of aggression that undermined America and its freedoms.
I think the main reason Trump is taking so much heat for his (unusually mild by his standards) response to the Khans is that they don't question the war.  Perhaps Khizr Khan should reread his copy of the Constitution, attending this time to the grounds it prescribes for the waging of war.

It's hard for me to make sense of a political faction that now claims Bush's war in Iraq was a bad decision (though its president not only supported it once it got going but tried to continue it after it was supposed to end), yet makes political hay out of the deaths of the soldiers who died uselessly in it.  Notice that I say "sense," because the partisan emotional appeal of Khizr Khan's speech has nothing to do with reason.  From a propaganda viewpoint, using the grieving parents of a fallen soldier to attack the enemy candidate makes perfect sense.  I don't blame the DNC for using the Khans, I only insist on my reservations about what that use means.

I'm also struck by the oddity of the Khans supporting Hillary Clinton, who did support the invasion of Iraq and every war since -- including some, like an attack on Syria, that didn't pan out -- as if she offered a real alternative to Trump.  The only sense in which she is an alternative is that she'll allow American Muslims to kill and die in her service.  That's equality!

Neither party is interested in the deaths of the Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, and others killed by our weapons in our unjustifiable wars.  The sacrifices they made, or had made for them by US fiat, don't count.  Defeating Trump in November isn't likely to end the sacrifices, either of US families or of the victims of US foreign policy abroad. 

Trump Delenda Est?

Remember: the Democratic Party bosses were (and are) more concerned with stopping Bernie Sanders than with stopping Donald Trump.

Kshama Sawant, the Socialist city council member from Seattle, was on Democracy Now this morning.  She made the above point in a fine debate with Rebecca Traister of New York magazine, and I think it will be a useful riposte, not only to Democratic loyalists who cling to Clinton as "all that stands between us and Il Douche," but to self-styled "pragmaticists."  I've said before that many Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than break with their corporate cronies, and if nothing else, the past year has confirmed that abundantly.

I want to give Rebecca Traister credit; though I disagree with much of what she said, she was careful to stay on the issues instead of descending into panicky hyperbole and abuse as most Democratic loyalists and Clinton supporters do when they must confront Clinton's critics.  Kshama Sawant impressed me especially because she didn't let Traister set the terms of the debate, didn't let herself be diverted from her points.  The whole segment is worth reading (or listening to, if you prefer), just as an example of responsible debate.

Here are the remarks by Kshama Sawant that I referred to above:

But here’s the question I would like to ask: If the Democratic Party establishment, the Democratic National Committee, was—had as its first priority to defeat Trump—I have no doubt that they want to defeat Trump, but if that was their topmost priority, then why did they not do everything in their power to promote the one candidate who, through many, many polls, was indicated to have been a really prominent, a very powerful voice against Trump and having the real possibility of winning against Trump?

I think this is an eminently fair question, and I intend to put it to every Clinton supporter I talk to.  Polls have their limitations, of course, but as I've also pointed out before, the Democratic bosses know what the polls show, and must be aware how unpopular most of their policies are.  Perhaps the polls were wrong, but then so were the bosses: they were taken completely by surprise when Clinton's road to the nomination turned out not to be a cakewalk as everyone had expected to be.  Bernie Sanders not only didn't fall out of the race early on, as all the Sensible People knew he would, he defeated Clinton repeatedly, often resoundingly, in numerous states.  I think it's also reasonable to believe that if not for DNC malfeasance and corporate media irresponsibility, he could have won the nomination in the primaries.

But the key point is that polls showed consistently that Sanders could have beaten Trump more certainly and securely than Clinton could.  That might not be true now, since Sanders went over to the Dark Side, and of course it's entirely possible that what the polls showed earlier this summer would not have stayed true after the convention.  As Sawant asks, if defeating Trump was the vital thing, then why did the party bosses support a candidate who very likely couldn't do it?

This counters most, maybe all of the arguments made by Clinton's supporters.  Yes, it would be nice to have a woman president; but we have to be realists, and in this campaign we have to put such considerations aside for the greater and indeed necessary good of defeating Trump.  That's the argument made against Sanders breaking with the Democrats and (say) joining Jill Stein and the Greens, isn't it?  It's a nice pipe dream, but all that matters is defeating Trump.  (My only reservation about Sawant's performance this morning is that she was a bit evasive about the consequences of supporting Jill Stein, whose positions are good but doesn't have any realistic chance of defeating Trump in a three-way race, not even if Sanders joined her.)

Which indicates that for the party bosses, defeating Trump is not all that essential.  They will suffer less than most Americans, or most people in the world, if Trump is elected -- aside from the First World Problem of having lost the election, to be sure, which is traumatic but they'll get over it.  If Clinton is defeated, the Democrats will blame everyone but themselves.  But they must be held responsible for ignoring hard political realities and pushing a candidate who's almost as unpopular as Trump himself, in order to maintain their control over the party.  If Clinton does win, it won't be because she's the best, most qualified candidate, but because the alternative was so much worse.

Paul, Paul, Why Persecutest Thou Me?

I think I've written about this before, but, well, we're in another campaign season and the same old apologetic slogans keep being deployed.

Someone linked to Rolling Stone's 2014 celebration of President Obama, I suppose because we're not getting enough propaganda and must recycle the old stuff; also because you can never adore the Leader too much.  It doesn't hurt that the author of the piece, Paul Krugman, had formerly been blind but now he sees.  This kind of ranking game is a waste of time in any field, but it probably does less harm in sports than in politics, and even in politics memories are short, so who will bother to remember Krugman's panegyric of Obama after next January 20?

Anyway, an acquaintance of mine commented on the article, recalling Obama's many crimes (which no doubt Krugman would consider among his successes): "Me, I curse the war criminal, that what passes for his soul burns forever in the fires of the missiles he causes to rain down on innocents. I curse him to silent pain and darkness until the end of time and space. So be it."  He's a neo-Wiccan, I believe, hence the style of his rhetoric.)

The person who'd linked to the article replied predictably.

Then you better curse pretty much every president we have ever had. We have been pretty constant with the wars, illegal actions, genocide, and more in this country. I think the office of presidency has always had blood on it's hands. And let's not forget the war criminals of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Haliburton and all.

My acquaintance replied equably, "I do. Obama is nothing unique or special in this respect."

Now, it seems to me that the Democrats have mostly forgotten "the war criminals of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Halliburton and all," just as this person has conveniently forgotten Obama's and Clinton's crimes. A well-controlled memory is so important in today's world!

What interests me here is that this defense of  Obama (and Clinton) is just as applicable to any Republican president or candidate, and indeed to any tyrant anywhere in the world.  Bush's wars were among his gravest offenses in the minds of liberal Democrats in 2008, but once they became Obama's wars they ceased to be of any concern; the same goes for just about everything Democrats had pretended to condemn in Bush's record: his economic policies, his assault on civil liberties, his hostility to "entitlements," you name it.  Obamamania has always been at war with Bushistan.

Does this apply to Trump?  Of course it does, as it did to McCain in 2008 and Romney and 2012.  The perfect is the enemy of the good, and if you demand a perfect candidate you won't be able to vote for anybody.   Probably you don't want anybody to vote, they should just stay at home on election day and hand the victory to Clinton.  Clinton is terrible, so we've just got to hold our noses and vote for Trump.  He may not be perfect but he's practically perfect, he's almost a progressive who'll fight the elites and the special interests on behalf of ordinary Americans!  (Yes, Trump's partisans do say this sort of thing.)  Besides, Trump has to say these kinds of things in order to get elected -- once he's in office he'll show his real self, and meanwhile he offers "a reasonable measure of hope."  (And change, don't forget change.)  Trump's playing eleven-dimensional chess with the libtards!  And with the rich elites that have driven our country into the ground!  And with ... you, O Trump fan.

When Donald Trump used a teleprompter recently, I tweaked my Right Wing Acquaintance Number 3, since "teleprompter" was one of her totem words to throw at Obama.  She has always declined to answer when I asked her how she felt about George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan using the things, but this time she said that it was okay, because he wasn't going to rely on the teleprompter.  As far as I know, Obama doesn't rely on the teleprompter either.  There are many times when he has to extemporize, as when he's fielding questions at press conferences.  Besides, Bush and Reagan relied on the machine at least as much as Obama does.  RWA3's response shows again that partisans care about isn't principle but persons: what matters isn't what is said or done, but who's doing it.  If my guy does it, it's a glorious example of America's greatness; if your guy does it, it's because he and his supporters hate America and the Constitution.  Which is why elections change nothing much except the names of the perpetrators.  Obamamania has always been at war with Trumposlovakia.

Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Brain

One benefit, if that's the right word, of using social media is that they bring me into fairly direct interaction with people who are ignorant, misinformed, and don't think very well.  Over the years I've been rather spoiled by reading the work of people who work hard to inform themselves, do their best to think critically, and do a pretty good job of it, at least within the pages of their published writing.  I've also exposed myself to media from a variety of positions, so while I'd hardly claim to be the most informed person on the planet, I'm better informed than most people I talk to.

So it's not surprising that when I've had a discussion with people who not only haven't read much or thought much or ranged beyond the corporate media for news, but who have actively sought to shut out of their awareness anything but Fox News or Breitbart.com or WorldNewsDaily (or Occupy Democrats or Daily Kos), I've been baffled.  I've been asking myself just how much thinking it's fair to demand from people.  As much as I demand of myself, I suppose, but that seems to set the bar much higher than I realized for a long time.

I remind myself that I've arranged my life so as to leave plenty of room for reading and thinking and learning.  People who chose to raise families, who've had demanding jobs that took time away even from spending time with their families, have a legitimate excuse for not pasturing their souls.  Still, I don't think I (or anyone else) is obligated to respect or take seriously the opinions of people who haven't bothered to inform themselves or consider alternatives.

It's a popular notion that people aren't equally gifted intellectually, and I try to bear that in mind.  The doctrine "All men are created equal" is dismissed lightly, mostly it seems by people who assume themselves to be in the superior ranks; again, they don't seem to have reached that conclusion by examining evidence, they just take it for granted.  Yet I find that if I dismiss such people's misinformed, irrational opinions, they indignantly appeal to egalitarianism: Everybody's entitled to their opinion!  My opinion is as good as yours! You're just a smart-aleck know-it-all, you think you're better than everybody else!  It's not really elitism. however, to say that some opinions are worth less than others, and indeed many aren't worth a damn.  (This is where I part company with someone like Noam Chomsky when he says "It is not possible to respond to opinions," especially when he then proceeds to discuss how you can respond to opinions.  Yes, debating opinions is messy and difficult, but so is debating arguments, which Chomsky thinks is possible.)  I think it's significant that people who insist that every opinion is as good or another don't extend that dogma to other people's opinions (mine, for example). 

Politics and religion are probably the most vexed areas for this.  I've come to realize that partisans, whether of Obama or Clinton or Trump, don't care about reasons or factual accuracy where their heroes are concerned.  It's probably not a complete waste of time to show why Donald Trump is a liar, a racist, or a corrupt thug, but it won't have much effect on his supporters, who mostly like his lies, racism, and corruption.  The same is true of Hillary Clinton's supporters.  (And of Obama, but he's old news now.)  On one hand they prefer to be uninformed about her record, but when it gets right down to it they mostly agree with her destructive, warmongering foreign policy history, her corporatist economic policy, and her support for structural racism in the drug war and the private prison system.  Dishonesty and irrationality go with electoral politics like a horse and carriage.  Besides, half of the population is below average, so we must have a meritocracy: our elites have never led us wrong before.

There are other takes on the problem, and all this is preamble to one of them.  Someone I know shared this meme on Facebook yesterday.

He remarked, "... sorry about my many deeply bigoted friends. i suppose they're doing the best they can to get by in a deeply crazy time and place."

I commented, "I can love my neighbor while disapproving strongly of her religion or other beliefs. I disapprove of all religions. This meme reeks of 'Some of my best friends are,' which is one of the Seven Warning Signals of Bigotry."

He responded, "on disapproving of religions. i hate their hierarchies... not their believers (the sin, not the sinner, as one tires of hearing). the believers generally seem to be honestly trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand. when all they have to say is some stuff i've known about since grade-school, it can... it does... become tiresome very quickly. but, with some good faith on both sides, sometimes i can get something out of such a discussion (namely, a chance to tell them something about my life; nothing in social life with one's clothes on can match the feeling of being listened to with attention)."

I replied:

"Hierarchies" are only part of religion, and they are not limited to religion anyway. My objection to religions is that they are false, hierarchies or no. And I didn't say anything about "hate," which is a meaningless buzzword and a sign of bad faith.

"the believers generally seem to be honestly trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand." Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but once it becomes clear that they are not interested in discussing in good faith, I tune them out. There's nothing wrong with that; life is short. Bad faith and dishonesty are part of human nature, but I'm not obligated to pretend that they're anything but spinach, and I say the hell with it.

The same is true of science cultists and conspiracy theory mongers. They too are trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand, but I'm not obligated to pretend that they're either right or honest. We're not children anymore, and there's no obligation to pretend that the crayon scrawl that's supposed to be a superhero looks like anything but random lines. For a five year old, of course; for a thirty-year-old and up, no.

I hadn't really thought about the condescension in his remarks about his "deeply bigoted friends," but it's definitely there.  For whatever reasons, he sees them with a patronizing contempt.  I added that he should extend the same indulgence to the shadowy overlords who control our thoughts with their media machine (my allusion to "conspiracy theory mongers" was directed at him).  Of course the same accusation might be directed at my analogy to children's drawings, but I don't think it's just.  It's my friend who was infantilizing his "deeply bigoted friends."  I -- we all -- expect adults to do better than random crayon scrawls.  There's certainly no reason I can see to pretend that their misinformed, wildly irrational opinions are as good as anyone else's.

One point that I consider revealing is his bit about "their hierarchies... not their believers (the sin, not the sinner, as one tires of hearing)".  The believers are beside the point for me: it's their beliefs.  In practice it's not so easy to distinguish between them, since people are apt to identify themselves with their beliefs, and contrary to "generally seem to be honestly trying to tell me something about their lives with what they think will be the most effective tools-at-hand," many believers revel in their bad faith.  I'm not talking only about your schlub in the street, but about educated and sophisticated thinkers.

I can see that my acquaintances, both far-right wing and center-right plus not a few of the lefties, have no idea how to proceed when someone disagrees with them.  From both positions I've been attacked for criticizing what they post.  For them to post something racist, inflammatory, or generally dishonest is exercising their sacred First Amendment rights; for me to disagree with them is to violate their freedom.  I've also been accused semi-teasingly (presumably a "microaggression"), usually by liberals, of "stirring the pot," of just saying what I say to "stir things up."  This is flagrantly patronizing, and I've slapped those people down without compunction.

Are my acquaintances, most of whom are in their fifties at least, too old and set in their ways to learn to think critically?  I don't know how to answer that question.  I don't believe one is ever too old to learn; age is not an excuse.  Be that as it may, I'm old and set in my ways too.  But at least aged bigots, having apparently led sheltered lives, need to be confronted with opposition when they blurt out their bigotry.  Their families may have to let their poisonous views pass, but I don't have to.

I've long suspected that many people love social media because they can jeer at people they think they hate from a safe distance; that their targets might talk back is unthinkable to them.  (Has anyone else noticed how many people will respond to material about a celebrity by stating their love and devotion to the celebrity directly in comments, though the material wasn't posted by the celebrity or her spokespeople?  It's like yelling at your TV in the belief that Dumpf or Hitlery will hear you.)  When one of their targets does talk back, they're flummoxed.  Like most people, they have no idea how to proceed from the point of disagreement.  Come to think of it, since they're not interested in questioning their loyalties and beliefs anyway, I guess there is no way to proceed.  And where would they have learned to think critically in the first place?  The Right has always treated the teaching of critical thinking in school as a threat to civilization, along with the Jews and gay marriage.

The question of 'media brainwashing' is important too.  The media would like to think they can affect opinion, even to manufacture and control it, but this is false advertising much of the time.  Sometimes they pander to opinions already held (jingoism, religion, partisanship, racism) and can intensify them somewhat, but rarely for long; giving them credit for the opinions seems like giving them credit for the rising of the sun because they printed the time of sunrise in advance.  It's a less persuasive claim now of all times, when Trump and Sanders have confounded our wise rulers in politics and the media.  Despite a relentless flood of apocalyptic propaganda, it appears that English voters mostly favor leaving the European Economic Community.  And so on.  Nothing inspires panic in an elite like the realization that the proles are disobeying orders, and they often do, for better and worse.  I often ask those who talk about media brainwashing how they managed to resist it; I've yet to get an answer.

In the end, shadowy overlords or no shadowy overlords (I don't think they're shadowy at all, if you bother to pay attention, but it's comforting to think of yourself as one of the few who can see what the Sheeple can't), we are responsible for what we take from the media, the pronouncements of our politicians.  No one can know everything, of course, but it's possible to apply the basics of critical thinking (summaries by Deborah Meier and Walter Kaufmann quoted in this post) and start asking sensible, relevant questions.  Then it's necessary to recognize that one might be wrong, and to pay attention to differing views until you've evaluated them.  (Whining that someone is making a career out of picking on your beliefs, that they're just a smart-aleck trying to stir things up, is not an acceptable substitute.  I don't believe I've ever done that myself, at least not since the age of six; when someone corrects me, I check the correction, and admit my error if I have made one.  Most of my friends do not.)  What to do from there is another problem, harder to answer, but the same critical tools can help.

If the Associated Press Says It, It Must Be True; I Will Work Harder

Yesterday, as you will no doubt have heard, the Associated Press ran a story on the eve of the California primary, announcing that Hillary Rodham Clinton already had all the delegates and superdelegates she needed to win the nomination for the Democratic Party's candidate for President.  That was great news, of course, because leaving behind that trivial but painful question will let the media concentrate on really important issues.  

This morning the lefty/progressive news outlet Democracy Now! ran a story announcing that many voters had essentially surrendered.  According to"Rose Aguilar, host of 'Your Call,' a daily public affairs radio show on NPR-affiliate KALW in San Francisco":

So 250,000 people have turned in their ballots, and this organization did an exit poll and asked these people, "All right, how many of you turned in a ballot without voting for a president?" It was 42 percent. They wanted to vote for president, and they didn’t. [Bold type mine -- DM.]  And they wanted to vote for a Democrat. So that’s almost half. That’s about 125,000 people in the state of California—

AMY GOODMAN: Why didn’t they vote?

ROSE AGUILAR: —have already voted without voting for a president. And 57 percent of those voters said they wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders. So people are turning in ballots without voting for a president. So you have to ask for a crossover ballot.

I suggest you read the entire interview, because as what I've quoted indicates, the situation is complicated.  The California primary balloting system is evidently set up to make it difficult for voters to vote as they wish.

It's funny: many Democrats are still blaming Ralph Nader for costing Al Gore the Presidency in 2000, though it's not at all clear he did so. (I lost most of the respect I had for Stephen Colbert when he parroted that line to discourage Sanders voters last month.)  Will those same Democrats attack the DNC and the AP for taking the nomination away from Sanders today?

But there's something else: I think it's a safe bet that Sanders supporters are more cynical about the corporate media than most voters. If I'm right, it's also strange that so many (125,000!?) evidently believed the AP story/propaganda, despite all the recent examples of media distortion about the primaries. (That's why I say "cynical," not "skeptical.") Instead of casting a vote for Sanders anyway, they let themselves be fooled. "They wanted to vote for president, and they didn’t." No one made them give up, they chose to do it. When people believe such falsehoods, I always suspect that it's because they wanted an excuse to believe them, on some level. If they really wanted to vote for a presidential candidate (not for president) they could have. They chose not to. What will they do in November if the media lie again? None of this excuses the AP, you understand, but they didn't make anyone do anything.

But I may be wrong.  From Aguilar's full remarks, it's not clear how much the AP story really had to do with the failure of many California voters to cast a vote for a presidential nominee in this primary.  (That's another sore point with me: many people in both parties talk about the primaries as if they chose the President, not the respective parties' candidates for President.  The Republicans I know consistently cited Trump's poll numbers among Republicans as if they represented his popularity among all voters,  Some Democrats I know scolded Clinton's or Sanders's critics as if they undermining the outcome of the November elections, which are still several months away.  The best was probably the Clintonbot who wrote in a blog comment a month ago], "Just remember that all the pessimism you express in comment sections on the internet helps Donald Trump."

Aguilar also told Amy Goodman:

Now, to make matters even more confusing, the Los Angeles Times had a really good report about a month ago and found that 500,000 Californians checked off the American Independent Party box, thinking, well, that’s the independent party, right? Seems logical. That is an ultra, ultra-right party in California, the American Independent Party. And the L.A. Times found that 75 percent of those voters had no idea it was an ultra-right party. So, it’s really shameful that the rules are so confusing.

I don't see, from what Aguilar says, what this has to do with "the rules."  It seems to be about a reasonable confusion due to the name of an "ultra, ultra-right party," which chose its name for propaganda purposes, in order to sound attractive to voters.  (You know, like "Democratic" and "Republican."  The names do not describe the actual principles or platforms of the parties.)

We will never have a government of by and for the people if the people don't think critically. But even highly trained professionals complain when the terms of a controversy aren't set out clearly and impartially in advance, predigested as it were, even though their training is ostensibly designed to teach them how to see through the extraneous elements to the core of a problem.  A good society will never be handed to us on a platter.  The rich and powerful don't even need to use coercion, just a well-timed lie in the news media.  That can be countered fairly bloodlessly, but you have counter it.