The shiny

>>>4) When you deny the legitimacy of people fighting for their rights, we’re not on the same side (that’s fine, just noting it). That is true if you deny the rebels in India, the Palestinians, the Syrians or the Libyans. Or Americans, for that matter.<<<<

For a long time, America has not had a conscious. It has not only denied the legitimacy of the struggles of many, it has acted against those very struggles to put them down just as all the colonial powers that preceded it did. Ultimately, empire becomes unwieldy and it creates the weight under which it own collapse is all but guaranteed. This is where we're at and now the rapaciousness with which it has attacked the rest of the globe will turn inward against its own citizens. We're seeing this beginning now, but most people are clueless about what's about to beset them as they've firmly planted their glance out of the rear view mirror and are assuming the recent past will also be the future. They don't realize that all of the things we've visited on people around the globe will now come home to roost.

A couple of minutes ago, I was reading about how the US is now discarding the UN mandate to "protect citizens" in Libya and is now going for straight up killing Ghaddhafi. Whether or not he's a dirtbag or not is beside the point. We're invading a nation to kill it's leader, install our own economic and political regime and simply take that nation's resources. The citizens of this nation should be outraged and perhaps more than we know are, but these voices won't be heard because the government, the media and big business are now fused as one. They always were to some extent, but at least we were entertained with the pretext of it being otherwise. Now, even that pretext has been removed. These people will create any reason to justify what they want to do, that much is clear.

The one thing that has sealed the faith of western citizens is their unawareness, their uncaring attitude and their lack of sense of justice as hell has been visited on all other peoples around the globe. That silence has enlarged the power and expertise of the oligarchs. They have long experience manipulating, raping and pillaging resources so it is no big deal to do it here and throughout the west. The same game that has been pulled in the third world for years while hopes, dreams and aspirations of those people were dashed is now being brought home. That much is clear.

The revolution, if there was to be one, should have started decades ago in response to what was happening to other people. The system was never sustainable even then. Anything based on war, exploitation and abuse never is.

What do you do when you are one of the few who even realizes this? Those who are aware of this are few and the vast majority are clueless. I just think the most viable path now is reduce one's dependence on the system as much as you can. That alone can take some power from them and put it back into one's own hands at least for now. There is a movement afoot to keep folks from getting too far off grid and that involves enforcing the use of digital money so you can't run outside the system. That system will likely be justified in the same manner that all the groping and feeling in the airports was–the war on terror. If it comes to that, my own position will need some reconsideration.

I think the political parallel to the current US situation is the 1950s: an irrational, authoritarian conservative dominance. The economic parallel, of course, is the 1930s.

Not like the 1960s, no, not at all.

The USA had its right-wing revolution with Bush II; the question is how long the right will stay in power. My impression is the radicals will be out in 2012–the Tea Party Republicans have made themselves unpopular. But I think the coalition of Wall Street Republicans and conservative Democrats is likely to last until 2020.

It’s not the least clear that anyone has any idea how implement even moderate liberal solutions, let alone radical ones. I am puzzled as to why you are objecting to incrementalism: ideological incrementalism is not the problem. The wrong people are in charge, that’s all. If you’ve got a solution, I’d like to hear it.

Personally I would not use the word evil. Not because I don’t think what you are talking about is morally reprehensible, but because I think it’s sort of like the word Nazi and all that Godwin’s law shit. What you see is small minded selfishness and ignorance and/or rationalizations for that selfishness. It’s completely banal, and of course many before have pointed out the banality of evil. But the word evil is loaded like the word Nazi, and most dumbshits think that Satan and Hitler etc personify evil and calling Dick Cheney evil, for instance, is over the top hyperbole for them (certainly not to me). Evil also seems to connote (to most people) some sort of genius for scheming, as well as a desire to harm others merely for the sake of doing evil. That to me gives too much credit to the Nazis or Republicans or Blue Dogs for having principals (even “evil” ones) or intelligence. Petty, small minded selfish assholes, that’s all they are. And they’re all around you, in every city and country -you’re soaking it it, as Madge the manicurist used to say.

Your last two paragraphs were what I was holding out on saying the entire time, because I was sitting back to see the Pavlovian reaction to the concept of coordinated and directed violent direct action. It was all quite predictable and I believe you have sized the situation up quite nicely, especially your characterization of, and prediction for, the U.S. That’s the part I was eventually going to say in all this. The U.S. will get a violent destabilization and quasi-revolution, but it won’t come from a coordinated action from the “Left” because there is no such thing in the U.S. There’s really no such thing as the “Right” here either, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s the perception that counts and as we have seen, those who consider themselves the “Right” are easily cajoled and manipulated. That senselessness will be used by the MIC to misdirect any potential violence. If things deteriorate enough, I can see a race war unfolding, scapegoats will be found and pogroms will be launched. A new Jew will be erected, but it won’t be the Jews who are to blamed…..it will be an issue that has never really been resolved and/or reconciled. It’s the issue of race. Despite Civil Rights, race is still a very serious issue in the U.S. For example, Blacks and Whites, outside of D.C., still don’t mix, socially. If you think otherwise, you’re an elitist intellectual who is out of touch with Main Street. As things tighten further and further, that tension that has always lurked underneath the surface will bubble to the top, a narrative will manifest, and senseless violence from the disenfranchised, gun-toting White Americans will ensue, and the Plutocracy will eat it up because a culling is in order, and what better way to conduct one. It’s great theater for them….one only need look at history to see that this is the Elite’s most favored form of entertainment. Disaster Capitalism on steroids.

Lambert, in no way does Ian’s statement that “’Try everything else first’ condemns those people to die.” entail that non-violent methods are off the table. Ian has repeatedly endorsed the use of multiple, simultaneous methods of resistance.

The pacifists’ demand that we try every non-violent method first may be appealing morally, but it’s bad strategy. When a foreign army is marching across your borders, you sometimes have to forego negotiations, protests, boycotts, and the like and just hit the bastards hard bfore they control all the strategic assets on the ground.

Similarly, waiting until the middle classes of the West are gone, and the majority of its people rduced to illiterate slum-dwellars before taking up arms against the banking oligarchs will guarantee that any revolt that does occur will fail.

There is no turning back the clock.

To this, I would like to deliver a line from The Road to Wigan Pier, different context but still applicable:

In the first place he [the socialist] will tell you that it is impossible to ‘go back’ (or to ‘put back the hand of progress’ — as though the hand of progress hadn’t been pretty violently put back several times in human history!)

Morocco Bama: appropriate action was never taken before the Nazi Party became too powerful…..and I’m sure there were many having this very same argument, and look how it turned out.

That’s actually not true. There was a lot of political street violence in the 20’s in Germany. The trade unions in particular fought against the Nazis. The middle classes, as is often the case, ended up more worried about working class rule than about the authoritarian option that the Nazis offered. This was true even among German middle class Jews prior to the Nazis actually seizing power.

The first reaction to actual physical violence is fear and flight to the arms of the authoritarian leader. As Ian points out, there’s enormous institutional violence from which we all suffer, but it isn’t perceived in the same way as the boogeyman who’s coming after you with his bomb! A reason for violence to come rather late in a struggle is that it may drive to the enemies’ arms the very people you want and need to support you, unless the other means of creating solidarity have been successful.

I differ with some of your points about the US, Ian. On almost every position, the US public is to the left of its leadership. We are not a “center-right’ nation; we have center-right leadership, because they are the best leadership money can buy. Americans are not voting for what is in store for them, and should not be held accountable for it.

But your point about the “silent deaths” and silent suffering as the “normal” state of affairs vs those from more violent, well-publicized, means is well taken. It’s the same old argument about what is worse–the number of deaths during the French terror vs all those peasants dying year after year silently under the ancien regime. And there’s no a facile answer for that one.

I do not see, however, how some social change could have happened in world history without violence. Southern slaveowners would have never given up slaves sans the outcome of the Civil War.

-StewartM

This was a factor in the Indian independence movement and the civil rights movement in the US South. Both movements were outgunned.

Neither were Revolutions in the true sense of the word. India may have cast out the Brits, but the factions that were in bed with the Brits took the helm because they were always exercising the power with the blessing of the Brits as Overseers. The Civil Rights movement was just that….a Movement, and ultimately it is a failure because it was not part of a larger Revolution. It never addressed the Class issue….or, when it did, MLK was murdered, and any chance for that movement to spread to Revolution, was buried with him. Cuba is the best example, but not applicable to the U.S. A Revolution is improbable in the U.S. for the reasons I stated, not because you say it couldn’t be successful because the state is too powerful. Also, just because the Cuban Revolution involved violence, doesn’t make it a “violent” Revolution. The Revolutionaries used all manner of tactics, as Ian outlines in his post. Pressure was applied everywhere and anywhere. All tactics were on the table at all times.

Here’s some appropriate thread music. Isn’t it a beautiful song? Could you imagine someone composing this about Bush or Obama?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxtwzU0-wPM

People are dying right now because of the way the world and specific countries are being run. People get distracted by explosions and words like violence, me, I look at the people dying for lack of health care, food and housing. The people who commit suicide because of the financial downturn. The wives and children being beaten because their husband or father cracked under financial stress that needn’t exist.

If you knew my neighborhood and my current circumstances, you would know that I am acutely aware of these painful realities. We have not reached the stage of children with matchstick legs and swollen bellies, but if there are further cuts to food stamps we will quickly reach that. And we may be like Chile or Argentina, go through a long period of right wing dictatorship before freedom is restored.

Lets look at the struggle for freedom in the 20th century. We have the oppressed Palestinians, Catholics of Northern Ireland, Basque country of Spain, and the Kurds. All of these groups faced, still face, terrible oppression of brutal dictators. All embraced violence. How did it work for them? Right.

Now lets look at those who embraced non-violence, India (and we can easily overestimate the civilized character of British Imperialism), Black Americans, Philippines, South Korea, Eastern Europe, and Russia. All of these people not only over threw their dictators, but got something better in their place (with the arguable exception of Russia).

Lets look at two mixed cases, Argentina and South Africa. In Argentina a guerilla war ignited a dirty war on the part of the government. Only when the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and similar groups began a sustained campaign of non-violence did the tide turn. The Falklands war gave these groups their opportunity, but had they not been place, they would not have been able to seize that opportunity.

In South Africa I would argue that the ANC war pro-longed Apartheid and part of what brought international opinion around was the sustained non-violence of the United Democratic Front and COSATU, even though there was a great deal of violence going on at that time.

One thing that is critical is a united front between labor and the intellectuals. That is part of what fell apart in the post WWII period in the US. Part of what I like about blogosphere is that for the most part it has been very supportive of organized labor.

Just on a pragmatic basis of who has won and who has lost, violence is a losing proposition, putting aside the question of moving from French colonialism, to American occupation, to Pol Pot. Let’s face it, the Congress Party of India had the better program.

The Raven:

StewartM, “Southern slaveowners would have never given up slaves sans the outcome of the Civil War.” Even if most of the slaves went on strike? There would have been violence on the part of the slaveholders, but in the end, the slaves would have won, they had the numbers and the food.

How exactly are the slaves going to organize amongst themselves a general strike, in the ability of being denied even the ability to read? (It was illegal in most Southern states for even a slaveowner to teach a slave literacy). Moreover, due to fear of any particular slave revolt spreading, Southerners repressed the news of them to such an extent that even today, we’re unsure of their numbers or frequency.

Also, using a metaphor from the era, your proposed action fails the “blood and flesh” test. In theory, as the military historian Paddy Griffith has been wont to argue when critiquing (unfairly and inaccurately, I believe) the leadership and tactics of Civil War troops, all those bayonet charges they made across open ground into the teeth of massed rifle musket and artillery fire *should* have succeeded more often. Griffith calls this failure one of leadership and training, and implies that if Civil War troops had been as well-trained and as well-led as Napoleon’s or Wellington’s by god, they would have done it. Griffith tries to debunk the more common argument that Civil War technological innovations such as rifled musketry and artillery made a significant difference and invalidated Napoleonic training and tactics.

I think Griffith’s wrong, for reasons I won’t go into. But a phrase from that era was that “blood and flesh can only endure so much” in reference to those charges. Charge across that open ground, and you’d see your comrades and leaders get blown to smithereens by artillery and musketry (descriptions said that when the canister hit, arms and legs and heads could be observed flying into the air in every direction; the aftermaths of such charges left gruesome remains). If you’re one of the lucky survivors after taking such blasts, the intimidation and desire to survive becomes rather overwhelming, causing you to hit the ground and hug every bit of cover you can find, and stop the charge. At most you start trying to shoot back at your tormentors from cover, but if they’re dug in it’s mostly ineffective return fire. It’s why so many of Pickett’s men did exactly that on that hot July day in 1863, at the Emittsburg Road.

Let’s move on to your proposed slave strike. If Civil war soldiers, people who may have had experience doing such charges in the past, and who had the training to know what they might expect, couldn’t persevere past a certain point, how are you expecting a comparable response from the slaves, who have had no training at this at all? Do you think it’s realistic to expect them to continue the strike passively, after they watch comrade after comrade suffer an ugly end in front of their very noses? Unlike the Civil Rights movement a century later, there are no TV cameras rolling so you don’t even know that your death will ever serve any purpose.

StewartM

The Raven:

I am puzzled as to why you are objecting to incrementalism: ideological incrementalism is not the problem.

The only incremental movement I see is ever rightward. We have the choice between going slowly rightward (the Dems) vs quickly rightward (the Repugs).

StewartM

The South is a toxic wasteland, at this point. I don’t call that progress. The Oligarchs sent manufacturing, first to the South before heading to Mexico and China, for the same reasons, which were cheap labor (no unions), tax concessions from the states and lax environmental laws….and you want to call that progress. Bullshit! The Southern states prostituted themselves out to the Corporatocracy, trading one ill for another, but don’t give me that shit that it was progress. At one time in this country, one salary could pay the bills for most, now it two salaries can’t get the job done. Wow, women can now work like slaves in Corporate World too. Now that’s progress…..equal on paper all the way to the poor house. Once again, it failed because it wasn’t a holistic, comprehensive to the bread & butter issue of Class.

I tend to come down between Ian and Lambert, at least in their present incarnations. Maybe violence will prove unavoidable. There is little doubt that a large-scale, sustained and peaceful protest movement will result in (further) state repression. When the baton-wielding thugs start the beatdown and loved ones are injured, incarcerated, or killed, how is one to react? With a candle?

And while some of the violence against us may yet seem abstract, our government is actively murdering people around the world as well as funneling cash and munitions to petty tyrants who do the dirty work for us, keeping markets and resources available to an insatiable empire. If the victims of such exploitation abroad are our brothers and sisters, are decades of incremental progress sufficient, particularly when the left’s objectives are almost always focused on their domestic condition.

That said, “effete” is an obnoxious and condescending term. While I remain open to the need for violence, folks like Lambert should not be alienated or insulted.

And Ian you do yourself no favors when you says things like this:

“The US will get a revolution, and it will come from the right. I’m not even particularly concerned about it at this point … Sure, it’d be nice to save America, plenty of good Americans, but the culture is now beyond corrupt and into evil.”

Such a dismissive take on violence, which always harms the least fortunate members of a society the most, is repugnant. In fact, it sounds like it’s coming from someone who relishes the prospect. “Plenty of good Americans”–well, that sure establishes genuine, humane concern. Out of 300 million, I’ll grant you “plenty,” maybe even a bushel.

Sorry, as anyone who’s met “plenty of Canadians” or any other people, there is no monopoly on goodness or evil. Americans no more equal their government than Iraqis did Saddam’s regime, Russians Stalin’s …

“When the baton-wielding thugs start the beatdown and loved ones are injured, incarcerated, or killed, how is one to react?”

If one reacts with violence, it just becomes the excuse for more violence on the part of the thugs and no-one can match their capabilities for violence. When MLK and the other leaders of his movement settled on non-violence, they decided they could not even use violence in self-defense.

Non-violence is hard.

I think none of us here are “incrementalists;” the people who are are still loyal Democrats. This is none of us. For me, my radicalism means both voting for the lesser evil and working toward the greater good. The question, since we have decided to take radical stances, is how to act on them. Without goals, strategies, and leaders we have nothing. Violence without these is simply mindless violence.

It seems to me that the inclination of humans to respond to the ‘shiny, shiny’ is too deeply wired to change much. The prefrontal lobes can overide the response, if they have an opportunity to process it. But for most humans, the ‘shiny, shiny’ generally wins the moment.
That response served pretty well for a lot of human evolution. Now, not so much.
I am pretty much on board with Jay Hanson’s ideas about energy, the human condition and America. I also respect him for not lapsing into hopeless nihilism but still working to put forth some possible solutions.

Scruff,

Thank you for the Derrick Jensen excerpt. It’s apropos.

I value the high level of discussion at this blog and appreciate the fact that even vehement disagreement is welcome (a rarity in the blabbosphere). It’s also one of the few places where one can make perfectly reasonable comparisons to history, including the ugly parts of history, without being hooted off as “hysterical,” “shrill,” or “paranoid.” Or for committing the dreaded Godwin violation.

P.S. And we get the news this morning that, surprise surprise, the FBI is ratcheting up its abuse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/us/13fbi.html?hp&gwh=AFBE226BBC6CDD10189E469FB919D18B

Oops! Did I say “abuse”? Silly me. I meant Reasonable And Appropriate Actions Against Potential Dangers For The Times In Which We Live, Which After All Aren’t Ordinary Times But New Times That Call For New Measures And New Cooperation And New Sacrifices From Us If We Want To Be Safe.

I’ve already provided thread music, so here’s a thread movie suggestion. I love this movie…..and hey, the guy was a non-violent Pacifist….or at least he was…he underwent a transformation. The movie’s germane to this topic, so when you get a chance, watch it, I think you will like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiYf97IddK0

Ian Welsh:

A majority of Americans approve of torture.

They do? I don’t buy that. For one, there have been past polls which show the opposite. And there’s this:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/a/m/americandad/2010/07/study-majority-support-for-tor.php

But this view was a misperception. Using a new survey dataset on torture collected during the 2008 election, combined with a comprehensive archive of public opinion on torture, we show here that a majority of Americans were opposed to torture throughout the Bush presidency. This stance was true even when respondents were asked about an imminent terrorist attack, even when enhanced interrogation techniques were not called torture, and even when Americans were assured that torture would work to get crucial information. Opposition to torture remained stable and consistent during the entire Bush presidency. Even soldiers serving in Iraq opposed the use of torture in these conditions. As we show in the following, a public majority in favor of torture did not appear until, interestingly, six months into the Obama administration.

This was true among all groups surveyed. Even Republicans. Military personnel opposed torture at higher rates than civilians.

In 2004, enough Americans voted for George Bush, fully knowing that he was torturing, to reelect him.

But did Kerry and the Dems make ending torture a big issue? You know as well as I do that it’s dangerous to try to compress any Presidential election down to any single issue—especially when the opposition scarcely mentions it.

Even among Americans who say that they support “extraordinary interrogations”, I would bet that’s because the subject has been euphemized so that they don’t realize what is actually being done. If you watch Fox News, you’d get the impression that all is being done is making is making defendants a mite uncomfortable, not subjecting them to procedures that could *kill* them if a mishap occurs. The fact that we’re being lied to is another factor.

I stand by what I say: Americans did not vote for or choose what is coming to them. The problem is that we have a center-right government and a center-right media–which, in the terms of the political dynamics in the rest of the developed world, represents a “right-far right” instead of “center-right” spectrum. Most Americans would want the US out of its wars, they want SS protected if not expanded, they want universal health care. I see this even among many self-identified conservatives. The problem is that there’s no one to vote for at the ballot box who will even advocate, much less implement, such changes. This country is so *bought*.

StewartM

I second the arguments of Lambert Strether, and repeat myself:

a) appeal on shame (which I learned here and add as a useful concept to the toolbox)
b) work on betterment of the electoral process (without corporate interference etc)
c) insist on the law and due process
d) exercise passive/unviolent resistance
e) exercise active resistance, if everything else fails.

Although I understand Ians frustration or even furor, to generalize or boil down to a too tiny set of options is not the way to go.

Remember Stephane Hessel: Time for Outrage! (Indignez-vous!), which is somewhere between (a) and (d).

Trying to judge the situation in the US –I suppose it IS grim– choose from your set of options.

It is difficult enough to choose the appropriate response in one’s own country, much less so concerning other countries.

Is graduated outrage the solution?
Probably not. Outrage works differently.

Listen to Arundhati, or Hessel, or internalize all those sufferings of the people we care for: the Palestinians, Lybians, Egyptians, Chinese …, and choose your methods.

Put another way round:

Is the US electoral process a lost cause?
Is congress/senate a lost cause?
Is the supreme court a lost cause?
Is the brainwashing of 80% of the US-populace a lost cause?
Is ’empire’ a lost cause?

I am inclined to agree, but am an outsider.
We have (sorry to say: I am German and therefore not entiteled to teach anybody ) a quite good working supreme court- Verfassungsgericht, a MUCH better electoral system than the US has, 50% public media, which is already bad enough, and a populace which is at least not completely deluded, concerning global warming, peak oil etc, but we are not living on an island, and NOT VERY MUCH OF THE TOTAL is NOT OK, ofcourse. Germany is the central asset of US interests in Europe, and keeping the Germans in check is not complicated. Just remind them on their everlasting guilt,and Europe is blocked, as long as this works.)

There are some encouraging activities in Iceland, Greece, Spain and the UK. Next to NONE in the US (and in Germany, btw)

What -well- weakens the Left is its insistence on sensible reflection and coherence.

What makes the Right strong are the simple anwers and fragmentation of the mind, which is intrinsic to the workings of the authoritarian followers, with the the crocodile segments quite easily summonable to a common denominator, which is some subpart of the brain: Getting angry!

I am not yet ready to leave that to the drain and go with the right-wing flow.

And I do not have an easy answer.

Does that make me weak?

Ian–you know that a single poll isn’t conclusive. You know a poll’s answers depend on its methodology. And you also know opinions can change even when it’s accurate.

But what I don’t understand is what I perceive to be a desire to essentially blame the majority of Americans as somehow deserving what’s heading their way. You say–and I agree completely–that the US has become a soft “fascist” state, that the American public receives skewed and inaccurate news reporting, that their welfare doesn’t matter to their elites, and more. And yet my interpretation of some of your more recent comments is one of blaming them (or some of them) for not seeing through the deceptions.

My moral compass: you don’t blame the deceived, you blame the deceiver(s). America is being dragged into a bad end game, true, but quite unwillingly. That’s what I see here on the ground, and moreover I live in the conservative South.

StewartM

Bill Gates has finally started to see sense and begun giving back.

No he isn’t. He education reform consists of privatizing schools and sending money that was going to teacher to companies controlled by Gates and Warren Buffett. Gates’ philanthropy consists of giving schools money to buy Microsoft technology instead of paying teachers. He has done nothing but harm the school system of Washington DC. Don’t turn your children over to a convicted monopolist.

I have to agree that Americans support torture. As soon as Bush announced that the Taliban prisoners were illegal combatants instead of prisoners of war and that the Geneva convection did not apply, we all knew that meant torture. We have chosen to look the other way, but we all knew what was going on. If we had a problem with it, we would have done something. If we cared the Democrats, who were the opposition party at the time, would have made an issue out of it. We don’t care and we have not made the connection between tolerating torture, the breakdown in law, and foreclosure fraud. We don’t yet get that law itself has been destroyed.

I agree with Ian that everyone with an option should leave the US. I myself would leave if I were younger or had a special skill. I would love to know how many people have left the US.

The situation in Wisconsin and across the Great Lakes is the best thing going on right now. There is a reason the national media is carefully blacking out all news of real popular protest.

My moral compass: you don’t blame the deceived, you blame the deceiver(s). America is being dragged into a bad end game, true, but quite unwillingly. That’s what I see here on the ground, and moreover I live in the conservative South.
StewartM

Stewart, of course we’re also blaming the deceivers, and have been for some time. But Ian’s right that willful ignorance is also to blame. Hell, you can’t even talk about these things at all on some blogs that are ostensibly liberal — you’ll get shouted down. They don’t want to hear it. My circle of friends is full of privileged, hyper-educated people who are choosing to stick their heads in the sand. I just had a heated argument at a dinner party last weekend over all this shit, and I ended by saying, “If this were happening under Bush, you’d be screaming bloody murder. Bloody murder.”

They refused to acknowledge it. Just refused.

It’s gross hypocrisy. It all comes down to, “Because Our Guy is in the White House, it’s okay.”

One of the aforementioned blogs actually displayed the sentence the other day, “Obama is an intelligent and decent man.” Okay, he’s intelligent, I’ll give you that. But decent?? Are you fucking kidding me? After what’s been going on? This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about when I say “America is getting what it asked for, and what it deserves.”

And re torture, the polls I’ve seen have shown again and again that at least half the population is just fine with it, even when the word “torture” is used. The most recent one was about teenagers/college students — came out just a month or so ago. 60% were okay with torture. 60%!

I’m sorry, there is no excuse today for remaining ignorant, not with so many other outlets for information besides the MSM. Especially for so-called well-educated people. They have tons of alternative sources at their disposal. They refuse to use them. I refuse to make excuses for them.

@Lisa Simeone,

No.
This ‘right or wrong, its my country’ thing is definiteley a rightist habit.
Just shut down some parts of your brain and here you are.

To some lesser degree also the Lefties seem to suffer from that.
But this depends on the general climate, where the closing of the guards is very much earlier a right-wing habit.
It is quite inevitable, that at a later time the left wing also closes the guard.

Just leave this company.

“Obama is an intelligent and decent man.”
Well. ‘Intelligence’ as such does not qualify for much.
Concerning ‘Decency’, i cannot see much in him.

‘Oblabla’ seems to tell his character.

So:
Intelligence: OK
Decency: any Proof on that?

Lisa Simeone:

Stewart, of course we’re also blaming the deceivers, and have been for some time. But Ian’s right that willful ignorance is also to blame. Hell, you can’t even talk about these things at all on some blogs that are ostensibly liberal — you’ll get shouted down. They don’t want to hear it. My circle of friends is full of privileged, hyper-educated people who are choosing to stick their heads in the sand.

Lisa, I had the same type of discussions, over ObamaCare, with similar ‘quiche liberals’–the Ezra Klein types who said “this is the best we can hope for” (NOT!! ObamaCare was in some ways worse than nothing (because it empowered even more those creating the problem) but also less than what was possible. Obama got exactly the HCR ‘reform’ he wanted, I’m convinced–a Republican one). And with those I would agree that there is a sizable element of self-delusion going on.

But let me introduce you to others–like a friend and her husband. They are surviving on some $20-25K a year. He has a heart problem; his medicines alone would cost twice their income if it wasn’t for dispensations and the Medicaid help they get.

They are not well educated. But they are smart enough to vote Democratic up to now, as they see what Republicans are all about. And they try to get out what vote they can. I have shown them clips of Michael Moore’s “Sicko” and they say: “That’s what WE need over here!!”.

But they tell me now “We can’t vote for Obama. He’s done NOTHING for us”. They looked into what the exchanges would cost for the husband (c. $600 a month, with possibly up to $13,000 a year in out-of-pockets) and that’s just for his insurance. They see that Obamacare, what Obama perceives as his crown jewel of accomplishments, is really worthless. These people with high school educations (or less) can see what my quiche liberal friends cannot.

And there’s more. Sometimes I talk to Republicans. Almost Tea Partier types. And yet, when I start talking about the cost of the US military (almost WWII levels!!) and what we get for it, they nod their head about the waste and the need to bring the forces home. When I talk about a modern WPA, or Medicare-for-all, they say things like “Yeah, we need stuff like that”. I had a conversation with a man just the other day which started out with with him asking me “Who do you think can beat Obama?” and wondering if Sarah Palin might be a better president, yet ended up with him advocating a WPA, advocating Medicare-for-all, and ranting about the price gouging of oil companies. I kid you not.

These people are the ones who will be hit by the Mack Truck first. And they’ve not been cheering that Mack truck on. They may be ignorant of politics and indoctrinated to believe that socialism is a synonym for “something bad”, but they certainly know that what’s about to hit them for sure ain’t good.

Americans have been bamboozled so much over the years. it’s hard for them to separate up from down in politics. One of the key reasons for this bamboozlement has been the Democrats’ (and the US left’s) cooperation in it. The Right in the US doesn’t have to emasculate the Left, the Left does it for them. The Left does it for them by forever shooting their own left flank. And I’m not just talking about the triangulation of Democrats like the Clintons and Obamas, supposedly left-liberal organizations and causes do it too. The Sierra club types shoot EarthFirst! The gay rights movement shot the gay liberationists and others. The AFL-CIO shot its communist and socialist members. Each and every “left” organization in the US triangulates to win what it perceives as short-term advantages and yet can’t see that the result of this is to move the Overton Window to the right another notch.

Look at the Right by contrast–they *protect* their right flank. Even after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Republican Congress squashed attempts to investigate the neo-militia movement. Moreover, in the press Tim McVeigh’s favorite book, The Turner Diaries, was almost universally reported by the press as being merely “anti-government” when in fact it’s a neo-Nazi work by William Pearce and chilling in its unabashedly racist and anti-semitic fantasies of a bloodbath of blacks and Jews.

StewartM

groo,

No, no, don’t worry; no offense taken. It takes a lot more than that to offend me!

I agree that no movement is going to succeed without the working class.

What is the “Working Class” anymore? I mean that sincerely. I’m not sure. It’s the first half of the 21st Century….not the first half of the 20th Century. The “Working Class” of the former is now the Chinese. The “Working Class” of the latter are now debt slaves.

MB: “What is the “Working Class” anymore?”

I answered this nearly three years ago on my own blog: I said that in the United States it was the undocumented aliens, the people who can’t ask for more wages, can’t negotiate for anything because their employers can have them deported at the drop of a hat. Anyone who’s working legally is of a higher class, even the people just scraping along. To which, though, I can add that after three years of depression, the situation of the people who are living hand to mouth on whatever they can bring in is getting very bad.

Some 57 percent said that it is OK to use enhanced interrogation techniques or some forms of torture on suspected terrorists if they might have information that keeps America safe.

“If they might have information”? Everyone on the planet over the age of two might have information. Everyone who doesn’t have information might have information.

Hey 57 percent, what if they might not have information? What if there is no evidence that they do have information? What if you might have committed a crime? Can the gov’t. lock you up indefinitely if you might have committed a crime?

It looks to me like the pollster wants to torture and wanted to find some agreement.

Just read this on the train:

“Public opinion polls are the critical instrument of imagology’s power, because they enable imagology to live in the absolute harmony with the people. The imagologue bombards people with questions: how is the French economy prospering? is there racism in France? is racism good or bad? who is the greatest writer of all time? is Hungary in Europe or in Polynesia? which world politician is the sexiest? And since for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have become a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth. Public opinion polls are a parliament in permanent session, whose function is to create truth, the democratic truth that has ever existed. Because it will never be at variance with the parliament of truth, the power of the imagologues will always live in truth, and although I know that everything human is mortal, I cannot imagine anything that could break this power.”

Milan Kundera, Immortality

Yeah, I take public opinion polls with a grain of salt….in fact, I don’t pay attention to them at all, for the very reasons jcapan posted, but just because I don’t pay attention to them, doesn’t mean that the opposite of them is necessarily true. I don’t think there is any such thing as “the American People” as politicians and their apparatchiks are so fond of saying, so there is no speaking as one, or a group consensus. I do believe that U.S. citizens, by and large, are led around by the nose and through propaganda techniques, to include public opinion polls, are told what to think and feel. If that’s the case, public opinion polls don’t serve to gauge the public’s opinion that has already been formed, but rather they’re a device used to form public opinion, and in that sense, they may be closer to accurate than I care to admit.

MB,

Totally agree. Was just saying exactly this to hubby last night. That smug, self-satisfied sense of superiority. Makes my skin crawl.

What has nonviolence actually accomplished? Indians killing Pakistani’s instead of both of them killing brits? White people having to be a little less public about their racism?

Seriously, you all act like you accomplished something lasting and epic, but nothing you’ve accomplished with this tool (which you insist must be the only one) actually measures up to that hype. You didn’t change the world. You didn’t make lasting change. Corporations didn’t tremble before you and the elite barely yawned (they were mostly on your side with the racism thing, or you wouldn’t even have gotten that much). All you did was push things forward a little tiny bit; you gained freedom for a country when many other countries were already gaining those same ‘freedoms’. You ended a system in the US that kept wages artificially high for the white working class, and in doing so, you assisted corporate America in destroying unions.

Stop believing your own BS.

Ian Welsh:

Are we even having this conversation? When I grew up, at least it was acknowledged that if you tortured, for whatever reason, you were evil. Period.

Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann had a similar conversation of about “Why torture is wrong”. Maddow took your position–that torture should just be considered wrong and evil, period, as a moral absolute. Keith took the argument I would tend to take–that torture produces bogus and unreliable information, that mistreatment of captives causes your adversaries to resist you harder, that it’s counterproductive to your own side’s morale, that it ruins your reputation, among others. That it’s not only hideous morality, but bad policy.

Maddow’s objection to Keith’s argument went: “But what if you could find an instance of torture where none of these objections hold true? It still would not be moral.” Maddow thought it was better to simply argue “it’s wrong and just never justified”.

You might Keith’s argument a “rational” analysis of torture that rejects it by a cost/benefit analysis. Perhaps that is true. However, in my experience Keith’s argument is more persuasive than Maddow’s “it’s just wrong” argument, Maybe that’s because of the cynicism of international politics nowadays. Maybe it’s because now more know that in WWII, the “good guys” did occasionally mistreat prisoners (and thus, using simplified reasoning, become instantly “no different” than the Nazis or the Japanese, who did it on a mass scale). I don’t know.

StewartM

Seconding Ian.

I’ve spent 30 years reading about torture, in accounts by victims, practitioners, family members, academics. Though it has always existed and, to the world’s misery, always will, we have to condemn it, again and again and again. And we have to quit with the grotesque “reasonable” arguments. They don’t convince people who don’t get it because those people don’t want to get it. They don’t give a shit.

It’s a sign of how far we’ve fallen as supposedly civilized human beings that we even have to discuss this in this country. In the ’80s we were propping up the most vile regimes in Latin America and not only casting a blind eye to but training torturers. So yes, the U.S. has engaged in it before (and what we did in the Philippines was horrific). But when news accounts about those incidents came out in the past, decent people were horrified. It wasn’t accorded any kind of respect as something to defend “in certain cases,” or fucking bragged about, or legalized in memos, or compared to a goddamn TV show, as some in Congress did with reference to “24.” It was considered shameful.

Now, we’ve run off the cliff, with “reasonable” conversations like that between Maddow and Olbermann, and that criminal John Yoo actually teaching at a major university. It’s unreal. It’s like we’re legitimizing the discussion.

Torture is wrong. It’s sadistic. It’s meant to humiliate and control. It is, as Ian said, meant to send a message. The fact that so many otherwise “ordinary” people can be brought to do it — that is worth discussing. For what it reveals about human nature. But no matter what, no matter where, no matter why, it’s wrong.

Torture is Terror, plain and simple. That’s its intent. It’s meant to strike fear into the heart of the target populace….to degrade them, to humiliate them…to demoralize them.

Considering that, let’s recalculate who the Terrorists really are in the WOT.

Are we even having this conversation? When I grew up, at least it was acknowledged that if you tortured, for whatever reason, you were evil.

As far as I am concerned, the answer is “No, we are not having a conversation about whether torture is acceptable.” Instead, the conversation is about the question “Has a poll result shown whether the majority of the u.s. population supports the use of torture on people who might be involved in terrorism?” My answer is, “Maybe. Measure it and find out. The current measurement is a ‘cold fusion’ declaration (“We’ve measured cold fusion!…No, wait. Never mind.”).”

“As far as I am concerned, the answer is ‘No, we are not having a conversation about whether torture is acceptable.’ Instead, the conversation is about the question ‘Has a poll result shown whether the majority of the u.s. population supports the use of torture on people who might be involved in terrorism?’ [and if so, however questionable it might be relative to other polling, can that be used to grossly generalize about 300 million people and/or dismiss the terrible things coming their way?]

Let’s say it’s only 40% (still repulsive, I grant you):

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/01/22/torture

And then let’s say it’s a more modest 22% in your own country:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=e380d404-cdec-4b1c-91ef-6c53914dafb1&k=360

At what point can the comforting term “evil” be used? At what point does concern over the innocent evaporate? Reminds me of the all Muslims support terrorism line. So much easier to stomach their bombed wedding parties.

Ian Welsh:

And why are we even having a discussion about whether a majority of Americans approve of torture? Hmmm? Let’s say you’re right, and it’s slightly under 50%.

Let’s not forget these polls were the ones taken right after the killing of Bin Laden, with a very loud persistent lie being told repeatedly over one of the 4 major networks by prominent people that torture somehow made this possible. (Aside from the fact that I believe like you, that Bin Laden should have been captured, not killed). Then it’s a poll “bump” in a long-term trend just like the similar and corresponding “bump” in Obama’s approval rating.

If popularity polls determine the “evil” of a country, then I must conclude that there’s not a country in the world that’s not “evil” because you can find opinion polls that say that a majority or plurality advocate a position I believe to be morally indefensible. I continue to insist that most Fox News-watching Americans have been propagandized and duped to believe that “torture’ when done by us (the “good guys”) just means inflicting mild discomfort or inconvenience on captives, as a reliable way to get precious information, instead of the truth—of subjecting them to potentially life-threatening procedures to get bogus information. If they simply knew the facts, our polling numbers would be more in line with Canada’s.

With Sean Hannity claiming on Fox that waterboarding is no big deal and that he’d willingly undergo it himself (of course, backing out of Keith Olbermann’s challenge that he actually follow through on his boast)–well, what other impression do you think is meant to be conveyed? That’s certainly the message I get the few time I have the stomach to watch Fox.

jcapan:

At what point can the comforting term “evil” be used? At what point does concern over the innocent evaporate? Reminds me of the all Muslims support terrorism line. So much easier to stomach their bombed wedding parties.

Very well said.

StewartM

anon2525

Let’s also not forget that when someone who is unarmed, is not resisting, and is not presenting a threat to anyone around him is killed, we call that killing “murder” or, possibly, “assassination.” And let’s not forget that pretty much everyone who spoke publicly in the u.s. approved of this murder or assassination. Not only did they approve of it, but those who disapproved were mocked or scorned.

I’ve not forgotten–indeed, I stated my own objection to his killing in my post. I agree with Ian on this, and with you.

But where are the cries of anger and protest and outrage over Bin Laden’s killing from the rest of the Western world? Maybe I’m tone deaf, but the voices from over there were just as muted as the objectors over here.

Well, heck. Here are their reactions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_the_death_of_Osama_bin_Laden

Most of them said “Way to Go!”: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, the list goes on and on. Even the Dalai Lama approved. Those are the official reactions, true, but the protests of individual objectors seem to have little in the way of a geographical principle component.

So what now–now the “evil” label gets pasted on most of the world?

StewartM

More of that which is not the shiny distraction:

Fig Leaf Nation,
Shocking pictures of pollution in China (or, “How does Walmart keeps its prices so darned low?”),
Slideshow of environmental destruction in the U.S.

1. True enough. But to play devil’s advocate, Switzerland has lots of guns too, as does Finland, yet both have homicide rates of approximately one-fifth and one-half of the US.

I must be dense, but it appears to me that you are not playing devil’s advocate because you appear to be making the case that the u.s. does have a segment of the population that has arrested moral development. You provide the example of other countries that have high gun ownership, but have lower rates of homicide. A possible reason for that is that the populations in those countries have a more egalitarian society that better supports individuals and families which, in turn, better supports the maturation of humans.

There can be lots of explanations for the more egalitarian society (less racism and poverty and better education because there are fewer races, for example), but the end result is a less morally developed population.

2. Why does the US has a culture of violence? There’s no easy answer for that question. But to talk of “arrested moral development” is unscientific and moralizing.

I suppose, but, after all, this is a discussion on the internet, not a scientific journal. We’re attempting to connect dots that 1) the political and media world will not, and does not necessarily want us to, and 2) there isn’t necessarily enough data or science to know definitively.

Even so, I would argue that these are quasi-scientific claims in that 1) they are a hypothesis that we don’t necessarily know the answer to based on existing scientific knowledge and 2) it is a falsifiable claim, unlike, say, “I believe god put us here to conquer nature.” It’s not scientific in that I’m not going to be conducting research and taking measurements and gathering data, other than the data that comes from observing events.

3. Why does the US has a culture of violence? There’s no easy answer for that question. But to talk of “arrested moral development” is unscientific and moralizing.
…
If you opened up an anthropology book to read about such cultures and the first thing you read was that they were in “arrested moral development”–well, MY first impression from reading such a book would be that the author was probably a racist, and certainly ethnocentric.

I’m not sure that anthropology is the relevant science to use to determine whether an existing, living population (not the culture) is morally undeveloped. If I were to attempt to measure this scientifically, I expect that I would use psychology or maybe biology or even biochemistry. Then you would need to develop some tests to determine whether a person has a mature morality, and of course you would need someway of objectively defining what that means. Then you would need to measure lots of individuals to determine its prevalence in the population.

We don’t have that carefully measured data available to us, so we either shrug our shoulders and say “who can tell?” or we draw conclusions based on events. I’m of the second camp.

Cultures evolve like biological organisms, but like them their evolution is simply adaptation–there’s no progress.

While there’s a good argument to be made that human beings are as flawed and un-evolved now as they were, say, 1,000 or 5,000 years ago, that is, I think, irrelevant to my point. My point is that some (significant percentage of) people in our population don’t mature, (whether willfully or for other causes is up to science to determine). This maturing as a person grows from an adolescent to an adult was possible 1,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago. That is different from claiming that “humankind is improving.”

But I have to wonder, given our elites joy at incarcerating even the non-violent, that they want this to happen

This has the simple explanation that 1) the Culture War has been useful for getting votes and obscuring the Class War and 2) the Class War wants to make profits (private prisons, private schools, private armies, for example) off of those activities that the population considers a necessity function of government. The joy is the Joy of Profit.

My fear is that the US will, in time of crisis, place a war-mongering demogogue in power who will in turn visit suffering upon the rest of the globe in a desperate effort to sustain the “American Way of Life” through resource wars.

Um, “the US will”? I think that the tense here is incorrect. Why do you think that this does not describe the past decade up to the present?

anon2525:

I must be dense, but it appears to me that you are not playing devil’s advocate because you appear to be making the case that the u.s. does have a segment of the population that has arrested moral development. You provide the example of other countries that have high gun ownership, but have lower rates of homicide. A possible reason for that is that the populations in those countries have a more egalitarian society that better supports individuals and families which, in turn, better supports the maturation of humans.

That makes a good argument, but it doesn’t contain all the variables. Why? Because the graph of violent crime in the US doesn’t correspond with wealth equality. The rates took off in the more egalitarian 1960s and then peaked in 1993 and has been in decline since, despite wealth inequality continuing to worsen, wages continuing to fall, and the safety net being shredded. I’m not saying that what you say isn’t part of the overall equation, but it can’t be the whole story. Hypotheses that have been floated to explain the decline include the baby bust, increased incarceration, cocaine use having peaked, even the reduction of lead poisoning.

I think that the US gun ownership rate and the support for capital punishment are due because, while the actual violent crime rate has declined, Americans have been blitzed by the media to think that it’s going up. I’m not just talking about Fox News; supposedly “liberal” Hollywood gives us each year fare that fairly scream a message how vicious criminal masterminds have the upper hand over overwhelmed police, bound by liberal judges and those silly constitutional rules. Often the hero “good guy” is the one who throws off the rules a la “Dirty Harry” to fight criminals who can’t be stopped any other way. Then I am reminded by Marvin Harris’s discussion in People, Culture, Nature” about art has been traditionally used to serve conservative purposes.

I’m not sure that anthropology is the relevant science to use to determine whether an existing, living population (not the culture) is morally undeveloped. If I were to attempt to measure this scientifically, I expect that I would use psychology or maybe biology or even biochemistry.

Psychology, no. Psychology like psychiatry is too wrapped up and blinded by our own cultural mores; too much psychology only looks at members of this culture at this time in history and then races to make pronouncements about “human nature” based on that.

Biology, specifically primatology, would be more useful. I am of the opinion that we’re Jared Diamond’s Third Chimp, but one much closer to bonobos than common chimps. That’s good news, as the hypersexual bonobos are peaceful and egalitarian, even emphatic, and hunter-gathering cultures are more peaceful than post-Neolithic ones. (Hard to say how peaceful; most hunter-gatherer cultures which survived long enough to be studied did practice low-intensity war, but they also were constant contact with post-Neolithic cultures so they might have adapted it as a response. At some point I personally think that in human prehistory human population density was so low that wars didn’t happen, no matter what you think about “human nature”).

However, the bad news is that humans are plastic enough that almost every instinct we have can be overwritten by our cultures, and replaced with emotional hardwiring that leads to responses usually worse. I have no doubt at all that vicious attitudes against say interracial couplings, homosexuality, celebrations of violence, and such are behaviors not arising from biology but taught by the culture. However, I also have no doubts that these emotional responses are truly genuinely and intensely felt. That’s why it’s never good to allow one’s warm fuzzies or repellant ickys emotional responses in the driver seat when it comes to making moral judgments. I say this despite the fact that I believe that biology gives us in essence a good set of moral instincts, in all cultures, these get oft overwritten and so one’s emotional hardwiring is not to be trusted. I don’t trust mine.

Finally–when you say “morally arrested development” I wouldn’t think that makes sense unless (like Maslow) you had a model of societies whose moral development wasn’t “morally arrested”. Can you name them?

For example, I highly respect Native American cultures. I think that they had a role in the development of democracy and personal liberty, simply because the culture of Europe was so top-down and *unfree* that most Europeans struggled to imagine what a freer society might look like before contact. Nor was this freedom for men only, women and children enjoyed freedom and rights unheard-of in Europe. There were taboos, to be sure, but the degree of personal freedom and autonomy granted to each member of their culture, ranging from matters of conscience to sexual expression, shame ours even today, and their social safety net was comprehensive. While our classical tales from Greece and Rome of heroes reinforce notions of inequality, theirs taught equality—a message of “even the seemingly smallest and weakest among you is important”.

Why am I telling you this? Because these cultures tortured too. Yes, the standard way of these cultures to deal with important male prisoners of war was to torture them to death. Often it was a long, involved, process with the women joining in with the men, thrusting burning sticks into various body orifices and other things I don’t care to mention. The scene in the Last of the Mohicans with the British officer about to die a long tortuous death at the hands of the Iroquois was historically accurate.

So, if cultures that have otherwise have many features I’d think we’d both say were attractive, even “morally mature” can also do things like that–well, how do you define “maturity” when it comes to morality?

StewartM

I’m excerpting bits — you can go read whole thing:

People Power
From Cairo, Egypt, to Madison, Wisconsin, civil society is fighting back through massive nonviolent resistance. But what makes for a successful campaign? The data are in.
By Erica Chenoweth

. . . Contrary to these assumptions, nonviolent resistance has proved to be a much more powerful way to achieve political goals, even in brutally repressive environments . . . .

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj1105&article=people-power

You keep saying that the US is in a state of “arrested moral development”. I think it’s therefore incumbent on you to define what “arrested moral development” is, and show us a society that isn’t by comparison. You must contrast the US with a society that isn’t because you claim the US as a society is. IOW, apples to apples

I would like to avoid being repetitious, but this comment above needs the same reply as I gave before: I am comparing a segment of the u.s., not the (entire) u.s. A segment of the adult population of the u.s. is in a state of arrested moral development. A segment is and so that segment may be compared with the rest of the population. (My guess is that this is true in many other countries, too, but I don’t live there so I’m not going to make that assessment.)

Similarly, I don’t think that it’s a persuasive argument to tell someone that they’re evil or have arrested moral development.

I would not attempt to have such an argument. Words and argument are not always sufficient for convincing someone because not everything is reducible to a rational argument. Much of what we know and believe comes only through experience, for example. Empathy is better taught through personal experience or through direct personal observation. I’m not sure that a rational argument for empathy can be made that will be as well learned and understood as through experience.

Anon2525:

I am comparing a segment of the u.s., not the (entire) u.s. A segment of the adult population of the u.s. is in a state of arrested moral development. A segment is and so that segment may be compared with the rest of the population.

Then my bad; I misunderstood.

But even there–polls give the percentage of hard-core righties to about 20 %. of the adult population in the US. That’s a lot, maybe but hardly enough to win elections. (The number of hard-core lefties lags only slightly behind, at 15 %.) Everyone else is in the middle or confused or not watching closely. I don’t have the numbers for the rest of the developed world, but looking at the 2009 elections far-right parties captured 14-17 % of the vote in places like Austria and the Nethlerlands, which is not too far behind the US percentage. That would make the breakdown of US political not terribly different than the rest of the developed world.

And that makes sense, in a way. In 1960 the US had one of the most equatable distributions of income and wealth in the world. Now it’s possibly the most unequal of the developed world.

So why is that 20 % so powerful in the US and less so in Europe? It all boils down to structural differences: our winner-take-all electoral system, our lack of any real restraint on essentially bribing government officials, our corporate-controlled media and lack of any public media free from that control (like the BBC) that hardly ever allows a lefty near a microphone. The fact that the public by and large continues to support the retention and even the expansion of progressive programs like Medicare and Social Security and despises the banksters bailout (like Ian said, calls ran against it 1200:1) matters little in the actual exercise of power in this country.

That’s not arrested moral development, but a gamed political system where the Right nearly always gets its way even when its proposals are wildly unpopular. A “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition. The fact that the Democrats pose as the opposition party but prove all-to-ready to enact the conservative agenda as well (Obamacare, anyone?) means that even when the Right seems to lose, they don’t.

StewartM

But even there–polls give the percentage of hard-core righties to about 20 %.

Yes, I made this point in an earlier comment. But now you’ll need to make some connection to Ian Welsh’s original point, which is that a poll had a result that over 55% of the (u.s.) respondents supported the use of torture. His conclusion from that result is that the u.s. population is “evil.” You then appeared to me to say that such a conclusion could not be drawn because it was “not scientific and moralizing.” Now, after a long, meandering walk, where are you? That 20% of the population is “evil”? That there is no such thing as “evil”? Or somewhere else?

Th argument of the left, like that of science, is fundamentally democratic; show us the data, and you win the argument, no matter who you are.

With regard to science, this gets cause and effect mixed up. For example, scientists do not make the claim that the use of fossil fuels is causing the earth’s atmosphere to get hotter because most scientists think that that claim is true. On the contrary, most scientists think that it is true because that is what has been measured. In other words, the measurements shape what is believed to be true by the majority–the measurements shape the majority view. Voting has no place is deciding, that is, science is not democratic.

Now, after a long, meandering walk, where are you? That 20% of the population is “evil”? That there is no such thing as “evil”? Or somewhere else?

I have consistently said that most of those supporters are not evil, but are deluded by propaganda. Even most of the 20 % hard-righties are.

I’ve also said that the support for torture by the US is not as great as the polls indicate, because “torture by us, the ‘good guys'” via Fox News is reported as “making obviously guilty ‘terroritsts’ mildly uncomfortable” instead of the reality of “subjecting often innocent people to terrifying and potentially life-threatening procedures”. I believe that support would evaporate if most Americans knew that truth.

StewartM

With regard to science, this gets cause and effect mixed up. For example, scientists do not make the claim that the use of fossil fuels is causing the earth’s atmosphere to get hotter because most scientists think that that claim is true. On the contrary, most scientists think that it is true because that is what has been measured. In other words, the measurements shape what is believed to be true by the majority–the measurements shape the majority view. Voting has no place is deciding, that is, science is not democratic.

But anyone can do the measurements. Anyone can propose a new hypothesis. Appeals to authority are not valid. Persuasion rather than coercion is the way that any new theory wins acceptance. And while there is no voting, there is consenus.

That sounds pretty democratic to me, in the tradition of hunter-gatherers.

StewartM

I’ve also said that the support for torture by the US is not as great as the polls indicate, because “torture by us, the ‘good guys’” via Fox News is reported as “making obviously guilty ‘terroritsts’ mildly uncomfortable” instead of the reality of “subjecting often innocent people to terrifying and potentially life-threatening procedures”.

You would be unscientific in saying it. Ian Welsh cited a poll result. My view is that a poll result is not sufficient to decide what people think. 1) The poll, as cited, was badly worded–leading, and 2) a single poll result is not enough to decide. Ian Welsh drew conclusions from one poll result, and you are drawing conclusions from zero polls. Truthiness personified. “Who needs data when one can consult one’s gut?”

I think that is possible that a significant percentage do support the use of torture on suspects, but we cannot know yet because we do not have the data. And it is completely possible that it would not be a significant percentage. In other words, I am not relying on my gut to tell me. Measure it, and find out.

I don’t do metaphysics. Practically speaking, I only have the rights that we grant each other in this society.

You don’t know whether you have a right to your own life? Or whether someone else has the right to take it from you? Or whether you have the right to self defense?

OK, then.

anon2525:

You would be unscientific in saying it. Ian Welsh cited a poll result. My view is that a poll result is not sufficient to decide what people think. 1) The poll, as cited, was badly worded–leading, and 2) a single poll result is not enough to decide. Ian Welsh drew conclusions from one poll result, and you are drawing conclusions from zero polls.

No, I posted a link earlier to the historical record on the polling on this during the Bush and Obama years. The poll Ian supports is the one taken after Bin Laden’s death, after a very loud contingent that was given a lot of air time insisted very publically that torture produced information that led to Bin Laden’s demise.

Sure, you think, the media reporting has some effect?

Truthiness personified. “Who needs data when one can consult one’s gut?”

Or by simply knowing people. People I know who advocate cruelty in the abstract usually back away from it when confronted with the close-up view. Or, as some have said, if most had to kill their own livestock, there’d be a lot more vegetarians.

The problem is not that the American people have “gone bad”, it’s with a sociopathic and lying political and economic leadership and a media that’s either craven or complicit, or both.

Measure it, and find out.

The problem is, most polls are very limited in what they really measure.

StewartM

You don’t know whether you have a right to your own life? Or whether someone else has the right to take it from you? Or whether you have the right to self defense?

A “right” existing somewhere out in the aether, a Platonic abstraction? Yep, I sure do. The reality is that I only enjoy what rights I am given by the society in which I live, including my “right” to live. To maintain otherwise is a form of wishful thinking, akin to the arguments made by income tax protesters that the Constitution gives the government no right to tax them. But it does.

So a “right to life”? We deny people’s “right” to life all the time. We call these denials “executions”.

Personally, I wished we had a great many more rights than we currently have–like voting. Voting’s not any inalienable right in the US at all, but one routinely denied. Me, I think that it should. Not only should released felons be able to vote, but incarcerated ones. But the simple deplorable fact is that we don’t.

-StewartM

Put another way, if there is a “theory” that one thousand “scientists” accept, but which contradicts the data, and there is another “theory” that only one “scientist” accepts, but which matches the data, which “theory” is scientific? Only the one that matches the data. And we don’t need any history or anecdotes to know this. It is the definition of science.

At the university I attended long ago, there was a newsletter in the physics department, dedicated to explaining the solar system using Ptolemy’s model instead of Copernicus’s. The students had great fun devising hypotheses that would explain all the then current data using Ptolemy’s model. Yes, it was a joke, but it illustrates a point that many scholars of science have pointed out: that while the acceptance of a hypothesis depends on it explaining the data, other factors–personal, cultural, aesthetic, and others—also play a role, especially as there will always be competing explanations. Starting with the very basic point that humans tend to prefer simple explanations of the data better than complex ones (parsimony). Yet there is nothing inherent in the nature of the universe that would mandate that the simplest explanation is the best.

Scientists are free to use either one, so long as the theory does not contradict the data (data coerces). One explanation is preferred because it makes it easier to make predictions. Both give the same prediction (“The moon will be full on June 30”), but one theory makes it easier to make calculate that date.

Nothing in your example supports the argument that science progresses by persuading scientists. It progresses by coming up with explanations that match the data. Without that condition, you have a human activity that is not science.

anon2525:

One explanation is preferred because it makes it easier to make predictions. Both give the same prediction (“The moon will be full on June 30″), but one theory makes it easier to make calculate that date.

So utility and simplicity are valid reasons to prefer one explanation over another? I don’t disagree that’s the way science is practiced, but why should the “real” universe accommodate human brains by always having the simpler explanation to be the correct one?

The fact is–although science is the best way humans have ever devised to understand our world, it cannot and does not explain what “real reality” is all about. Science constructs models, stick-figure simplifications of how reality works, stick-figure simplifications which are useful because they seem to make predictions. But are said stick figures ever “real” or correct? Science cannot answer that question, we only find out when they seem to be obviously wrong.

This is not to knock science. The utility of science to me is not that science always gets the stick figures right–hardly, it doesn’t. The utility of science to humanity is in the democratic way that scientific knowledge is produced, and the honesty by which it proceeds (ideally). When one posits a hypothesis, you also set forth the criteria where you yourself will accept error if met.

Imagine how much better our politics would be if practiced likewise! All the claims of Reaganomics have been demostrated to be empirically false, yet they keep getting repeated ad nauseum as if repeating them enough make them true.

-StewartM

And yes, while there has been new data discovered that has influenced this debate, it doesn’t mean that the other side is being unreasonable or that their position doesn’t explain the data either. It’s just that a majority of scientists working in that field believe that one explanation is to be preferred. That is how the scientific consensus on any subject is achieved.

And though no votes are taken, that sounds democratic to me.

The question is “Does any of the new data contradict any predictions made by the explanation (the current theory)?” If it does, then the theory is thrown out. It is no longer accepted. Some people would like to say that it is modified, but all theories that work at some time are modified when new data is found that it does not explain. All of science is an approximate explanation that improves over time. What your example does not say is that there is (or is not) some contradictory data.

Once upon a time, the best scientific thinking was that the earth was flat. That theory matched all known data. It was correct for that data. Eventually, new data was measured that could not be explained by the flat earth theory. The flat earth theory was a good approximation. Most people (billions) still use it most of the time today because the earth’s curvature does not need to be taken into consideration in their day-to-day activities. Democratically-speaking, the earth is flat. Scientifically-speaking, we have found data that contradicts the flat-earth explanation. Democracy is good for some purposes, but if a single measured fact contradicts a democratically-accepted explanation, then science discards the democratically-accepted explanation.

The utility of science to humanity is in the democratic way that scientific knowledge is produced, and the honesty by which it proceeds (ideally).

You continue to repeat the claim that science progresses through the use of democracy, but you haven’t provided a single argument that shows a democratic process that advances a theory that is contradicted by data. Once a theory makes a prediction that is found to be contradicted by data, science throws out that explanation and begins the process of trying to find a new explanation.

Imagine how much better our politics would be if practiced likewise! All the claims of Reaganomics have been demostrated to be empirically false, yet they keep getting repeated ad nauseum as if repeating them enough make them true.

You’re making my argument for me. “Reaganomics” is supported by some majority (at least for a time). Evidence/data is measured that contradicts that explanation, but because politics is not scientific, the explanation is not discarded.

The result of this is that even when what might seem to be an objectively better explanation is at-hand, the majority finding of science may instead gravitate towards an objectively poorer explanation more congenial with cultural or personal bias and/or a given political power structure.

You would need more specifics about what is meant in a particular instance by “what might seem to be an objectively better explanation.” If by “might seem to be …better,” you mean it is not contradicted by the data while some other explanation is contradicted by the data, then it doesn’t matter what the majority “gravitate towards”–they are simply moving away from reality.

Does politics influence science? No, politics eliminates science. Once a theory is no longer coerced to match data, it is no longer science. It is political dogma. Lysenkoism is not science.

Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the whole sorry history of human intelligence testing, how it was (and still is) manipulated to reinforce biases about race and gender and social class. Studies involving sexuality likewise can run afoul of such biases or limitations; the researchers who first seriously studied homosexuality in other human cultures or even among other animals ran afoul of similar biases.

No one said that science is easy. Working out an explanation that describes cause and effect in human intelligence is going to take a long time. The fact that Gould can describe biases shows that science has found data that contradict the explanations provided earlier. Data is coercing those scientists to change their explanation.

“The data” does not come with any instruction manual to tell one how to assemble them together, one is free to devise any means.

No, you are not free to devise any means. You need to devise an explanation that accounts for the existing data, and which predicts future events correctly. And if your explanation does not account for some of the data, or if it makes a prediction which is shown not to match the data, then your explanation is astrology, not science.

The difference that makes science different is a) you can’t force-fit the parts together, or pretend that they don’t exist*; and b) that a form of democracy, not authority or tradition, is the arbiter of what is at any time the “best way”.

I think that this is likely my final reply because this has been repeated. You continue not to supply an example of a scientific theory that is contradicted by measured data, but which, despite that contradictory data, is accepted because of a democratic vote or consensus. You have your cart before your horse, and appear not to be able to reverse them.

The latter is why the practice of science is ecumenical; it crosses barriers of language and culture which constrain other presumed paths to knowledge.

This, too, is false. The reason that science is not culture or language-specific is that it is empirical, and all of us live in the natural world subject to the same natural phenomena.

Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics–was he being “unscientific” or not truly practicing science by this?

By your reasoning, he was being unscientific because he was in the minority.

He did what a scientist is supposed to do: He tried to come up with alternative explanations for the data. He failed to come up with a better explanation that makes a prediction that quantum mechanics did not predict. If he had succeeded then he would have unseated QM with a better theory.

For him to behave as a non-scientist he would have had to develop an explanation, have that explanation be contradicted by data, and then still hold that the explanation was correct. That is, he would have had to refuse to be coerced by the data.

Both sides recognize the same Leggo pieces on the table. Both sides believe their explanations are a better way of assembling the Leggo pieces than the other. But the Leggo pieces themselves are silent and coerce neither explanation.

Both sides believe they are correct, and one side is wrong. The data will determine who is. A majority vote won’t.

Repeating my reply above: either one explanation or the other is correct, or the explanations are equivalent. If one is correct and the other is not, then as more data is measured, it will coerce the explanation towards the correct one. You give lots of examples above, and the answer to them all is the same. Not all of the explanations are correct (except when they are equivalent). You appear to think that there are many, many equivalent theories that explain various phenomena, and that the advancement of science is through a consensus forming around a favorite. Instead, what you are seeing is that many fields of study simply haven’t advanced enough and don’t have enough data to provide falsifying tests. The scientists studying those phenomena are attempting to get that data so that it can coerce one explanation or another. They might like one explanation or another, but they know that they have no say in which one is correct. The data will decide, by falsifying one or another explanation, not them.

And that’s why and how science operates democratically.

No, what will happen is that more measurements will be made and one explanation or the other will be falsified by the new data. People have no vote in what the natural world is.

In the case of bird origins, I certainly did think I said that Martin and Feduccia were being unscientific.

Change that to :

..I certainly did *not* think *I said that Martin and Feduccia were being unscientific.

Editing error.

StewartM

Your argument has been that a consensus decides which theory is correct. If that is true, then Einstein was being unscientific because he did not accept the consensus view.

No, it just means he is in the minority. One can still practice sound science and not hold to majority opinion.

No, there is only one, just as there is only one reality.

I don’t necessarily differ that there is only one physical reality, but we don’t know what that reality is. We will never know what that reality “really is”; as science cannot provide a final answer. All we can do is construct models that explain and predict observations.

And there are nearly always more than *just one* model in any field of endeavor that will achieve this. I have no dispute with you that new data can upset theoretical applecarts and that any proposed model must explain the data and be falsifiable to be properly scientific. But to say that the “data coerces” *just one and only one explanation* is empirically false, for reasons I have cited. Martin’s model explains bird evolution. Modified steady-state and plasma explanations explain cosmology. None of these explanations ignore any of the data, all of these explain the data and make predictions about future observations. They’re not “bad science” and their practitioners are not being unscientific by being in the minority. They might emphasize some of the observations more than others, but that’s also true of the consensus opinion. While Larry Martin downplays the importance of cladistic analysis and of the Chinese Cretaceous discoveries while playing up the importance of embryological research and Longisquama insignis, someone like Kevin Padian does the opposite–tit for tat. It just happens that a majority of researchers currently agree with Padian and disagree with Martin, for a variety of reasons, and that’s why Padian’s view forms the current scientific consensus.

This is true in every field. It’s more apparent and pronounced in discussions of “cutting edge” stuff, but even in the basics, even in well-established theories like quantum mechanics or relativity, there are researchers who question orthodoxy (in the former, about randomness being apparent or real; in the latter, about the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment really being null). The fact that these are minority opinions even on well-established explanations doesn’t mean they’re not scientific.

Science is always about tentative knowledge and uncertainty as well as democracy. You seem to have the perspective of science as some sort of secular dogma. It’s not.

-StewartM